THE CHARTER CONVERSATION TAKES A PAGE OUT OF EDWARD LEAR
It’s been a couple weeks since I’ve written anything. There has been plenty on my mind, but I’ve got a full time job and parenting is a full time job and my wife would like a little attention as well, so it’s been hard to carve out some time. I need one of those lobbyist jobs or a gig like Andy Smarick over at Bellwether Education Partners has. One where I can read about education, write papers, and pontificate on Twitter all day. Alas, I am stuck in the world I live in, which can sometimes be a little bizarre. This week is a prime example.
Tuesday night was the monthly meeting of the Metro Nashville Public School Board. I had some prepared remarks that I was going to deliver to urge passage of a new communications bill. When I arrived, the room was already full. A brief glance showed it to be a packed room of charter school supporters. A little puzzled, I sat down and looked at the agenda and saw nothing to warrant this level of interest. I shrugged and thought, well, public interest is always good. What a naïve old man I am.
It seems there were plans afoot for this meeting. School Board Chair Sharon Gentry wasn’t in attendance, but she had some prepared remarks that she wished to share with the public and asked fellow member Jo Ann Brannon to read them. Apparently, Gentry’s had enough of the arguing over charter schools and such and deemed it time to put these differences aside and adopt positions agreeable with her. (Well she didn’t say that exactly, but that was the point.) At the conclusion of the speech, the room full of charter folks leapt to their feet in applause. Elissa Kim, who as vice chair was chairing the meeting, did nothing to quell the outburst.
It should be noted that Ms. Kim is the Executive Vice President, Recruitment and Admissions for Teach for America Greater Nashville. I know, you’re probably thinking, isn’t that a conflict of interest? Apparently not because she also works closely with MNPS Human Capital on the recruitment of teachers for the district, and nobody thinks that’s an issue either. Yeah, it all gets a little goofy, but that’s the world I live in.
Sitting at that meeting, it suddenly dawned on me that I was in the middle of yet another charter school publicity stunt. I’ve written previously about what happens when charters get angry and I guess they were angry again because they had astro-turfed yet another meeting. The thing that really opened my eyes with this incident though, was the number of leadership people present. The folks present were equivalent to the top leadership at MNPS. I can only imagine what would happen if I called up Jay Steele, chief academic officer for MNPS, and asked him to get his office to show up and leap to applaud a letter that I’d written to disavow charter schools. He’d stop taking my calls. Not neccesarily out of Dad Gone Wild | The Charter Conversation takes a page out of Edward Lear:
