Nashville schools director Pedro Garcia isn’t a thin-skinned man. He’s well aware of what people say about him—and he’s even been known to egg it on: an autocrat who rules by fear; a leader who’s unpopular with legions of parents and teachers, not to mention a healthy number of principals; a tool of the Chamber of Commerce who works tirelessly to co-opt the monied classes to the exclusion of other constituencies. All of it rolls off the back of the towering 61-year-old educator. He was more amused than offended when former U.S. Sen. Jim Sasser mistakenly recognized him from the podium as “Dr. Gonzales” at a well-attended Nashville Alliance for Public Education fundraiser last week. “I thought it was funny,” Garcia says, before launching into a story about once being introduced as “Poncho Gonzales” when he held his first job as principal. (By the way, Sasser, the classic WASP in contrast to the Cuban-born schools director, corrected himself, but not quickly enough for the embarrassing gaffe to be forgotten.) Finally, as if the litany of other complaints about the dean of Bransford Avenue weren’t enough, many critics resent Garcia for his well-publicized flirtations with other school districts, and regard him as an ambitious district jumper who’s only biding his time until a plum superintendent job in his home state of California opens up.

That last rap on Garcia is somewhat ironic, given that his five-and-a-half years in Nashville actually make him the second most tenured director among urban districts nationwide. Asked whether he would take his California dream post tomorrow, he says flatly, “No. I’d wait until Monday,” before adding more seriously, “If you had asked me that three months ago, I would have said ‘absolutely.’ But not now.... It would have to be a hell of an offer, a real huge offer.”

His sudden loyalty to Nashville is largely mercenary, even he concedes. And it’s happened because those most rabid of Garcia true believers—local businessmen with last names such as Cigarran and Ingram—helped fund last August what was perhaps the most choreographed business-bankrolled school board election in Nashville history. School board members who had grown particularly antagonistic toward Garcia suddenly saw themselves with a lot more free time on their hands, while, by and large, serious, fresh-faced replacements stepped into their shadows. The end result was a dream come true for Garcia, who no doubt regarded the time he’d invested on the 37215 cocktail party circuit time well spent. His backers and the new board saw him as the beleaguered chief executive officer who’d been shat upon and disrespected by the previous board all over the media and around town. Collectively, his new bosses decided they’d be different. They’d give him the benefit of the doubt, along with a hefty raise, and do something else their predecessors had decided against—renew his contract. Oh, and another thing: they all but took a blood oath not to criticize Garcia or the administration outside official channels—during school board meetings, board committee meetings and one-on-one meetings with the director.

“Before they renewed my contract,” Garcia says over lunch at El Palenque, “the other 49 states looked pretty appealing.”

Board members have pretty well stuck by their pact with one another, and a core group of Nashville business leaders who have their hand in education have remained loyally pro-Garcia, doing all they can to play down the significant failures of the 70,000-student public school system—and relentlessly spin the successes.

But over the last six months or so, there’s been a volume increase in the negative chatter about Garcia. Critics complain that he hasn’t taken seriously the formal criticisms of a citizens’ panel that recently released recommendations for the school system. He’s lost respect among some independent-minded business leaders who feel Garcia is sabotaging school reform efforts. Parents and others are frustrated that Garcia’s backers try to snuff out criticism at every turn.

In short, what all the disciplined messaging from the devoted Kool-Aid drinkers can’t possibly hide is this: Garcia remains extremely controversial, arguably more than ever.

Perhaps it’s Garcia’s willingness to say what he thinks, without taking the time to edit himself or consider diplomacy, that helps explain some of the criticism against him. After some unrelated chitchat at his favorite Mexican lunch spot in Green Hills—the movie buff “endured” the crude Golden Globe Award-winning comedy Borat while his wife walked out after five minutes, and he’s in favor of standard school attire on the grounds that uniforms send a message to students that “school is important”—Garcia addresses a question about the recently released Citizens Panel Report Card, researched and written by a diverse group of Nashvillians under the auspices of the Nashville Area Chamber of Commerce.

For 14 years now, the annual exercise has cataloged progress and lack thereof within the Metro school system. This year, much to the chagrin of certain business people who’d have preferred a more positive—or at least innocuous—conclusion, the panel lowered its overall grade for student achievement from last year’s C+ to a C. While the group acknowledged improvement in graduation rates and in high school reading and writing scores, it offered a mild dressing down of the system for the widening gap in achievement between rich and poor, white and black, and “the lag of academic success at the high school level and the high rate of suspensions of African American students,” among other systemwide deficits.

“[The grade] is really fairly subjective, but I think it is a statement that the panel does not think there’s been substantial achievement growth,” panel chairman Avi Poster says of the results. “The panel has significant concerns about math scores in particular…and what it perceives as a slow closing of the gap.”

One particular Garcia appearance before the group left an impression that won’t soon be forgotten and underscored the director’s notoriously controversial leadership style. After a question that raised the issue of strained relationships between Garcia and the community, Garcia’s response was something like, “That’s like asking me if I’m still beating my wife.” Poster didn’t attend that particular meeting and says he can’t speak to what transpired, but another panel member recalls, “He went on to say that he ruled by fear and that fear works. It came up repeatedly in meetings after that that he had flat-out said that’s the way he was doing it.”

From then on, Garcia’s stylistic flourishes were never a central topic of discussion by the panel during the four-month process, but Poster says the subject surfaced frequently in conversation. “Our panel had strong feelings…that leadership style has a direct impact on district climate and how people in general view our system,” he says. “It wasn’t a focus topic but was a consideration that came in and out of our conversations.”

Freshman school board member David Fox says he takes the report card seriously and that the system can and should learn from its findings. “I was comfortable with the report and think the chamber’s done a good job in protecting their credibility when it comes to evaluating the school system. I don’t think anyone regards a C as a desirable situation, so anything that indicates a lack of progress is significant…. It indicates a certain level of impatience on [the panel’s] part and an expectation to have more rapid results.”

But Garcia says there’s nothing the panel found that he didn’t already know. “For me, it’s not something I worry about,” he says of the report. “The concerns that they list are the concerns that we know.... It’s a wonderful report, but it’s not intended for the schools. The audience isn’t us; it’s the chamber, it’s the community.”

And there it is: precisely the kind of dismissive attitude that has rankled parents and others since virtually the beginning of Garcia’s tenure in Nashville. Many say perception is important and simply wish he would pay more attention to the way the public views the Metro school system. “Fuck him,” one critic says when told of Garcia’s posture about the report card, which, it should be noted, recommends that the administration do a better job engaging the community by organizing frequent town hall meetings to discuss issues of importance to the district and parents.

Panel members say such an effort would cost nothing but would go a long way to create goodwill. Judging by how much parents look to the report card to provide independent and rigorous review of the school system, they say such meetings would be well attended.

“We hear from people inside and outside the district who praise and look for our panel to represent their voices, which otherwise might not be heard, ” Poster says.

Speaking of unheard voices, discontent with Garcia among charter school advocates in Nashville—some of whom were once Garcia loyalists—has reached a boiling point. Despite the fact that the newly elected school board unanimously approved LEAD Academy, the school’s founder and board have bumped into obstacle after obstacle as they’ve tried to secure space to begin the first school year with 180 students come August.

In a Feb. 21 letter to the school’s director, Jeremy Kane, Garcia acknowledged LEAD’s request to lease space from the school system, which is common for charters to do. But the director offered only one option for the school, which will be a public school open only to students who attend quantitatively failing schools and whose plans are to include longer school days, a longer school year and a strict code of discipline. Garcia offered the Highland Heights building in East Nashville, part of which is currently being used by another charter school, KIPP Academy. It would be fair to say that while this school has done amazing things for its middle school students, the physical campus leaves plenty to be desired.

Meanwhile, the district’s own school enrollment and capacity figures show several school sites that could conceivably accommodate LEAD. Park Avenue Enhanced Option School, for example, had 17 empty classrooms as of late November.

“Well, I’m not going to sacrifice our needs and our resources for their space,” Garcia says of LEAD, adding that the city’s three charters suck up about $4 million in district money and that the school’s application never said it would need space from the district.

Actually, a review of the school’s application indicates otherwise. To be precise, page 146 of Section 6 and pages 188 and 189 of Section 10 explicitly state that LEAD would like to discuss leasing options with Metro.

After saying that the school will need to locate in a short-term facility for the first year, the application goes on to state: “Although LEAD has planned to locate, secure and develop its own facility, the founder and board of directors are very conscious of the school’s close relationship with and responsibility to MNPS. LEAD would simply like the district to know that should reorganization of schools occur, shifting vacancies that would create space in an MNPS facility, LEAD would very seriously consider relocating in such space. LEAD will be raising and spending resources for capital development with or without such opportunities, but the school would also be happy to see MNPS reap the benefits of that spending.”

Blair Wilson, a businessman whose family recently tried to give the district $2 million for an incentive pay pilot program before the idea was shot down by the teachers’ union, says the administration has “totally stiffed” the fledgling charter school, which his family is now trying to help. “It’s not just them either,” he says. “KIPP Academy has been getting so much trouble from them too. It’s the whole charter movement.”

(Back in September, Garcia ordered some students attending KIPP to leave there and begin attending their zoned school—this after classes had already been in session for six weeks. Why? Because those zoned schools came off the state’s list of failing schools after classes had started, which Garcia said disqualified the kids from choosing to attend a charter. Never mind that the schools in question were considered quantitatively woeful at the time the students got off the bus for their first day of school. In the end, the state disagreed with Garcia’s conclusion, and he acquiesced after media scrutiny.)

Garcia’s very suggestion that the two schools co-exist at the same location would put the dual reform efforts at cross purposes, as LEAD hopes to draw students who are currently attending failing schools from the northern part of the city, not the east side.

One businessman says that maneuver and others suggest Garcia has forgotten who his primary clients are. “I believe that when Pedro first came here, the customer was always first,” he says of students. “I’m not sure that’s the case anymore.”

LEAD Academy board chairman (and former Scene editor) Bruce Dobie says the school has been asking for space all along. “As soon as we were approved, we started calling people in the school district asking about available space,” he says. “Why would you put two charter schools in the same part of the city? I think it’s certainly not an enlightened notion. I don’t know anybody’s motive. I can only argue whether or not it’s the right decision, and I don’t think it’s the right decision.

“Why would a school system, one, forgo revenue and, two, forgo maximum utilization of their capital assets?” he continues.

LEAD founder and director Jeremy Kane says Garcia’s decision means the school needs to raise $1.5 million in 30 days if it hopes to open in August. “It’s disappointing we couldn’t work something out, unfortunate that the administration couldn’t find space for us. But out motto is ‘Do whatever it takes,’ and we will.”

The whole imbroglio has led school board member David Fox to propose that the board’s governance committee address the administration’s treatment of charter schools by adding to its list of “executive expectation” a line item basically saying the director should make a good-faith effort to work productively with charter schools. The committee will take up the proposal in coming months.

Most of the rest of the executive expectations about charters focus on the process of awarding charters, with a few pertaining to financial oversight of existing charter schools, but there is nothing currently that requires the administration to work in a helpful manner with existing charter schools.

Garcia says his plan is to work 10 more years before retiring to California, and adds that, despite the frustration that reformer types in Nashville seem to feel, he’s committed to new ideas such as single-gender schools and other reform efforts.

“Just because it’s a charter school doesn’t mean it’s good,” he says in defense of his half-embrace of charters. “It’s like calling every private school good.” He acknowledges that KIPP has tried very hard to play by the rules and has produced some of the city’s most astonishing student achievement improvements, but notes in the same breath that Smithson-Craighead Academy—the city’s only other charter school that’s currently up and running—has been largely a disaster. “I wouldn’t be surprised if Smithson-Craighead is on the target list” of failing schools in the coming year, he says.

In the end, he says, whatever criticism comes his way may or may not be deserved. As he once noted to the Scene, “My job is not to be popular. It’s to do the job, and if that ruffles some feathers…then so be it.”

And he points to the admitted success of the Nashville Alliance for Public Education, a nonprofit that has raised more than $8 million over the last few years for public schools, as a strong measure of support for his leadership. In addition, he notes the Frist family’s $3.5 million investment in renovating Julia Green as another indicator. “The only way I know to judge…is from the alliance,” he says.

Dobie, the LEAD Academy board chairman who also serves on the Nashville Alliance board, says Garcia’s conclusion is “partially true.” There are, he says, “a lot of people on the Nashville Alliance board who think that Pedro is doing great stuff.” But, he continues, “The alliance is not focused on policy. All it’s focused on is money. It’s not charged with grading Pedro Garcia and the board on whether they’re taking the right approach to education.”

In fact, Dobie has a certain skepticism about any organization—whether it’s the alliance or the chamber or the Nashville Alignment organization, which recently booted board member Hal Cato, director of the Oasis Center, for having the audacity to allow a mildly critical student survey to see the light of day—that values boosterism over critical thought.

“If I had a criticism of all these well-meaning people, it’s that they seem to believe that if you call attention to the school system doing a good job, it will do a good job.”

The feeling that Garcia and his backers are too defensive, and unwilling to consider critics’ points, may be as much a part of dissatisfaction with the director as anything else. For example, the inside baseball skirmish that went on between business leaders and the report card panel over the group’s final grade was an unproductive waste of time, says Dobie. As was businessman’s Tom Cigarran’s heavy-handed firing of Cato from the Nashville Alignment board, on which Garcia serves. (For the record, Garcia says he stayed out of that one, saying he “didn’t want the schools stuck in the middle of it.”)