Talladega City School Board member Shirley Simmons-Sims said part of the reason she will not support appealing the termination of Principal Ginger Paris is because she is worried about the negative publicity it could bring to the system.We find that somewhat ironic, since most of the negative publicity generated about an otherwise good school system is the result of public behavior by the board members.
To be clear, we are not taking sides in Paris’ termination — that’s a decision which will be made by the arbitrator and the courts.
What should be a concern to everyone is how the Talladega City Board of Education members conduct business and present themselves to the public.
Simmons-Sims’ comments aside, Board Member Mary McGhee’s statements during an open meeting about the board attorney – someone who is working to help the school system – and his motivations for continuing the case are indefensible and unacceptable.
That’s all the more true since she is referring to discussions that happened during an executive session and the lawyer is bound by attorney-client privilege not to defend himself against the allegations.
If this kind of behavior was a rare occurrence, it could be written off as an occasional public misstep by a public official.
But the opposite is true: far from being a rare occurrence, such behavior is more often than not the norm.
Since the board is the public face of the school system, how the board members behave has a lot to do with how people in the community and elsewhere perceive our schools.
As a result, the Talladega city schools, which have a solid academic record and are in many cases doing a standout job of providing a quality educational experience for children here, have developed a bad public image.
If Simmons-Sims and other board members are so concerned about negative press, they only have to look to themselves to blame.
If they really want to improve the way people look at our schools, they have to pay more attention to how they act while representing the system and how they treat each other, the public and people working with the board.
