Anger Grows in Nashville « Dad Gone Wild

Anger Grows in Nashville « Dad Gone Wild:

ANGER GROWS IN NASHVILLE

I think Diane Ravitch said it best last week: “Nashville, you have a problem.” In case you are new to the game, back in July, Nashville got a new Director of Schools, and while there was a sigh of relief that he wasn’t of the reformer ilk, he’s raised plenty of other red flags since he started work here. This past week, even more started to pop up.

Either due to my last blog post or independently, Phil Williams, an investigative local journalist with Channel 5 News, has begun asking many of the same questions that I have been asking. In an attempt to preempt the potential damage, Metro Nashville Public Schools (MNPS) released a series of communications. The first was under the guise of a“fact checking” sheet. Everybody loves a fact checker these days, but the problem is, this one didn’t counter any facts. Instead, it confirmed that the Chiefs were driving luxury vehicles and commanding much larger salaries than last year. Salaries that were not designated in the budget that was approved just a few months ago. Here’s another hint: justifications that involve how special you are as opposed to everybody else will usually fall on deaf ears.

What this “fact check” does is try to move the conversation away from whether administrators are receiving these benefits and instead make an argument that it is justified. My argument is, where did the money come from? In the recently approved budget, neither English Learner programs nor literacy programs were fully funded. Yet somehow we’ve magically found money to raise administrator’s salaries by $20,000 or more in one fell swoop. More than that, we’ve dramatically grown central office despite Anger Grows in Nashville « Dad Gone Wild: