Marsha Warden drops out

The Nashville City Paper is reporting that MNPS BOE Chair Marsha Warden has changed her mind and isn't going to run for reelection. That's good news. She had plenty of opposition, it was going to be a tough competition and I don't think she'd have come out on the other end in good condition. The YouTube's weren't going to be pretty. The question now is, who will she support and will they really want it?

Running from responsibility

This picture is of MNPS BOE Chair Marsha Warden turning her back on Nashville Channel 5's Phil Williams as he tries to get answers from our School Board Chair about what MNPS is going to do to ensure the safety of children, specifically special needs children, on school buses.

Our chief investigator Phil Williams went to the school board looking for answers.

"I'd like to talk to you about the sexual assaults," Williams told board chairwoman Marsha Warden.

Warden suddenly turned and walked away. "I'm sorry. I can't talk about that, OK?"

"Why not?" Williams asked.

Her answer: "They're minors."

Instead of facing him (and us via the camera), being a leader and addressing the issue or at minimum providing a political answer like "This is a serious issue and we're working on a solution", she runs away under the pretext that she's got to get a meeting started.

Williams didn't ask her about any child in particular. That's just the first excuse that came to mind. She'd be happy to talk about minors that have done well, won awards or are participating in some MNPS backed activity. What she didn't want to talk about is a very messy and serious issue that demands her full attention. Her first responsibility to these children is their safety. If there is a gag order from Metro Legal covering the entire issue of school bus safety, she should have been honest and said so. But if there is, it's one that needs to be broken. One lawsuit, which could take years to litigate should not shut down legitimate discussion of the whole issue.

Is there any wonder why she has 5 opponents in the upcoming election?

If you missed the report you can view it at NewsChannel 5.

BOE is unsure--I'm not

It's the sub-headline that tells the real story regarding the MNPS BOE and Nashville Mayor Karl Dean's 'partnership' to find a new superintendent for Metro schools. That sub-headline at the Tennessean is:

"Board members seem unsure about next step in process"

And that's exactly it. We've hired 9 people to run the district, they rubber stamped pretty much everything former superintendent Dr. Pedro Garcia wanted, they were propped up by the business establishment and the unions and haven't been held accountable by the electorate, it was assumed that since they had legal and education experience they were qualified and so here we are. They are unsure about how to hire one employee. Like nearly everything else they've decided to 'hire' out the hard work which will then allow them to avoid accepting all the blame later. They'll let the mayor help, they'll call in the Tennessee School Boards Association and before the final decision is made they'll have created a community group to advise them. What are these folks getting paid to actually do? When things are cruising along they wield that rubber stamp pretty well, but let the system wobble a bit and they just aren't up for the task. One of them needs to grow a backbone and start leading.

From BOE member's Karen Johnson blog:

"...the School Board in a 7-2 (Marsha Warden, Steve Glover, JoAnn Brannon, Mark North, George Thompson, Gracie Porter and Ed Kindall -7) (Karen Johnson, David Fox -2) vote moved the following motion from Board Member George Thompson "I move that we request the involvement and participation of Mayor Karl Dean in helping to identify a candidate for interim director of schools to be selected by this board....then at the appropriate time the Mayor would further be involved to participate with the board in a search for a permanent Director that will be hired by the board."

Karen Johnson offered an amendment to include 'all stakeholders' in this motion. It was voted down:

The amendment failed by a 5-4 vote (Marsha Warden, Steve Glover, Mark North, JoAnn Brannon, and David Fox -5) (Karen Johnson, Ed Kindall, George Thompson, Gracie Porter -4)

From the City Paper:

[Mayor Karl] Dean later added that he believes the interim director position should be filled quickly, and that he believes the best process would be for Dean himself to find members of the community willing and qualified to fill the temporary position. The board could then make the final decision.

This is just a bad idea. first of all...it's not his job. He's got enough on his plate. It is the BOE's job and they need to earn their paychecks. What quickly hiring someone will do is give the appearance of stability and progress in time for the August BOE election.

At this point in time the MNPS staff doesn't need the distraction of taking on a new person and training them in the finer points of running the school system. Something like this will slow them down and eat up valuable resources at a time when we don't have them to spare.

For now, Chris Henson needs to focus on the budget. I suggest the other 'cabinet members' can step up and finish out the school year and begin planning for the next. They've been around long enough to have done this several times, this isn't reinventing the wheel. They can do this. Likely, without the heavy hand of the former superintendent they'll have a great opportunity to shine and show us just how successfully they can work together and actually get the job done.

This season of change is a great time to see which of the BOE members is up to the task of actually running the system and has earned the right to stay on the BOE. Pay attention and remember this August. Remember, all but North, gave former superintendent Pedro Garcia a hefty raise and voted to renew his contract, Porter once, the rest over, and over and over again.










From left to right:
Ed Kindall on the BOE 23 years since 7/9/1985,
George Thompson, more than 12 years: 4 months on the BOE in 1991 and then back on 8/1/1996,
MNPS BOE Chair Marsha Warden on the BOE since 8/24/2004 ,
Gracie Porter elected in August of 2006 and
Mark North since spring of 2007.

Undercutting the Chair

Further evidence that no one is in charge comes from George Thompson in this morning's City Paper:

Board member George Thompson said it’s important to keep in mind that Warden, though she is board chair, was representing only herself in the e-mail.

“We have not authorized her to say anything, or to do anything,” he said.

Thompson pointed to a portion of the board’s governance process policy, which states that the Board of Education chair should “refrain from exercising any authority as an individual to supervise or direct the Director.”

He's exactly right, but of course the BOE hasn't authorized HIM to say this either.

So if you had hope that MNPS BOE Chair Marsha Warden's direct order

I expect you to review the questions asked at the meeting and present written responses to those questions to Ms. Smith, the members of the Metro Council, they Mayor, and the local press. I expect this to be done immediately.

in her email to MNPS Director of Schools Dr. Pedro Garcia yesterday was going to be fulfilled, think again. What I would have liked Mr. Thompson to say is something along the lines of: "I happen to agree that this information must be provided to these people as quickly as possible and I'll present a motion at the next BOE meeting to instruct Garcia to do so." If he did, no one is reporting that.

The Board has a Code of Conduct and in Governance Policy 9.2 it states:

2. Board members may not attempt to exercise individual authority over the
organization.

a. Members’ interaction with the Director and with staff must recognize the lack
of authority vested in individuals except when explicitly authorized by the
Board.

b. Members’ interaction with the public, press or other entities must recognize
the same limitation and the inability of any Board member to speak for the
Board except to repeat explicitly-stated Board decisions.

c. Members will not publicly express individual negative judgments about
Director or staff performance outside the formal evaluation process. Any
such judgments of Director or staff performance will be made only by the full
Board.

This Governance Policy is part of the problem with the BOE and thus the entire system. I'm not saying we need to adopt a free for all BOE but this policy becomes a very convenient excuse as well as a crippler for real action. I knew if I had stayed on the BOE I was going to violate this policy eventually. It's too easy to characterize legitimate public discussion of issues as 'negative judgments'. Never mind whether those judgments are accurate or not.

Anyone wanting to take on the task of running for School Board this August should read this entire document. Frustrated citizens and parents should be familiar with it also.

George Thompson is up for reelection in August.

Testy, testy

Yeah, that'll work. A couple of weeks before your evaluation tell the Chairman that it's her fault. Apparently MNPS BOE Chair Marsha Warden is peeved that MNPS Director of Schools Dr. Pedro Garcia missed the Council's Education meeting on Monday which then put her in the position of having to defend MNPS. That was something she wasn't prepared to do. The Tennessean tells us:

Garcia fired back an e-mail confronting Warden for her repeated threats to give him a bad evaluation. He also suggested that she take note of questions at future public hearings rather than give out incorrect information.

The Tennessean has copies of the email exchange between Warden and Garcia. You're going to want to read these. Scroll down to see them.

Warden wrote:

There was no financial information available at the
meeting. In consequence, there were a number of allegations of
impropriety that was made to which I cold not respond effectively.
Financial information was not the only thing missing. The most
important thing missing was you. You could have answered the questions
and demonstrated that Metro Schools did not misappropriate funds.

Just my opinion, but it seems to me that as Chairman of the BOE she should have had a handle on a lot of this.

And she gives him a direct order:

I expect you to review the questions asked at the meeting and
present written responses to those questions to Ms. Smith, the members
of the Metro Council, they Mayor, and the local press. I expect this to
be done immediately.

Garcia responds:

I take my job very seriously, but I also make it a practice to have representation from the Administration at every meeting. Sandy Tinnon used to be that representative, and presently those duties are handled by Woody McMillin. The Board has never directed me as to what meetings I need to attend.

Now I like Woody McMillan a lot and wouldn't want his job for all the tea in China, but he's not Sandra Tinnon, or Chris Henson or even Paul Changas, all of whom, I expect, would be better able to handle most of the questions.

I don't see any explanation from Garcia in his email as to where he was or why that was more important than the Metro Education Committee meeting.

BOE Chair Warden comments

The Tennessean prints a light interview with MNPS BOE Chair Marsha Warden. I'd like to see similar pieces for all the BOE members on a regular basis.

A couple of quotes to encourage you to read the rest. There are questions about goals and if Pedro Garcia is doing a good job--a question she doesn't answer with a yes or no.

The BOE role:

"The school board is different from the Metro Council. We are a policy governing board, and we do a lot of legislative work. The easiest way to think of it is that we oversee and approve the Metro Nashville Schools budget and policy.

SSA:

"If you look around, most private schools enforce standard school attire or uniforms. Maybe they know something we don't. Maybe in distinguishing the way the students dress at school as opposed to the way they dress at home, we are preparing them to enter a learning environment."

It doesn't matter

This quote from Metro Nashville Public School Boards Chairman Marsha Warden is in today's Tennessean:

Marsha Warden, school board chairwoman, said its operations were transparent and would continue to be. However, the board is looking to be more sensitive to personal issues for employees and parents, she said.

"In no way, we intended to limit anyone's access to the performance of the district, and certainly the director's evaluation is a direct measurement of how we are doing as a district," Warden said. "I just don't know how many people have their personnel evaluation publicly scrutinized."

It doesn't matter how many of us have this sort of scrutiny. The fact is Pedro Garcia (and others) took the job knowing we had these minimal sunshine laws in this state and their personnel information would be and should be public record. If they objected to the 'scrutiny' they should not have taken the job.

The only people I'm concerned about is the children who are witnesses to the conduct of their teachers and the staff. I hate having them in the witness chair with all those adults surrounding them asking them over and over what happened, did that really happen, are you sure? But it's for their sake that we've got to ensure this process is as open as possible so that we know what to look for and who to be looking at. For their sake--accountability, full and legitimate accountably--does matter and is worth fighting for.

In loco parentis loco

This is not a good beginning for our new school board, or its new chairman.

School board member (and chairman of the Board for the Council of Great City Schools) George Thompson, an attorney, took a case that involved a woman whose son brought a gun and drugs to school.

Incredibly, the new school board chairman has to ask--

“My question to Metro legal was ‘Is there a conflict of interest in this matter?’” said Marsha Warden, chairwoman of the Metro School Board. City Paper

Of course there is and I'm astonished that both George Thompson and Marsha Warden even needed to ask. The minute this woman said 'school' as in "my son brought my gun and drugs to school" Thompson should have said: "I'm sorry ma'am but I'm on the school board. I can't take this case." Further, he's just resigning now when the incident happened back on May 11? When was he hired by this woman?

The other half of this story-- perhaps the rest of this iceberg-- is why it took so long for the school system to let the parents know what's going on in the schools.

Instead, many of the nearly 50 parents who attended the special meeting wanted to know why they first found out about the May 11 incident more than four months after it happened, and were not notified by the Metro school system.
(snip)
“This is about trust, and right now that trust has been broken,” said Scott Dickson, the parent of a now-first grade student at Shayne Elementary, City Paper

Parents who don't trust don't support the system, leave the system and, perhaps, leave the county. And they talk to their neighbors and relatives--who then don't trust. Catch a clue, MNPS. I've talked about this over and over, people assume that many of our schools aren't safe and it doesn't help when they cover these things up for 5 months.

In a conversation at a meeting held by CM Pam Murray regarding Maplewood High School I, as a school board member, said we've got to let folks know just what the truth is so that we can either kill the rumors and assumptions about the safety of schools or work on correcting the problem. At the time Ralph Thompson, head of discipline for Metro Nashville Public Schools, said they were still working on the information but he'd get it to me. Well, it took quite a while and we still didn't get a school by school breakdown (more at my previous post.) They are still hiding information about the safety of our schools--of our children.

At the very least the parents with children in that classroom should have immediately been told that their child's classmate had brought a gun and drugs to school so that parents could do what good parents do--help their children understand the situation, fight fear and train them about proper gun and drug handling (for them don't touch, call and adult). But no, 'in loco parentis" kicks into high gear and the system decides that they should handle it and it's none of our business. Never mind that they're our children, it's our school system and it's our tax money paying for it all.