Here’s a perfect example of how the more you know about CMS, the more you see problems with the system.

Langston Wertz is the Uptown paper of record’s chief prep sports guy, and a good one. Every metro daily needs at least one sports nut to keep track of the local high schools. Wertz gets to both see CMS up close and know what other districts are doing.

A few months back Wertz noted that Nike wanted to give Independence High’s stellar football team a boatload of Nike gear. It was, in effect, a sponsorship deal. Nike is inking them with what Nike regards as the best prep programs in the country, a list that would have to include IHS and its six-straight state titles.

Besides, compared to championship schools from smaller communities, Indy really is not all that well-off on the booster and facilities front. The Patriots could use the Nike help.

Meanwhile, down in South Carolina, powerful Duncan Byrnes inked a four-year deal with Nike that will supply the team with jerseys and equipment “from head to toe.” This is what Byrnes coach Bobby Bentley said about the deal:

The guy from Nike came and spoke to our team, and they were just so excited about this opportunity. … So many times you hear people say, ‘Kids are not like they used to be.’ Well, I think they are. Sometimes they just need to be led. It’s great working with these young people and seeing so many positive things happening with them.

Yet the CMS braintrust nixed IHS getting the same deal, citing concerns about equity across the system. CMS’ position is that money either goes in through the Ed Center or not at all. Worse, official CMS change agent, new superintendent Peter Gorman, did not seem to have much problem with the CMS decision in his recent interview with The Rhino Times:

I wonder if somebody would be willing to sponsor the whole district? It’s great to sponsor Independence because, frankly, they’re winning right now. But is there a piece of the pie for someone – I mean, we’ve got to have somebody who’s downtrodden. We’ve got to have a 1-10 program out there. I wonder if they’d sponsor them? I don’t know. I’ve never been faced with that before.

What’s the proper role we should play in protecting our kids from commercialism and introducing our kids to commercialism? I don’t know. But I’m looking for money. I don’t know what was involved with that. Boy, I’d have to sleep on that one.

Well, nap time is over. Money is fungible. The more Independence can take in on its own, the more there is for everyone in CMS. True, Walton Plaza might lose control of the money, but didn’t Harvey Gantt and the CMS Task Force practically beg CMS to begin to decentralize control and reward success? Didn’t county manager Harry Jones challenge CMS to do a better job of minding its money?

Which brings us back to Langston Wertz. Today he pleads with CMS to reverse itself and allow each school to cut what deals it can:

Facilities are widely disparate. Affluent schools’ booster clubs can raise more money than others, and if a school gets offered a shoe deal or a TV deal or even a soda deal, taking it should be up to the school’s officials, not CMS’.

So, once again, we are confronted with informed, well-meaning people who want CMS to change what it does and how it does it. This may seem like a small matter — a few thousand dollars worth of football uniforms — but the principle cuts to the core of what ails CMS.

The system is far too rigid and centrally managed to respond to 21st century realities. Either we begin to fix it now, with the easily stuff, or we can just pack it in.