The meeting lasted from 5:00 to 9:45 but the only article in the Tennessean related to the last five minutes: a letter glorifying the alleged progress made in test scores.  The public relations machine is still hard at work.

Without mentioning the bullying editorial in the Monday Tennessean, three board members who are under newspaper attack, actually did give their reasons for not extending Garcia's contract at this time.  They did not spell out their answers directly as the editor of the Tennessean demanded, but reading between the lines, the dissatisfaction of Mebenin Awipi, Kathleen Harkey, and Lisa Hunt was obvious.  The points they brought out were not new, they have been wrestled with for months or years, yet they are not reported in the newspaper.  Again  that evening, no news report was made to the general public.  Unless someone is a specialist watching the public access news, Will Rogers' comic statement remains operative: "All I know is what I read in the newspapers." 

The Covey trainer/saleslady said that Pedro Garcia was one of the five best Directors of Schools/Superintendents of Schools in the whole country.  For the million dollars a year that her contract is worth, I suppose such effusive praise is not surprising.

Lisa Hunt is concerned because she suspects that the 4 percent of teachers on waivers are most likely overly represented in her district.  She wants a report to learn the truth.  But the "spin" she already got from June Keel was that teachers do not want to go to those schools.  What Keel did not say was that principals try to move experienced teachers out.  The principal would rather have a humble teacher, without tenure and without a certificate, than to have to deal with real teachers of experience.  There is some truth that experienced teachers would rather have easier students to teach, but that is not the whole truth.

Kathleen Harkey wonders why we cannot get exit interviews from parents and teachers who are leaving the system.  We used to have that listed in the board minutes.  But as a part of suppressing data, the numbers of teachers departing and the reasons is now secret--or at least not transparent.  The board could change that back by asking for the personnel report to be included in the board minutes like it was from before 2003.

In a long exchange between Lisa Hunt and June Keel, the various imponderables about salary, working conditions, and affirmative action were batted about.  The statistic that 26 percent of our system is made up of minority teachers is shocking.  In 1970 the number was 24 percent.  So little progress has been made.  The "spin" is that minority teachers can go elsewhere for more money.  What is not said is that minority teachers are so often discouraged and deprived of learning opportunities when they first start teaching.  Unless one can see the type of students put in the new African-American teacher's classroom, they have no idea of the struggles a new teacher faces.  The wonder is that so many new minority teachers actually survive.

As the board members start evaluating the Executive Expectation on the quality of staff treatment, Mebenin Awipi accused Keel in the preliminary report of silence on the points where the administration has failed to meet the standards.  Kathy Nevill and Pam Garrett tried to take advantage of Awipi's English by "misunderstanding" the direction of his questioning.  In the exchange, Awipi stood firm and indicated that he is less likely to be pushed around than he appeared to be in the past.  This is no small item, since the pro-Garcia faction pins most of their hopes for an extended contract for the Director of Schools on Awipi's potential malleability.  Awipi may not be so malleable after all.

Another sales team with a big dollar contract for training took major amounts of time on a power point pitch. [7:18 - 8:02 total power point]  After listening to the wonderful ideas on individual teacher behavior and quality ethnic pedagogy, Lisa Hunt brought up the more serious question of institutional racism.  "How much can individuals do?" she wondered, when the big picture racism of school closings and resegregation so limit individual effort?  That was a question no one could answer.

Also in a complex approach, Hunt tried to use established procedures to give Garcia a plausible way to deny what had been in the Nashville Scene regarding calling the Mayor and Council insane, and/or certifiably insane.  After initial efforts to avoid the subject, the board finally did hear Garcia's side.  He naturally denied using those words and told of having his lawyer threaten the Scene with a SLAPP.  While the denial might be convincing to the uninformed, persons who have watched Garcia over the years recognize that his other indiscreet remarks give this report the ring of truth.