Snow in Nashville is a rare but exciting occurrence. Before Pedro Garcia arrived years had passed since any large snowstorm. The quota of five snow days had not been used in as many as ten years. Popular sentiment was that global warming had reduced the snow to such an extent that it was almost unknown. Added to the mix was Garcia's macho reputation about ignoring snow, even though that may have been imagined. Further complicating potential decision-making was the sensationalism of the local television stations in reporting snow possibilities with the help of the ever more sophisticated weather technology.
On the evening of January 15, 2003, the local television weathermen were in full feather talking about a monster snowstorm approaching from the west. All night long it was advancing toward Nashville past Memphis. But Garcia would not cancel school based on a forecast. The truth is, that the weather predictions had been seriously flawed in the past, so Garcia was not deserving of the blame entirely. At 9 AM, just after the last students had arrived at school, the snow started--with a vengeance! Within thirty minutes the dismissal was sounded and busses started taking students home. But the window was hardly more than one hour. By the time younger students were on busses, the roads were impassable in many areas. It took as long as ten hours to get some of the last ones home. A multitude of stories involved parents searching for busses on the roads or side roads. Students took rest room breaks and were given free food by merchants along the route. Emergency vehicles had to pull busses out of ditches all over town. But no one was killed or seriously injured, and by 10 PM everyone was home and/or accounted for. The high drama made for good story telling and the school board minutes for January 28, 2003, include most of the highlights.
The story could end there on a tired but happy note except that soon Garcia used the crisis as a pretext to suspend a principal that he wanted to punish. The story, apparently invented, was that Ron Harris, Principal of Joelton Middle School, had taken in one or two bus loads of students, allowed them to use the rest room, given them what food was available in the cafeteria, and then forced them back out on the road, where they were stuck on a big downhill going home toward the river. Harris was suspended from duty pending an investigation by Gene Hughes.
The teachers at Joelton plus church members from the Church of Christ went into battle. Harris, not a member of the teachers union, got no official help there. But the information that the union had previously presented about the principal transfers gave the teachers ammunition to show this was a setup to carry out a previous plan to transfer Harris. As nearly as could be reconstructed from publicity at the time, the students did arrive cold and hungry at Joelton. They were fed cold rations from the kitchen and given ample time to use the rest room. With time, and these were middle school students, they started to run in the halls and become rowdy. Apparently, the bus drivers themselves said that things were not going to get any easier. If they did not make an attempt, darkness would fall. No adults could imagine spending the night at the school. So they departed. At least one bus ran off the road and had to be towed. Nowhere could it be found that Harris himself had forced the people out into danger.
Eventually, Harris was returned to Joelton. However, by this time his health had failed. People will always wonder if the cancer he developed could have been stress related. Based on the original transfer list from May of 2002, he had been under about a year of threats from Garcia. Before school reopened in September 2003, he was on sick leave and he died of pancreatic cancer in November of 2003.
The whole snow experience left a bad taste in the mouth of many Nashvillians who knew of the situation. Like in a parable of Jesus, Garcia had made mistakes--big mistakes--regarding the whole city and the decisions about the snow. But the school board and the community was forgiving. Upon receiving that forgiveness, he went to one man who might have, in hindsight, been able to do something differently, and he (Garcia) was as punitive as he could be toward his subordinate.