Agendas

Whatever the Chamber has in mind for Nashville's schools, you can bet that educating all of Nashville's children is not topping the agenda. The Chamber's agenda is intended first to help its member businesses and that doesn't mean being an advocate for children who live in challenging social situations and who have no options other than the city's public schools.

The Chamber is not evil. It has a voice and it has a right to be heard. But if it's going to throw its money and power around at election time, it's a fair target for criticism and it better become accustomed to that. Progressive Nashville

The exact same thing can be said about the Metro Nashville Teacher's Association , the Service Employees International Union and a few other politically active groups. We're not going to make any progress until we recognize that all of these organizations have their own best interests at heart first and foremost. They exist to serve the needs of their members. Like any organization self-preservation is "Job 1". While individual members, no doubt, are quite concerned about the welfare of students and do their best to ensure students get the best education possible these organizations are much more concerned about the welfare of their organization and its members than the welfare of students with uninvolved parents of little means either financially or politically.

When I ran for school board back in August of 2006 questionaires from these organizations were full of questions about how I was going to ensure they got better wages and benefits. Not one of them asked me how I was going to ensure that students were safer and better educated. The SEIU questionnaire was so focused on their needs that I refused to fill it out and chose to read a prepared statement about me and my qualifications instead. It's certainly part of their job to get as much as possible for their members but my job was to focus on getting as much as possible for the students.