Follow the Flow
When systems break down, it’s rarely a mystery—just a failure to pay attention
“If there is one class of person I have never quite trusted, it is a man who knows no doubt.”
― Geraldine Brooks
I’ve picked up a new hobby recently.
Admittedly, not a great one for an aging gent with fading eyesight, but one that brings me a certain kind of peace—and maybe more importantly, keeps the mind working in ways that scrolling a phone never will.
I’ve been picking up old hi-fi gear. Mostly stuff from the ‘70s and early ‘80s. Estate sales, Facebook Marketplace, the occasional “this thing’s been sitting in a garage for 20 years” special.
And then I try to fix it.
Now, let’s be clear—I’m not particularly good at fixing it. Not yet, anyway. At this stage, I’m probably better at taking things apart than I am at putting them back together. There’s a growing graveyard of “projects” that currently function more as educational experiences than restored pieces of audio history.
But with each teardown, something clicks.
You start to see how it all fits together. You start to understand the logic behind the machine.
Because that’s the beauty of equipment from that era—it’s mechanical. It’s deliberate. It’s rooted in logic you can actually follow.
You open one up, and you can trace the path. You can see where the signal goes, where the movement begins, where it’s supposed to stop. When something isn’t working, it’s usually not a mystery. It’s friction. It’s buildup. It’s neglect.
More often than not, the fix isn’t glamorous. It’s cleaning. It’s fresh grease. It’s patience.
Not all that different from life, really.
Fixing this gear has a rhythm to it. Follow the flow. Learn as you go. Apply change where the system has broken down.
The first time you open one up, it’s intimidating. Wires everywhere. Gears that don’t look like they belong to anything you recognize. A whole lot of “what in the world am I looking at?”
But then, slowly, you start to recognize things.
There’s the cam.
There’s the actuator.
There’s the lever that’s supposed to trip the shutoff.
You start to recognize the signs of grease that’s aged and hardened—gumming everything up, slowing things down, preventing the system from doing what it was designed to do.
And once you see it, you can’t unsee it.
There’s something reassuring about that.
There’s also something instructive.
Because if you’re paying attention, you start to realize just how many systems in life operate the exact same way.
Every once in a while, you come across a story that makes you stop and think:
“How’d they miss that?”
Not just the action—but the moment. The awareness. The basic understanding of how something is going to land.
There’s a story out of Tennessee that’s been making the rounds this week.
During a live-streamed Washington County Board of Education meeting, board member Keith Irvin sat next to a female student, put his arm around her, and said:
“God, you’re hot.”
Now, it doesn’t take a whole lot of imagination to figure out how that was received.
People got upset. Quickly. Loudly.
As they should.
Irvin, for his part, says the comment is being taken out of context. That he wasn’t referring to her appearance, but to her performance at the meeting—that she was “on a roll,” asking strong questions, engaging thoughtfully.
In a statement, he said:
“When I mentioned she was hot, I meant she was on a roll. It was nothing to do with her appearance.”
And look—I have no reason to believe he’s lying.
I can absolutely believe that in his mind, that’s what he meant.
But here’s the problem.
Meaning doesn’t matter nearly as much as understanding how something is going to be received.
A grown man.
An elected official.
Sitting next to a high school student.
Putting his arm around her.
And using a phrase that, in just about every modern context, is associated with appearance.
That’s not a “gotcha moment.”
That’s a failure to understand the system you’re operating in.
Irvin also said:
“I’m not always good with words. I sometimes say things in a way that doesn’t convey what I mean.”
That might be true.
It’s also not an acceptable defense for someone in a leadership role in 2026.
We live in a world where everything is recorded. Everything is clipped. Everything is shared.
There are no side conversations anymore.
There is no “that’s not what I meant” buffer.
And if you haven’t adjusted to that reality, then you’ve got hardened grease in the system—and it’s going to cause problems.
Predictably, the backlash came quickly.
A petition calling for Irvin’s removal has gathered thousands of signatures. Community members are speaking out. Media coverage has amplified the moment.
One organizer described it as part of a broader issue:
“It’s the ‘good ole boy’ system. They protect each other and let each other get away with whatever they want, and it needs to stop.”
And maybe that’s true.
Maybe this is about more than one comment.
But somewhere in the middle of all of this, something—or rather someone—has gotten lost.
The student.
We’ve turned her moment into a battleground.
There’s outrage. There’s defense. There are statements and counterstatements and petitions and interviews.
But has anyone stopped and asked:
What does she want?
I raise my son with the belief that you don’t assume women need your help. That they’re capable of handling their own business. That if they need support, they’ll ask for it.
The same applies as a parent in general.
I try—emphasis on try—to give my kids space to fight their own battles. I offer advice. I offer perspective. But I don’t jump in unless I’m asked.
Do they lose sometimes because of that?
Absolutely.
But the lessons tend to stick a little better when they’re earned.
From everything we’ve heard, this student handled herself exceptionally well in that meeting. She asked thoughtful questions. She engaged. She held her own.
I have no doubt she’s capable of expressing how she feels about what happened.
And I can’t help but wonder if anyone gave her the chance to do that before the adults showed up with microphones and petitions.
Now, maybe they did.
Maybe she was deeply offended and wanted action taken.
If that’s the case, then fine—full steam ahead.
But if not, then we’ve done what adults too often do.
We’ve taken ownership of something that wasn’t ours to begin with.
As for Irvin, there’s a larger question at play.
Not just about what he said—but what it says about his ability to lead.
He’s been on the board a long time. Long enough that it’s entirely possible he hasn’t kept up with how quickly social expectations have shifted.
And if you can’t recognize that telling a high school student she’s “hot” is inappropriate—regardless of intent—then how equipped are you to create policy that reflects the reality students are living in today?
Sometimes leadership isn’t about digging in.
Sometimes it’s about recognizing when you’ve become the distraction.
Sometimes it’s about stepping aside.
Because here’s the reality: every word he says from this point forward is going to be filtered through that moment.
Every statement.
Every vote.
Every attempt at communication.
That’s not fair, maybe—but it’s real.
And effective communication requires clarity. It requires removing obstacles, not becoming one.
Right now, he is the obstacle.
There’s no real upside to trying to weather this storm.
But if history tells us anything, it’s that when the interests of adults and the interests of kids collide…
We all know who usually wins.
While we’re on the subject of school boards, let me ask you a question.
Did you know the Metro Nashville Public Schools board is holding an election this year?
Go ahead. Be honest.
Yeah. That’s what I thought.
Let me catch you up.
This year, the even-numbered seats are up—Districts 2, 4, 6, and 8.
Districts 2 and 8? Incumbents. No challengers.
District 4 has two candidates.
District 6 has three.
All Democrats.
Which means once the primaries are done, all four winners will run unopposed.
So if you’re looking for sweeping change…
You might be looking in the wrong place.
Personally, I’m keeping an eye on Jennifer Bell and Fran Bush.
Bell brings experience as an educator.
Bush brings something just as valuable—she’s willing to challenge the system.
At a recent forum, Bush pointed to something parents across the district have been saying for years:
“Parent engagement hasn’t been there… Parents don’t feel like they’re connected to MNPS.”
She’s not wrong.
You hear it everywhere.
At ballfields. In parking lots. In those quiet conversations that happen after school events.
There’s a disconnect.
And when people feel disconnected, they leave.
That shows up in enrollment numbers. It shows up in the rise of charter schools. It shows up in interest in vouchers.
Incumbent Cheryl Mayes pushed back on that idea, pointing instead to immigration fears as a major factor in declining enrollment.
That may be part of the picture.
But the idea that families are pulling their kids out of public schools and moving to private options because they’re afraid to attend school?
That’s a tough sell.
There are bigger forces at play here.
And one of them is control.
Bush touched on that too:
“Teachers can only do what they are allowed to do… sometimes they can’t go outside the box because it’s all about testing.”
That’s been the direction for a while now.
Centralized decision-making.
Standardized approaches.
A belief that improvement comes from the top down.
The problem is, classrooms don’t work that way.
Teachers aren’t interchangeable parts.
They’re the system.
And when you strip them of autonomy—when you reduce everything to pacing guides and testing metrics—you don’t create consistency.
You create tension.
And tension doesn’t help kids learn.
But it does make adults feel like they’re in control.
Another voice worth listening to came from Mary Polk, a bus driver running in District 6:
“We need to stop being a rubber stamp… As a board, you’re supposed to make policy and make policy work.”
That word—rubber stamp—keeps coming up.
And it’s sticking.
Because people are starting to notice.
A board that values agreement over accuracy.
Stability over accountability.
Harmony over hard decisions.
Trying to make omelets without breaking eggs.
It doesn’t work.
It never has.
But come May 5th, the outcomes will be what they are.
And we’ll all move forward pretending this is what choice looks like.
Because in today’s version of democracy, sometimes the illusion of competition is enough.
Meanwhile, over at the Tennessee General Assembly, things are moving at their usual end-of-session pace—which is to say, fast enough that even people paying attention are struggling to keep up.
Bills are changing in real time.
Amendments are appearing and disappearing.
What’s alive, what’s dead, and what’s been quietly reshaped depends on the hour.
Take the voucher expansion bill.
The House recently amended its version, pushing the program to 35,000 students next year—an increase of 15,000.
The Senate? They want 40,000.
Because of course they do.
The House version also adjusts “hold harmless” funding—meaning districts would only receive funding for students who actually take vouchers, not for overall enrollment losses.
That’s not a small tweak.
That’s a structural shift.
And it has the potential to hit district budgets hard.
There was also a provision requiring districts to report the number of undocumented students.
That got dropped.
Which tells you something about where the pressure points are.
The big question now is whether there are enough votes to get anything across the finish line.
Republicans have a supermajority, but even within that, there’s division.
And when divisions show up this late in session, strange things can happen.
The clock becomes a factor.
Deals get made—or don’t.
And sometimes, everything just… stalls.
If that happens, the program may only expand by 5,000 seats, as already written into current law.
Which, in this environment, might qualify as restraint.
We’ll see.
This isn’t corporate media.
There’s no team.
No budget.
No handlers.
It’s just me.
Trying to keep up.
Trying to make sense of it.
Trying to follow the flow.
Same as that old hi-fi gear sitting on the workbench.
You open it up, and eventually you see it—
where the system is supposed to move,
where it’s getting stuck,
where the grease has hardened and everything just… slows down.
And once you see it, the fix usually isn’t complicated.
It’s attention.
It’s honesty.
It’s a willingness to admit something isn’t working the way it should.
The problem is—unlike a turntable—
the people running these systems don’t always want to be fixed.
They’d rather keep forcing it.
Grinding gears.
Pretending it still works.
Until something breaks loud enough that nobody can ignore it anymore.
If you’ve made it this far, you probably get why that matters.
And if you think it does…
Venmo: @Thomas-Weber-10
Cash App: $PeterAveryWeber
Tips: Norinrad10@yahoo.com
I live in School Board District 6 and am a public school teacher in MNPS. Fran Bush has been a SB member previously. What did she do to help students and educators?