Green making waves in JCSS

Change. It’s a dirty word in any business or institution. People don’t like change and the first response is always to resist anything but the status quo.
And nowhere is change more loathed than within the bubble of the academic world. For all their focus on being progressive, many in public education are themselves the most resistant to changing anything inside their own world.
That is especially true in the JCSS where weak administrative leadership in recent years spoiled a lot of people. The system has had massive financial and personnel mismanagement in the last few years. Accountability was non-existent. Bad teachers and administrators were coddled, moved around perhaps, but never disciplined or fired.
So it was into that kind of cozy atmosphere that Green stepped last summer. Or maybe it’s more accurate to say he charged in.
Among other items, Green has taken on three major issues that are shaking the system to its core.

First, Green is trying to get a handle on the system’s poor spending habits. A few years ago, the system had a financial collapse. It cut spending down for a couple of years to get out of a $1 million hole, but as soon as it got out of that hole, it again ramped up spending. Last year, the JCSS spent more on a per student basis than any other system in the area except for the bloated Clarke County School System.
The system has to get its spending under control, but doing that scares a lot of people who are fearful for their own jobs. Green has made it clear that he intends to change how the system has been spending its money.

Second, Green is confronting the system’s imbalance of facilities. Green has floated the idea of creating a 6th Grade school at the current Kings Bridge Middle School to make better use of the system’s empty classrooms on the East side of Jackson County and to take pressure off of the overcrowded West side.
But that plan has led to a lot of questions by parents. The transportation issue is major and will be difficult to overcome due to geography. Two meetings are coming up — one Thursday and one Monday — on that proposal and it will be interesting to see how it all plays out. But until a final decision is made, that issue has created a lot of uncertainty with both parents and school system employees.

Third, and perhaps most importantly, Green is taking on the system’s entrenched administrative structure and upending the status quo. He did that with the appointment of Tim Stowers as principal at East Jackson Comprehensive High School. Stowers took over the job last Friday.
But this was not a traditional appointment in a system accustomed to promoting administrators from within. Stowers isn’t an educator and doesn’t have a degree in education. He hasn’t taught in the classroom. He doesn’t have a doctorate degree.
Perhaps worst of all in the eyes of traditional educators, Stowers is a football coach. He coached at Georgia Southern and the University of Rhode Island. Many traditional educators look down their nose at coaches. Now — gasp! — a coach who has never been an educator will be the boss at EJCHS.
To say that has created a firestorm within the school system is an understatement. This is a major appointment and it will be very, very interesting to see how it works out. Strong leadership from a principal is the key to success at any school. Without a strong principal, a school will drift and eventually, fail.

The question is, does a principal have to come from within the education culture, or can he come from a career path that has been outside that bubble?
A lot of traditional educators would argue that nobody outside the academic world can understand how a school works and that only someone who has risen through the traditional education ranks and gotten all the appropriate degrees should be put in administration. Given the complexity of today’s education system, they have a point.
But others argue that all too often, those who might be good in the classroom rise through the ranks but are terrible as administrators. The two require very different skill sets and not every good teacher can rise to become a good administrator.
If a principal’s job is leadership, why does that have to come from within the education culture? Can’t leadership come from other jobs, too?
What Green is doing with this appointment is to challenge the status quo by bringing in someone from outside the system and putting him in charge. When I asked Green about the appointment of Stowers, he said the qualities of a coach and a principal are similar: To motivate a team and to hold people accountable for the results. That seems to be Green’s theory at work here.
Still, the naming of Stowers to the EJCHS slot is a big gamble for the new superintendent. If he is right and Stowers proves to be a successful leader, it will totally upend the traditional view of school management in the county system. It could, in fact, become a model for other systems to emulate.
But if Green is wrong and Stowers’ lack of education experience causes him to fumble, the fallout will land directly on the superintendent. It’s a big, big gamble.

What remains to be seen in all of this is if Green can juggle all the balls he’s throwing into the air. Will employees in the system try to undermine these changes either directly, or with passive-aggressive resistance? And will the board of education continue to give Green the leeway to make these kinds of bold moves, or will they try to put him on a shorter leash?

Green is making some big waves in the JCSS. Time will tell if his moves will have a cleansing effect by washing away the deadwood, or if those waves will turn into a tsunami that overwhelms everyone in its path, including the superintendent.

Mike Buffington is editor of The Jackson Herald. He can be reached at mike@mainstreetnews.com.