A committee of Manchester’s school board voted on Tuesday to grant the superintendent the authority to “align the curriculum and staffing throughout the school district ... .” That is amazing — not only because some board members finally expressed trust in the superintendent, but because it revealed that the superintendent does not have that basic organizational authority.

Manchester’s Board of School Committee reserves for itself a large amount of authority to make what are essentially operational decisions for the district. That makes the superintendent’s job, which is to manage the district, more difficult.

The committee’s vote came on the eve of the first day of school. The full board still has to vote on the proposal. So as students returned to school on Wednesday, some entered classrooms packed with more than 30, even 40, students. The board has known for months that this was likely to happen. And yet it still has not allowed the superintendent to make staffing and curricula changes that would mitigate the problem. The soonest it could approve the change would be in September.

The superintendent is supposed to manage the school district. But in Manchester he cannot even cancel, say, Manchester High School Central’s poorly attended needlework class to free up funds to hire another teacher to help reduce class sizes in core courses.

Superintendents should not have entirely free rein, of course. But they have to have some leeway to manage resources “to obtain the most cost-effective solution,” as the proposed policy change states. The full board ought to approve this change at its next meeting. In fact, it should have approved it long ago. But in Manchester, it often takes a crisis before the school board will try something different, and this time, alas, is no exception.