Why the Sarasota Herald-Tribune’s Tom Tryon just doesn’t seem to get it

Opinion Editor for the Sarasota Herald-Tribune Tom Tryon did a column titled “Post-election enmity won’t help schools.” Tryon used the word enmity when referring to Bridget Ziegler, a newly elected member of the Sarasota County School Board.

Enmity is defined as, “the state or feeling of being actively opposed or hostile to someone or something.” You know like being opposed to things that are absurd, and people who are bad or evil.

Tryon is concerned that  in the local community there is “a palpable sense of hostility, enmity and animus.” Tryon wants to be the “can’t we all just get along” Rodney King of Sarasota, Florida. You know, think alike, be alike, don’t stand out from the crowd for your ideas and ideals. Perhaps Tryon should write a letter to President Obama on his enmity toward Republicans, rather than picking on a working mother who is doing her civic duty.

Tryon wants this new school board member to go along to get along. To fully embrace Common Core State Standards (a.k.a. Florida Standards) even though she campaigned against it because teachers and parents are against it. In the name of just getting along Tryon wants this newly elected school board member to abandon those who have enmity toward Common Core.

He wants this school board member to embrace government secrecy and behind closed door “workshop” meetings in the name of being nice.

He wants this new school board member to lovingly embrace the Sarasota Classified/Teachers Association that repeatedly used the district email system, even after Superintendent Lori White sent out a warning that it violates district policy, to defeat her. Perhaps district staff member Gary Ferguson, who used his office and the district email system to support Ziegler’s opponent, didn’t get the memo, which he probably wrote?

What about the district staff and SC/TA enmity toward Ziegler?

Tryon wants this school board member to forget what she stands for and stands against in the name of uniformity of purpose.

Tryon wants this school board member to abandon those parents, teachers, administrators and citizens who voted for her in the name of friendship with those on the School Board who openly and publicly attacked her at a behind closed doors school board “workshop.”

Tryon wants this newly elected school board member to forget how her fellow school board member Democrat Shirley Brown and her fellow Republicans Caroline Zucker and Jane Goodwin did everything in their power to undermine her election. Brown used the school district email system to fund raise for her opponent. Zucker brought her opponent to a North Port Republican Party event as her guest. Goodwin did a robo-call endorsement of her opponent. Isn’t three against one bullying?

But let’s let bygones be bygones. Just slip into bed with the enemy and all will be right as rain.

Abandon your principles, says Tryon, and you will be loved. Tryon has one thing right, the 2014 mid-term election is over. But the bad policies of the school board continue. Policies like:

  1. Embracing Common Core State Standards (Florida Standards) that takes away every teachers ability to teach. A centralized one size fits all education system.
  2. Holding school board workshops off camera, throwing government transparency under the bus.
  3. Holding SC/TA negotiations at their offices rather than in the open, live and on camera at the district so all can see.
  4. Putting the tax referendum on an off year March ballot (thereby suppressing the vote), while costing taxpayers $500,000, rather than during the regular November election cycle.
  5. Teaching to the test as required by No Child Left Behind and Race To The Top federal legislation.
  6. Allowing school board members, the district staff, SC/TA and others to use the taxpayer funded district email system for political purposes.

Tryon seems to want a 5-0 vote on everything district staff brings to the board for action. Heaven forbid that any school board member ever questions any district action or school board policy because it is considered unfair, wrong or just plain bad policy by parents, students and ordinary citizens.

Maybe Tryon needs to tell Brown, Zucker and Goodwin to stop the enmity toward those who don’t think like them such as parents and students?

We do agree with a couple of Tryon’s comments like Brown, Zucker and Goodwin avoiding “creating the appearance that the School Board is their private club.” We also like Tryon’s idea, which he took from us,  to make “Union leaders to help themselves and their members by creating their own email system.”

Maybe Tom Tryon is actually reading what we write? No, that can’t be it.

Enmity is a good thing. Marching in lockstep is a bad thing, just as it is in Washington, D.C. and at Sarasota school board meetings. Different ideas must be heard, discussed in a civil manner and then voted on. That is the Constitutional Republican way.

Tryon is trying to use his editorial pen to pound a round peg into a square hole. Good luck with that Tom.