The Sound of Glass Shattering

School board member Robert Noel was up to his old tricks in last Sunday’s Santa Barbara News-Press, cataloging the many failures of the Santa Barbara School District – from faulty budgeting to lagging test scores, and practically everything in between.

Who is Dr. Bob referring to when he maligns the “District?” Is he talking about Superintendent Sarvis, one of the Assistant Superintendents, the Director of Special Education, the receptionist or the night custodian?

Dr. Bob made one or two references to moral leadership, but if Noel is so big on the concept, why doesn’t he exercise one of the most conspicuous traits of exceptional leaders – honesty – and come right out and name names?

Because here’s the thing, I work at the District office and have a vested interest in knowing who’s responsible for our woes and shortcomings. (I have a few notions of my own, but if Dr. Noel has the definitive answer I wish he’d share, because I for one do not enjoy working my tail off for a losing team.) Like many of my colleagues, I take my role as a public school employee seriously, and remind myself every day that taxpayers pay my salary and that fact confers on me a special responsibility. I may not always succeed, but giving the taxpayers value for their money is my lodestar.

But according to Dr. Bob, the “District,” and I guess that includes me, is a seething hive of incompetents, liars, spin-meisters and failures. To put it more colloquially, we suck.

Ironically, I happen to like Dr. Bob and think his contrarian views serve an important purpose on the school board. Dissent is as American as the Federalist papers Dr. Bob frequently quotes and -- more often than not -- Dr. Bob’s is the lone dissenting voice in an otherwise unanimous chorus. I enjoy informed debate and believe that the sound of ideas bouncing and ricocheting off one another stirs the blood, energizes the mind and makes progress possible.

Much of Dr. Bob’s editorial is, unfortunately, true: last year’s budget process was a joke and an embarrassment. For months we were dirt poor, scraping for pennies; then we were inexplicably awash in money; then the money started bleeding away; now it appears that the District is again headed for lean days, with a rising tide of crimson ink. Dr. Bob is right to be contemptuous – the public deserves better from us, but let’s not forget that it was Dr. Bob and his fellow board members who signed off on hiring decisions that put a couple of fiscal knuckleheads in key positions. It was also Dr. Bob and his board colleagues who extended Superintendent Sarvis’s contract before it was due to expire, giving the man lifetime medical benefits and a pay hike at a time when the District was imploding and the aforementioned test scores were plummeting.

Which begs the question: if the District is so fouled up, why isn’t the Superintendent’s job on the line?

What say ye about that, Dr. Bob? You can’t sit on the dais and cast votes for policies and programs and personnel, and then act like you had nothing to do with it when the decisions you green-lighted go south. That’s hypocrisy, and moral leaders don’t become moral leaders by acting hypocritically.

One problem with Institutions in general -- and the school District in particular -- is a lack of accountability and a perverse tolerance for mediocrity. When flies get in the ointment and gum up the works, nobody is called to task; nobody gets their asshole reamed in a way that sends a distinct message that allowing flies to get in the ointment again will not be tolerated. Instead of dragging the culprit out to the courtyard for a very public flogging, excuses are made, fingers are pointed, shoulders are shrugged. Consequently, the idea that mediocrity is acceptable gets reinforced.

And that’s no way to run a railroad -- or a school district.

On the other hand, when Dr. Bob gets an urge to load up his slingshot and fire stones at our glass house, I wish he’d take aim at specific windows rather than scattershot the entire building.