Meanwhile, Six Months Later, Will Pinkston Resigns

Remember that fiery resignation letter school board member Will Pinkston issued way back on March 25?

"This year's mind-numbingly irrational conversations about the Director's contract, evaluation, and the FY2019-20 budget have led to me to conclude that the board, in its current configuration, is impossibly inept," the pugnacious South Nashville school board member wrote to board chair Sharon Gentry, saying he'd resign effective April 12.

Pinkston, whose term expires in November 2020, was more or less always in some kind of imbroglio during his seven years on the board, fighting against charter school expansion and whatever else got his goat. He did, it should be noted, take a break from these verbal donnybrooks when he was helping former Gov. Phil Bredesen apply for the job of U.S. Senator.

Anyway, two weeks after he said he was resigning, he said he was still resigning, but that the actual date was a "moving target" and he'd likely step down in late June so as not to trigger a special election and allow his successor to be appointed. 

Then the wicket got sticky. Someone realized that Metro's charter called for school board vacancies to be filled by a vote of the rump school board. Pinkston, in his letter, said there are "board members who lack the intellectual capacity" to make big decisions, so the idea his replacement would be selected by the same may have stuck in his craw. A bigger problem is that the provision of the charter runs counter to state law, which requires the county legislative body — in Nashville's case, the Metro Council — to fill school board vacancies.

While it certainly would have been intriguing to have competing school board members — both claiming legitimacy from different bodies, like the Great Occidental Schism and the Year of Three Popes — more rational (and less fun) heads prevailed and put a charter amendment bringing Metro into compliance with state law on the August ballot, and Metro voters dutifully ratified it.

So 189 days after announcing his resignation, 171 days after his original resignation date, 92 days after "late June" ended and 60 days after voters approved the requisite charter change, Pinkston officially resigned Monday.

Best wishes to him.