Metro School Director's quid pro quo?

I received a couple of tips overnight that Metro School Director Jesse Register has anointed school board member Gracie Porter to be board chair in exchange for her swing vote to support Register's privatization of Metro Schools service workers. She will be elected today.

This is not what I had in mind when I originally supported Ms. Porter over Kay Brooks, whom Davidson County Republicans helped appoint over the wishes of voters. Of course, as a conservative, Kay Brooks could have just as easily voted to bust up the local service workers union, cut wages, erode benefits that Metro employees enjoy, and subsidize private corporations.

Another progressive success story plays out today, because "progressive" turns out to mean anything anyone wants it to mean.

As board chair maybe Ms. Porter can help Mr. Register take down the teachers union next time. Kay Brooks would not have it any other way.

Kay Brooks is in a show-me state

Kay Brooks is once again carrying the water for a council member who helped Davidson County Republicans assign her a seat on the School Board without consulting her constituents a while back:

Show me a 'major firm with diverse employees' that wants to move into Nashville. Just show me one who is seriously considering taking Nashville out of consideration based on Nashville requiring its official business be conducted in English. Just one. I'll wait

Oh yeah? Show me one onerous, expensive problem that is caused when Metro employees, who ought to be free from micromanagement, speak to immigrants in their own language, if they are able and they choose to. Just show me one major burden such a personal courtesy has placed on Metro taxpayers, particularly to the same degree that Eric Crafton has been burning through Metro resources for the past two years resurrecting English Only time after time. Just one. I won't be holding my breath.


UPDATE: Did I mention that Kay Brooks is also comparing herself to the Mayor? That is one flight of fancy.

Using Kay Brooks as Your Litmus Test for Electing Council Members

For those who prefer an issue checklist to help make voting decisions and for those who consider the 2006 Kay Brooks fiasco a litmus test for either voting or not voting for certain candidates, I give you the Metro Council's roll call vote that put Ms. Brooks on the School Board in May 2006 over the heads and the wishes of the school district that she was installed to represent.

Here are the names of those currently running for office and who voted to plug Kay Brooks in the only open public school board seat she will probably ever occupy (unless some future Metro Council repeats this Council's mistake):

• Buck Dozier (Mayoral candidate)
• Michael Craddock (Council candidate)
• Rip Ryman (Council candidate)
• Carl Burch (Council candidate)
• Harold White (Council candidate)
• JB Loring (at-Large candidate)
• Eric Crafton (Council candidate)
• Randy Foster (Council candidate)
• Parker Toler (Council candidate)
• Charlie Tygard (at-Large candidate)

Here are the names of those current candidates who voted for Ms. Brooks' opponent, who was months later elected popularly in the more legitimate race for the open school board seat:

• Diane Neighbors (Vice Mayoral candidate)
• Carolyn Baldwin Tucker (Vice Mayoral candidate)
• David Briley (Mayoral candidate)
• Pam Murray (Council candidate)
• Mike Jameson (Council candidate)
• Ronnie Greer (at-Large candidate)
• Billy Joe Walls (Council candidate)
• John Summers (at-Large candidate)
• Vivian Wilhoite (Council candidate)
• Sam Coleman (Council candidate)

As I pointed out before, Kay Brooks blogs more and more like the church lady every day. In her latest installment of screeds against council members who did not vote for her in May 2006, she compares squeaky clean District 6 Member Mike Jameson to the Tennessee Waltz convicts. She refers to Mr. Jameson x3 using the word "special," which is further proof of her resemblance to the church lady. Of course, she is also prone to overblown and faulty comparisons: she once compared public education to slavery, so I do not put much stock in her linking Jameson to the Tennessee Waltz infamy.

But what is so patently ridiculous about her swipes at Mr. Jameson is that she totally ignores information from the same article that several Council candidates who voted for her in May 2006 have received nearly $10,000 in campaign contributions from convention center lobby groups. More than half of those contributions went from Gaylord to JB Loring and $1,000 went from Gaylord to Charlie Tygard.

A little money may certainly corrupt, but more money corrupts more absolutely. And when a candidate has been generally above reproach like Mike Jameson, he deserves a better fate than to be mentioned in the same breath with those properly convicted in a bribery scandal.

Eric Crafton to Pursue Override of Mayor's Veto: More Arm Twisting and Vote Trading in Store for Council

Metro Council Member Eric Crafton tells News 2 that he will pursue an override of Mayor Purcell's veto of the English Now, English Tomorrow, English Forever Bill.


UPDATE: Michael Cass reports (via VV) that, if Eric "I'm Not Mean-Spirited" Crafton does not get the votes necessary to override the Mayor's veto, he may further waste taxpayer resources by working on a Charter Amendment and forcing a money-consuming popular referendum on the measure. Looks like more arm-twisting and government waste to me.

Crafton is going to hold the divisive immigration issue hostage until he wrings some kind of personal satisfaction out of Metro and milks conservative red meat for all its worth, and then he'll fall back on the ridiculous cover that he "always" takes his "marching orders" from voters, like he did in the Cass interview. Would "always" include the time you disregarded the popular will of 5th School District voters and followed the Republican Party's prompt to vote for Kay Brooks, Mr. Crafton? Or does "always" refer to the time, Mr. Crafton, that you passed a crutch to your own business interest by sponsoring a bill to reduce developers' sidewalk fees? Or perhaps "always" means that time that you padded your own conflict of interest by lining your pockets with $300,000 in MDHA loans, Mr. Crafton.

Shame on your shamelessness, Mr. Crafton. You hobble through Council on your own crutches and try to mislead us voters into thinking that you march stride for stride to our orders. You are out of step and out of turn.

Metro Legal Calls Metro Council's Monolingual Bill "A Surrogate for Racial Discrimination"

Bruce Barry at PiTW is first with the legal details on Metro's sentence against "English Only/First." Metro Legal believes it will violate the Equal Protection Clause; jump and read the rest. Bruce also published Mayor Purcell's entire comment on his veto. Here's one exerpt that just may hit you upside the head:

This ordinance was introduced last September and for the last six months the sponsors have been twisting arms and trading votes to get it passed. Some sponsors say it is an important law while other sponsors say it has no effect at all. The truth is that no one knows how this law may ultimately be interpreted. If this law takes effect, this city will be engaged in years of lawsuits testing the effect and constitutionality of the ordinance. That means hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees whether we win or lose, for no good reason.

Legal fees are bad and unneeded, yes. But that trading votes charge especially rubs me the wrong way. If it is true it means that the brand of vote trading that went on during the Kay Brooks/School Board fiasco never stopped. Given that Council Member John Summers inexplicably voted for the monolingual bill, I'm left to wonder what he got in return.

Council Members Who Voted For English Only/First

English Only/First passed by 3 votes. Here are the "aye" votes from last night's English Only/First vote (along with links to district maps):

Carolyn Baldwin Tucker (at-Large; Vice Mayoral candidate)
Walter Hunt (Dist. 3)
Michael Craddock (Dist. 4)
Pam Murray (Dist. 5)
Jason Hart (Dist. 8)
Rip Ryman (Dist. 10)
Feller Brown (Dist. 11)
Jim Gotto (Dist. 12)
Harold White (Dist. 14)
J.B. Loring (Dist. 15)
Ludye Wallace (Dist. 19)
Billy Joe Walls (Dist. 20)
Edward Whitmore (Dist. 21)
Eric Crafton (Dist. 22)
Emily Evans (Dist. 23)
John Summers (Dist. 24)
Greg Adkins (Dist. 26)
Randy Foster (Dist. 27)
Jason Alexander (Dist. 28)
Vivian Wilhoite (Dist. 29)
Sam Coleman (Dist. 32)
Robert Duvall (Dist. 33)
Charlie Tygard (Dist. 35)


UPDATE: Mary Mancini over at Liberadio generously linked me in a post she wrote on devoting more energy to turning back the "conservative takeover" of Metro government by voting for more progressive candidates in the upcoming August election. Since she has opened that door, we need to add Metro School Board candidate and local Republican Party/social-conservative darling Kay Brooks to the list of those English Only supporters seeking office. In fact, she supported Crafton's first, unrevised, harder-core resolution without much qualification.

The Conservative Kiss of Death

If mayoral candidate Bob Clement is really angling against partisan, petty politics, as he told the City Paper, then associating with Davidson County Republican Party Chair Jon Crisp will fail him. We've seen Jon Crisp's "non-partisanship" in action during a council episode I affectionately refer to as "The Kay Brooks Fiasco."

Clement obviously tried to distance himself from such in his statement to the NCP, but even having Crisp's name mentioned with his campaign can be corrosive.

Backlash

With about 95% of the precincts now reporting, Gracie Porter looks like the unofficial runaway winner for the Metro School Board's District 5 seat, as she is enjoying about 55% (2,573) of the vote. Her three rivals are each netting below 20% of the vote. District 5 appears to have struck back at Council member Michael Craddock's backroom attempts--in cahoots with the Davidson County Republican Party--to misrepresent their interests on the Board of Education. The 17 Council members who voted with Michael Craddock may not have listened to District 5 voters back in May; but they sure as hell ought to be able to hear them in August.


08/04/2006, 6:00 p.m. Update: Bruce Barry writes a noteable synopsis of yesterday's BoE elections, including a dressing-down of what appears to me to be the Chamber of Commerce PAC's naked attempt to flex its post-election influence over our BoE.

Hang Fire

There's a big debate raging over at Kay Brooks' blog about the school board candidate's controversial views on including Intelligent Design (ID) in science curriculum, on requiring school uniforms for students, and on publicizing her home-schooled children's test scores. I do not know where she has had her ammunition for this campaign stored, but she's not getting clean shots off in the local culture war she's championing.

There is a way to allow ID to be taught in public schools without threatening scientific method or promoting religion: as a social theory in a philosophy or a civics class. However, she does not seem to grasp the difference between social theory and scientific theory, so she does not seem to be persuading parents who want their children to be taught serious science, and thus, stay cutting-edge and competitive with the rest of the world.

The subject of school uniforms seems a grayer area, but I agree with the comment:

[With school uniforms] you'd have administrators with an additional "discipline" issue to deal with and enforce. They'd be with kids in the office more rather than observing teachers, helping their classroom management and instructional effectiveness, and accumulating evidence for the dismissal hearings before the board.

Or it means additional tax money to pay for extra staff and/or time to pay for policing the uniform policy. But Kay has already argued that public schools get too much money for things she claims are not directly related to education:

1. "transportation, feeding, discipline, health and counseling"
2. "Pre-K classes"
3. "afterschool programs"

And now she would promote a potentially expensive uniform program that in her words "isn't really education"?

Finally, Kay seems too defensive about publicizing her children's test scores so that voters can judge her in the same way that she has asked them to judge Gracie Porter in light of the scores of children in Porters' charge. This gets to the heart of the problem of a home-school mom running for office: unless she has some kind of demonstrable track record in education or in local public school culture, she seems to have no business running for office. Kay has entered the public square as a candidate for school board. Her primary qualification is that she is the sole administrator and educator responsible for her children's academic performance. She subscribes to the idea that testing is the primary means of judging whether teachers, principals, and public servants are doing their jobs. Even so, she still will not publish her children's test scores so that the voters can decide whether she is doing a better job than her opponent?

I'm not saying that home-schooling moms in general should be required to advertise their children's test scores, but once they step out of private life in order to run for public office and once they skewer opponents on test scores, shouldn't they be expected to give voters some idea of how they have performed themselves as educators? Kay doesn't seem to think so. She wants to have it both ways. And thus, the problem of a home-school mom without experience running for office.


07/30/06, 5:30 p.m. Update: See the first comment below for the best evaluation that I've seen of the problems facing this school board and the inability of either Kay Brooks or her critics to address the real issues of education beyond the symbolic ones of culture wars. Particularly insightful is the criticism of those who speak of Kay Brooks as some kind of true agent of change (or in A.C. Kleinheider's starkly symbolic and practically vacuous terms "the definitive agent of change" in contrast to "the candidate of the system."). We are indeed guilty of allowing the culture wars to distract us from the real issues of education policy. So, by all means, let's get back to reality.

Her Blog May Not Be Suitable for All Eyes

Kay Brooks writes the following warning after linking Bruce Barry at the Nashville Scene:

Note, I consider the Scene to be and [sic] adult publication. Their advertising may not be suitable for all eyes.

I would be more comfortable with my children seeing a woman's bare shoulders in a laser ad than I would with them reading a lot of conservative dogma in the blogosphere during their most impressionable years.

Tennessean Editorial Board Endorses Kay Brooks' Ethically Challenged Idea

An editorial in this morning's Tennessean championed School Board candidate Kay Brooks' idea of having private groups pay for School Board laptops, in spite of the idea's potential for influence peddling and conflicts of interest, which I have pointed out. Do you ever wonder if the editors think about the implications of what they write before they publish it, or is this a matter of "just hurry up, take any stance, and get it into print"?

She Would Cut Off the Nose to Spite the Face

District 5 School Board candidate Kay Brooks says that she is not pleased that Metro foots the bill for laptops for School Board members. She would prefer that “a not-for-profit or community group step up and supply them.”

What is it about Metro governance that attracts local yokels who either do not understand or do not care about the petty improprieties that eat away at the fabric of government accountability and integrity? Remember the Meals-for-Deals take in which private groups were paying for Metro Council members to eat on meeting nights, while some of those groups stood to gain from Metro Council action? Remember how when government officials start receiving gifts like Titans tickets and movie passes from private sources they start throwing around the “we-cannot-police-this” excuse in order to undermine ethics reform?

Now, Kay Brooks, if she stays in control of her seat after the August election, would have private groups pay for School Board laptops. The implication is clear to me: private groups, which have interests in School Board decisions, would be giving gifts (of around $1,000 per seat!) to nine people vested with protecting the public interest in education. Gifts received from certain non-profits connected with certain private interests would predispose School Board members to vote favorably with those private interests on future decisions before the Board. Why isn’t this dilemma clear to Kay? If she has her way, School Board members could only accept these private gifts and avoid a conflict of interest by recusing themselves whenever a vote involving the interests of the private group came up. All nine members would have to recuse themselves. That means that votes could not be taken on matters that involve the private gift-giver; in some cases the lack of a vote on a contentious matter involving the gift-giver could itself be a conflict of interest.

But the problem is more profound. Kay Brooks is essentially arguing that we take the ability to hold our School Board members accountable out of the hands of Nashvillians and that we put it into the hands of a smaller ring of private groups and School Board members themselves. Finding a “not-for-profit” or “community” gift-giver does not make her argument any more palatable. There is nothing more inherently moral about a “not-for-profit” as opposed to a “for-profit.” In fact, the former has been known to be used as a smoke-screen for the latter, even when it is “for the children.”

If tax money pays for the computers, then taxpayers keep hold of the right to demand responsible and ethical behavior on the School Board. If private money pays for the computers, then taxpayers have less power over their School Board representatives, and private groups have more influence over education policy. In the name of saving some tax money, Kay Brooks is asking us to sacrifice our claim and our resort to demanding accountability from our representatives. That is a price too high for me, and it represents another reason to vote for anybody but Kay Brooks in District 5.

And Thus, We Learn That Mike Jameson Is the Real Puppetmaster

In what has to be one of the most glaring fumbles I have ever seen at the Tennessean, reporters Claudette Riley and Michaela Jackson mistakenly cast Mike Jameson in the role of frustrating himself by first nominating Kay Brooks to be the seat-filler for District 5 School Board member (incorrect) and then by joining with a majority of other District 5 Council members in voting for Gracie Porter (correct). It is almost common knowledge that The Insider Michael Craddock butted into the process from another district against the will of 5 out of 6 of the district's Council members, drummed up the votes for Brooks outside of the public eye, and made at least one trade for Ludye Wallace's vote. How could these reporters have confused Mike J. with The Insider the real puppetmaster? I mean I would understand if they had confused The Insider Michael Craddock with Jim Gotto or even Adam Dread. And I would understand confusing Mike Jameson with David Briley. Heck, I would even understand mistaking Ludye Wallace for Leon Phelps. But confusing Jameson with Craddock is patently dimwitted and practically unredeemable.


07/17/2006, 1:00 p.m. Update: As Laura points out in the comments, the on-line edition of the Tennessean corrected their dimwitted error. But those of you who have it on hard copy have record that the Freudian slip remains unredeemable. It is inexcusably the wrongest name switch at the worst time during this local election.

Important Public School Information You Probably Will Not Get From Kay Brooks

This past Friday, the Bush Education Department quietly (or more like "silently") released a report on reading and math scores, which concluded that children in public schools generally perform as well or better than comparable children in private schools. Kay Brooks is the school board candidate championing charter schools (publicly funded schools run by private groups) and private school vouchers, who sees little but abject failure in Metro public schools, so this report actually hurts her campaign. Charter schools "fared no better at educating children than traditional public schools." Now can we get serious by voting for school board members who will preserve what is good about our public schools and who will actually fix what needs fixing?

Brooks Seems to Lack Grace Under Fire

Kay Brooks was at the Howard School Building this morning as the polls opened for early voting. Rather than giving a pass to the inevitable critical comments that candidates tend get if they show up to shake voters' hands, Brooks gives the voters a lecture on the merits of being polite and on how voter rudeness makes her opponent look bad. As NiT points out, the candidate is not exactly forthcoming about what the voters said, so we do not know whether they were really rude or just acceptably critical.

It does not seem to me that talking down to voters is going garner Miss Manners Kay Brooks more votes. The public expects leaders to be more diplomatic, patient, and graceful, even if they actually do face rude criticism from others. Handling criticism seems to come with the territory of running for office. And showing up at the polls to glad-hand the voters runs the risk of facing unpleasant comments from your opponents.

In the final analysis, it is disingenuous for Kay Brooks--who is after all a candidate on the ballot holding her campaign sign for voters to see--to talk as if she was merely showing up to thank voters for "participating in the process." I doubt very seriously that Kay Brooks shows up at the polls to thank voters for merely participating when she is not a candidate for office. She is obviously campaigning, and she insults her readers by indicating that she was there for nobler reasons.

Watch for the Will O' the Wisps on Your Right and Then Veer Right Off the Deep End

Folktales are full of apparitions and fuzzy specters that hover between fantasy and reality. It looks like District 5 School Board candidate Kay Brooks has written her own folktale over on her blog today about some nebulous "they" in the netherworld trying to "silence" her and to "deny" her "full partnership" in holding the MNPS accountable to the taxpayers. She is never really specific about whom the "they" is, so we do not really know whose feet she wants to "hold to the fire."

She cuts and pastes quotes from her opponent, Gracie Porter, and from her predecessor, Lisa Hunt, both of whom agree that every citizen in Nashville is vested in and ought to influence public school policy. But no one but Kay Brooks herself has ever tried to stop Kay Brooks from participating in the process. Until Michael Craddock came along, other than voting and paying taxes, she opted entirely out of the public schools; not just pulling her children out, but also choosing not to exercise leadership in some capacity in our local public school culture. That was her decision, and it cost her valuable experience to fall back on in her campaign. But while voting and paying taxes do guarantee one representation in the debate, they do not in and of themselves entitle any individual to take the representative's seat. Otherwise, like some monstrous game of musical chairs, we would all be diving for that one seat. A candidate for the seat has to show herself capable and worthy to the voters in the district in order to be granted the privilege of serving those voters. Michael Craddock only has so much power over a district not his own.

So, I do not know where Kay gets the idea that full partnership equals entitlement to an empty School Board seat absent the decision of the voters of District 5. And I do not know why she concludes that someone out there is attempting to silence her. I am fairly sure, though, that jumping to those conclusions will do nothing to extend her public service past the August election. Voters are more interested in what the candidates pragmatically intend to do and they are less interested in allusions to monolithic conspiracies directed at specific candidates. While the latter may gain sympathies, only the former gains votes.

Kay Brooks Draws a Bead on Chamber and Takes Pot Shots at Gracie Porter, Updated

Kay Brooks seems a little miffed that the PAC of Nashville's business community is not endorsing her in the August election. As my public high school civics professor used to say, "Too bad, doo dad." In what seems to be a trend of Kay Brooks failing to fill out interest group surveys, she admits that she did not bother to give SuccessPAC a gauge for judging her. So, how can the Chamber group endorse a candidate who does not seem to be interested in informing them of her ideas?

The Chamber of Commerce may deserve its share of criticism (especially of the notion that solving MNPS's problems comes down to gimmicky remedies like blanket endorsements of challengers; public schools need more than just cliché), but Kay Brooks threw a low blow by insinuating that she has more of an interest in public school children than the business group does. It is truly something to witness a home-school mom accusing Chamber members, many of whom are public school parents, of caring less about Nashville's children than she does, simply because they did not endorse her.

And this story has got Kay Brooks running away from her newly minted "incumbent" title. Now that the Tennessean is pushing this "fresh faces" angle, she is in overdrive trying to project her outsider status once again. And that leads to her latest attack on Gracie Porter, who has never served on the School Board like Kay Brooks has. Nevertheless, Ms. Brooks tries to paint Ms. Porter into an insider corner that she already occupies herself. The Brooks blog slaps up a couple of statistical bar graphs on Alex Green Elementary student scores from 2001 to 2003, during the time when Ms. Porter was principal there. Then Kay Brooks encourages her likely and largely conservative blog audience to base their votes solely on these statistical snap shots (as District 8 incumbent Kathleen Harkey tells Bruce Barry in her unrelated podcast, accurate judgments of test score data happen by following trends in children's progress through the school system, rather than as simple snap shots taken in a period of less than 5 years).

Even the most cursory approach to statistics warns you that raw stats alone do not self-evidently say much of anything about the actual influence of various individuals on those results. That is why the test results should be "disaggregated" or divided up into constituent parts to interpret cause-and-effect. One of the commenters on Kay Brooks blog alludes to that possibility, but Kay Brooks responds by twisting that person's comments into an excuse for educators' failures, an allegation that she herself does not bother to prove. (Brooks makes no attempt whatsoever to point out in fairness that Gracie Porter has had a vested interest in the success of public schools as the parent of two sons who attended public schools all the way to graduation. She basically speaks of Porter as an uncaring cog or as if Porter was what Brooks refers to elsewhere as an "educrat," a term that she seems to have spun off from "autocrat" and a term she applies generally to teachers, administrators, and board members).

Brooks completely ignores the commenters' request that she post her own children's standardized test scores to show that she is a more competent educator than Gracie Porter. That fits Ms. Brooks' past tendency to fail to answer important questions as they arise. In her Scene podcast, Bruce asks Kay Brooks whether Metro schools currently have enough money. She quickly answers in the affirmative and then adds that there are programs she would "tweak and move out" and others that she would "encourage." Yet, she never gets down to brass tacks and tells us which ones she would "move out" and which ones she would promote. She has yet to give the same solutions on her blog. As a commenter put it, "Seven weeks on the board and you yet to propose a single reform."

And we are back to the rub: Kay Brooks, as much as she seems to want to have it both ways, cannot continue to have it both ways. She cannot both demand reform and offer no options. That makes her look like she has neither the skills for public service nor any idea what she is doing on the School Board. She cannot both be incumbent and be an outsider cliché. She is inside now and she can no longer run as a challenger. She can thank Michael Craddock, Ludye Wallace, Adam Dread, and the other 15 Council members who voted for her to serve in that state of limbo. While Brooks is looking fit to be tied, Porter is looking fit to be elected with her endorsements from groups as diverse as Democracy for Tennessee and the Nashville Chamber of Commerce. Brooks better start at least answering some questionaires.


07/11/2006, 2:45 p.m. Update: According to today's Nashville City Paper, Gracie Porter has also been endorced by SEIU.

Saturday's District 5 Debate: Brooks to Show, Craddock Continues to Deny Deal Brokering

Council member Mike Jameson dubbed the Kay Brooks school board appointment a Council black eye. Council member Michael Craddock--in seeming denial of the pummelling that caused the black eye--told the City Paper that he did "what was needed" because of his concern for schools. As usual, the dysfunctional machinery of the Metro Council has made a simple school board debate more controversial than need be. Otherwise, eyebrows would not be raised in some quarters when the title "incumbent" appears next to Kay Brooks name in print. But according to the NCP, Brooks intends to be there this time, because somehow in the span of only 4 or 5 weeks, she has gone from having limited experience to overcoming being overwhelmed enough to be the incumbent. I would have to call that improbable. I would have to say that the Brooks campaign obviously believes that showing up for this debate is as strategically astute as skipping the first debate before the May Council vote. However, the focus is increasingly moving away from the means used by the Metro Council that ultimately failed District 5 on this one. Voters in that district will have to pull their own butts out of the fire in August. But the rest of us are still left with this dysfunctional Council, and no chance for some cure until 2007.

Kay Brooks: The Only Board Member Who Asks Questions?

In an obvious attempt to draw herself out from among the other School Board members, Kay Brooks wrote the these comments on her blog after Tuesday's Metro Council meeting:

There was a short [Board of Education] meeting before the [Metro] Council meeting. Sometimes I feel like the only one who questions anything on the agenda.

Sounds to me like Kay may see herself as the only critical thinker on the Board of Education or at least the only one conscientious enough to get more information. Here's an alternative possibility: maybe she faces a steeper learning curve than others, having little or no experience with public schools. That's why those volumes of reading materials in boxes that they sent her can be a little overwhelming. And that's why she has more questions than others. But to suggest that she is the only member who questions anything sounds farfetched to me.

Sometimes I feel like the only one who tries to come up with the top ten questions that I would ask if I were in Kay Brooks' position:

1. Since I don't support slavery ... errrr ... I mean, public education, why am I here again?
2. Can Michael Craddock put votes together for me in August like he did in May?
3. Since feeding children does not really count as education, can we cut the budget and just bring them ice water at lunch time?
4. You thought I was serious when I advocated open meetings? Do you understand irony?
5. Will you please watch your language?
6. Why did I ever request that laptop in the first place?
7. Are my meetings with Pedro becoming too much like victory jigs with Satan?
8. If I don't need a nurse for my home school, why does Metro need them in public schools?
9. Did I thank dear Ludye nearly enough for his courageous vote for me in exchange for a back alley?
10. Why do I have to keep hearing about my predecessor's accomplishments?

Is The Insider "The Insider"?

Council member Michael Craddock may not be living large at the moment. The Nashville Scene, armed with a writing analyst and information from another unnamed Council member, maintains that the backroom deal-maker is "The Insider," the author of an anonymous attack blog called Word on the Street (WOTS), even though Craddock denies it. The Insider promoted school board seat-filler and candidate Kay Brooks, for whom Craddock mustered Council votes, and performed a couple of hatchet jobs on candidate Gracie Porter. So, it would not be too surprising if Craddock was the blogger.

Enclave got drawn into this controversy after Craddock told the Scene that the only blog on which he had taken time to comment was this one. (Scene reporter William Dean Hinton erroneously stated that Craddock "blogged" on Enclave). While I am flattered that Enclave would actually attract various stripes of people, I have got to wander wonder why a conservative would mention a progressive blog as the only one on which he took time to comment (the comment was tame: just that he reads Enclave regularly). The mention seems even more fishy to me in light of the fact that, at the end of May and beginning of June, Enclave conveyed some uncomfortable, unsettling information about Craddock's baby: the lined-up, traded-for votes for the Brooks appointment.

Nonetheless, who am I to question link love from whatever quarter it comes? Thanks to Michael Craddock for sending more readers my way. Don't feel too small if you were outed. You should feel worse about the Council's backroom wheeler-dealer meetings. That's the kind of "Insider" that I don't care for.

And thanks to the Scene for linking Enclave, even though Hinton should learn more about blogging vs. commenting. After all, I have already had to deal with a pro-Kay-Brooks troll who masquerades as the author of Enclave; I do not want readers thinking that Michael Craddock is blogging on Enclave, too, unless of course Michael Craddock is also the Enclave troll, which would make him a very busy Insider who deserves to be outed.

06/28/2006, 10:45 p.m. Update: Catherine McTamaney, the writing analyst interviewed by the Scene, left a thorough explanation in the comments below of the process by which she identified Michael Craddock as the author of WOTS. Here's an exerpt:

What impresses me most about the number of commonalities between Mr. Craddock's writing and the anonymous blogger is that these similarities come from a very small sample of original text. In other words, it just wasn't that hard to find so many exact matches.

Go read her entire comment. It's very enlightening.