A couple months ago Peter Herschend said he would like to have a conversation about transitioning the presidency of the State Board of Education (SBE). I told him I’d been thinking about the same thing. The normal order of succession is the board vice president becomes the next president.
I told him I didn’t want to be the next president. I told him at the time I would share my reasons publicly as to spare us the crazy conspiracy theories that are the zombies of political life.
In team sports (and the SBE is a team), you are successful when you get player match ups that give you an advantage. In other words, put the right player in the right place at the right time in the game. Ain’t real complicated – hard, but not complicated.
Unless you’re a member of the SBE, you wouldn’t necessarily know that one of the most important things the president does for the board and the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) is deal with the Legislature, particularly legislative leadership.
Even the most casual observer would objectively describe the Missouri General Assembly as overwhelmingly white, overwhelmingly Republican and severely conservative. It’s safe to stipulate that I’m an overwhelmingly black, liberal, urban Democrat. So you wouldn’t have to be a political Phil Jackson or Greg Popovich to conclude that might not be the best match up for the SBE.
That’s especially true when you have three current members of this board who have served in the Legislature and have long-standing, working political relationships with members of the Legislature. So it was clear to me if you want the match up that would give this board and DESE the best chance at political success with the legislature, you needed to call somebody else’s number, not mine.
That’s a good and politically smart reason for me declining the presidency. However, it was not my primary reason for declining the position.
The board president speaks for the entire board and is its official voice. As such, he has to work to develop and maintain a consensus among the board members on educational policy. When he speaks publicly, he must always be mindful that he’s speaking for more than himself.
This was my reason declining the position. I didn’t want to be compromised by the responsibilities of the office. I want to be free to speak to and advocate for those children in places like Normandy that never have anybody in positions of authority and influence make their fate the single most important priority. We have a statewide educational and political apparatus to look out for “all our children,” as people are so ready to say. I’m going to focus exclusively on these children.
What would the SBE member from the First Congressional District be required to say that would be imprudent and politically unwise for the board president? Let’s take the Missouri General Assembly that concluded what they call a legislative session and I would call a farce.
If they were serious about helping children of Normandy or any unaccredited district, there were a lot of things they could have done but only one thing they had to do – fix the transfer statue. For the second consecutive year, they didn’t get it done.
There are two rational explanations for this failure: gross political incompetence or a malicious callous disregard for the educational welfare of children in places like Normandy. The SBE president couldn’t and shouldn’t say something like this, because he or she has to maintain the fiction of a working relationship.
DESE has multiple issues affecting every child in Missouri, and it needs at least some cooperation from the Legislature in order to function. I, on the other hand, see the Legislature as somewhere between politically hostile to generally useless when it comes to supporting the education of black children in urban areas.
As for the SBE and DESE, what about us? We have to be more honest about what we’re facing. We publicly say we’re holding people accountable for a level of performance. We also have to say we know they don’t have right tools to get the job done. We have to be prepared to loudly and consistently say – whether it’s the budgets we’re given or statues that define how we operate – when what we have is insufficient to educate every child in Missouri.
To the black community of St Louis, who I love with the life you’ve given me, we have to do better and be better. When you read Elisa Crouch’s Post-Dispatch articles on the difference in the educational experiences of Angel Matthews, who transferred to Kirkwood, and Cameron Hensley, who decided to stay at Normandy, it breaks your heart. There was no difference in their ability or desire, just in the adults responsible for their education. If we cannot make successfully educating black children, our children, our number one priority, bar none, then we are truly unworthy of the sacrifice of our ancestors.
Mike Jones serves on the State Board of Education and on The St. Louis American editorial board.
