Sorry for the long title but I thought it was a good one!
I have been researching this matter and maybe I am missing something. The Montgomery Public Schools is in the process of selecting a new Superintendent. There were many candidates including the Interim Superintendent, who is a white male.
The board has whittled down the selection to two finalist - two black females. They are Samantha Ingram, superintendent of Fairfield County Schools in South Carolina, and Barbara Thompson, superintendent of New Glarus Public Schools in Wisconsin.
Now, allegedly there have been public comments made that the City Council President Charles Jinright and County Commission Vice Chairman Reed Ingram about the selection process for finding a new Superintendent. I am not sure what they said and personally don't really care. More than likely whatever they said was due to the fact that the person or persons they would have liked to be Superintendent were not selected as a finalist.
Now with all that being said, our "Champion of Injustice", State Representative Alvin Holmes (sarcasm) decides to shoot off at the mouth saying that "officials should stop bringing race into Superintendent search". I do not remember race ever being brought into this matter until he opened his big a$$ mouth. Those of you who follow my blog might remember an earlier entry I made regarding Mr. Holmes, "OMG! Who is Dealing? Here Comes the Race Card." The finalist were narrowed down some time ago. Why rant off about it now? The Montgomery Chamber of Commerce would like to send a representative on the site visits of the two finalists but people are opposing that. Did I miss something or are both finalist black? Where is race involved? Who cares who goes on the site visits, as long as it is not costing me money as a taxpayer? I can be almost certain that the next Superintendent of the Montgomery Public Schools will be a black female. Am I wrong?
School board member Eleanor Dawkins said the site visits have become controversial because the democratic process didn't go the way some members of the community wanted it to go in favor of Clay Slagle, the white interim Superintendent. "Because the vote didn't go the way they wanted it to go they want to go on the site visits to try and find a reason why these candidates are wrong or why the vote was wrong," Dawkins said. Who the hell is "they"? White people? What can the Chamber of Commerce do to stop this process if they send representatives on the site visits? Holmes has chimed in and said that the Montgomery Chamber of Commerce represents "silk stocking, country club millionaires in this town, and does nothing to help west Montgomery." (In case you do not live here, West Montgomery, is the "black side of town".
Holmes also announced that he would bring the Reverend Al Sharpton, Reverend Jesse Jackson, and other civil rights leaders to protest all over the city if there is a block to appoint either of these finalist.
Again, we (black people) did not ask for a crusader to come to our rescue and cloud up the relative peace with stupid rhetoric and playing the "race card". I am not one to play that card myself but there is a time or a place for everything, and this was not one of those times or not remotely close to the place. I have no preference of who is Superintendent as long as my child can actually learn something to that will provide the launching pad to be anything she wants to be in life.
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I'm just randomly stopping by after seeing a link from another blog, so I don't know the background. However, having been a teacher in several school districts, I would like to suggest that the race card is just convenient and the most obvious way to create an issue where there isn't one. Almost every time there was a turnover in leadership at a school or district level, the interim person never got it. I was even at a school where the loved-by-everyone assistant principal was promoted to acting principal. The school PTA asked the school board to make it permanent. The teachers at the school asked to make it permanen. The school district hired someone from out-of-district. I've seen this happen over and over and over. For some reason,school districts don't like to promote from within. They always seem to think someone from another district has better skills and/or ideas. It gets worse the higher up in bureaucracy you go.
ReplyDeleteI am sure. The main focus for this blog was the "gentleman" Alvin Holmes who ALWAYS makes a mountain out of an ant hill (not a mole hill because that is TOO BIG). The last two Superintendents were black,a female that they ran out of town and a male who they wanted to stay. He sets black people back in the time when riding in the back of the bus was not "cool" and there were two different waters fountains. Not everything is about race. I hate the gentleman who was the interim (a white male) didn't get the opportunity but I guess everyone's butts are on the line when you have kids graduating that cannot read or pass a basic skills test.
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