KENNEY: Make Haste Slowly in Spotsylvania

The new majority on the Spotsylvania County School Board should be cautious -- even allergic -- toward employing the heavy-handed tactics voters repudiated in November.

by SHAUN KENNEY
Columnist (and Beleaguered Wahoo)

The dirty little secret most Virginians do not know about their local government is that their elected officials don’t actually run their local government.

Though they can reach down and start whacking employees like Paul Bunyan — and I wonder how many elementary school children have any idea who Paul Bunyan or Babe the Blue Ox are nowadays? — the truth of the matter is that most local governments get to hire and fire precisely one person: their county administrator, city manager, or in the case of public schools, the superintendent.

Now it is probably not outside the realm of possibility that Spotsylvania County school superintendent Mark Taylor may not be long for this world. Or at least Spotsylvania County where many of the shenanigans — specifically book burning — are rightly or wrongly (mostly rightly) being placed at his doorstep.

Surely bringing in alternatives to Scholastic which emphasize a more Christian worldview are setting up a dramatis personae telling the story of how Innocent Lamb Mark Taylor (TM) tried to bring in more perspectives and only to be in turn persecuted by a malevolent left-wing board whose victorious October Revolution is to be followed up by frog marching the new bureaucratic hires to the Gulag — a perfect martyrdom if there ever was one.

In times past, outgoing superintendents in Spotsylvania were given plush severance packages upon their retirement, forced or otherwise. Dr. Jerry Hill was famously if boorishly given a mid-six figures parting gift courtesy of the public trust, a move which garnered no small degree of controversy yet was perfectly within the bounds of legal.

Could the outgoing Spotsylvania School Board use past as precedent? After all, this is what the political left did when they saw the writing on the wall.

Spotsylvania Isn’t Loudoun: Don’t Miss The Mark

This is where we run into a bit of a conundrum.

Democracy dictates that every elected board has the right to govern and represent the people’s will as their elected officials. Yet as conservatives learned over the last two years, this right is by no means absolute. Parents, teachers, and unelected bureaucrats all fought relentlessly to frustrate the present board.

When this reality was made stark, Mark Taylor — as superintendent — hired new bureaucrats whom he could rely upon to execute the will of those elected officials, this despite growing political pressure from outside and declining test scores within.

So now the shoe potentially goes on the other foot.

A new school board with a majority pledged to return our public school system to normalcy — not Loudoun County — ran and was elected on a platform which could be summarized in two words: not crazy. Spotsylvanians rewarded a platform of not crazy by electing school board officials pledged to not being crazy.

By crazy, I am not suggesting that anyone is indeed mentally insane much less intend to denigrate a soul. By crazy, we should probably go with the textbook definition of the obsessive or the fanatic. Or the Churchillian dictum of someone who will not change their mind and will not change the subject. Most certainly, a crazed opinion would be defined as a perspective which has taken its eye off the ball. In pure etymological terms, it is to have to have missed the mark, where we get the old English word recognized by most faith traditions — to have sinned.

Thus the incoming Spotsylvania School Board majority isn’t running on a crazy all of its own. In fact, it is running and basking in the political capital which represents a vast mea culpa to a voting public which is ostensibly more center-right than anything else.

BAD IDEAS: Paying People Back in Their Own Coin

The temptation to whack Mark Taylor is most likely to prove irresistible. At the very least, the temptation not to renew his contract next year will prove all but inevitable, as Taylor’s refusal to even engage with his critics remains at-odds with his post-November public pronouncements. So long as his newfound discovery and love of the public square does not involve speaking to the local media, Taylor’s critics will now do so from the horseshoe as well as the dais.

Most Spotsylvanians will expect Taylor to be treated better than Dr. Scott Baker. Or at the very least, Taylor ought to be for two reasons.

First and foremost, if the termination of Dr. Baker was considered to be all of the evil things it was said to be — fascism, segregation, racism, bigotry, Christian Nationalism, etc. — then doing the exact same thing in the exact same way (or worse) would not only forfeit every inch of the moral high ground, but far worse it would confirm every drop of criticism leveled at the apparatus of public education in Spotsylvania County.

If this is really about power rather than education, and if it really was about who is in power and who is not? Then a return to normal isn’t a return to a uniparty education perspective.

Second and perhaps more damning, if this incoming majority chooses to repudiate how it campaigned? Then buckle up for a long two years. Satisfying as it might be to reach down and pay Taylor and those whom he brought in with their own coin, in one instant the new board will confirm the criticism of every crank and blowhard defending the old one — that this was indeed all about political power and indoctrination, not professionalism and education for its own sake.

Giving People Enough Rope (and Let Them Surprise You)

Obviously, the incoming Spotsylvania School Board should do as it must. Virginia is going to be in a tremendous budget crunch as COVID funding stops and recessionary pressures meet inflationary pressures.

The problems facing most local school boards are far greater than their locality, and it will take all of us — especially the other half of the political spectrum which feels locked out — in order to restore confidence in our public institutions.

The temptation to drive out Mark Taylor and his new hires will be tremendous. Yet one might suggest that the grand solution — and the least expensive one — will be to at least work in good faith with the existing superintendent until a new one can be onboarded. Consider that a search will take months even under the best of conditions. Notifying Taylor that his services will most likely no longer be required after his contract expires would certainly be more cost effective to the locality — especially if the cost of severance puts an emphasis on the severe.

As for the bureaucrats, the return to normal should consist of a return to precisely that — working with an administration and bureaucracy whose goal is to support educators and not impose narrow (or crazy?) social agendas.

By setting the demands for professional conduct clear and up front, the incoming board would set a precedent which says that we don’t care what your religious or political background might be so long as you are here to help execute the mission of educating children first.

Here is the real sticking point. If these bureaucrats remain insubordinate? Remove them tout suite. Yet remember this — if Spotsylvania Democrats believe a Night of the Long Knives is justified in January, do not whine much less be surprised if Spotsylvania Republicans begin treating the public education as a modern-day spoils system in two years when they recapture the board. Be very careful on this point — because more than just Spotsylvania is watching.

Of course, some may not stick around for that and leave of their own volition. Yet the political capital gained by returning to professionalism would be immensely strengthened by such a move. Moreover, it would signal a certain confidence in our already existing professionals that the culture of public education really can absorb differing viewpoints and ideas — that public education is a common good rather than an exclusive club.

If we truly want to repudiate the politics of crazy, then the opening weeks will set the tone for the new majority moving forward. Either they will govern as they campaigned and be rewarded appropriately for their caution and poise, or they will succumb to the tactics of their opposition and make the very same mistakes.

Therein lies the cautionary tale.

We are probably not terribly far from a political environment where superintendents, city managers, and county administrators become the targets of political ire.

Yet if we continue to politicize our institutions, rock the pendulum, and wall out the other half of our community in pursuit of the highest good instead of the common good? How does that make us any better than the opposition?

If the last two years was a textbook case of how not to cash out the public trust, Spotsylvanians — and in fact, Virginians — deserve a little bit better than the rank political justification that it isn’t fascism when our side does it. That sort of craziness needs to end.

Slashing through the bureaucrats hired by Mark Taylor with Bunyanesque joy would not be a repudiation of the recent craziness, but rather its triumph. Perhaps instead, a “blue ox” strategy which moves slowly, deliberately, and intentionally should be the modus operandi for the new majority. One which governs as it campaigns rather than present itself as a Trojan Horse.

Such discipline and leadership move won’t please the partisans one iota, but that’s precisely the point — and its advantages should be plain to see.

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