My recent vote for Ed Kindall validated

Julia Green is a well-heeled school in affluent Green Hills that provides their kids with iPads. Mr. Kindall lost his North Nashville school board seat by a few hundred votes to Sharon Gentry. Wish I could have been there for that "discussion".

Jump to background.

How I plan to vote in the District 1 School Board race

As a North Nashville parent, I am generally unenthused and unenergized by the campaigns in the District 1 School Board race. Ed Kindall has faced ethics questions in the past, including the cell phone drama of a few years ago. Sharon Gentry has struck me in the past as undiplomatic. She was a little too cavalier about and dismissive of parents' concerns at one community meeting in Hope Gardens for me to take her at her current promise that she will be a voice for "ALL parents" (emphasis hers) if we vote for her. At least one parent wrote me feeling ignored by Ms. Gentry after a personal appeal.

While both Kindall and Gentry did the right thing two years ago and voted against Jesse Register's plan to privatize Metro Schools service workers, the union representing those workers unambiguously endorses Mr. Kindall:

“He’s often the only one in the school board meetings who asks the tough questions and tries to hold Dr. Register accountable,” said Cordelia Howard, a school secretary, in the SEIU’s announcement.

Lately, Sharon Gentry has said and done nothing to change my sense of ambivalence about her, and she seems less willing to speak truth to power. In fact, she talks about public schools as if she is now one of those ideologues who believes the school district should be managed like a business, right down to reciting jargon about "portfolios":

What are your priorities for the Metro School system as a whole?

Fostering more proactive methods for including charter schools into the choice portfolio for MNPS that focuses on identify charter school programs that help address the needs within the district.

It is straight out of the Chamber's school reform playbook. Keep in mind that Ms. Gentry is also married to Howard Gentry, who has had close professional ties to the Nashville Chamber of Commerce. She received large campaign donations from Chamber big shots in the past. This all seems to beholden her to an organization which is setting up shop and hawking its products in Metro Nashville Public Schools.

The goal of maximizing private profits is not always commensurable with democratic values of public education. Financial and personal ties to the Chamber of Commerce suggest to me that a candidate will be more prone to cow to the special business interests who treat children as more a future compliant labor force than a potential democratic citizenry. In that vein, John Dewey knew what he was talking about 100 years ago in Democracy and Education:

Democracy cannot flourish where the chief influences in selecting subject matter of instruction are utilitarian ends narrowly conceived for the masses, and, for the higher education of the few, the traditions of a specialized cultivated class. The notion that the "essentials" of elementary education are ... mechanically treated, is based upon ignorance of the essentials needed for realization of democratic ideals. Unconsciously it assumes that these ideals are unrealizable; it assumes that in the future, as in the past, getting a livelihood, "making a living," must dignify for most men and women doing things which are not significant, freely chosen, and ennobling to those who do them; doing things which serve ends unrecognized by those engaged in them, carried on under the direction of others for the sake of pecuniary reward.

It is pecuniary reward (plainly put, "the big money score") that the Chamber of Commerce is committed to and the means by which it sells others on supporting its narrow goals.

I believe a school board candidate should strive toward a larger vision of public education than selling it to private charter school companies or reducing it to "Academies" for vocational training. Sharon Gentry strikes me as just a bit too zealous about charter schools and a lot too embedded with the Chamber's business class to exert herself toward the larger vision. I'm not saying that I believe fervently that Mr. Kindall will not resort to old-school political patronage or to supporting charter schools, but I do believe that the Chamber's influence begs to be checked and balanced, that Jesse Register ought to continue to be held accountable and that Mr. Kindall is more likely to do both than is Ms. Gentry.

Sharon Gentry covered for Alan Coverstone?

An anonymous commenter writes of the last school board meeting in which action was taken on charter school applications:

Board member Mark North poured over the data of not only charter schools, but also local MNPS schools. What he found was that the charter schools proposed to set up shop to address students in schools that not only were not failing, they were in the top three in the county. He also studied in depth the charter applications and found glaring errors within the applications themselves.

North presented his findings to the board on May 29th only to have his board members question his findings and sweep them under the rug. Dr. Sharon Gentry did the first sweeping. Her words were an attempt to devalue what Mr. North had uncovered and make him look foolish. No one else on the board even questions Mr. Coverstone's committee to recommend a charter school where one is not needed.

Coverstone is being paid a six figure salary to dismantle MNPS with charter schools that do not work, and his board members are following his lead like lemmings.

That account is consistent with my experience with my school board representative, Sharon Gentry. She came across to me as dismissive toward concerned parents in a community meeting I attended. I never really heard from her when I copied her an email I sent to Gracie Porter about comments she made in the media celebrating Green Hills's Julia Green Elementary getting iPads while my kid's North Nashville classroom had desktops that seemed to limp along.

It is also worth noting that Gentry and her husband received large campaign donations from well-placed leaders in the Nashville Chamber of Commerce, the lobby about as invested in charter schools as any other special interest group. I suppose privately-governed, publicly-financed charter schools represent a big windfall for the business lobby's agenda. Is Sharon Gentry's opposition to Mark North prompted by campaign finance influence?

Commenter: Sharon Gentry unresponsive to, uncaring about constituents

While I was on vacation the week before last, a concerned parent whose child had attended a North End school  responded to a previous post I wrote criticizing school board member Sharon Gentry's demeanor at a public meeting. I did not think her comments should be relegated to a 2011 post that may or may not be seen in 2012:

I was a parent in this zone at Churchwell Elementary. My son was constantly assaulted and bullied almost from his first day of school. As a very involved parent, I was in the school almost daily volunteering, checking on my son and offering support to teachers, administration and support staff. I reached out to Sharon Gentry in dire need because of the assaults and got NO RESPONSE to this day. She simply doesn't seem to have time or care about the needs of her constituents. I finally had to pull my son out of that school after he'd been choked, had his eye blacked three times, kicked in the stomach and pushed down stairs by other 4 grade students, boys and girls. Churchwell has all the means to be THE BEST elementary school in Nashville, TN if we can get the proper leadership at the School and Board levels. Even though I have removed my son for his own safety, I still support the efforts to make North Nashville schools safe and extraordinary places of learning! It has to work as that is the only opportunity most of those students have.

North End debate on public schools seemed resistant to a third way

Last week CM Erica Gilmore sponsored a community meeting in Hope Gardens, part of which focused on parent concerns about the zoned schools in the North End. School Board members Sharon Gentry and Ed Kindall were in attendance for that discussion. It resulted in what seemed to me to be a tale of two sides who were not willing to meet in the middle.