The Code Blue folks succeeded in stopping the $500 million FWCS renovation project, and now they've set their sights even higher:
Their new mission, they say, is nothing less than to control - and thereby reform - an unaccountable, underperforming bureaucracy that is out of touch with the public it supposedly serves.
Don't let the ho-hum name fool you. The newly created Code Blue Schools Political Action Committee has the potential to become a political and fundraising force capable of fulfilling its stated purpose: to elect FWCS school board members who will set achievement milestones needed to comply with federal law and to balance the needs of the district and taxpayers alike.
Its first test will come in November, when three board positions - two of them now held by supporters of the capital-improvement project - will be on the ballot.
You can call this a "takeover attempt" or democracy in action, depending on what you think about the effort. The school system has just announced new goals that sound compatible with what this group wants. In a perfect world, administrators and board members, no matter who gets elected, would realize they're on the same mission of educational excellence and accountability. Or at least board members, even if they have philosophical differences, would use them to debate the finer points of pedagogic theories in search of what is best for students.
But this isn't a perfect world. With the Code Blue people starting out this aggressively, I can easily imagine two board factions fueled by personality conflicts and a "take no prisoners" mentality. Remember the Bill Coats era?
