This Superintendent Candidate Says Maybe Nashville District Leaders Should Sub for Absent Teachers

Nashville’s superintendent candidates who’ve returned for a second round of interviews are facing more specific questions about the district’s persistent problems. One problem is elevated teacher absences and a shortage of substitutes. Finalist Allen Smith says there’s no excuse for interfering with instruction.

Smith, who is currently the chief of schools in Oakland, says his district has experienced a similar problem with teachers calling in sick — especially on Mondays and Fridays.

“We call it ‘the Friday, Monday flus,” Smith said to laughter. “And it impacts, unfortunately, some of our lowest performing and hardest to serve schools.”

You’ve got to get to the bottom of what’s going on there, Smith told the Metro school board. And the district needs to build a strong stable of substitutes. A backup plan is helpful. But in Oakland, Smith says central office leaders have been temporarily assigned to some schools with unfilled positions.

“The number one option is we gotta go teach,” he said. “These students have to get instruction. So we can clear our calendars and go to the schools and spend some time in classrooms.”

Smith says the district might also need to consider having full-time subs who are always in a school, ready for any last minute absences.

At a community forum Wednesday night, Smith said
he hopes to make the district more inclusive — educating students with a variety of needs in one classroom.
He said turning around low-performing schools requires including all children in the classroom — kids with special needs, gang members and disruptive students who might be suspended under current policy.

“That’s important to me because we all live in this world together, we’re all going to function in this world together, and so we need to be able to learn together,” Smith said.

But Charlane Oliver, who attended the question-and-answer session at Creswell Middle Prep, worries that Smith’s strategy might take away from the classroom experience of her child.

“I’m all about individual attention,” she said. “I want to make sure that my child is going to get that attention, and not the most disruptive one.”

Local educators also say Smith’s position on inclusivity is noble, but possibly problematic.

Smith is currently an administrator in Oakland, but at the forum he talked more about his time in Denver, where he claims responsibility for the turnaround of a school once dubbed the “worst in America.”

Smith has moved twice in the three years since he left Colorado, but he still says consistent leadership is important. If hired, he says he hopes to stay in Nashville for at least a decade.

Talking to parents, Smith shied away from controversial topics like charter school growth, which has often divided Nashville’s school board. Smith called that debate a distraction.

On Thursday, Jesus Jara from Orlando will sit for his second-round interview. Shawn Joseph of Maryland went first this week. The Metro school board hopes to offer the job to one of the three men on Friday.