Tony Nichelson

Congratulations are in order for the two finalists in the search for the city’s next school superintendent.  Dr. Nicholas Gledich and Dr. Kriner Cash did everything that was asked of them.  The two finalists responded to the initial request for applications, they followed up with visits to the city, and they survived a lengthy process that saw more than two hundred other’s fall short of the criteria set forth by the Memphis Board of Education and their national search committee.

The two career educators should be commended for the grace and dignity they showed throughout the past four months.  And while the candidates showed class, the city did not.

 Dr. Carol Johnson has been gone for almost a year, and Superintendent Dan Ward has done what he could to hold this raft together through turbulent waters and petty Memphis politics.  It took several months for the process to get going, and even then, there was major disagreement over how to conduct the search.

“Should it be a local educator”?  “Do we need to look outside of the city for a new school chief”?  “Why do we need to do a national search at all?”  

These and other questions swirled, as local students were injured in classrooms, dirty dancing videos were aired nationally, and investigations were launched into a local food service fiasco.  It was against this backdrop that we sought a new superintendent.  

If these issues weren’t enough to make potential applicants queasy, we added political in-fighting, and a School Board delegation that failed to show up at a City Council hearing on funding and leadership.  You forgot about that one, didn’t you?  Could this be where the current disrespect and ill will between the two governing bodies began?

A local newspaper asked to see “who else” had applied, and even filed a request to see the other two hundred applicants (most of whose resume’s are now in a round file somewhere.)  Local elected officials showed their utter disdain for the “process” by calling the finalists “third rate” and even suggested opening up the search all over again.  

City Council “rookies” and ambitious career politicians voted to cut $70 million dollars from the proposed school budget without giving the new superintendent a chance to come in and make more thoughtful cuts to any waste, fraud, or misappropriation within the school system’s $900 million budget.

At the end of the day, we can only congratulate Dr. Kriner Cash for weathering this first storm.  The parents, church congregations, advocacy groups, mentors, and regular taxpaying citizens cowered before political midgets, and allowed us to treat quality applicants like homeless beggars at our back door.  

This is our school system, these are our children, and we all have a responsibility to show some class and dignity in moving forward now on behalf of our children.  There is no more time to waste, and no more political games to play.  The future of our children and our city is at stake, and this time, we may have gotten it right.  

Local “leaders” behaved badly, and made us all look “third rate” as a major U.S. city.  Now is the time to come together, and really support Dr. Cash as he opens this new educational chapter.

(Tony Nichelson is the author of “110 Tasks Every Young Man Should Know How to Do… Before Ninth Grade” and operates the 110 Institute for the development of urban students.  He is the host of the Public Affairs programs for the Citadel-Memphis Radio Group.)