Published on: Thursday, August 26, 2010

By Brian J. Karem

Actually, the one thing you won’t be able to say after 12 years of Dr. Jerry Weast’s tenure as the Superintendent of public schools is that you didn’t know him.

I guess, maybe if you’ve been living under a rock, you might qualify, but if you’ve had children in the county public schools, or if you’ve been in the public schools, your life has been touched by Weast, and by the e-mails and letters we’ve received since he announced his retirement, you either love him or hate him.

No one is tepid in their opinion of the very public figure.

This I can appreciate. Nothing strikes me worse than a person who leaves no passion in those around him.

If you love him or if you hate him, you have an opinion of him if you know him.

For that alone we should be thankful.

At times I’ve not been a fan of the decisions Weast has made and have voiced my disagreements here in this column.

I wasn’t real happy with plans to close schools because of bacteria last year.

I really don’t like how some administrators seem to get fired up.

In other words, even when a principal has done something very questionable, they don’t ever seem to get canned. They seem to get promoted.

I’ve also never been a fan of how top heavy the administration seems, with far too much money spent in central office and not nearly enough spent on the children.

As a parent, I guess that would be my biggest concern.

But, I’ve also worked with Weast as a member of two different PTAs and as an editor here, and while I’ve heard criticisms of bullying and mean spiritedness, I can honestly say I’ve never seen any of it.

With a perpetual smile on his face, and usually a very jocular contenance, I have found Dr. Weast - affable.

Of course, I’ve never worked with him, and those under him may have a different view.

But, I venture to say that goes for anyone in public life, whether you’re a superintendent of a public school system, a mayor, a PTA president or even the lowly editor of a weekly newspaper.

Truth is, it will be years before we can adequately sum up what Dr. Weast brought to the table.

But for those who are ready to disembowel him now, I find that to be a knee-jerk reaction of those who knee-jerk react to everything.

There was a moment two years ago when I believe I got to see Dr. Weast at his best.

As Richard Montgomery HIgh School officials struggled to convince everyone in the county government to allow them to install an artificial surface on their new football field, Weast remained cool and collected while others did not.

Some were convinced artificial turf was the work of the devil and would cause everything from the plague to boils and warts.

I wrote here and testified several times before the county of the advantage of turf - and how it would provide a consistent, safe environment for children to play on during high school football and other sporting activities.

I became disturbed one day as I listened to the naysayers prattle on about the dangers.

The youth football program I run for my church had, at the time, played on the turf for more than two years in Howard County.

The Howard County parks and recs people had supplied me with endless documentation on the safety of the turf, but the stubborn naysayers here would have none of it.

Outside of the county council chambers, following one of the presentations, I ran into Dr. Weast.

I was more upset than he. He had on his perpetual smile and he said something to me that I will never forget: “Sometimes common sense does prevail.”

For a dozen years Weast ran one of the largest and most difficult to administer school systems in the country.

Common sense tells us that he is just a man doing a job. He did the best he could and has earned the right to retire with these words:

“God Bless. God Speed. And I hope common sense does prevail.”