By Rob Holbert Managing Editor

I wonder if Roy Nichols wishes now that he’d made the school board members sign that pledge not to micromanage?

If you don’t remember, Nichols originally was reported to want the board to sign a pledge not to meddle in the day-to-day operations of the school, but he backed off at the last minute. (Probably because he was giddy about the fat money they were willing to pay.) Instead Nichols settled for a promise that they’d be good.

As promises go, that one was in the same category as “the check’s in the mail.” After less than two months on the job, Nichols is dealing with his first micromanagement incident. Board President Fleet Belle and board member Hazel Fournier were busted Feb. 7 having a little tete-a-tete with a member of the school system’s finance department. Hard to believe, but Hazel and Fleet made it just over a month before they fell off the micromanagement wagon.

Gotta get these folks into a better program. Hell, even the biggest drunks around can make it a couple of months before relapse. Hazel and Fleet must have gotten the D.T.s something awful to drive them to an ad hoc meeting that quickly.

Or maybe they just had their fingers crossed when they promised not to meddle. Nah, Fleet’s a preacher. He wouldn’t fib about something like that, would he?

Quite frankly, we’re lucky we even know about this mess. If it wasn’t for the sharp eyes of Wade Perry, director of the local office of the Alabama Education Association teachers union, we almost surely would never have heard about the secret meeting. I’m sure that’s what Fleet and Hazel were hoping.

Perry was driving by Belle’s church, Rock of Faith Baptist, and noticed the two members’ cars parked there. Fortunately he was acquainted enough with some school board members’ typical M.O.s that he investigated. According to published accounts, Perry walked in and overheard the words “budget” and “longevity” before the board members clammed up.

Perry says the secret meeting was about upcoming budget cuts and he made sure it went public – much to the chagrin of the school board members involved, I’m told – by bringing it up at their next meeting. Well done Wade. The taxpayers owe you a cold beer. I’m pretty sure you won’t be getting one from Fleet or Hazel.

Nichols, for his part, seemed to try to play things down, telling the Press-Register he didn’t think the board members were micromanaging. Instead he kind of pinned it on the employee who failed to tell him about the meeting.

What!?

Come on Roy, you’re going to have to be tougher with them than that. A secret meeting at a local church with an employee in the finance department isn’t micromanaging? What is, going down and adding extra breadcrumbs to the fishsticks they’re serving in Leinkauf Elementary’s cafeteria? This kind if thing is precisely the type of micromanagement that’s been going on for years in this school system. Everyone knows it. So let’s be honest about what we’re dealing with here.

The really troubling thing is just how obvious it is that some members of the school board are massively full of it. (See Vanna White if you want to buy your own “s” and “h” for the last sentence, if you must. I’ll keep it clean.)

Why, in early January they talked about it at their little retreat down at the Admiral Semmes Hotel, because they needed to get away from all the congestion down at the Branch Davidian Compound off of Schillinger’s Road they call a central office.

“Our one shared goal is to empower the superintendent. That’s a major one,” Belle told the P-R at the time. “That’s what we’re working to accomplish – the board decreasing so that the superintendent can increase. We want to be out of sight. It’s all about being more professional and really, really steering clear of the superintendent.”

I get the impression those words really just meant: “We want to be out of sight. You know, meeting with personnel in out-of-the-way places where we can’t be heard or seen by nosy people. It’s all about being really sneaky and steering clear of anyone who might try to stop us from micromanaging.”

I’m sure Fleet and Hazel won’t be so easy to catch next time. Even they have probably figured out meeting at Fleet’s church or Hazel’s favorite hat shop is a dumb idea. Next time they’ll take precautions. They’ll call a cab, wait for it to show for three hours, get fed up and borrow a neighbor’s car. Or maybe they’ll meet on the Dauphin Island Ferry. That would be kind of cool and spy-like. But I think Wade Perry has a boat, so that might not work either…. Regardless, chances are they’ve had their last secret meeting in a not-so-secret place.

But I’d bet my blind 9-year-old rat terrier they sure haven’t had their last secret meeting. (The seeing-eye monkey comes with him if I lose the bet.) Frankly I’m not really sure what Nichols can really do to keep them from micromanaging. He could probably threaten to quit or fire anyone who meets with the board without his permission, but I’m not sure there’s a real comeuppance if they keep doing it.

It certainly doesn’t seem likely the voters are a real deterrent. Most of these board members probably figure there’s a pretty limited group that would their jobs in the first place. Maybe we should just get David Thomas back on the board. At least he was amusing and easy to keep up with from the trail of police cars following him.

We’ll see how Nichols handles this from now on. The gauntlet has been thrown down. Let’s see if he really picks it up and tries to make the board toe the line. After all, we can’t expect Wade Perry to tail the school board members every day.

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Rob Holbert is Lagniappe managing editor. Contact him at rholbert@lagniappemobile.com.

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