Monday, July 07, 2008

Maybe, but it wasn't the ONLY reason

Former MNPS Superintendent of Schools Pedro Garcia isn't gone yet.

Thanks to MNPS BOE member Ed Kindall (District 7-Downtown-Glencliff) Garcia's sour grapes have entered the current rezoning controversy just in time for tomorrow's vote by the MNPS BOE. The Post quotes from an email from Garcia to Kindall back in January:

“I know that the situation I find [Garcia] myself in today, and the pressure exerted upon me by Marsha Warden [Chairman of the BOE], is the direct result of my decision to fight against her desire to move the African American children from the Hillwood cluster so she could be reelected,”...
Give me a break. There were plenty of good reasons to encourage Garcia to leave and not one of them had to do with rezoning.

And again, Kindall, who is running for reelection after 23 years on the board already, makes race the issue and not the actual education of the children. That racial box he's got MNPS in is one of the reasons he does not need to be reelected. It's not 1985. It's 2008. We've come a long way since then.

Councilman Erica Gilmore (District 19) also felt the need to speak to the MNPS BOE. Her statement can be found, again, at the Nashville Post. Basically, she's against the plan because it will "result in an increase in the percentage of economincally disadvantaged minority students attending schools in lower income areas" and wants the new BOE and the new Superintendent to make the decision. Her council district hosts three schools: Hume Fogg Magnet High School, Martin Luther King, Jr. Magnet High School and Rose Park Middle Math/Science Magnet School.

2 comments:

din819go said...

Welcome back --

I do believe the next board and superintendent should vote on the rezoning plan. Why? They are the ones that have to live with it. If they have to live with it then they should own it by voting yea or nay.

Kay Brooks said...

And I suggested back in April that they just hold off a year until the new BOE and the new superintendent have a chance to get up to speed and then let them live with the decision instead of inheriting all that anger and frustration which will put them behind the 8 ball.

They should probably wait longer