New trustee Terry Slatic is barging all over Fresno Unified, and it is not going well

Terry Slatic has left no question about how he intends to act as a new Fresno Unified school board member. He thinks the district staff owe him answers and explanations any time he wants, wherever he wants.

Whether he is climbing on the roofs of school facilities looking for dry rot, or barging into meetings of top administrators, Slatic is pushing for greater accountability and answers to problems he is finding. “I am not patient,” he told Bee education writer Aleksandra Appleton. “We’re interested in accountability and results. Effort no longer counts.”

Such take-the-hill talk might be expected from a former Marine, such as Slatic. But he will soon find himself being on the short end of board votes should he antagonize fellow trustees with such brusqueness. And he is subverting a chain of command at Fresno Unified that, as a career military man, he should well respect.

He will also face questions from the public about his behavior. In a new twist, Fresno Unified released a video Wednesday morning after The Bee filed a public records request that shows Slatic encountering a student at Bullard High last Friday. The student was outside a snack bar. Slatic and his assistant Michelle Asadoorian walk past the student, who apparently says something to them. They stop, and Slatic advances toward the student. The student starts to walk away, but Slatic grabs the boy’s backpack and a short tussle ensues before the student grabs the backpack and runs away.

In explaining the incident, Slatic says the student uttered profanities and threats at him, and that he was fearing for their safety. He also has personal experience with threats at a campus: One of Slatic’s sons was once the target of a threat by another student.

Seeking accountability, wanting to oversee the district as a trustee, and hoping to maintain campus safety are worthy goals. But Slatic is not going about it the proper way. He is not the chief executive, top administrator or district sovereign. He is one of seven board members who oversee one employee directly — the district superintendent.

Slatic was elected last November to replace Brooke Ashjian to represent the Bullard High area. The Bee’s Editorial Board did not recommend him, feeling the personality coming out now would not be in the best interests of Fresno Unified. Ashjian had been a disruptive force in his time, and in a self-review, the board members admitted they needed to work better together.

Increasing accountability was Slatic’s campaign promise. But Slatic seems to be betraying his own experience in how he is going about the job. During the campaign he told The Bee’s Editorial Board of his assignments to Iraq and Afghanistan as a Marine. He would work to enlist the trust of elders in the villages where his squad was assigned. He proudly related how those sessions led the elders to work for the village’s common good in ways never before achieved.

Well, he should do the same now. Fresno Unified is the state’s fourth-largest district, and it faces huge problems that bedevil every other government body in the Valley: high poverty, parents with few skills and low educational attainment, and many with English as a second language. Beyond the adult issues FUSD faces, the core constituency is children.

So patience is not only a virtue, it is required. Any parent knows this, as does Slatic, the father of four who attended schools in the Bullard area.

Effort also counts when done in good faith and with best intentions. Case in point: the latest state test scores. Fresno Unified has steadily improved over the last three years in both English and math. The latest results showed better scores in all demographic subgroups. Fresno Unified is up 8 percent in English since 2015, 9 percent in math.

“We are shooting for the farthest-away goal,” Superintendent Bob Nelson said last October, when the test results became public. “You have to shoot for those double-digit gains, and if we fall a little short of that, that’s not bad.”

There is a word for that approach: Accountability.

No one would suggest Fresno Unified is doing all things well, least of all Nelson. But Slatic’s modus operandi has so frustrated Nelson that he has taken the unusual step of asking the board to re-evaluate him. He just got a glowing evaluation from the board four months ago. But given Slatic’s uncompromising stance, Nelson wants the full board to decide if he is “still their guy.”

The answer should be yes, without hesitation. Nelson had to step in when former Superintendent Michael Hanson abruptly left. Nelson then immediately faced the hot-button issue of negotiating a new contract with the Fresno Teachers Association, which the sides managed to reach without a teacher walkout — an accomplishment now lacking in Los Angeles Unified.

Besides that, one would be hard-pressed to find a more avid cheerleader for Fresno Unified that Nelson. He exudes a positive belief in the potential and promise of Fresno’s young people that is powerful.

Will Terry Slatic be a good board member? Time will tell, but the early snapshot is not promising. He would do well to slow down, start listening and learning, and show respect to the professionals working in Fresno Unified.

And when it comes to interacting with students, Slatic must remember they are children, he is the adult. No matter how offensive a young person might be — or even threatening — he has to remain cool and calm, and let the school site administrators handle the confrontations.

The chain of command, in this instance, means Slatic works through Nelson and his team, not around them.

This story was originally published January 16, 2019 at 11:09 AM.