It was the vote that broke the school board. Days before Halloween, Nashville’s Board of Education voted 5-4 not to extend schools director Pedro Garcia’s contract beyond June 2007, a “no confidence” finding that left the lightning-rod superintendent twisting in the wind and hunting for a new job. Politically, the vote shattered tenuous board relationships and helped forge some interesting community alliances. It also left a small group of influential business leaders scouting new faces for upcoming board races. One of those new faces is David A. Fox, a West Nashville hedge fund expert and former business journalist (you might know him as the founder of nashvillepost.com; around the Scene, he’s special projects editor Carrington Fox’s husband) who says he will challenge incumbent Kathleen Harkey in District 8. Fox says he considered running for the school board several years ago but ultimately decided against it. Last fall, he left nashvillepost.com and Business Tennessee and again started thinking about running for the nerdiest—but most important—job in Metro. On a November airport trip, Fox ran into Harvey Sperling, an educational consultant and former school headmaster, who urged him to throw his name in the ring. On Monday, Fox picked up papers from the election commission. “I just know we could use a change of leadership, and I’m giving it my best shot to make it happen,” he tells the Scene. “I’ve been surprised by how much progress the schools are making when they have a board that’s semi-functional.” To hear Fox tell it, the school board made a huge mistake in October when they voted not to renew Garcia’s contract. He’s not the only one who feels that way. For a few months, a loose-knit group that includes wealthy megabusinessmen Orrin Ingram and Tom Cigarran, Adventure Science Center CEO Ralph Schulz, union leader Don Driscoll and Sperling, among others, has met informally to contemplate the future of public education in Nashville. Though the members don’t agree on every issue—as Driscoll is quick to point out—the group places a common value on the importance of public education to the city’s future. Children are citizens, and in this group’s eyes, they are future workers, too. “This isn’t anything yet,” says Driscoll, president of SEIU Local 205, who refers to the group as “some guys who have had coffee on Friday mornings to talk about elections.” “What we’re all concerned about is that we have a strong school board and that we do some work in the community that is good for schools…. People have had some discussions about working together and identifying good school board candidates in the election.” Members of the group have talked informally with Allison Cutler, a veteran political strategist who recently left her job advising the school board to start her own consulting group and is managing Fox’s campaign. They’ve discussed the prospect of forming a political action committee to raise and distribute funds for candidates they favor, but no decisions have been made. A second, more broadly based group has taken shape in recent months as well, one that has emerged from a Leadership Nashville class and aims to represent a broader cross-section of the Nashville community. It reportedly includes members of Tying Nashville Together, the Interdenominational Ministers’ Fellowship, Vanderbilt University and Nashville’s Hispanic community, among others, and totals nearly 50 people. The group, which is in its embryonic stages, has yet to form itself into a coherent organization with a clear purpose. “There’s no one splinter group that should have unalterable power with the schools,” says Schulz, the science center’s leader. “There shouldn’t be a business group, there shouldn’t be an ethnic group, there shouldn’t be a wealthy group…. It needs to be a cross-section of the community.” That said, money makes the political world turn, and the Ingrams and Cigarrans of the world have plenty of it. While the large, amorphous discussion group sounds nice, it’s the powerful coffee klatch that will probably change the school system. Driscoll says his caffeinated coziness with business bosses shouldn’t be confused with abandoning the interests of working people. “I was pleased to discover that people who can disagree on as many issues as Tom Cigarran and Don Driscoll do can agree on the fundamental value of public education for the future of the republic,” he says, noting he believes they operate in a good-faith attempt to make the school system as strong as possible. “I’m going to keep talking to [the bizpigs] unless they do something terrible that affects working-class kids or union members.” One thing is certain: all the political organizing that’s going on in Nashville’s school system happens against the backdrop of last October’s “no confidence” vote on Garcia. You’re either with Garcia’s leadership or you’re against it, the business types say, and people like Harkey and Mebenin Awipi, the two board members up for reelection who voted not to renew his contract, are abandoning the momentum he built. “The school system is moving toward change, and then halfway down the road, you’re going to interrupt that change before it can be institutionalized,” says Schulz, who’s actively supporting Fox’s candidacy. “To me, the issue is not about Pedro, it’s about continuity of leadership during a change period.” For his part, Fox seems to understand that, as with so many things in Metro schools, this election may turn into a referendum on Garcia. “He can be a polarizing figure. He has people who think he can do no wrong and others who think he can do no right, and the truth is somewhere in the middle,” Fox says. “We’re making progress, and he’s responsible for it. To the extent that he does have shortcomings—I think communication is one, and teacher morale is another—a more effective board could take care of that.” Others would say an effective board did try to take care of that, only to be undermined by Garcia apologists—many of whom hail from the business community, Williamson County ZIP codes and private schools, and who run in the same social circles as the party-hopping schools director. “It really doesn’t affect them if school starts on the 17th, or if a principal is transferred midyear; they haven’t really experienced it,” says one Harkey supporter. (Harkey declined to comment for this article.) Stewart Clifton, a former Metro Council member and current political consultant who says he supports Harkey, is more diplomatic. “It seems to me that Kathleen has worked very, very hard and has developed an incredible knowledge of the system,” he says. “She has lots of friends throughout the schools in her district, and I think she’ll be hard to beat at the polls.” Electoral politics aside, relationships within the current Metro Board of Education remain fraught, frigid and even testy at times. What Garcia’s supporters on the board, and his deep-pocketed allies in the community, don’t understand is how anyone could oppose the momentum he’s generated. Others, however, point at Metro schools’ failure to outpace state and national trends as evidence that the much-hyped test scores Garcia returned are little more than that: hype. But whatever their respective perspectives are, surely they could all just get along. “This is a very smart board that’s worked well together for over five years. It’s my expectation that we’ll get to that point again,” says board chair Pam Garrett. On Wednesday, the board was scheduled to hold a much-needed retreat at a West End Marriott. Garcia, the lightning rod, was not invited. As Garrett said: “It’s about us.”