Last week, the Scene reported that veteran educator Brent Hurst had resigned after e-mails surfaced in which he disparaged Metro school administrators, including director Pedro Garcia and chief instructional officer Sandy Johnson. This week, Hurst sat down with John Spragens to discuss what he sees as a leadership crisis in Metro schools.

Scene readers will know you for the emails that they read excerpts of last week. They were rambling, long and had criticisms of school system administrators in them. Can you tell me why you sent them?

Being in a school every day is very intense, and there's very little downtime. It's stressful. From a teacher's perspective, you've got kids coming at you, parents coming at you, principals coming at you, in some cases the Central Office coming at you. You're getting it from all sides. It's stressful.

Our first year [at Rose Park Magnet] was last year. Brand-new school. Brand-new staff. Everything. Far more stressful and difficult than I ever imagined. We had a rough year, but everybody hung in there and they came back. And so I consciously said, beginning this summer, even before school starts, we're going to get a different mind-set. We're going to go back to that first day of the previous year when everybody was brand new.

I said during summertime we're going to purposely start it back where it was. And so we had meetings during the summer. We had get-togethers. It was fun, it was as much social as it was business because they were actually working on our curriculum.

And when the school year started, I said, I'm going back to what I used to do at MLK. We had morning music. We did funny announcements. We were humorous. Kids loved it. Teachers loved it. It just set a tone for the day that, OK, we know we're going to have lots of stuff happen, but we're going to at least have a good laugh before we get started.

As far as e-mailing to staff: this was the first year Rose Park teachers got computers. And communication within a day is such a problem in a school because your teachers are tied up most of the time and it's hard to plan...So I said, let's use emails, and I want to make it where they want to check those emails. To me, that means humor. And my humor is—there's no doubt about it—satirical. It's crazy sometimes. It's intended to get their attention, get them to laugh, give them a smile—and to relay the information.

Communication is a problem everywhere and I want my staff to know what's going on. You know, there's 15, 20 things coming at me every day and I don't have time to tell them individually. So I want to get these staff notes out and give them the basic information so they can keep up with what's going on. Also to alert them that if they want to say something to me about these things, do it. Because my door's always open, my staff knows that. Open and transparent, I want to be no other way...At least my staff knew that my intent was to keep them informed, make them laugh, make it entertaining, and keep everybody's spirits high. There will be bad days, good days, but keep everybody's spirits high.

What you saw in emails to staff—I never said anything to parents, in public, to kids, except positive [things about] Metro Schools. This is a great school system, there are great people in this school system. I know most of them. I've worked with them. They are cream of the crop. And I love the school system; I'm a product of it. I've been in it. I went to Peabody so I could student-teach in it. Both kids went to Metro schools. My wife was a teacher in Metro. Seventy-four years altogether, I added it up, that I, my wife and two children have been in this school system. My kids graduated from the two best high schools in the state of Tennessee, in the nation I think, MLK and Hume-Fogg. No one could be luckier than me. No one. So this school system's everything to me, and I've given my entire career to it, and I think a successful one. I believe that I had a lot of positive impact on people, and on kids. And that's what it's all about.

Do you regret sending the emails that were negative in nature toward the administration?

I don't think so. Again, the intent was to be humorous; it was not to hurt people. I had no idea that it would be many months later sent on to them for whatever purposes. The purpose was to laugh, to be absurd in some cases. To make people want to read them.

It is abundantly clear that there are frustrations among teachers and there are frustrations among administrators. From what I read the other day, there are frustrations among board members, parents, community members. There's a lot of frustration out there about the slowness, the grinding to a halt of a lot of things, all because one person has to do everything, to make every decision, no matter how small. That just gums up the works. It's not doable, and I think that's abundantly clear to everyone. It's not doable.

I guess the interesting thing was, people can [report someone] anonymously and it's in the newspaper and it's OK. Someone actually says what they believe—honestly—with their name, and that's wrong.

Dr. Garcia said, "It doesn't bother me. I'm tough." And I think he is tough—you have to be, to be anywhere out there like that, doing the kind of job that you have to do there. This is what I believed.

Did you express your criticisms to Dr. Garcia or to Dr. Johnson? Over time, did you let them know you had objections to the way things were going?

I would take specific problems and issues that I thought were being handled wrong or unfairly or unduly being delayed directly to him. I told him once, "Your principals can't come to you every single time with every single frustration because you don't have the time for that." We have to save those...

I did not have good communication with Dr. Johnson. I communicated, mostly by email...but no, we did not have a good personal relationship. You just don't hit it off with some people, and that just didn't happen.

But there was communication, yeah. And again, in some cases it was on things that in my opinion, it shouldn't have been something you would even have to [consult the central office about]. Trust your principals. Give them the latitude to do what's best for a school. They know their school. They know their teachers. They picked a lot of them; in my case I picked them all. They know their kids. They know their parents. They know that school. Give them that flexibility and don't just dictate and say, "You will do this; you will do this."

And anyone who says, "Well I'd kind of like to do—," gets told, "No, you will do this. We don't trust you."

I've actually heard that come from Dr. Johnson's mouth when I've asked her about something. That's the impression that's being given: we don't trust you, or we don't think you really have all that much to say about this. I'm going to make all the decisions.

That just can't happen. No organization—even a school run by a principal. You can't make all the decisions. You've got to help people become confident and able to make decisions that you know are going to be best for the school. And then you address situations where you know something didn't go right. That's much easier than having to tell everybody everything to do and every decision to make. After a while, they'll lose the ability to make decisions. They'll lose common sense.

Common sense is a big one for me. There are rules, there are procedures. But there's common sense. And what works for one kid may not work for another kid. You've got to treat them fair, but every child, every parent, every situation is different. It's just the way it is in life. We don't treat our kids the same way all the time.

As somebody who's been in the system for 30 years as a teacher or principal, is what you're describing a change, the way things are run in Metro schools?

It's the climate, sort of like this aura of fear and intimidation has taken over. I'm fearful of saying something for what might happen to me. I feel so intimated that I can't do what I as a professional feel is best.

Say they put this program in, and it doesn't exactly fit my kids. It doesn't exactly fit my school; it doesn't exactly work for me. I want to tweak it, I want to do this. "No. This is how you do it," you're told. "Here's your manual for how to teach this course. Boom boom boom. Here's all the overheads. Here's all that."

In other words, you're not a professional anymore, you're a robot. And that intimidates teachers because the greatest thing about education is the freedom for each professional who is well-trained—many have advanced degrees—they're professionals, they've been doing it, they know what works, they know what their strengths are and they need that flexibility. I think that among a lot of teachers there's that feeling that we don't have that flexibility anymore. It's got to be by the book, it's got to be this, this and this. And that, psychologically, puts people down. Because it says, we just don't trust you.

The current administration has said, you know there's a lot of entrenched teachers, an inertia created by a long time in the system. You've got to get out the dead wood. Is that a factor? What do you say to people who say, maybe there's just some stubbornness.

And there is. That's pretty natural. But I'll go back to what I said about putting your principal in charge. The principal knows who those people are in the building; help them. My whole philosophy on how you do things is, the central office's role is to remove barriers for principals. Help them figure out what it is they want to do. The principal's role with teachers is to help them figure out what to do and empower them to do that.

That empowerment is the difference I think, in the last few years. We're losing that feeling among teachers and principals that you're trusted, you're well trained, we're giving you the resources.

This whole focus on principals as instructional leaders is absolutely fantastic. I've worked with a couple principals in my life who were instructional leaders, and they drummed that into me. When we go to principals' meetings, it [shouldn't be] to talk about basketball and the next tournament, and scheduling for this. It's to talk about new ideas, how to improve instruction, how to give teachers tools and principals tools to make things happen.

I've been very involved with the principals' leadership academy. It's fantastic—because that's their whole focus. And use data—I'm a geek from way back, and to me data is what does everything—but let us interpret the data. Teach us how, and let us interpret the data and apply it to our school. Help teachers interpret the data and apply it to their specific individual students. That's how improvement's going to take place. One child at a time with the teacher directing it. Empower those teachers.

Wouldn't some people say that public schools are in such a crisis these days, that there are so many failing students that it takes a radical, centralized effort to improve them? That maybe for five years or seven years you have to clamp down in a really centralized way, and then, maybe things can get better?

I think that type solution would need to be used in a situation where you've got total failure going on, where nothing works. That was not the case in Metro schools. Yeah, there are some that were not succeeding well, but by and large...there are great successes in this school system. Lots of pockets of it.

So I don't think that situation existed. There were places where it wasn't good. (I'm not real hot on this issue of "We're going to tag you as a failing school" based on some stuff which may or may not be really indicative.) But I don't think we had that big of a crisis to where it required this heavy-handed, "This is what we're going to do," boom boom boom, move everybody around, etc. No, I've been with this school system a long time—I can show you the successes, one after another—and you look at what's going on now and say, what is our greatest need?

For example, the achievement gap. I still remember the day when I talked to Dr Garcia and he was helping me with some things I needed help with, and I said in exchange I'm promising you right now, Rose Park's going to be the first to eliminate that achievement gap. I promise you, you can hold me to that. Because that takes a certain way of focusing on it.

Now if the whole school system was not even doing anything to try to deal with that, that's one thing. But they were. And those of us who get the data, we can look at the schools where they've narrowed that gap. OK, go to that principal, go to that staff. "What did y'all do? What are y'all doing? How do you think? Tell the rest of us."

That's not what principals' meetings are like. That's what I think they ought to be. "Hey, tell me what you're doing, I'll tell you what I'm doing. This worked"—or even better, "We tried to do this, it just didn't work." Keeping in mind that every school's different.

For example what we were doing [at Rose Park] is going for, maybe even focusing on, the nontraditional good student, the verbal and the math skills, and saying, every kid's got strengths. It's the whole issues of learning styles, multiple intelligences, etc. Every kid's got strengths. Let's identify them. Let's play off them.

Rose Park is the first school in Metro to fully implement Format Teaching strategy, which without a lot of details, does all that. It focuses on everything that the child could be strong in and uses it as a springboard to the things they could be strong in. Success breeds success.

Let your principals work that way together; not sit in a meeting for three-and-a-half hours being given a three-inch packet of information and directives and "you will do this, you will do that." But spend that time sharing. Because that's what's so good about education and teachers. We're not a business. In business you protect, you copyright, you hide, you don't give away trade secrets. In education, teachers give away trade secrets. Have you ever known of a teacher to copyright a lesson plan? Of course not, they share it with their friends. They share materials. They share resources. That's why you never want teachers to be competing against each other for money or anything like that.

Along those lines, do you think that Metro has adopted more of a business model as opposed to a past model? Is there a radical change that's happened, and where do you locate that?

Yeah, I think that is a big piece of it. It's this business mentality. I'm just going to fire people, or I'm just going to move people. And yeah, the law says the director of schools doesn't have to do anything—I mean, no one has tenure as a principal or an administrator. The law says you can do that.

But if you do it in a heavy-handed way, it's going to have counterproductive results. That's something I said many times, and I've even developed a name for it now: the law of unintended consequences. OK, I'm going to show everybody that I'm going to run this like a business, and I'm going to move a lot of principals.

OK. But what's going to happen as a result of that? Are you going to lose a lot of institutional memory? Are the new principals that come into a school going to really struggle for a while getting to know the school, getting to know the staff, getting to know strengths weaknesses, etc. Think it through.

So I think you can overdo the business part. Now, when it comes to money, when it comes to facilities, when it comes to transportation, by golly yes, use that business model, use those business skills. But when it comes to people, teachers, when it comes to employees and programs and instruction, don't use a business model.

You know, I know how training is done in the business world, and it's a package and it's a program and somebody comes in and delivers it and they leave. In education, that doesn't work. If teachers don't get support and backup—or whatever training it is you're doing—then it's gonna die. They don't have time to figure it all out.

I was talking about the Format program our whole staff's been through. We sent them to training. But that's not all you do because then, after a while, that'll be it because it'll be too hard for them to figure it all out. No, give them the support. We've got a person on staff now who is a certified Format instructor, and he's going to help the whole staff. Give them the software, give them the resources and the tools and keep supporting that. Use your in-service time to keep it going. And that's how you make something work. Now that's not the business model in my opinion, in what limited experience in the business world I have. But I do have an MBA, so I'm kind of aware of how those things operate. So yeah, a business model approach in many ways, but not at the core business that we do.

When Dr. Garcia came to Nashville, people talked a lot about him as an agent of change, and it really seemed like they were pinning a lot on him personally to make or break the school system. Do you think there was too much? In retrospect as you look back on it, did people put too many eggs in one basket?

There were some unrealistic expectations there, no doubt about it. You know, I'm a change agent. I like change agents. I think they get in there and say, "Let's do it." But they also say, "By golly, we messed that up. That didn't work. Hey, let's try this." So I'm all for change agents because that's what keeps people going, keeps people motivated and engages people.

Now, the expectations that he's going to come in here and in a year or two it's going to be [fixed]—no, in education it takes three to five years for anything. It's like that core curriculum that we got kind of pushed on us. It never even had three to five years to find out. It could be that the test scores that first year [of Garcia's tenure], that might have been the result of core curriculum. But that program was quickly put aside, which is something you have in education. Reform after reform after reform and never give it time to see before you jump onto something else, and don't give teachers any input into that. It's a formula maybe not for disaster but certainly not for success.

And so, I think some of the things he did may have been to try and meet those expectations when in reality, it was not going to happen that fast. The biggest problem I see of the way all that happened in the beginning—Dr. Garcia said, "I work with principals, I don't deal with teachers. I work with principals and then I want them to work with their teachers."

Yeah, you've got to have teachers who are really committed to that principal. And with just a few exceptions I had that at Rose Park. They've got to believe in that principal; they've got to like that principal; they've got to trust that principal and know that they can have input and change things and drive things. I never forced anything on those teachers. I knew what I wanted to do, but I didn't force it on them, so it had to come from them: that engagement, that commitment.

But the things Dr. Garcia wanted to do—which were good, there's no doubt, it's good stuff—it's the teachers who were going to make it happen in the end. That's who's going to make it happen. I'm sure you've talked to lots of teachers. There's not a lot of happiness with Dr. Garcia. Most of them have probably never met him, never talked to him. But this persona or the way things were done, I'm afraid it may have sent a signal to teachers that, "You know, I'm just not concerned about you. You're just going to do what we say and let that be it."

That is psychologically and professionally debilitating for people. And then suddenly they say, "I don't like this guy at all." After a while, a lot of people start saying that, and then they tune out everything; even the good stuff. Before you know it, it's too late. We've swung over the point of no return to where they will never like him no matter what he does. And that's no good; people have to like their leaders.

Has that happened? The point of no return?

There's a lot of us who are fearful that we're getting real close. And it's the people who really love this school system and have devoted many long years of hard work to this school system who are beginning to feel that way. And that is a really terrible feeling, and then to feel, as I think most people feel, that they're powerless to do anything about it. That's even more—gosh, you can imagine. You just feel like you can't do anything about it, it's just going to happen and you're watching it before your very eyes and there's nothing you can do about it. That really gets people's morale down, and if anybody's morale needs to be lifted it's teachers'.

Those were my happiest most wonderful days, my teaching days. I loved everything about it. But if people don't love that job, it's an impossible job.

In your own personal case you made the decision to resign. You weren't fired. Wouldn't you have been able to make more change in the school system by staying in it than by leaving? Why, after 30 years, did you decide to throw in the towel?

Well there are several factors involved in that, and some of it's personal. With my wife—who through an accident in a Metro schools classroom has become disabled in a condition that the doctors say, "There's nothing we can do about it; all we can do is try to manage your pain"— for someone who's less than 50 years old to have to be told that, that's pretty rough.

So having to leave every morning knowing that as a principal, I may not be back until 8 or 9 at night, that's real tough. We had already been looking and thinking. With days saved up I could have retired before this school year started, and I seriously considered it for our family's quality of life. I was seriously considering it and also retiring at the end of this year.

I am glad that I came back this year because we got Rose Park rolling. We got the programs in place and it's clicking, and that makes me very happy. And it will continue to click, with the staff, the people there who want to be there for the right reason and are committed to what the school is doing.

I've worked with a lot of directors, some more closely than others, and I think about how they would have handled [a situation where a principal sends "insubordinate" e-mails]. Some of them, I think, would have called that principal and said, "Somebody on your staff has sent some things our way, and gosh, I think they may be secretly tape recording you and whatever and making anonymous phone calls and all this stuff." And then they talk about it and say, "You know what? I don't like this, I don't like this, you shouldn't do this, you shouldn't do that. I'm going to write you a letter and tell you all that and put it in your file. Now get on back to your school and run that school, and do it right. And let's cut out all these little shenanigans stuff. If you've got something to say, call me on the phone."

And you do that, I say, with a person who—[Garcia] knows what's going on at my school, he knows what's going on at every school. It's great stuff. It's wonderful stuff. I'm amazed sometimes at how the teachers were able to take what we were doing and turn it into a place where kids wanted to come everyday and run up in the hallway and hug the principal. How many schools do you know like that?

So send that person out there and say, "Let's handle it this way. Now, if you ever do this again, by golly, you're gone." OK. That's the way I would see others I've worked with having dealt with a principal who was successful as a principal, successful as a teacher, successful at MNEA, a hard worker who's always put everything into his school.

It took me six months to get over not being [assistant principal] at MLK [magnet school] anymore, to internalize, "This is my school now." And that's what teachers do: "This is my school. I will do everything. I will work untold hours to make it successful."

And that's what we can't afford to lose because when you lose that, yeah, it may be beyond the point of return, and that grieves me. I am a Nashvillian, after all.

Do you feel like you were treated unfairly in the process of your resignation?

I think there were probably some elements in there that could have been handled a lot differently. As I said, it's like when you're dealing with discipline with kids, OK? Some kids, they're in trouble all the time. You deal with that in one certain way. You've got another kid, never in trouble, never a problem, good student, working hard. They mess up. You deal with that a little differently. And I think it's that sense, that, yeah we want to be fair with everybody but we deal with everyone as an individual and do what's best for the schoolchildren and do what's best for the children at, in this case Rose Park. What's best for those kids? What's best for those parents?

I invite anyone to go to that school. Randomly pick, and ask them what they thought about me.

Not just kids—it's the same thing with teachers. You've got to treat teachers a little differently. If I've got a teacher that comes to school early, volunteers to tutor in the afternoon, works every ballgame, comes to every activity, am I going to cut them a little slack if everything doesn't go right? You betcha. If I've got a teacher that arrives with the kids, runs them over on the way out, doesn't help with anything, doesn't come back to nighttime events, weekend events, etc., I think that's a little different. I don't think you treat every single case the same way.

Now that you're no longer affiliated with Metro schools—you turned in your last paper this morning—what's next for you? Where do you see your role, both in your leisure time, but also do you have any future involvement planned for schools, in education?

I am at the moment enjoying not having to get up, not having to fight traffic, not having to be somewhere, and most importantly, not having to be around anyone I don't want to be around and that I don't trust. And I certainly don't have to talk to anybody. I've already found that's the best thing about retirement.

My wife, just in a short period of time, is much better. Her frame of mind, her happiness, my being able to be there with her. She doesn't have to go to the doctor by herself now because I have to go to a principals' meeting. No. I take her. And the little exercises she was supposed to be doing? I don't think she was doing them. She's doing them now! And in the long run that's going to make things even better.

So I'm enjoying that. And my son lives in Seattle, and I only get to see him very rarely, so that's going to be an option now, just whenever we want to.

And I have lots of interests. I work doing some adjunct college teaching, I've worked with lots of other professionals in this town. I've worked with the teachers' associations. Of course now it would be the retired teachers' association. I'm involved with the community. My alumni association. I love politics. I like working for candidates I believe it. I think that's America, and now I can do that. I don't have to feel like I have to do anything, and that's the best thing.

I'm a fairly smart guy, and I do have some good training and some good degrees and some good background and I've got knowledge that someone might be interested in. But for now, I'm resting. I'm enjoying sitting around in my pajamas until noon if I want to—just playing around on the computer.

Where would you like to see Metro Schools go in the next year but also in the next five years or so?

First, I'd like to see it get a handle on this whole issue of demoralized people, and that's going to be tough. It's going to be real hard, and it's going to take a whole lot of focus. I'm glad to see that they're beginning to look at and talk about how gummed up the system is in terms of decisions, things happening and getting done on time, the orderly flow of stuff. I'm glad that they're looking at that. That's got to all be addressed quickly. I don't think a new organizational chart is going to do it. You can put anything on paper—I imagine we've already got something on paper—but there's paper and reality, and everybody knows what the reality is and what it's more than likely going to remain. Maybe, maybe not. I don't know. It's not my call, but that's all got to be fixed.

And you've got to get the morale of the teachers back up. And you've got to be willing to say, "You know, maybe I didn't do that right. What do y'all think? What could we do to fix that?" I know MNEA is looked at as an enemy by many. That's kind of the business approach. When I was at MNEA, MNEA started the PALS program, which is the support program for teachers who are having trouble, and if they're not cutting it, to kind of help them decide that they need to do something else. That's a professional thing. Call on those people—you kind of know who the good people are, you know who's got good ideas, you know who's really knowledgeable about stuff. Bring 'em in, and then actually listen to them, and take their ideas.

That's the great thing about teachers and educators—we don't really care who gets the credit. I understand for people at the top—you've got careers and you want to move here, there and yonder or whatever—you need to be able to [take credit]. Everybody understands that. Beyond that, it doesn't matter who gets the credit or who had the idea or who started it or who proposed it first. If it's good, let's do it; let's share it with everybody. Let's help others see how we did it if it's a good program.

Let's have that. Let's go back to that day when we were all a family of professional educators, and it wasn't one person had all the answers. Because that is just not possible. If we can get that back, I think things are going to start clicking. Things are going to perk up. People are going to feel good about going to schools every day and working, and that's going to translate to the kids, and when you translate it to the kids you translate it to the parents, because that's what a parent's interested in is their kid.

It's synergy, which is a term I use all the time. Once you get that rolling, then it's just going to happen, and it's going to be like a steamroller. Now that's where I would like to see the system head right now, and do it quickly. Let's value differences of opinion. Let's value people who think there's another way to do it and will fight you on it. You know, I love teachers when they fight me on something because sometimes they change my mind. But if they didn't fight me, there never would have been a change; it just would have been my way. Well, I'm smart enough to know that doesn't work.

Any other thoughts?

I know I joked [in the emails] a lot about California. But California's not all bad, particularly if you're a Democrat, you kind of like California. It's not that it's California. It's that people sense that they're being told, we know how to do it better, we're from somewhere else. We know everything and we've done this before and it's going to work here.

Well, where you came from is not here. Nashville is Nashville. Nashville has a history, Nashville has a way things are. And it may work somewhere else and it doesn't work here. And the feeling is put out to people that we know what's best and it doesn't matter about "y'all."

I know Southerners sometimes are a little bit oversensitive, but it's like a putdown. "You're just not smart enough." That's the impression people get when you keep throwing California at us a lot. You know, back off of that. You're not in California anymore. You're in Nashville, Tennessee. Our student makeup, our community, the private/public thing, it's totally different. So it might have worked there; fine, good ideas, let's bring it in, let's Nashvillize it. Let's make it Nashville's. Let's take the best from somewhere else and turn it into Nashville.

It can work, because there are so many good people in this school system, but we're losing some, and it concerns me. Because of the frustration and the morale. Experience isn't everything, and you want new. When I put my staff together, I wanted new, and I wanted experienced, and I wanted middle. I wanted some of all. You don't just want a bunch of old-timers because yeah, entrenchment can lead to stagnation. But you don't just want all new either because there's some things they haven't thought about and don't know yet, but they've got that energy and that zeal that you want.

You want that good mix. So let's feed off that, and let's not run people out of the school system. Because there's a lot of people that are getting really frustrated—and I'm talking good people that are really getting frustrated and are really beginning to feel that they just can't take it anymore. And that's a terrible feeling.

On a personal note, I am so deeply touched by all the cards, letter, phone calls, emails—believe it or not—saying, "You go guy. You said what you said, you said what you feel, right or wrong. You voiced what a lot of us were feeling."

You should have seen the cards that I'm getting from the Rose Park kids...And community leaders. When you've been around as long as I have you've met a lot of people and it's heartwarming. And they have good memories of what I did...