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.

Counselor resigns

A bit of good news, a Glencliff counselor has chosen to resign rather than fight allegations of grade tampering thus saving the district untold hours of work and who knows how much money in an effort to remove her. Though considering the outcome of the Bowers hearing--she might very well have had a chance at keeping her job despite the evidence.

I, though, am thankful she took the higher road this time. It does make you wonder what kind of counsel these folks are providing the children if they feel comfortable altering records.

I'm also thankful it wasn't another District 5 problem. It's still a district-wide problem and I'm glad the records are all being examined but how it is that the school was being audited and they didn't catch this.

[Metro Schools’ guidance department Kim] Mansfield said her team was present at Glencliff, conducting an audit, when it was discovered that Cobb has allegedly altered grades.

She said they did not, however, discover the errors during the audit process.

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.

Public School business must be public

The Metro Nashville Public Schools Board of Education is suggesting to the Tennessee School Boards Association that they pursue legislation that would allow more of the BOE business to be conducted away from public accountability. This must not happen.

Today's City Paper quotes former BOE Chair Pam Garret as saying:

“There are some things that I felt like, and I think we all agree, would be better off in private, like the hiring of the director, the evaluation of the director,” Garrett said. “For some districts the issue of purchasing property would be considered something that would be better off to be confidential.”

The board is asking to exempt meetings to consider employee dismissal, compensation, discipline or performance, as well as collective bargaining matters, from the law. This could effect certain aspects of union negotiations.

All of the above are decisions that are vital to the running of the district. These decisions will commit the district to paths that will have long term and far reaching impact and absolutely must be conducted with full accountability to the public that is paying for the system, the parents with children in the system and to the voters that determine who will oversee the system. To take make this information private is completely wrong and mocks the term "public education".

I understand that some of these issues are delicate. I understand what it's like to have people discuss you and your performance with little regard to the fact that you can hear them and that may scare a few potential employees off. I know that we may pay a bit more for land because someone was paying attention to the proceedings and realized the value of their property. Disciplinary proceedings are very difficult but we don't need to have secret trials determining whether people come or go. The public is owed the information about the conduct of it's employees and employees are owed the safety of a public proceeding. Going secret with these discussions comes at too high a price.

Part of the problem is the attitude that our board meetings must be sedate, polite and entirely business-like, that there should be no public disagreement or fireworks. Policy Governance rules and demands order in the interpretation of some--perhaps at the cost of legitimate in depth discussion. Somewhere we bought into the lie that healthy disagreement and airing of views is shameful. It's only so if the participants lower themselves to personal attacks and not the facts of the matter.

It's my opinion that the BOE and MNPS are still doing a poor job of communicating exactly what they are about to do and have done as it is. They don't need more hiding places for the people's business.

Whose neighborhood?

You gotta wonder just who these folks are working for when, in regard to zoning changes, they're quoted in today's City Paper as saying:

Meanwhile, the Metro Planning Department still believes such mass downzoning is not a good thing — it makes duplexes a limited resource at a time when more and more people are moving into Nashville and want a variety of housing options for reasons of convenience and cost, according o the department.

and

Customers will still buy these, [real estate broker Many] Wachtler said, but residents relocating from Atlanta, Dallas and Los Angeles in search of housing at about $500,000 “want new, and they want in town — so the only way to do that is to get two [houses] on the lot.”

Councilmen Jim Shulman and Lynn Williams are both spending a lot of time trying to save their neighorhoods from these out-of-towners. CM Williams explains the neighbors' concern by saying:

“It is the character of the neighborhood they bought into,” which they wish to maintain, she said.

Indeed. I wish them success at preserving their neighborhood.

Absentee landlords

I'm glad to see a modest proposal to ensure that the very people that help craft and manage Metro policies are going to have to live under them. Councilman Charlie Tygard is introducing legislation to the Metro Council that would require

Mayor’s Office employees and employees of the Metro Council office to live within Davidson County if they earn $100,000 or more annually (City Paper)

Falling outside this legislation but of serious concern:

The statistics showed that by far the city’s public safety departments employ the highest number of workers who live outside Nashville: 432 police employees live outside the county, receiving about $21.3 million in annual salary dollars, and 526 fire workers live outside the county, earning approximately $28.4 million in annual salaries, according to the statistics.

In addition, six Metro department heads do not live in Davidson County, as well as six employees of the 39-member Mayor’s Office. In total, roughly 27 percent of Metro employees live out-of-county, receiving about $124 million of $413 million in total salary dollars Metro pays annually.

Allowing employees to live elsewhere has created a form of absentee landlordism. Imagine what having 432 extra police officers living in our neighborhoods could do to our crime rates. Imagine the improved response time when 526 emergency workers are closer to us in the event of a natural disaster. Many of them have had to make the difficult decision of choosing to live in the city they care for and providing the best education possible for their children--a very hard choice indeed.

Missing from this list of employee groups is teachers and support staff not living in Davidson County. Other than property tax rates nothing impacts our city like the schools and when 28.6% of our teachers are not putting their own children in the system they help craft and many not even living in the city we have a serious problem. A few people fussed at me in my school board race regarding my own children not being in the system--why the silence and even support for these folks?

When these people leave the county they are not part of the natural pressure that would be created to force change in our schools and government. These people know the systems intimately and they're choosing to leave. We've got to wonder why.

On a related note Ben Cunningham's Tennessee Tax Revolt group has had their signatures certified and their initiative to allow voters a direct voice on property tax increase will be on November's ballot.

Don Driscoll, president of the Service Employees International Union Local 205 that represents Metro employees and who opposes the measure, said he could not say whether the union would take any legal action if the measure passes. Both Metro and the Tennessee Comptroller’s Office have expressed doubts about the concept’s constitutionality.

Still, Driscoll was biting in his attacking of the idea, saying he believes it could damage the city’s education and health care systems. (City Paper)

Perhaps if more of these employees actually lived and paid property taxes in the city Mr. Driscoll's concern for his union members could be mitigated. Regardless, I believe our city would be better off with both CM Tygard's and Mr. Cunningham's proposals.