Locker Room bloggers aren’t the only ones concerned about changes in public school leadership, including the role of the elected state superintendent.

During this afternoon’s meeting of the General Assembly’s Program Evaluation Oversight Committee, Sen. Martin Nesbitt, D-Buncombe, said:

We had a system where we had an elected superintendent, who through campaigning had pretty good relationships with the local superintendents [and] local school boards and got out and heard what the people wanted. I’ve watched state government destroy that position. We’re down now to where, as I read in the paper, our superintendent is now an ambassador.

We’re creating a very top-down … just about all of this report is a top-down structure in Raleigh to somehow organize everybody in a way to where there’s one guy at the top that’s responsible, and he tells everybody what to do. I follow all that. That would be a good structure down here.

Where is the part about somebody from the bottom up advocating for the schools down here? Where does that fit in all this?

After hearing that the state constitution invests the State Board of Education with the authority to oversee the schools, Nesbitt added:

I’ve got to tell you what I perceive going on in state government. We started something 10 or 15 years ago where anybody under control of the governor is muzzled at the time the governor presents a budget. Basically, they will tell you that they are not at liberty to ask you or tell you anything that’s not in the governor’s budget. I’ve had that problem in the area of mental health, which I’m overseeing. It’s going on in education, too.

Now all these things are kind of under the control of the governor through an appointed CEO, and my problem is when the governor decides this is all the money I’m going to spend, who is it’s going to come over here and say … We have a thing going on over here right now where some of our leadership thinks that teacher’s aides are a waste of time and money. If you talk to your local school units, they say it’s one of the best assets they have. Now when the governor decides that they’re going to cut those, who’s going to come over here and tell us, “No, your people back home don’t want these things cut”? They see them as valuable assets. Do you see anybody in this system that can do that for us, or are we going to need to create an advocacy group out here to somehow advocate for education and bring us the message from home?

Nesbitt made one final point a bit later:

What’s missing over here right now is there’s nobody coming in here and telling us what we do need. That’s what’s been missing in mental health. That’s what’s been missing in education, in my opinion. We haven’t had a major education initiative in this state to speak of since the Basic Education Plan in the ’80s. And there’re nobody putting anything together out there to bring to us. And your local people get edicts from Raleigh until they’re blue in the face, and they’re tired of them. There’s no bottom-up work going on.  …

We had superintendents who were great advocates, and nobody over here would listen to a word they said. But at least somebody was saying it. And what’s … bothering me about state government right now [is] we’ve muzzled dissent and muzzled other voices that might tell us something that we need to know.