‘Education is far too important’

Dothan voters will choose a chairman of the Dothan School Board on Aug. 25. It is critical that citizens elect a layperson as chairman of the school board.

While both of the candidates are indeed fine people, one has had a professional career in education and coaching, most recently outside the state of Alabama. No doubt the coaching record is impressive, for coaches are hired to win.

The concern is that when an educator is sitting in the powerful chair of a policymaking body for education itself, the relationship between the school board and the city schools can become all too cozy. This concern grows when the orientation from coaching is always “win” and never “lose.”

Having been a basketball coach myself, I understand that on the court there are no win-win games, and I know that the “winning is the only thing” view can so easily carry over into public policy debate and that the obsession to win obscures other options and clouds one’s judgment.

In school board policy, we need win-win solutions, and people who can articulate those solutions.

The other candidate has served for several years on the local school board, providing the insight of both a concerned parent and a very involved, civic-minded citizen. Her lay leadership perspective has been important in helping the school administration discover and ask the significant questions, which so often only a person external to the education profession itself can do.

Having been a school superintendent, too, I have had first-hand experience with school board members who were not educators, and, by virtue of their different professional backgrounds, they so often brought solutions from “outside the box” of education.

Therefore, since education is far too important to be left to educators alone, I highly recommend that the Dothan electorate choose Gayla White as the next chairman of the school board.

Jack D. Cook
Dothan