The Tennessean's Frank Daniels questions judgement of Amy Frogge, Gupta, and Pinkston

The Gupta-Pinkston Facebook rumble is in the news again.  

Frank Daniels recounts the Gupta-Pinkston Facebook exchange in today's Tennessean. He says, "the most egregious back-to-school behavior was exhibited by Nashville Prep charter school founder Ravi Gupta and Metro school board member Will Pinkston, who exhibited classically inappropriate social media etiquette last weekend in a Facebook flame war over Gupta’s comments on Metro school board member Amy Frogge’s Facebook post lambasting a segment of the school reform movement with which she disagrees."

If you want to read the embarrassing Facebook exchanges in which Gupta and Pinkston call each other drunks and questions each others integrity and read where Pinkson challenges Gupta's right to express an opinion because he is not a school board member and was not elected, read my previous post here. 

In today's article Daniels says, "When three of our most intelligent and committed leaders are so quick to judge one another’s opinions and motivations, we see clearly the challenges facing efforts to improve outcomes for our community’s children." He is right. We do have challenges facing the effort to improve outcomes for our community's children. I would not agree however that Amy Frogge is one of most intelligent community leaders. If I was selecting the worst school board member, it would be Amy Frogge.

I was actually surprised to see Pinkston behave the way he did in his Facebook exchange.  I watch every school board meeting and have actually thought that Pinkston was one of the better school board members.  It is not that I always agree with him, but he seems smart, informed, cautious and rational. I don't know what motivated Pinkson to take such offense at Gupta's modest criticism of Frogge's attack on charter schools. Maybe both he and Gupta were facebooking while enjoying a late night adult beverage and dropped their inhibitions.

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