The Best Move Is To Not Play The Game
February 26, 2004
It looks like the fireworks between TFT President Fran Lawrence and the Toledo School Board are going to continue after the apparent harsh conclusions made earlier by Lawrence. From the looks of it, she hastily concluded that the school board was going to apply different (lower) standards for hiring prospective black teachers and wrote out against it.
After The Blade revealed that her conclusions were based on little hard fact, not much else was said on the subject and I assumed it would fade into the noise of other daily news... until today.
A news item has appeared in the Toledo Journal, the city's only black newspaper including comments from Toledo School Board Member Larry Sykes. From the article:
Some of the harshest criticism came from board member Larry Sykes, who said Mr. [sic] Lawrence has made a fool of herself and compared the union president to the singing star of the Super Bowl halftime show.“I feel that Fran is like Janet Jackson. She’s got her tit out,” Mr. Sykes said.
He said TPS would never consider anything but one standard for all teachers. At the same time, an intern program that is greatly controlled by the TFT should be periodically reviewed, Mr. Sykes said.“We review all other programs. Why can’t we review the intern program?” he said.
“Fran Lawrence is a liar – quote me on that,” Mr. Sykes continued. “She’s saying African Americans are not equipped to teach in our system unless we give them some type of assistance. If I was a teacher, I would be sending in my damn TFT card.”
Wow. I have no inside information but it seems obvious there is a lot of animosity between members of the teachers union and the school board. Sykes' comparison is not only vulgar but unnecessary and inflammatory. I'm also at a loss to understand how the paragraph written by Lawrence could be interpreted that way. As I read it, she was upset because she believed the school board was going to enforce lower standards for black teachers, not the teachers union. In fact she said, "There is no evidence that our standards result in a higher percentage of African-American teacher dismissals than others."
In my opinion both Fran Lawrence and Larry Sykes have acted very unprofessionally in this matter. It's even more disappointing considering the importance of education and the fact that the Toledo Public School system needs everyone working together to do its job well. Perhaps the best action left for both sides (and the media) to take is to let this non-issue die.
