Education Law

Working together in Nashville

It’s good to see a positive story in the news about school boards and this one definitely caught BoardBuzz’s eye.  With so much attention on mayors taking over urban school boards and adding yet another huge responsibility to a mayor’s plate, Nashville is looking in the opposite direction.  A new superintendent and state mandated testing requirements have focused the board, so that instead of getting negative press and attention from the community, the person in charge of the potential state overhaul is saying things like, “They’re working as a cooperative body and as a team, they’re communicating, and there’s no hidden agenda.”

Urban boards are often under attack, sometimes from people very high up in state and federal education department offices.  Sometimes the attacks are accurate, and sometimes they’re not.  The fact is, urban districts are under a microscope for a variety of reasons, and one of them is that they are in the major media markets and have a lot more eyes following what happens inside on a regular basis.  Perhaps that’s why when a good thing happens (and it does), we like to show it off a bit.  Nashville is an example of a district where there has been a lot of work to do and the board needed to focus–or the state would take partial control of the district.  Instead of imploding, they hired a new schools chief and the board leadership changed. 

As our own Anne Bryant, executive director of NSBA said,

“Once you have a clear agenda, it’s amazing how much a board and superintendent team can drive the right work.  If you have no agenda and you’re not using data, the last idea that came up is as good as the next one.” 

It seems that Nashville is on the right track, let’s hope for the sake of the students there that the leadership maintains their progress.

Full post as published by BoardBuzz: NSBA's Daily Weblog on June 10, 2009 (boomark / email).