News-Record.com

Maurice Green is a lawyer by training, not a teacher. That doesn’t sit well with some critics, who thought the Guilford County school board should have selected an experienced educator as the next superintendent.

Green makes it clear, however, that he’d like to spend time teaching in Guilford County classrooms.

There’s one small problem, which Green noted when asked at a public meeting in Greensboro last week whether he’d consider substitute teaching.

“Absolutely,” he said. But he added that superintendents are prohibited by state law from teaching.

Green, who served as general counsel for Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools before becoming deputy superintendent there two years ago, knows his stuff.

N.C. General Statute 115C-272(a) says: “The superintendent shall not teach, nor be regularly employed in any other capacity that may limit or interfere with his duties as superintendent.”

Green expressed a desire to get into the classroom anyway.

“As for how to deal with that statute,” he said in an e-mail to the News & Record, “I don’t think it would prohibit a superintendent from assisting a teacher (especially on a limited basis) so long as the superintendent is not the teacher of record for the students. In any event, I am very interested in working with teachers in such a role.”

The law clearly is meant to make sure a superintendent devotes full attention to his or her primary responsibilities, which are tremendously demanding in a district as large as Guilford’s.

Yet, relating directly to teachers and students in a classroom setting can be very helpful to Green as he learns about this system, the challenges teachers face and the needs and interests of his most important customers: the students.

That kind of involvement won’t interfere with his duties but help him perform them better. As a good lawyer, Green is on the right track around an overly restrictive law.