WAKE SUPT. ANTHONY TATA
By Cash Michaels
Editor
The
first line of the News and Observer’s June 20th Wake Ed Blog, the same day the Wake School Board voted 5-4 to
reincorporate diversity in student assignment, said it all - Wake
County Schools Superintendent Tony Tata literally played the good soldier at
today’s press conference as he didn’t criticize the school board’s call to
develop a base school assignment plan.
Indeed, even though Tata, after the Democrat-led
board gave him new marching orders to scrap his floundering school choice plan,
maintained that it was beginning to bare fruit after a rocky start with a “high
satisfaction rate” among a majority of Wake County parents, he reluctantly
conceded that he and his staff, “…work at the direction of the board.”
More
specifically, a Democratic board majority with which Tata, a conservative Tea
Party sympathizer who sources say has US senatorial aspirations in a few years,
has had several very public nasty fights with in the six months they’ve been in
charge.
With
his heart really not into establishing a base school model with aspects of
choice, and elements of stability, proximity, student achievement and
diversity, will Tata drag his feet in meeting the 2013-14 school year deadline,
or will the retired US Army brigadier general be the “good soldier,” and follow
the directive?
No
matter what Tata’s personal feelings, some community leaders expect him too,
beginning with his boss.
“I’ve
talked with Supt. Tata a little bit about this,” Wake School Board Chairman
Kevin Hill told The Carolinian last
week. :”I think he’s a professional. My expectation, as chairman…is as
superintendent, you take our direction from the Board of Education, and
whatever direction the Board of Education points Wake County in, I need you to
enthusiastically and wholeheartedly work to make that happen, and he
understands that, that’s his intention.”
But Chairman Hill also added a
cautionary note to Tata’s “intention.”
“I’m going to take him at his word,
and look to partner with him, again with the caveat that somewhere along the
line, every superintendent has to make a decision if they’re comfortable with
what the board is directing them to do or not,” Hill said, reminding of Tata’s
predecessor in the job, Del Burns, who resigned shortly after a Republican-led
majority on the board, with intentions of scrapping diversity and instituting
racially segregated neighborhood schools, took over in 2010.
That board majority hired Tata, who
had no classroom experience, and only 18 months of any school administration
experience, to run the nation’s 16th largest public school system.
Chairman Hill seemed to suggest
that he wouldn’t be surprised if Tata, now given the change in board majority
leadership, had a change of heart.
“I compare superintendents to major
league baseball managers - they kind of come and go,” Hill told The
Carolinian. “I respect Tony, I respect the
service that he has given to our country, I like him an individual, and want to
take him at his word that he will work in the best interests of the children of
Wake County.”
Even Tata’s staunchest critics
expressed the belief that the “good soldier,” no matter what his personal
beliefs, will get the new directive done.
“It would be my thought that he
understands that [in] the governance process that the board dictates what [is
done]… and as an employee of the Wake County Public Schools, I’m sure he
understands…the protocol of what that demand means,” said Calla Wright,
president of Coalition of Concerned Citizens for African-American
Children.
Yevonne Brannon, chair of Great
Schools in Wake Coalition - a frequent adversary of Supt. Tata and his school
choice plan - agrees that it is his job to now come up with a workable base
assignment plan that connects student addresses to particular schools.
That’s Tata’s job, but she’s not so
sure he’s going to do it!
“I don’t know, because I don’t know
Mr. Tata,” Brannon told The Carolinian.
“He seems to be more interested in following his own beliefs, his own
interests. His personal will seems to be stronger than listening to the board’s
will. So I’m not so sure that he’s good at following direction and following
orders. I haven’t seen that. I don’t know him personally.”
But Brannon added, “ I would say, I
hope so. I hope that he has taken an oath as superintendent that serves the
best interests of the Board of Education…and I hope he will do what he can to
make [WCPSS] successful.”
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