Moderates have been heroes in the storied and troubled history of the Little Rock Public Schools.
Their heroism in 1958 was in a public willingness to be separate from the segregationist mob--to be pragmatic, not strident or ideological, for the greater causes of reason, orderliness and children.
When Orval Faubus closed the city's public schools under a nonsensical and racist state law in 1958, moderate Little Rock women calling themselves the Women's Emergency Committee led the way to reopen the schools. They helped elect to the school board moderate civic leaders like industrialist Everett Tucker. Those civic leaders didn't necessarily favor integration, but they stood--bravely at the time--for obeying the courts and putting emotions aside to attend to the responsible business of public schooling and community progress.
Now, almost 60 years later, those Little Rock public schools have been taken over by the state Education Department. Six of the schools are defined as in academic distress. The district administration was dysfunctional.
A state law born from the epic Lake View case gives the state the authority, indeed the responsibility, to take control in such cases.
I do not mean to say that the state takeover rivals in scope the integration crisis, or that today's angry community reaction to that takeover compares to the behavior of a racist mob, or that deposed local school board president Greg Adams belongs in the company of the Women's Emergency Committee.
But I do mean to say Little Rock's public schools face another critical juncture. And I do mean to say that once again we need responsible and heroic moderation and pragmatism. And I do mean to say that Adams is as good an example of it as I've seen to date.
He went to a community meeting Saturday that, according to reports, broke down in angry shouting toward state education commissioner Tony Wood and Sam Ledbetter, the Little Rock lawyer who is the current chairman of the state Board of Education, and who cast the tie-breaking vote for state takeover.
Adams was sufficiently distressed that he went home and composed a post for Facebook saying, essentially, that he didn't like the takeover, but that it was the law; that people could disagree about the takeover without accusing the other side of not caring about children; that it's a good sign, not a bad one, that the two education officials don't have specific answers yet, since that suggests open-mindedness and appropriate deliberation, and that the best thing for district parents and patrons to do now is deal with the situation as it exists, volunteer in the public schools and hope for the best from a state takeover that is causing understandable concern, even anxiety.
"Patient engagement is not an easy task, but I believe it is the one we have," Adams wrote.
In a phone conversation Tuesday morning, Adams called for a kind of balance: He understands, indeed shares, a sense of concern and powerlessness over the community's detachment from whatever it is the state is getting ready to do outside the standard rules of accountability and local democracy. But he says frustration can't become paranoia about a supposed conspiracy to turn the schools over to full privatization run under business models cooked up by corporate-funded foundations.
Adams said he met before the state Education Board's vote with the three Little Rock members--Ledbetter and Vickie Saviers, who voted for the takeover, and Jay Barth, who proposed unsuccessfully an incremental step.
Adams said he got no sense from either Ledbetter or Saviers of any motivation on their part other than two factors: One was a desire to fix the six distressed schools. The other was an end-of-the-rope frustration with the Little Rock district's repeated inability to function better and show progress.
Indeed, Wood's first public action has been to name Baker Kurrus, speaking of moderate heroes, to head a committee that will recommend how the Little Rock district can manage financially after the imminent loss of special state desegregation money. Kurrus is a lawyer and businessman who spent 15 years toiling nobly against raging dysfunction as a school board member, and who is clearly committed to public schools.
Adams provided an apt comparison: The takeover is like a bad election.
In other words: He put his heart and soul into trying to avoid the takeover, just as a fervent political supporter puts his heart and soul into a losing politician's campaign. When you lose, you naturally are fearful of what the winner may do in office. But you do not engage in personal attacks or divisiveness or disengagement or destructiveness merely for losing. You want the best for whatever political jurisdiction is at issue, be it your country or state or congressional district or school system.
So you wait and see.
So let's calm down, shout less and honor our community's rich history of brave moderation by performing the hard task of engaging patiently.
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John Brummett's column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Email him at [email protected]. Read his blog at brummett.arkansasonline.com, or his @johnbrummett Twitter feed.
Editorial on 02/19/2015