Pulling it Together? Again!

“I had a preconceived notion once. But it turned out to be something that I already thought.”  -Ernest P. Worrell

The Metropolitan Nashville Board of Public Education is searching for a new Director of Schools – the position most school districts call Superintendent.  What do you think of the school board? Last week, conventional wisdom and chronic cynicism combined for a chorus of naysaying calls for delay. No one believed the school board can pull it together long enough to make the hire.

          I attended last week’s “emergency” board meeting that reconsidered the interim director to show my support for whatever the Board decided on that issue and joked that Ringling Brothers sent me to take notes on their competition.  I left that meeting troubled, but a sense of déjà vu gave me hope the Board would step up, take responsibility and do its job. 

Flashback: Seven or eight years ago, amid the search for a Director of Schools and a call to rid the world of the Nashville School Board, the members looked around the table at a retreat and committed to pull it together.  After the slate of finalists was deemed underwhelming by local pundits, politicians and media, the Mayor met individually with each Board member to persuade the Board to call off the search and wait for a year of failure so he could name the Director.  The Board had already decided to do its job and not allow any special interest to usurp its responsibility.  We rejected his suggestion that the school system plan a year of failure because – as a twist on the old saying goes – planning to fail is planning to fail.  No matter your opinion of that school board, former Director of Schools Jesse Register, or public education in general, you should recognize that the Board’s hiring of Dr. Register saved the school system and the school board from total annihilation.  

          That time on the Board is highlighted by this photo on the front page of the now defunct Nashville City Paper. 

How many hands do I have?  That’s right; I am a three-armed mutant with the innate ability to say “but on the other hand” one more time than most people.

          Welcome back to 2015, and the school board won the week!  Amid calls for delay, the School Board interviewed the finalists, accepting responsibility and displaying accountability that should be an example to every legislative body.  Whether they decide to hire one of these finalists, ask for more applicants, or to start school with an interim, we now know that this school board will do its job.  Are you comfortable with that?

Whether you’re comfortable with that or not, here is what you should do.  Call, email or otherwise contact your school board member (whether you live in Nashville or not and no matter what issue is presently before your school board) and express your sincere gratitude to them.  They hold the hardest and most important of all elected offices. Don’t express any opinion on any issue and don’t cite any vote or position taken by your school board member.  Don’t even have a reason.  Just say: “thank you.”