Superintendent reversal would set Escambia Schools on a collision course with failure
By Jarah Jacquay
Escambia County’s governmental gears are grinding slowly into reverse and setting our schools and students on a collision course with failure. There’s still time to pump the brakes, but the outcome of a key vote later this month will be a bellwether event. Will cooler heads prevail, or will we allow a small group of people to drag our community back into a never-ending cycle of failure?
School Board Member Kevin Adams intends to present a resolution to the school board on March 21 that, if approved, would set the stage for voters to consider returning our schools to an elected superintendent, just two years after voters abandoned that system in favor of an appointed one.
This month’s vote would not be decisive. The Escambia County Commission would still have to pass a resolution asking the legislature to place the question on the ballot during the 2024 presidential preference primary, and a majority of voters would then need to go along with it.
Still, it’s a dangerous reversal that relies on a compelling, but false narrative. Those pushing this narrative seem to wish to rewrite history and convince voters that some shadowy cabal of local elites hijacked our educational system and replaced our superintendent with a minion that would do their bidding.
This distorts what actually happened, and conceals what is truly at stake. Escambia County citizens voted to change how our superintendent was selected in the hope of reversing decades of shameful educational outcomes. The rationale for this change was strong when voters went to the ballot box two years ago, and it remains equally so today.
School board members understood this, as well, and worked strenuously to ensure the public remained engaged throughout the process of selecting the county’s first appointed superintendent — even while Covid-19 made this work very difficult. They should be applauded for those efforts. They should also be held accountable for following through with what voters started.
Here’s why: An appointed superintendent insulates the difficult work of educating our children from the vagaries of local politics, which often have less to do with the will of voters and much more to do with the whims of a few well-connected donors and patrons.
Yes, I am talking now about an actual cabal of local elites — who care less about our children’s education than they do about lining their own pockets with lucrative public contracts or imposing their values and priorities on our families.
An elected superintendent’s focus and loyalties will always be divided between parents and patrons, and the ugly truth is that our politicians often choose the patrons, because their livelihoods depend on them. That simply will not do. Campaign cycles are short, afterall, but the results of our children’s education will last a lifetime.
This is why an overwhelming majority of states, as well as most counties in Florida, had abandoned the elected superintendent model long before Escambia County voters decided to follow suit.
Of course, you might argue that whatever nefarious forces would conspire to corrupt a superintendent election would do the same with our school board races and, from there, trickle down to a superintendent, regardless of how they found their way into the job. This is a fair critique, so let me address it directly with two counter-arguments.
First, anyone wishing to corrupt an appointed superintendent would need to control five races, not one. Second, an appointed superintendent has a different set of constraints and incentives than one who is elected. Their livelihood does not depend on raising funds or campaigning to remain in office. It depends on doing their job and producing good educational outcomes.
To be clear, I am not arguing that Tim Smith is the right man to lead our district, nor am I saying that parents should be prevented from expressing their concerns about the person who manages their children’s education. I am simply affirming that voters had strong reasons to change the way our superintendent was selected two years ago and that altering course now, when the first appointee’s contract has not even come up for review, would be capricious, short-sighted and unnecessary.
Parents and voters still have ample mechanisms to express their grievances with our schools, both by electing board members who share their values and by lobbying those officials when their choice of leadership produces unfavorable outcomes.
As a parent of five school-aged children, myself, I know that behavior change demands discipline. However, without patience, structure or follow-through, this discipline is seldom effective. An appointed superintendent gives us the structure to evaluate our school’s performance and make changes over time while also allowing the administration enough room to focus on outcomes, rather than short-term political objectives.
We have the structure to succeed. What we need now is not a reversal, but the patience and resolve to follow-through on what we started.