The most highly developed skill of Pedro Garcia is his ability to size up an audience and then tell them what they want to hear. The first demonstration in his original interview, had the audience on its feet cheering. He made the rounds of other meetings, civic groups, religious meetings, business gatherings, and in each case left a highly positive impression. He did not see it as a problem that community groups had expectations which might lead to conflict. Because he knew something few Nashvillians had ever experienced.
Since the beginning of Metropolitan Public Schools, there had been the intermittent refrain, "What we need is some good public relations!" What the locals thought this meant was "selling" the community on what good things were going on in the public schools. The educators were justifiably proud of their accomplishments in the nearly forty year history of the school system and it was a continual wish that the public would share in that sense of ownership. Despite stories from far away Washington, of a Republican "spin machine," few people could envision how such a thing could happen in local government. The locals did not realize that conflicting expectations of various "stakeholders" did not matter. With sufficient "spin" and allies in the media, the dissatisfied groups could be marginalized.
The engineering involved in such a public relations maneuver first involved the staff. At the beginning of the school year, 2001-2002, the communications section of the business department had four staff. Soon a contracted PR expert, Milton Capps was added. Within a year, the operation was a stand alone operation headed by a former Superintendent of Schools from Oakland, California. The office now contained nine staff--and not at modest salaries. The impact of such resources was soon apparent.
Whether it was explicitly explained, or just understood, Diane Long, the education reporter from the Tennessean saw the advantage of having large amounts of favorable copy delivered to her prepackaged. The weekends were particularly good times to plant stories about Metro schools to run in the Monday newspaper. Almost immediately she started following the lead of school officials in trying to uncover critical stories of the MNEA, while at the same time quoting school board members in various self-congratulatory stories. In a style called "dueling quotes" she would give one quote to the MNEA President and one each to as many school board members or central office persons as would comment. Needless to say, the union always came up short. Other "alternative" news outlets were likewise dominated by concern for business advertisers. Any internet search of the Nashville print media will uncover a multitude of stories about the school board. Any stories of the conflicts with teachers always contain a pejorative adjective in front of the word teachers' union or MNEA. Garcia and his agents followed a motto described by Gordon Browning of his opponent, "Stand still while I gore you." They tried to persuade the public that the union should have no right to complain.
In television interviews, Garcia said he would try to blame the MNEA for any failures, give credit for any successes to the teachers. Of course, the media machine actually promoted giving credit to the new crowd from California. The motto soon adopted, "Do whatever it takes" to have the best school system, had the ring of Fascism. Surely they did not mean to violate the law, the contract with the teachers, the Code of Ethics of the Education Profession, or to distort the educational research to make themselves look better. But in the pugilistic moment, no board member was able to change the motto to something higher sounding.
Any usual round of photo opportunities, whether it was a few minutes swinging a paint brush or carrying a box into a school, caused the news media to react as if Prince Charles himself had come to town and touched the drywall. Clearly, Al Gore's comment, "Timing is everything in politics," was demonstrated. Elected officials said nothing critical. Unfortunately for the union president, he did not have the luxury of waiting years for Garcia to fall on his face. His members were suffering in the present. Garcia offered no peace either. In no less than three public speeches with Harry McMackin in the audience that first year, he said, "I never miss a chance to hammer the MNEA."
Much of the PR campaign centered upon bragging about how much test scores were going to go up: Seven percent the first year, fifteen percent the second year. For media value, Garcia said he would shave his head and kiss a pig if the teachers and students made their goal. They didn't. But through creative math, completely wrong-headed comparing of percentiles rather than actual scores, Garcia claimed to have met the goal. The ensuing media hype over the pig and the hair kept most people from seeing the statistical trickery.
Moving into the second semester of his first year, Pedro Garcia had all the high ground when planning his new budget year. War psychology gripped the news media. Teachers had no contract issue to motivate them to come to meetings. The mayor and council were going to be patient. The feel-good stories saturated the news. So the budget would be a blank slate upon which Garcia could write his real priorities for years to come.