Protip for the Triangle media: Wake County’s new superintendent, Jim Merrill, is a career administrator, not a career educator. An educator provides instruction. An administrator manages the enterprise that allows instruction to occur. Yes, he was a teacher before he became an administrator, presumably in 1984, but since then, he’s held various administrative posts. That means that Merrill has been a public school administrator for nearly 30 years.
And public schools do not pay “educators” $275,000 a year.
I know that the Democratic majority on the Wake County Board of Education want you to call him a “career educator” to contrast his career with that of the previous superintendent, Tony Tata. But I urge you – do not go gentle into that good night.
