Probably be a long time before school board, commission ever get along

Apparently, it’s OK for school officials to crap all over county leaders and call them out in public meetings, but not for county leaders to ask the superintendent questions.

According to Commissioner Sam McKenzie, members of the joint education committee (of commissioners and board of education members) met last week and a “majority” of the conversation focused on “how we talk to each other.”

McKenzie told fellow commissioners last night that committee members (including some commissioners) felt the tone of a recent public meeting with Superintendent Jim McIntyre turned “nasty.”

(That particular meeting by the way occurred on April 21. At the time, McIntyre talked finances with the commission and mostly dodged questions. I blogged about it right smack here.)

McKenzie said the committee agreed that there should be a level of “tone and civility” toward “our elected or appointed leaders” and that last week “we may have missed the mark.”

McKenzie said the commissioners who serve on the committee agreed “probably to varying points,” but told the BOE members that “we can’t legislate tone.”

Anyhoo, it’s obvious that the discussion was focused around commissioners Mike Brown and Tony Norman who took McIntyre to task, and said that he and the school system really didn’t care much for teachers (in so many words).

Brown on Monday said he wasn’t apologizing, and that – in fact – he’s still waiting for answers, which, he added, was typical.

He then took a shot at the school system’s administration, saying “they have some marvelous spin doctors over there,” and that he doesn’t believe any of the numbers that the system provides to the commission or the public.

Norman, for his part, said he was actually disappointed in the “general demeanor of the (school) board – some individuals in particular almost had their backs to the people who were speaking.”

He was referring to a number of public meetings that took place last year in which students, teachers and parents – wearing red shirts – attended the school board meetings to show support for teachers.

Norman said a number of Board of Education members were “obviously dismissive in their posture and in the way they treated the teachers.”

Folks, this isn’t going to end any time soon.

Now granted this is fun stuff to watch, but probably detrimental in the end if neither side can get along and work together.

And let’s face it: Neither side will.

Sure, they formed some lame joint education committee, but it’s comprised of members who agree with each other. Duh! Put members who don’t agree on it.

Further, there’s all this talk – every freaking year – about how both sides are going to meet super early in the year and talk about budgets, so that there won’t be any surprises.

Yeah, sure.

Remind me again when that happened?

It didn’t.

And it won’t next year, either.