Say you are running for the top post in a local education union. Then consider that the school board asks you to share your vision with them, to demonstrate what the school system could be under your leadership.  What do you do?

If you’re running for presidency of the Metro Nashville Education Association, you blow them off, of course.

[School Board Chairman Marsha] Warden said she was hoping to allow teachers across the district the opportunity to hear from the candidates on television because the school board meetings are televised on Nashville’s public access channel.

“In my mind this was a public service to our board, because whomever is elected, we’re going to have a working relationship with them,” Warden said. “I would like to hear their vision on collaboration around public education needs. Many of our teachers who may not ever have an opportunity to hear either one of these individuals speak; many of these teachers who are MNEA members would have an opportunity to have heard their comments on our community access channel.”

Two invitations were sent. Erick Huth, current vice president of the MNEA, refused to attend, originally citing he thought it would have been illegal to address the board, but then in an apparent state of confusion figuring out it was not illegal, then more perplexedly, proving delinquent on the matter entirely by not showing for the meeting.

Huth, who is currently MNEA vice president, declined to appear originally citing Warden’s invitation as a violation of state law.

“My initial thought on the subject was the board was attempting to get involved with something that really was not any of its affair,” Huth said. “I reviewed the bargaining act and I actually sought legal advice on the matter. I was assured since the board had provided the invitation to both of us, they did not violate the [law].”

Jane Walling, the other candidate for MNEA head, was present, but was not allowed to speak because Huth wasn’t there. By vote, the board allowed a confused and altogether ill informed candidate sink its only chance to hear and broadcast the ideas and goals of that candidate’s opposition. Perversely, the only winner was the no-show.

As any regular reader knows, and putting it mildly, I harbor significant doubts as to the usefulness of unions in our present-day economy. As working conditions and child exploitation are effectively regulated in excruciating detail by both the central government and the states, the raison d’etre for organized labor has long ago faded away. As the Detroit auto industry can attest, unbridled unionism coupled with poor innovation eventually results in the slow-cooked death of the proverbial golden goose. I am no fan of the MNEA - in fact, as with most educators’ unions, I find its very existence an impediment to good education. That aside, they are the legitimate bargaining arm of the school district’s teachers. For the welfare of the children whom the school system exists to serve, the board has a vested interest in hearing and knowing where the union leadership may be taking the system.

It is despicable that the board refused to hear anyone, despite a good faith effort to hear everyone.  Huth made a mockery of a more open election, and the school board by its inexplicable vote showed itself the organizational invertebrate we have come to expect. If there was a question who has the upper hand in running the school system, it has been answered.