🏺 THE GOLDEN PARACHUTE
If you grew up anywhere near a souvenir shop — or one of those mall stores that sold porcelain unicorns to grandmothers with too much disposable income — you know the sign. Hand-lettered. Taped crooked to the register.
“You break it, you buy it.”
Your mother made certain you knew what it said, squeezed your wrist, and gave you the look. And you kept your grimy little mitts in your pockets, because you knew — with the moral clarity only a seven-year-old facing certain doom can muster — that if you so much as breathed on a figurine, the family was leaving with a $48 partially disassembled ceramic owl and you were never seeing a Happy Meal again.
That sign now hangs over the Williamson County Schools administration building.
Because yesterday, Superintendent Jason Golden — paid handsomely, contractually fortified, and freshly extended through 2029 — resigned and departed for the Franklin Special School District with all the dignified urgency of a man whose Uber is double-parked. New title: Associate Director of Finance, Administration and Legal Services. New employer: a district that runs eight schools instead of fifty. He gave the board the 45 days his contract requires, ending August 7.
Eric Welch — District 10, one of Golden’s most reliable defenders — got out ahead of it on social media: “The toxic elements and individuals that refused to support our Superintendent, despite leading the district to the highest academic achievement and growth scores in the state, now own whatever comes next.”
Something about broken clocks. Hate to agree with Welch, who rarely finds fault with the administration, but on this point he may have stumbled into the truth.
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THE EIGHT-DAY WARRANTY
Eight days before he resigned, the board voted to extend Golden’s contract through 2029. It wasn’t close. A motion to defer the decision to the incoming board failed. The extension itself passed 9-2-1 — an agreement with roughly the shelf life of a gas-station egg salad.
The three holdouts were Margie Johnson, Donna Clements and Tony Bostic. Johnson argued the next board should have a say in whether Golden stayed. Others heard something different: the opening move in a campaign to show him the door.
Eight days later, the point was academic.
Golden never fully escaped COVID. For many parents, that’s where their opinion of him was formed and where it remains. And maybe they’re right.
But that’s a different question from whether he was competent. The man was, and is, competent.
Golden inherited a machine his predecessor Mike Looney spent a decade building, and he kept it running without stripping the gears. Williamson succeeds because of an unusually engaged mix of parents, students, teachers and administrators, and Golden never seemed to confuse himself with the source of that success.
So the whole drama boils down to what lies ahead:
The good news is the board now has an opportunity to find someone better.
The bad news is the board now has an opportunity to find someone better.
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FINGERPRINTS ON THE MERCHANDISE
About that sign on the register.
Let’s be clear about what did not push Golden out.
It wasn’t the day-in-day-out turmoil from the last school board meeting. A superintendent absorbs complaints from parents, teachers, coaches, and community members every month he holds the chair. Bullying concerns. Special-ed grievances. Personnel disputes. Golden had been taking those hits for years, and he could have taken them for three more. The criticism at the last meeting was largely business as usual.
What changed was the board.
Johnson built the motion to defer. Clements seconded the motion, spoke for the motion, then abstained on the motion — three positions on the same five minutes of her own evening. And Bostic cast the only other vote outside the majority.
Around them ran a steady critique of Golden — much of it aired on Facebook by District 10 frontrunner Elliott Franklin, whose seat isn’t even warm yet.
Golden’s critics point to a 3.29 evaluation score that cleared the district’s own 3.0 “satisfactory” threshold only because two members submitted perfect 5-out-of-5 scorecards; special-ed compliance rates that remain far below state expectations; an organizational chart it took three years to obtain; and a central office many believe has grown too large and too expensive.
Board member Jay Galbreath, who voted to keep Golden, described an undercurrent “that looks for any possible opening to undermine this administration.”
The people who wanted Golden kept had the votes and cast them. The people who wanted him gone largely avoided saying so directly and attempted to hand the decision to a board that had not yet been sworn in.
Golden, who is many things but is not slow, left for a smaller shop — quieter title and a great deal less scrutiny — rather than spend two more years one board reshuffle away from people openly debating whether he should remain in the job.
So now the board will embark on finding his replacement.
Any candidate worth hiring just watched the whole show unfold. A competent administrator in a high-performing district, paid well and freshly extended, read the room and walked before the new board could even be seated.
That’s the job posting now. Less protection. The same board watching.
Good candidates can read a room too.
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ALL SALES FINAL
So this is the board’s time to shine. This is the moment for everyone who had so much to say about Golden’s performance — every Facebook polemic, every line-by-line breakdown of his evaluation scores — to rise to the occasion. For our kids’ sake, let’s hope they can. They lent their voices to this affair, handled the merchandise, and now the merchandise is on the floor.
Maybe they find a leader who’s honest, competent, and aligned all at once. But missing does more than land on them. It lands on the kids stuck on bus routes, teachers stuck in classrooms, and administrators keeping the lights on while the board argues.
Williamson County School Board — you carried this one all the way to the register. It’s yours now. The sign over it is no longer a warning.
It is an invoice.
