What does a community (or business, school, or church) do when a person in leadership makes a decision that is clearly, obviously, glaringly wrong for the community (or for the business, school or church)?

It certainly doesn’t happen often. In the best definition of the word, a leader is chosen to facilitate the complex logistics of reaching the goals of his or her organization. Problems arise when a leader disagrees with the organization on its goals.

We have a serious problem in the Enota school controversy, and it’s not about a garden. What is our goal in this situation? Is it saving money? Or is it getting the new building finished by a certain date? Are we actually aiming at the goal of making Enota just another cookie-cutter school?

Why not aim at making all our schools extraordinary? What’s wrong with unique? What’s wrong with making all our schools stand out as examples for the rest of the state?

A rigid attitude won’t make that happen. It doesn’t work for parenting or teaching, for that matter. Looking at the big picture, maybe we should aim at making our school system more than just adequate. That’s certainly what we want to do for our students. Keeping the garden says that is our goal.

Janelle Whalen
Gainesville

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