DoCo School Board Antics…enough reason to leave town.
With their knowingly illegal acts yesterday, the School Board drove another nail in the coffin for Albany and Dougherty County as far as many people are concerned. For the record, I’m one of them. Maybe it’s just me, but until we find people who are qualified for office, we will never get out of the mess we’re in.
Joshua Murfree may well be a great guy. He might well actually have the ability to make a great school superindendent. He just might be able to save Albany single handedly through education. I’ll be the very first to admit it. But there’s not a thing in his resume to show that he’s the one who can do that.
Out of 37 candidates, he was ranked 34th. He has never held a teaching position in grades K-12. He’s never been an administrator at an elementary, middle, or secondary school. He’s an athletic director at Albany State University. If he were applying to be Athletic Director for the Dougherty County School System or something, I’d see no problems. The thing is, he’s not.
Joshua Murfree has somewhat gotten wrapped up and drug through the dirt because of nothing he has done besides applying for a job. That’s all I know of him doing, and he’s taken a lot of heat for it. That heat should be directed at the School Board members who voted to ram this through, including the one who changed his mind after the fact.
I was ready to give them a bit of a reprieve if they changed their tune and gave us some new candidates, but they didn’t. I was ready, but they never gave me the chance. I’m not alone in my disgust at that body right now. There is a huge amount of outrage.
What may well piss me off most is that there are people out there who want to make this outrage about race, that we can’t handle the idea of a black man in charge. Frankly, that’s a load of crap. I honestly don’t have a problem with his skin color, it’s his complete lack of qualifications and the School Board’s violation of law in doing this despite their own attorney telling them it’s illegal.
There’s only two that did the right thing from the start. There’s only three who did the right thing yesterday. There’s still far to many sitting on that board that seem oblivious to things like law and their obligation to the public interest.
Powered by FireStats
February 4th, 2010 at 11:51 am
What we are considering on some level are lateral moves, when a person near the top on one profession moves across to the top another without starting at the bottom. There is an obvious up and down side to such moves. Those against such moves would natural oppose Meg Whitman, former CEO of Ebay, running for governor of California; and Arnold Schwarzenegger’s and Ronald Reagan’s successful lateral moves into the same position. In the same state, Carly Fiorina seeks to move from CEO of Hewlett-Packard to the U.S. Senate.
Sometimes, we need new or fresh blood in a body if the current blood is stagnated. Most of the U.S. Senate could teach in the University System of Georgia with advance degrees but couldn’t teach at Merry Acres Middle School without teaching certifications and I understand that because reaching the young ones properly requires a different skill-set than lecturing in ivy-covered halls. I love the move of Harry S. Truman from haberdasher to Senator to President. I sometimes like a leader who does not have ties or bonds to the institutional establishment; a person who can do things differently because he or she never learned the traditional method.
I live in Worth County and our current superintendent taught me social studies in junior high (nice guy when you see him in the post office); so let me stay out of Dougherty County business. I will say this: the crop of freshmen congress people who rode the Contract with America wave into D.C. in the 90s came bragging about being private business people or small business people who would run the government like a business. Lateral moves. Maybe the assistant city manager who is a Marine needs to fix the school system by bring a little Paris Island into that camp. A list of credentials for superintendent in south Georgia unofficial should included “the ability to motivate faculty, staff, students and parents to believe, achieve, learn and grow.” Are the other finalists Pete Carroll, Lou Hotz and Vince Dooley? You must reach the kids and as quiet as it is kept “the finalist” is a well-known motivator. I bet he is offended that he was not presented with the others and let the chips fall where they may.
It’s always something. At ASU, people like warm and fuzzy presidents but the primary role of the president is the relationship to the state and the Board of Regents. The day to day operations of the university is covered primarily (in my opinion) by the VPs. I attended the season opener of the ASU baseball team and sat next to the university president. Sometimes you must cover all bases.
February 4th, 2010 at 1:03 pm
If qualifications don’t matter, then why even waste money for the ranking of applicants? The next time an opening comes up, we can save money by simply asking the school board members if they have any friends who are interested in the job.
Will, I appreciate your point about the legitimacy of lateral transfers. However, most of the disgruntlement is not about Dr. Murfree himself, as it is about how he was “annointed, rather than appointed”. A reputation for cronyism will discourage qualified applicants for other positions. Then when confronted, the board displayed arrogance in not simply rebooting the process properly.
Why not explain their pick? What plan of action, expertise or unique skill does Dr. Murfree offer that made him stand out from the 33 applicants above him in the rankings? Without such an explanation or reason, the only factor appears to be his friendship with certain school board members. If that was not the reason, just spit it out. Is the public not entitled to at least an explanation? Or are we just required to pay for it and remain quiet?
Requiring the new Superintendent to take office amid public animosity and suspicion is unfair to him. Dr. Murfree might well work out to be a great Superintendent, but because of the board’s selection process, he will now have to overcome public skepticism.
Keep in mind, the blame is NOT on Dr. Murfree. The blame falls squarely on certain school board members. Public trust in local government was already on thin ice. This disgusting episode didn’t help Albany at all.
February 4th, 2010 at 3:47 pm
Cart: You makes several good points and I personally think one thing looms over hiring for high public positions in this area: familiarity. When I was in grad school here, the attorney who was mayor at the time put a little wisdom in my ear at a barbeque at that south Dougherty community center place. He said if you want to work here one day move away. I was like “huh.” He said for some reason there is a formula or equation in people’s minds that the distance a person move to get here makes that person a better candidate.
Like a clerk in the city manager’s office in Tacoma would look great on paper in sowega. I like to think about “skin in the game” from the personnel standpoint. If a kid from south Georgia moves to Idaho after college and completely screws up on the job, who knows. But if you are in your home area and are half doing your job, your friends and family suffer—like a police chief’s mom getting mugged.
In this down economy, the competition for any position is strong (open positions and jobs currently held.) Getting caught napping and your job could be ghost—which is a good thing because people shouldn’t get comfortable. We know too well what happens (happened) when a person moves here without ties to the community.
In school, we read an anthology collected my Dr. Robert Golembieski of the UGA MPA program that included an article on Representative Bureaucracy—basically, should a person who runs a public entity be personally familiar with the agency. Should the director of the housing authority be from the projects? Of course, that would be an interesting factor but to disqualify a person who grew up wealth would be discrimination on some level. (For the record, my classmates and I really liked the service of the local housing authority director and his insight and opinions on HUD and housing matters was golden to congressional staffers.)
Representative Bureaucracy “the Prequel” could have been the public school teachers in my county who didn’t attend public schools or those who put their children in private school in the 70s. Of course, private school for faith reasons is understandable but we knew what was really happening. (I better leave this alone) There were many a south Georgia farm boy who brought his college sweetheart back to his hometown and that sorority girl taught public school with an unquestionable dedication and commitment. South Georgia is a poor region and we must have administrators who can grasp the unique educational situation here. You can hire a rich Kennedy kid; just reach the kids and get results..and do it under budget. When industry considers a city, the first thing they want to see is the test results from the area school systems.
In Worth, Dougherty, Lee, Tift and Terell counties, I don’t see the same person from the list of DoCo superintendent candidates get the job in each county—different skill set.
February 4th, 2010 at 5:08 pm
As Cartman said, the issue is not Murfree himself. However, nothing on his resume fills me with confidence that he is the one who should take over as the chief educator in Dougherty County. The problem here is that the School Board had promised to give the people of Dougherty County a chance to look at all the finalists and for them to give their feedback. That didn’t happen. The School Board broke the law in their actions, and they broke their word, and unfortunately Joshua Murfree got caught in the middle.
If, and I do mean if, he was chosen for something other than his prior relationship with a School Board Commissioner, then someone needs to do some serious explaining on why. I want to know why the full procedure wasn’t followed. I want to know why one interview is sufficient. I want to know what Murfree brings to the table that NONE of the other candidates did that suddenly propelled him forward above all the candidates ranked above him.
I pay taxes in this county. My son attends public school in this county. I damn well have a right to know the answers to this. It has nothing to do with proximity. If they had announced one candidate under similar circumstances from Podunk, CA I’d have written the same thing.
But when talking about education, keep one thing in mind. Those from this area haven’t managed to get it right yet. Maybe new blood actually would.