Lincoln's Log

The problem with gadflies is, while we know they don’t approve of the status quo, we rarely know what they stand for or what proposed solutions they hold, if any.

Gadflies are also uncomfortable working with a team, and rarely make for great leaders.

Thus, Peter Sherr will need to decide in the next 30 days whether he will make a meaningful contribution to the future of Greenwich schools or whether he will just stand on the sidelines taking pot shots for the next two years as a BOE member. Will his legacy be written as that of a gadfly or as a leader?

We have been handed this extraordinary opportunity because the Greenwich Democrats finally decided to take a stand. On Tuesday night, they said no to another year under incumbent chair Steve Anderson. Thank you, thank you, thank you. I for one am a grateful Greenwich resident, taxpayer and parent (even though I no longer have a child in the public school system). I am also a registered independent, as are a great many folks in Greenwich.

I do not interpret the Dems’ vote Tuesday night to support Leslie Moriarty as chair of the BOE as a political move in any way, even though the Townies will certainly portray it as such. Anyone who has followed the Greenwich schools closely the last four years is aware of the colossal failure of leadership under Anderson.

He had his fingerprints on two failed superintendencies. He signed documents obligating Greenwich to undertake a massive and expensive curriculum change without approval from BOE members. He withheld from the BOE, BET and the RTM cost overruns at North Mianus School which then required special actions from those bodies to pay the bills. While I am not a big fan of BOE member Nancy Kail, I do not think she should have been shut down by Anderson when she tried to making a nominating speech Tuesday night. But this is Anderson – heavy handed, dictatorial, and oblivious to the damage he has caused to our schools the last four to five years. We now have a middle school – one of only three – underperforming a school in Bridgeport, where 95 percent of the students receive free lunches because of their poverty. Greenwich High School, once the proud pillar of the community and ranked next to the country’s finest, New Trier, Whitman, is now a mediocre, run-of-the-mill place.

Those are the reasons Greenwich needs a change, not because of party lines or party beliefs. Those democrats played the game the way it was intended – true to the bipartisan intent of the school board. They voted with their GOP counterparts on many, many initiatives.

Now it’s Peter Sherr’s turn to respect that bipartisanship. If he votes to support the nomination of Leslie Moriarty, we will have a new BOE chair. If he continues to cop out (abstention), Anderson will likely return as chair. I say likely because the statutes are fuzzy on this score. It is clear that the new chair requires a “majority” of the board not just a majority of the board votes (4-3 in favor of Moriarty with the Sherr abstention). Where it gets fuzzy is that both board policy and state statute say that the selectmen (dominated by Townies) will name the new chair in the event of a tie. But a 4-3 vote with one abstention is not a “tie” in my Webster’s dictionary. The statutes do not have any provisions for what to do in that case. Will Anderson continue to be the chair in that case?

The most telling action taken by the BOE Tuesday night was not the 4-3 vote in favor of Moriarty. Rather, it was the unanimous vote to rebuff Anderson, who wanted the town fixer (AKA town attorney) John Wayne Fox to render an opinion on what constitutes a majority. That would be like asking Sonia Sotomayor to rule on the legitimacy of the Obama Health Care law. While the other two Republicans, Peter Von Braun and Barbara O’Neill, did not want to go on the record as supporting a Democrat, they had no problems voting for a non-partisan opinion of the rules. They seem to want a change as well.

Sherr should understand this. He has a huge opportunity to help bring seven motivated members of the BOE together to hire the right superintendent for Greenwich.

Will he get pilloried by some members of the RTC and Townies? Yes. But I got news for you. They are already pillorying him. So do the right thing, Peter, for the children of Greenwich.