By Cardell Orrin

Leadership is difficult…we always say we want elected leaders who will do what they think is best for our children and our community…not thinking about the next election and personal political consequences, but what’s the right decision today.

Despite the pushback and messiness of the process, I believe these board members are working towards what they believe will bring greater stability and a clearer path forward. From the information I have seen and heard from direct sources, I can say there are serious concerns and issues that they are trying to address.

This has been something of a perfect storm for the current tempest with a shifting of school board members, leadership changes, personalities, layers of interests, general distrust of bureaucracy, challenges of policy and public understanding of policy, actual and real needs for change at the district, and other factors that would be interesting to study fully. The previous board considered taking action before they left, but didn’t have the will or felt they’d give more time or just let the current board assess and deal with issues that they created.

That’s where we’ve gotten to, and it’s a difficult challenge for the board…the only elected body that has to manage an employee directly in the public eye. Most HR issues, especially in performance are not dealt with so publicly. The closest might be MATA and MLGW…where MATA just changed leadership from their interim CEO to high-priced consultants…with much less of the public eye on that mayoral forced decision, but a similar set of political interests, issues, drama, public perception, etc just with a different set of players.

It’s been interesting to watch the public advocates who have come together to support Feagins…some interesting analysis of that is possible too.

Let’s hope that we can move past this moment and refocus on improving education in our community.

The mantra: No permanent friends or permanent enemies, only permanent interests…everyone should decide on what their permanent interests are, and hopefully they center around what is best for children and our community, so no matter what happens we can focus on those interests with whoever is at the table.

#ForwardEver

#SausageMakingInProgress

#LeadershipMatters