Point missed

The usually sensitized Gov. Asa Hutchinson has rarely seemed so out of touch. “This is Exhibit A in being out of touch,” state Sen. Joyce Elliott, now a second-time Democratic congressional candidate, told me Monday.

I had called her on an odd matter arising over the weekend regarding something Hutchinson said off-camera to Roby Brock of Talk Business and Politics—after a recorded interview for broadcast on KATV, Channel 7.

The governor said he was thinking of using the state Martin Luther King Jr. Commission to facilitate better communication between feuding parties in the Little Rock school controversy.

The King Commission declares its mission to be advancing understanding, nonviolence and human equality to serve a better community.

Brock subsequently mentioned the governor’s comment in an onair question to Elliott, a

Little Rock public school advocate who seemed bemused and discredited the notion, albeit courteously.

I, on the other hand, was jarred. I said so to Hutchinson in an email.

I said it sounded as if he was implying that the school matter was simply one of race and that he wanted to use a commission named for a great black leader to help him and his administration talk to black people.

He did not care for that formulation, writing, “I know you are just trying to provoke a response. All I can say is you are off base.”

He went on to write in reply that he had enjoyed a recent meeting with Little Rock high school students. He said he was interested in additional sessions with students that perhaps could be set up by the MLK Commission, which is organized under the state Education Department. But he said it probably wouldn’t happen because he heard Elliott in the television interview dismissing much hope of effectiveness in the suggestion.

Elliott had said the MLK commission’s purpose was broad and that it did not offer any expertise in education issues. She said the problem of communication was not one of disconnection but of the governor’s state Board of Education being heard loudly and clearly in its imperiousness toward the Little Rock schools.

The problem between Hutchinson’s state government and Little Rock public school advocates is not among students, but adults—parents, grandparents, teachers, patrons, state board members and business community would-be “reformers.” The problem has to do with education policy and social conditions, not simply or mainly race.

Everything is eventually about the children, of course. But that doesn’t mean the appropriate direct dialogue should be between the governor of the state and minor children.

It’s almost as if Hutchinson was thinking of trying to use kids, which surely isn’t so. More likely, it’s that he simply doesn’t get it.

These Little Rock advocates want the district returned to local control and the teachers’ union recertified. Their basis it that, after five years of state-controlled failure exacerbated by the state’s mad rush for more charter schools, Little Rock deserves representation for its taxation—and a partner, not an overlord, in state government.

Like me, Elliott declines to fault Hutchinson for anything other than not getting it. No one is calling him racist.

“To be charitable, this is shortsighted,” Elliott told me. “It’s almost as if he wants to meet with students to smooth out everything—almost as if, by doing that, he could avoid having to deal with the real problems and the hard problems, the systemic problems.”

The point of writing about this development is not to make a personal assault against Hutchinson. It’s to take advantage of the clear revelation of the governor’s missing the point.

It’s to seek to better illuminate the disconnection and perhaps, if we may permit ourselves to dream, move toward a better understanding.

To that end, I will tell you that I asked Hutchinson about all that I have written here, and, in 24 hours, got this response:

“The assumption that I am only interested in a dialogue with students is incorrect. Please note my last sentence of my email in which I referenced parents and teachers. You are correct that this is an issue of education policy and the differences are with adults … but the union has encouraged students to get engaged, so conversation with them is relevant.

“My role as governor is to understand the public sentiment and to express my view on policy balanced with letting the State Board of Education do its work. I am in tune with the public sentiment; I have expressed my views as I deem appropriate and I have made sure the Board has independent autonomy to listen and make judgments on policy. They have demonstrated a willingness to listen, debate and change recommendations as they see appropriate.

“Now, I will leave it to you to write the column you desire.”

And I will leave to him that nextto-last word.

The last word is that I look forward to hearing of the governor’s forthcoming meeting with Little Rock parents and teachers.