One Vision Of A Naked Emperor

The Emperor’s New Clothes: a pompous dictator rules over sycophantic bootlickers and gets tricked into buying a suit that is supposedly invisible to those who are unqualified or hopelessly stupid. In Beaumont, TX, we have our own version of this emperor, and he’s running around in the metaphorical nude like a wild cowboy. His name is Dr. Carrol A. Thomas or, as I prefer to think of him, Buck Nekkid: Texas Ranger.… … …

Dr. Carrol A “Butch” Thomas, the Superintendent of Beaumont ISD, is the highest paid school superintendent and third highest paid public employee in the entire state of Texas (itself the second largest state in the US), although BISD has only about 20,000 students and is ranked 569^th out of 948 Texas school districts on schooldigger.com (a website that ranks districts based on test performance). For my non-local readers, you may be scratching your heads right about now and wondering why some tiny town in east Texas would be paying one man so much money to do, apparently, so very little. To my local readers, however, the question is all too easily answered: politics of the sort that would turn Machiavelli green with envy and send him back to his Italian exile in shame to kiss Lorenzo de’ Medici’s pearly white butt.

To help him in his duties, Dr. Thomas also employs the aid of a “Special Assistant” named Jessie Haynes who, among other things, handles the district’s public relations (which often seems to involve angry mass-emails sent to the local media while under a medicated haze or potentially libelous accusations leveled against a 67 year old maintenance worker). She also finds time to craft the weekly district newsletter, titled One Vision, in which Dr. Thomas pens (or has ghost-written) a regular column.

After stroking his ego in last week’s edition of this newsletter like a lonely teenager left too long alone in the bathroom, Dr. Carrol A. “Butch” Thomas (or perhaps Jessie Haynes in a Carrol suit) is back at it again this week, and this time he’s playing defense. In his most recent T-Notes column, (“Yes, you count!“), he thanks God that the democratic process is alive and well in BISD, but it’s difficult to imagine a less democratic institution than the Beaumont Independent School District. After all, when addressing the public’s desire to have its voice heard regarding naming the $44 million dollar athletic complex after Carrol Thomas, board Vice-President Janice Brassard recently proclaimed that “There is nothing that said you have to have public input.” Maybe it’s my BISD education getting in the way, but doing what you want without even pretending to listen to public opinion sounds like the sort of democracy that doesn’t have anything to do with the vox populi and everything to do with the type of governmental leader that rhymes with hick-tater. Time to break out the dictionary…

de· moc· ra· cy
–noun

• government by the people; a form of government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised directly by them or by their elected agents under a free electoral system

butch· oc· ra· cy
–noun

• “a public school district…is not subject to the whims of the rich, famous and/or powerful.”
  (You know, like obscenely overpaid school Superintendents.)
• “(BISD) is subject only to the law and the constituents – those who live right here in Beaumont”
  (Well, unless the Superintendent thinks he’s above the law.)

Dr. Haynes Thomas goes on to teach and reteach his democratic life lessons throughout the T-Note, pausing once or twice to pull the car over and stop making any sense at all. For example, he writes, “Imagine someone telling BISD officials that we should listen to registered voters only. The well-being of students –who are mostly ineligible to vote due to their age– should not be of interest to BISD is what that person would be saying.”

Really? It sounds to me like that person would be saying that registered voters do crazy things like actually vote. Wouldn’t this make voters the very same active participants in the phantom BISD democracy that Dr. Thomas claims BISD is subject to? Unless he’s suggesting that the BISD school board consults the Student Council kids on major policy decisions (perhaps about getting unlimited recess time or having soda machines installed in the bathrooms), I’m not quite sure what he is on about with the ineligible students comment, but the good Doctor goes on to say the idea is “ludicrous” – and for once, I agree with him.

Dr. Butch pinches off the last of this “nugget of wisdom” by stating that, “…BISD will not participate in elitist attitudes of being in place only for the rich, famous or powerful.” How thoughtful!

I suppose making $330,000+ last year puts him and his girl Friday ($94,000+) squarely alongside the financially disadvantaged constituents he professes to care about. Being at the head of the city’s largest employer must also somehow make him weak and not a powerful elitist, while all of the media coverage he gets surely keeps him mired in anonymity and well out of any spotlights that might make him famous. Right? If not – if Dr. Thomas is actually rich, somewhat famous and/or powerful – then his dictatorial control of the school district forces BISD to participate in his own elitist attitudes, by his own definition of the term. And, considering that BISD is not interested in entertaining public discourse (as per the board vice-president) unless it’s absolutely required by law, it’s clear that Carrol Thomas has little concern for what the people want. In fact, the city’s population seems to exist only as a force he can manipulate and exploit as he continues to feed the insatiable appetite of his own behemothic ego.

Once, when BISD’s esteemed leader was campaigning for the Presidency of the National Association of Black School Educators, it was decreed that “Hail to the Chief” be playing when he entered the board room. I’m not making this up. I remember it because I was there, and because I was the one who was forced to log in to iTunes and buy the song for ninety-nine of my own pennies, just so Butch Thomas could play make believe with the music. I never got my money back.

Don’t buy what Mr. Dr. T is selling when he uses words like democracy and tries to come across as a man of the people. He is a very rich, very powerful, and very (in)famous man. Public opinion only seems to matter to him when it aligns with his own wishes. Maybe he is the best thing that ever happened to BISD, but from where I’m sitting, that doesn’t really matter. The myth of the benevolent dictator is a just that – a myth. He may have done some great things for some of Beaumont’s population, but we have a democracy for a reason, folks – and it’s not something that can be ignored simply because our so-called leaders don’t like to listen to voices of dissent. For better or worse, the government is by the people and for the people, not by and for Carrol Thomas and the BISD school board (or any other elected or appointed representative in any level of government). Remember that.

For the record, during the recent controversy surrounding demolishing a historic landmark rather than preserving it, I supported building a new South Park school because the students deserve a clean and safe learning environment. I’m not sure why the historic building’s distinctive entryway couldn’t be preserved in some way (as it was for Martin Luther King Middle School), but these sorts of questions are beyond the scope of today’s lesson, which is to confirm that which any good student should have already realized: to Dr. Carrol Thomas and the BISD school board…