Why is Will Wade Doing Richard Woods Job?

In an epic, mind numbingly stupid sequence of events, Georgia Superintendent of Schools, Richard Woods, showed the world the depths of his complete and total lack of ability to read and understand legislation, his blatant laziness, and exhibited a stunning lack of political awareness in the span of just a couple of days, all while embarrassing our state. Way to go, Dick!

In the 2022 legislative session, Representative Will Wade, who serves as one of Governor Kemp’s floor leaders, carried HB 1084, or the Protect Students First Act, which was signed into law that year. The media will refer to it as the divisive concepts law.

In the over simplified summary, it prevents public schools from teaching kids that one race is superior to another, that people of any one race are inherently racist, that the United States is racist, that character is determined by race, and does not allow teachers to espouse their personal political beliefs regarding these matters in the classroom. There is some more to it, but for our purposes, you get the idea.

And then there are a whole bunch of carve outs where the bill does not apply, One of them exempts Advanced Placement (AP) courses so long as the teacher refrains from adding their personal political beliefs into the class. It is on lines 92-96 of the law.

I want to be very clear here, I am not expressing my personal opinion about the law one way or the other. I was out of office by the time the bill passed. But you do not need to be for or against the bill to understand what Richard Woods did next was an epic cluster.

Because in spite of the plain language in the bill that exempts AP courses, Richard Woods announced he was dropping an AP class on African American History, and blamed the legislature for passing the divisive concepts law. Cue the national media outrage machine! LOOK MA! THOSE REPUBLICANS DOWN THERE IN GAWGIA ARE BEING RACIST AGAIN!

Geeze, thanks, Dick!

I mean, seriously, all he had to do was read the freaking bill. It’s right there!

And it isn’t like he doesn’t have a ton of resources to help him out on this. He could have picked up the phone and called our Attorney General, Chris Carr, and asked for an opinion. It would have taken AG Carr 5 minutes to tell him AP classes were excluded. But it wasn’t Richard Woods who made the call, it was Rep Wade. Wade told the Georgia Recorder, “Once I understood that he was trying to find clarity, I felt obligated as the author of the bill to get clarification with the AG’s office, which he provided to me, and I shared it with the staff at the DOE to say, ‘Hey guys, I’m not sure why you are having confusion and what’s going on, but I want you to know that I’ve asked this question, and I’m happy to share it with you.’ And that occurred earlier this week.”

By the time Woods received that opinion from Carr he had already made his decision public. Not going through that process before he announced what he was doing is the lazy part. He could have gone to any legislator. He could have gone to the Governor’s policy team. He could have had conversations with individual State School Board Members or their Chairman. We are told he didn’t do any of that.

The media firestorm was immediate as was the outrage from Democrats. That’s the lack of political awareness part.

Woods had to have Will Wade recognize what was happening and do what Woods should have done to start with.

Should Woods have even had to ask Carr for the opinion? I mean, isn’t Richard Woods responsible for making sure our kids in Georgia are literate? How can you be the one in charge of reading comprehension when you fail at it in such an embarrassing way? And why is Rep. Wade doing Richard Wood’s job? HEY LOOK, MA! THE GAWGIA SUPERINTENDENT OF SCHOOLS CAN’T READ!

While I was in the legislature, a bill came through that would strip the Georgia Superintendent of Schools authority on a range of issues. The bill sponsor and I had a very long talk about it because I had severe reservations. What it came down to was the growing perception within the Georgia General Assembly that Richard Woods was essentially incompetent and our kids were too important to leave their education in his hands. I must admit I did not see it then, but I do now. These last few weeks have not helped his reputation in that regard.

Maybe it is time for the legislature to revisit the topic of how our Superintendent is selected. Maybe it doesn’t need to be an elected position anymore. Maybe there might be a way to insulate that position from the pressures of politics and to make sure that the person who has the job is capable of doing it. I don’t know what the right fix is just yet, but there certainly needs to be some public debate about it.