The latest fracas at the Bentonville School Board shows why a deft touch matters. Look what happens without one.
That spat also casts a little light on why Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin's the man to watch in the GOP presidential primary. More about that later.
Board member Wendi Cheatham walked out of Monday's meeting. This left the board without a quorum. Having enough members to pass anything was on the bubble because three board members weren't there. It's the middle of July. It's the best time for any member of any school board to plan a vacation or any other out-of-town event. Having thinned ranks for the July meeting is no surprise.
So everybody needed to get along to have a meeting. This made it a bad time to bring up the most contentious issue this board's faced since the decision to build a second high school.
The board is seriously split over a proposed change to the district's Equal Employment Opportunity policy. The board fight has clearly gotten personal. The change would bar discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity.
Something like that change is in the wind after the U.S. Supreme Court's recent decision on gay marriage. I get that. But death and taxes, for example, are clearly inevitable. That doesn't make either popular in Bentonville. People fight against both. Inevitability and acceptance are two different things. Often, the more inevitable a thing is, the more bitter the struggle against it becomes.
Marshall Ney, the district's attorney, had complied a report on the likely impact of the Supreme Court's decision on district policy. Any such report was bound to favor the change.
Superintendent Michael Poore wanted to get on with things and present the report at the meeting as scheduled. Cheatham objected before the meeting. The report on this major issue should be presented when more board members were there, she argued. Not even Ney was going to be at Monday's meeting, so board members had no one to ask any questions. She felt strongly enough to threaten to not show up if the report was read.
I disagree with Cheatham. The board should have gone ahead and released the report. School board members can read even when they're out of town. Go ahead and get the report out there where everyone, including patrons, could see the thing. Discuss it when the full board came back.
That said, if I'd been a school board member--a post I wouldn't claim if I won it at a raffle--I'd have shrugged and accepted Cheatham's demand. I understand that those who support the change or see it as unavoidable believe this was just stalling. Suppose it was. I'd have weighed the risks and benefits because the person doing the stalling was holding the board's quorum in the palm of her hand. There were decisions to make. People the district wanted to hire were waiting for a firm job offer before August. If they don't get one from Bentonville, they'll take another.
A little diplomacy was needed. And as Will Rogers put it: "Diplomacy is the art of saying 'Nice doggie' until you can find a rock." Board president Travis Riggs refused to say "Nice doggie" but held no rock. He promptly got bit.
"Basically we were held hostage and had to remove that from the agenda tonight," Riggs said at the meeting. Cheatham protested. "I didn't put your name out there," Riggs replied.
No, Mr. Riggs, you didn't name names. But I'm a wiseguy from Fayetteville who's never attended one of your board's meetings. Even I could tell who you were griping about.
Cheatham left in a huff. The quorum evaporated. The report wasn't released until later. No board business was done. It was a fight in which everyone was a sore loser.
Now, to explain my cryptic comment about Walker. Bentonville is not the only place where peace didn't break out after the Supreme Court ruled -- on gay marriage, Obamacare, whatever. Conservatives are angry and frustrated at being swept along. They want somebody who can paddle against the current.
To be the conservative governor of Florida or Texas is to go downstream. Being the conservative governor of a Midwestern union state isn't. Walker hasn't just paddled against the current. His paddling provoked his enemies to bring on a recall election. He crushed them.
I don't know yet if Walker's ready for national prime time. If he is, he's what the GOP's looking for.
Commentary on 07/18/2015