Keep talking

Sam Nichols must be blessed with the patience of Job.

For months, the Dothan City Schools superintendent has been assembling options to improve the city’s public schools. The undertaking has been mammoth, requiring a mind-numbing amount of research into the strategies employed by other public school systems as well as trips to different cities to see what works and what doesn’t.

Nichols hammered out several possibilities, which have been discussed at great length by the school board. An idea to consolidate the city’s two public high schools at one newly constructed facility was dead on arrival; there is no money to spend on a new high school, and the notion of stripping away the identities of each institution didn’t sit well with many students, parents and alumni.

The superintendent then did what he thought the people of Dothan might want — he arranged a series of 19 public hearings to allow residents to learn about the possibilities and make their own suggestions. Many Dothan residents were critical of the city commission for passing a one-cent sales tax increase without public input; Nichols hoped to avoid that pitfall.

But the public stayed away from Nichols’ public forums in droves. Even most members of his own school board missed the lion’s share of the public meetings. Not only is the public disinterested in what happens to the public school system, it appears the school board is apathetic as well.

This week, Nichols told the board the discussion should have ended long ago, and that the time had come to take action.

In a way, he’s right; this matter has been talked to death. The only problem is that there seems to be no clear direction on which to vote.

Many parents are rightly concerned about the future of the city’s magnet schools, saying those programs are the system’s crowning achievement. Magnet school students show better academic performance, they say, and are better prepared for future study when they leave the magnet schools. Some parents fear that a proposal to establish neighborhood schools will destroy “the best thing the city schools have going,” as one parent said recently.

This is the sort of feedback school officials need to hear. They should identify what’s being done right and look for ways to implement those things at every school.

The best solution would seem to be a neighborhood magnet school concept. That’s one idea we haven’t heard.

The time for talking should be over. Even Job would have grown weary of this plodding rumination.

But the discussion must not end until the best conceivable plan is developed.