When the candidates for state school superintendent pleaded their case to educational leaders earlier this month in Jekyll Island, the man who now holds the job sat in the audience and listened — closely, it turns out.
As I watched John Barge’s reactions to comments about the failings of the Georgia Department of Education, I thought this must be like hearing your own eulogy — delivered by someone whose dog you ran over, or to whom you owed money.
No one runs for office with the slogan, “I’ll follow the same path as the old guy,” or, “Things are so perfect, I won’t even change the light bulbs.”
Even Mike Buck, Barge’s current deputy at DOE, felt compelled to clarify he would not be “Barge 2.0.” Fellow Republican Richard Woods made retracting Common Core, a key DOE initiatives, the foundation of his campaign to succeed Barge.
In last week’s Republican runoff, Woods led Buck by less than one-fifth of 1 percent of nearly 398,000 ballots cast, a margin so narrow the contest is facing a recount. (The outcome was more straightforward on the Democratic side, where Valarie Wilson won the nomination with 54 percent of the vote, defeating state Rep. Alisha Thomas Morgan, D-Austell.)
A day after the candidates spoke at the Georgia Association of Educational Leaders, Barge took the podium and proved he was paying attention to the campaigns and what was being said about him and DOE.
“Since it really doesn’t matter now if I offend some people, I want to set the record straight,” he announced. “Yesterday, I sat with all of you and listened to four candidates who are seeking this position. Some of the folks who were up here yesterday talked about how much they appreciate the work you do and, in the next breath, they talked about how lousy you are doing it.”
“You are doing some of the best work we have ever seen in this state. At least, that is what the results show, if results really matter. There is a huge difference in the rhetoric and the demands of the job and understanding what authority you have as state school superintendent. And I learned that the hard way; you have a board you need to work with,” Barge said.
Barge addressed his surprising and controversial decision to forgo seeking a second term as state school chief to instead take on Gov. Nathan Deal in the Republican primary for governor, a decision deemed foolhardy by pundits who predicted — correctly — that Barge would be crushed.
Deal fell out with Barge over the school chief's opposition to the 2012 charter school amendment that allowed the state to not only approve charters over the objections of local districts, but to funnel local money to those schools.
Barge said he’s heard the accusation he abandoned educators when he chose to challenge Deal, but contended it was his commitment to Georgia schools that led him to pick a fight with the governor. He ran, he said, “to force the conversation on education funding.”
“A number of your districts were close to bankruptcy — very, very close,” said Barge. “And when I posed the question to the governor, ‘Does anyone have a plan what you will do with bankrupt school districts?’ the response was quick: ‘Charters can just take them over.’”
“That is when I knew I needed to fight for education,” said Barge. “I truly believe had I not forced education to the forefront in this election, we would not have seen increases of $300 million to QBE (Quality Basic Education), and the health plan would not have been addressed.”
“To me, abandonment is turning and running. To me, this was, take the fight to the governor’s office and make sure our teacher and kids are taken care of,” he said.
“I am not going away,” said Barge, who is reportedly in discussions to become a district superintendent. “I will never stop fighting for our kids.”
