From Grover Robinson:
The bad thing about being a former elected official is people approach you with community problems hoping you might fix them. The good thing about being a former elected official is that you get to tell them you are no longer in public office, and they need to talk to someone elected to handle that problem. However, when those issues are related to the education of our children, we all need to find ways to work together for a solution.
I do not pretend to know all the details leading to Dr. Tim Smith’s dismissal as Superintendent. However, I do know both Dr. Smith and the five Escambia School Board members. While I fully realize that some School Board members lost confidence in Dr. Smith, I had the opportunity to successfully work with Dr. Smith on several programs that enhance student learning and participation, like the Pensacola Youth Council, the Pensacola Summer Intern program, and Parent University. His heart was certainly in supporting student achievement.
Just because Dr. Smith may not have been the right person for the Board does not mean the concept people voted for is wrong. I think Dr. Smith was doomed from the start by the original selection process. With that said, I don’t blame the School Board members; they had never gone through the Superintendent selection process before. My father always told me, “A mistake is not a mistake if you learn from it.”
Why do I say the process was doomed? Because the only potential candidates for the School Board members were educators. As the husband of a teacher, I am keenly aware of the importance of qualified teachers. However, the voters did not say the Superintendent had to teach. No, they wanted the Board to select someone who could manage.
What the School Board members owe us, the citizens and students, is their expectation of the position to shape the selection process. Is it someone who can build trust? Is it someone who can manage metrics? Again, that needs to be determined by the elected Escambia County School Board Members.
Once done, they need to allow the process to find individuals who meet those skills with experience and not limited to education. That does not mean the next Superintendent won’t be someone in education. It simply means anyone from the military, private sector, or other management experience should have the opportunity to constructively manage education for the betterment of our students. It is skills, experience and the betterment of students that should drive our education, not arbitrary feelings and politics.
I have great respect for all five of our Escambia School Board members, but the success of our education system is in their hands. They need to be serious and diligent about the process and allow it to find the right person who should be supported. Whether right, center or left, the one thing we can all agree on is that we need less politics in our education.
Not for nothing Mr. Mayor, but if you’re going to profess your Christian faith perhaps, “…turning the other cheek…,” might be a better way to respond instead of this online back and forth. Your desire to bicker in the comments undermines your attempt to preach at us. Walk the walk next time, sir.
As usual Mel, you don’t touch the facts and you throw as much irrelevant innuendo to smear people with things that they aren’t even a part of.
I do hope to share a couple of important things for anyone who takes the time to read this because it is an important exchange. First, you ask how I can respect those who advocate a different position. Easy, because I respect them as human beings, something I realize is difficult for you. You make fun of Christians, but it is Christ who compels Christians to respect all people, especially those with whom we disagree. We are not required to agree with them, but we are required to respect them. You demand respect for every person you agree with but give no respect to anyone you disagree with which is why you have such trouble creating effective change. What a great world this would be if we actually tried to give respect and understanding to everyone.
Second, back to the facts, all I have done is to advocate for a common goal driven process to be used. Then all I have asked is that you work to attract the best possible pool of both education leaders and non-education leaders and allow all those applicants to present themselves and their skills to that process. This process is proven at generating success in our community’s public sector. However, you attack this and say all we need is someone in education. If I’m not wrong, your method is exactly what the people you proport to be fighting are doing, no accountable process and staying in education, and you attack anyone who suggest an alternative personally. If I were prone to your grand conspiracies, I’d have to say you sure seem to line with the people you claim to be against.
What we are talking about is a management system of people. I fully realize people are emotional and full of feelings. However, if we could just set the feelings, emotions and politics aside for a moment and simply pursue a goal driven process, we might actually get something that all Escambia County residents could feel good about. Or….. we could just do what Mel does and throw mud and innuendo at everyone and expect magic to solve everything and wonder why we can’t create effective change.
Thank you for your response, Grover, and for laying out your leadership goals.
Here’s my goal as an advocate: getting you and others to cut the crap.
I see Darien Schaefer is dithering to the press about how welcoming Escambia County is, but he can hardly be blamed, as tourism is his job. What on earth is Rodney Jones’s problem in seconding the “please keep coming to Pensacola and Florida we just love *everybody* up in here” BS is a better question–what’s he trying out for?
So yes, my comments are highly partisan: while the Florida GOP has become a fascist tool of a megalomaniac bigot, and a core of area republicans are reveling in finally being able to say the quiet parts out loud, the *actual* divide is nonpartisan: it’s between the handful of people who have the courage and decency to speak out here and the majority WHO WON’T SAY A DAMN THING, even though most of them are good people who recognize what’s happening is not just wrong, but evil.
Even worse are people like you with a pulpit who refuse to speak the truth about what’s going on and throw stones at other people’s “toxicity.” I’m toxic? How about the crap that Kevin Adams, Paul Fetsko, and their chaos mob are spewing at school board meetings? While community leadership sits silent for fear of everything from not getting elected, not getting the next slick sinecure, not getting kicked out of their golf group. It’s absolutely deplorable.
Here’s a real question: you say you respect all of our school board members greatly. What, exactly, do you respect Paul Fetsko and Kevin Adams for, Grover? Getting elected?
Please let’s not teach our children to respect such men and their caustic, divisive actions; if you’re going to put your money where your mouth is on wanting unity, you’re going to have to recognize at some point the “high road” (i.e. pretending a lack of courage in speaking out is an ethical strength) isn’t working, and the people who are sewing the seeds of hatred need to be called out on it, loudly. If you need a role model to point our children to, please consider a true hero for our community, Dr. Lindsay Durtschi, who has more courage and ethics in her little finger than most of our community “leadership” has demonstrated collectively since the beginning of this mess.
Here’s a thought experiment, Grover: just imagine–just try to imagine–speaking the truth about what’s going on, instead of politicking and positioning on it. *Imagine* the *real* good you might achieve if you said, “You know, I’m from here, my family goes back generations, we helped found an early church here, I’ve served in office for decades, I love everyone in this community, and I can’t take not speaking the truth about what’s happening any more. It’s time for the people who are really conducting this horrible divisive program in our community to be cast out from polite society.”
Whatever your version of that is, Grover, I am am asking you–and, “more important, others”–to practice that in front of the mirror for a while. In the meantime, I’ll yell it so other people might gain the courage to start whispering it.
A note on numbers: Concerning your statistics on 50% of the people coming to you being Black, what’s the denominator on that–2? (Please remember that dividing anything by zero doesn’t even result in an imaginary number that has a use.)
Here’s another number for you, and every other person professing to be a good Christian in this area to muse on: sins of omission count, big time. In the Catholic doctrine, their degree of gravity can rise to being a mortal sin. And the collective sins of omission are adding up quickly in this community, as the hell of these woke culture wars rage on not just in the state as a whole but right here, right now, *locally.* So if you don’t want a person who isn’t from here being one of the loudest voices for justice in the room, then a whole lotta locals better wake up. When that happens, I will *gladly* shut up about it.
Mel,
Clearly the only thing you read was my name and not the article. My letter clearly says I am not in support of the action that was taken. However, I don’t call people I disagree with names or try to belittle them. No, instead I rise above the immaturity of partisan politics and offer them insightful suggestions like building a selection process based on their goals and expanding your view rather than contracting. From experience, the action taken by the School Board will encourage fewer qualified educators to apply, not more.
What I have learned from being a parent is that children respond better to actions than words. Unlike you who hurls insults, accusations and the most trite partisan political platitudes, my goal is to offer actions that produce sound and successful leadership and outcomes. Allow me to demonstrate in more detail so I can prove to you and, more importantly any others, what we should be trying to do to actually accomplish what you say you want.
You seem to doubt that our military produces qualified leaders, so I will for argument’s sake offer Tim Kinsella at UWF and Keith Hoskins at Navy Federal. In 2 seconds, I have named two successful examples in our community and one in education. Guess how many more could be out there? I never said nor do I believe, just because you are retired military you will be a successful superintendent. Likewise, just because you are in education, doesn’t mean you will be a successful superintendent. Instead, I have advocated a sound process based on shared goals that will lead you to the right people. How do I know this?
Pull up the leadership team at the city when I left as Mayor. If you look at it you will see a management team that reflects not only greatness in achievement but also balance in race, gender and sexual preference. While you attempt to allege meaningless insults at me, my actions demonstrate an entirely different reality. Again the entire reason I wrote this is because of the people who have come to me about the School Board and nearly half of those are African-American. The fact that they come to me and not you is further proof that actions are more important than words.
Mel, if you want to join in the toxic morass that is our national politics, please be my guest. However, please do not bring your poison to this community any longer. We don’t need your hurtful rhetoric that offers no positive moves forward. This is a wonderful place that my family has lived in and worked to make better for 8 generations. I want it to be a great place for another 8 generations and better with each one.
So what ill-qualified, non-educator candidate in particular do the GOB and REC have in mind, Grover?
Now that the Florida republican party has created this and other like catastrophes state-wide by winning their war against public schools, winding back the clock on civil rights, trafficking in backwoods bigotry and discrimination, fomenting hostility against Black and LBGTQ students, and keeping the female folk barefoot and pregnant, did you all have somebody particular in mind to fix our school system here?
Maybe Manny Diaz and his charter cronies have some ideas about which fascist, White Supremacist, Christian Nationalist, wealthy donor or witch doctor can lock arms with Adams and Fetsko in REALLY owning those libs, and better assist David Williams in selling out his constituents?
Interesting that “anyone from the military” sticks out first on the short list of basic qualifications demonstrating a complete ignorance (or, perhaps, denial) of the actual experience, tools, and talents necessary to be a successful school superintendent. Huh.
Or is this somewhat wistful statement just as much wishful thinking about what qualifications might be necessary for, say, becoming the president of a public college? (Pro tip, Grover: per DeSantis’s destruction of New College, Not Much.) Oh, the places we’ll go…