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I think Dot is absolutely right. First you carefully listen carefully to other people, nod your head and say you understand, then at crunch time, follow your own heart and political interest and @&%k them!

And then, three years later, after the first @&%kin'
doesn't work, you do the same thing again.

Then after this second @&%kin' doesn't work, you get up and make an incoherent speech trying to table a motion that tried to correct the second @&%kin'.

Then when the people just can't take anymore you hand pick and groom your own dummy er...I mean candidate, who will no doubt engineer more @$%kins' to come.

You're right, Dot. This is just what we need.

Teaching experience preferable but not necessarily a deal breaker. Saying "no" to flat out crazy people (see above) a must. Standing up to special interest group reps seeking to take economic advantage of their position on the board instead of doing their job educating kids -vital.

Absolutely - I recall a quote from a CEO of a large corporation that roughly went:

"One should not fly so high as they can lose touch with the ground."

...or something like that. The basic principle is still there even if my beleaguered brain cannot remember it on a sunny, spring, Friday afternoon. He basically meant that to maintain success at the top it is still imperative to understand the challenges at the bottom of the totem pole, in the "trenches," so to speak, of whatever business you're in.

In the case of Guilford County Schools, that's the teachers and staff of every school in the county. If the new superintendent hasn't a notion of what they have to deal with on a daily basis, he or she will not be an effective leader. I think Guilford County needs to look within - and encourage any and everyone with a good amount of experience at any level to apply. I think that will lead to the discovery of an amazing candidate who otherwise might not have even been considered.

I do not completely disagree with my friends Routh and Garrett. However should one have had teaching experience "too" many years ago - it's a different ball game today. I would hope that the new superintendent would listen to a cadre of outstanding teachers (not politically connected). Each school in '95 when I retired had leadership teams. I would hope the new superintendent would have a "leadership team" of teachers at each level (elementary, middle, and high) who could keep him/her informed regarding what it's like to teach in today's classroom. This "report" could happen at least each semester (or each report period) . I found that teachers "know" what is happening and what needs to be done. These would be teachers from all eras of experience. They would also be teachers who have had highly successful evaluations and high caliber teachers.
I also think it could be someone with recent experience in teacher education and knows that area as an expert.
Listening to teachers is the main idea. Really listening.

What we really need right now is someone who will be open and honest with parents and taxpayers and who values input from others. One of "central office's" biggest problems is a lack of public confidence. We can change this only by making things more transparent and by being more responsive to the customers.

I think it would be shortsighted to limit our search to so-called "professional educators." What we need is an innovative leader who inspires others and who can produce tangible results, i.e. higher test scores. We should cast a wide net.

I think Ed Allred has got it exactly right: "Listening to teachers is the main idea. Really listening." Guilford County needs a superintendent, preferably one with a background in education, who stays "tuned in" to what's going on in our schools. The best way to accomplish this is to communicate with the ones on the front lines of education...our dedicated teachers!

When I first became a parent I read all the books written by the so-called experts, but it soon became apparent to me that my best source of reliable information came from other parents. The people who spend day in and day out raising children are the experts.

The same goes with education. The people who spend day in and day out in classrooms teaching children are the experts!

Having teaching experience is a plus, but it is not one of the primary attributes we should seek in a superintendent. The job calls for management ability, financial and economic knowledge, a thorough grounding in personnel administration, ability to delegate responsibility to capable lieutenants and a tough minded approach to getting the "most bang for the buck" in an unfriendly economic environment.

We have hundreds of capable teachers and a number of curriculum experts. The superintendent should focus on clearing the way for them to do their jobs. Having teaching experience is not a requirement. Great generals don't do the front line fighting ... they get the most from their resources by helping them to win the battles through tactical and strategic planning.

Listening to teachers is all well and good. However, I would prefer that he listen to those that can get the job done. You search for the people and practices that have worked and you implement them here in Guilford Co. The practices have to be validated. If something worked great in Wake Co., then we could try it on 1 or 2 schools. It is not necessary to have everyone in an uproar if the concept will not work. One of things that is hurting us is site-based managment which lets the locals decide if they want to improve and how they improve. Most great organizations have a highly controlled environment that ensures that the baby is not thrown out with the bath water. For years, the BOE has blamed their problems on Washington, Raleigh and the Board of Commissioners. Enough is enough. We want a BOE and Supt. that takes what we have and inspires children to learn at a higher level. We want people who are positive and can make others feel positive about their opportunities. It can be done.

YOU JUST DON'T GET IT, folks. It's not about all the in-house politics, posturing, “innovative” programs, and playacting. The failure is SYSTEMIC and philosophical. The public system was flawed from the gitgo - i.e. harboring the seeds of its own demise when the whole idea of "public" education was hatched by Dewey et al.

By now it has become a huge, damnably expensive Brontosaurus that can only lumber along making mammoth droppings and eating up all the taxpayers’ moolah, with an insatiable lust for more!

Superintendents, and the entire bureaucratic superstructure, by nature, live in a safe, well-paid bubble of self-preservation. They just MIGHT truly want to solve the overwhelming problems that the system has generated, but are utterly powerless to do so, because the system has a life of its own, perpetuating itself year-to-year like a unstoppable bureaucratic Tiger tank that demands fuel and respect and total submission. We are deceived, cajoled and guilt-baited into voting more millions “for the kids.” The best thing for the kids is to phase the whole system out over five years and get on with real education. The only rational solution for the public schools is the one they applied to the fallen race horse recently: put it out of its misery.

It is wholly unwieldy and hopeless; not because real education is hopeless in America, but because all socialistic programs fail, and the American public school is just an educational War on Poverty or Welfare system. Government should just get out of the education business and give it back to the people; who should then create private and parochial schools, home school enterprises, etc. - all relatively small, and owned by those who send their kids there. We already have thousands of such schools across the nation. All we have to do is vote NO! on the ballots, as I did today; de-fund and disband the whole rotten socialistic monstrosity, and begin creative, sensitive, God-fearing schools and home schools to replace it.

I know this sounds radical to most mind-numbed taxpayers. So what's it gonna take, fellow citizens: another massacre like Columbine etc.(or almost in Columbia), another teacher sex abuser, race riots, beatings, rapes, wretched academic reports, a full history re-write, wholesale condom distribution, gay lesbian and trans-gendered clubs, ad nauseam.

The problem is systemic, inherent and irremediable. We are sacrificing our kids on the altar of a modern Moloch-system that ruins and devours all too many of them. Funny, just when they convince us that things are “improving” and turning around, another massacre occurs, or another teacher ends up getting a student pregnant, etc. Again I say. What’s it gonna take? How long will we swear that the king has clothes? How long will we allow the NEA to perpetuate itself at our children’s expense? It’s time to realize that there are virtually endless creative and dynamic alternatives to the current failed system of academic socialism.