Monday, December 24, 2007

Hypocritical Blog Blast of the Week; and the Week Just Started

Homeschooling blogger and former School Board seat-filler Kay Brooks replies to a Tennessean report on public schools and exhorts Mayor Karl Dean:
[The Chamber of Commerce] bought and paid for many of those BOE members, as did the unions...and look where we are. If you want change, you're going to have to put people in charge whose first loyalty is to their constituents and not the adult organizations with a 'direct interest' in the system.
She should have said, "not the adult organizations that don't sit on my side of the partisan aisle," because back in 2006, Ms. Brooks was put on the School Board not by constituents in her district but by 18 Council Members in league with then Davidson County Republican Party Chair Jon Crisp. Unless the county GOP has gone teenybopper on us, I would assume that they are an "adult organization" with a direct interest in the system, as is the conservative shadow organization, Save Our Schools, that was lead by Mr. Crisp and Council Member Eric Crafton. So, that kind of support belies her indignation about the current BOE.

As those whom the Tennessean interviewed--including our friend and fellow local blogger Catherine McTamaney--attest, we need reform in the school system. But we don't need Kay Brooks' brand of anti-public education reform in our school system. If she wants to homeschool her own then more power to her, but her educational habits create a conflict of interest when she calls for cuts to school budgets and for handing over public resources to private schools. And the special interest adult groups that brought her to the school board without an election make her pleas to Mayor Dean the pinnacle of hypocrisy this final week of December.

2 comments:

  1. Righteousness and hypocrisy are frequent companions and Kay Brooks' preoccupation with our schools while avoiding them for her own children is annoying. But from time to time she accidentally does ask some darn good questions.

    Warden and Porter were in fact courted and supported by the Chamber and both have been huge dissapointments. The Chamber would likely like nothing better than to get rid of Kindall and Thompson and I heartily support those efforts. Mark North was appointed - sponsored by Pam Garrett and he has done an admirable job with clearly inferior compatriots (David Fox excluded).

    No one cares what the MNEA thinks about anything, least of all the BOE. But I do agree with her that the 40 member committee appointed by the Mayor is a huge waste of time when we have little time to burn.

    Everyone is holding Garcia accountable when he does nothing the BOE has not agreed to let him do. She is right to keep calling attention to the BOE when in fact they are responsible for the lack of progress - diversity first, education second agenda of our district. Garcia didn't start that - they did.

    I think Nashville would be far better off having the Mayor fire the board and appointing 9 actual qualified individuals to do a very difficult job. And if they didn't, we could fire the Mayor.

    The biggest problem with Kay Brooks though is she is masterful at pointing out the problems but never has a suggestion to a solution. Even during her mercifully short tenure on the BOE - she did far more finger pointing than problem solving - which is the problem of the BOE in a nutshell. She is more like them than she knows.

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  2. Kay Brooks' preoccupation with our schools while avoiding them for her own children is annoying.

    Perhaps, but it makes sense . . . unless one thinks that children should be sacrificed to ideals. And I'd say her "accidental[] good questions" and "[mere] fingerpointing" may appear as such because you categorically reject her (valid, in my opinion) presuppositions. Competition is good for our schools and (adult) self-interest isn't.

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