Note from Quin to all Alabamans: Please read the stories below, and call your State Board of Education representative to demand that he/she votes to keep Michael Sentance as state superintendent of schools. There is an utter “railroad job” in progress to try to fire him after less than a year, even though he is succeeding on multiple fronts. It’s a travesty pushed by the same old gang that has ill-served our schools and our children for decades. It must be stopped; Sentance’s job must be saved. He is a successful reformer already making our state schools better. Firing him would cause a huge scandal and give Alabama a HUGE national black eye.
This story is the most comprehensive explanation of the whole situation. Its closing lines are worth quoting. If Sentance is fired, writes Larry Huff, “Alabama’s children will be the losers. And what the rest of the country will conclude is that the importance of what those students learn, know, and achieve has again been lost in the vindictive swamp of Alabama’s insider politics. In the swamp, getting even always trumps getting better. For the sake of our children and teachers, we can only hope that the New Alabama will rise up and that will not be the case this Tuesday.”
Here, another good conservative site reports on the situation while noting Sentance’s successes on behalf of Alabama students and parents.
This story explains how Sentance was supremely, and personally, successful at convincing the national Department of Education to allow Alabama to get rid of a badly designed state school assessment hated by administrators, teachers, parents and students alike.
This one explains how state school board members are wrongfully micro-managing Montgomery’s schools.
More on the premature nature of the board’s “evaluation” of Mr. Sentance.
More on the success at replacing the bad test.
This one says the votes are in hand to fire him, but I don’t believe it. Call Jackie Zeigler. Call Cynthia McCarty. Tell them that firing somebody after less than a year is a horrible idea. Tell them this move to fire him looks crooked. Tell them to put their pathetic, petty politics aside, and give reform a chance, for the sake of Alabama’s children.
And while you are at it, perhaps call Gov. Kay Ivey’s office too, and tell them it’s time she started showing leadership here. She is technically president of the state school board. Tell her to do her job and weigh in, hard, to keep this black eye from being self-inflicted.
Thank you. — Quin