Manson Likely Pick To Head Dade Schools

Nothing is official yet, but sources close to the Dade Board of Education say Charlie Manson looks good to be tapped for Dade's top school administrator.  Board members say Manson, who persuaded members of his youthful "Family to carry out gruesome murders in 1969, is "good with young people."                                                                                      

Manson Rumored Favorite For Dade County Schools Superintendent

By Robin Ford Wallace

With the accelerated retirement of current Dade County Schools Superintendent Shawn Tobin effective immediately, the burning question in Dade has become:  Who will the Board of Education pick next?

Nothing is official yet, but one name that cropped up again and again as The Turnip pressed county officials for speculation was:  Charles Manson.

Objections to Manson’s selection as the next leader of education in Dade seemed overwhelming, in that he is (a) 79 years old, (b) currently incarcerated and (c) an international icon of evil. 

But a source close to the school board said, who spoke on condition of anonymity, commented:  “And that makes Charlie less suitable than Mr. Tobin … how?”

Tobin announced his resignation Jan. 27 in a letter peppered with quotations from Abraham Lincoln, George Patton and Friedrich Nietzsche, respectively an American president, an American general and a German philosopher whose doctrines were bedtime reading for Hitler.

Tobin had announced his departure date as May 1, but the Board of Education at a special meeting on Feb 20 invited the administrator to, as Shakespeare put it, “Stand not upon the order of your going, but go at once”; or as a local wit paraphrased, “Don’t let the door hit you on the ass on your way out.”

During Tobin’s three years as the county’s top educator, he banned books at the high school, effectively assassinated the county library and lost the schools hundreds of thousands of dollars in income when his campaign in favor of continuing the educational one-cent sales tax culminated in the revelation he had neglected to put it on the ballot.

“But his fall from grace came about when he suggested rich people pay school taxes,” said The Turnip’s anonymous source.  “We’re forgiving in Dade County but you have to draw the line somewhere.”

The source referred to the B of E’s push, for which Tobin was the front man, to amend a piece of local legislation which exempts citizens over 65 from paying any school real estate taxes on their homes. 

The amendment would have allowed seniors to exempt the first $125,000 of home value from taxation, but blue-haired Lookout Mountain residents arrived at subsequent board meetings by the limo-load to protest that that wasn’t enough.

“If I had to pay school taxes on my Dade mansion, I wouldn’t be able to afford my other one in Bimini,” one protestor commented through his butler.

“But we do support young people in Dade,” a neighbor added.  “Not to educate the little darlings, maybe, but I personally don’t mind paying them to mow the yard and scrub the toilet.”

“We’ve used locals ever since our Mexican died,” her husband chimed in.

As for Tobin’s possible replacement, Charles Manson’s death sentence for high-profile mass murders in California in 1969 was commuted to life imprisonment when the state put a temporary kibosh on capital punishment in the early 1970s.

But sources close to the B of E insist that Dade officials are negotiating with the warden of Corocoran State Prison in the Golden State for Manson’s temporary release to attend a series of job interviews with board members.   

Why should Dade County hire a convicted California resident, whose major claim to fame was brainwashing his followers, the so-called “Manson Family,” into murdering, among others, a pregnant movie star?

“Charlie is very good with young people, and from somewhere else,” explained The Turnip’s anonymous source.  “They hired Tobin on less than that, mostly on the grounds that he talked like a Yankee.” 

Superintendent Tobin, pictured here at a book-banning session in November 2011, will be a tough act to follow, but sources say contenders include some pretty big names -- not only Manson but Kim Jong-un, who made contributions to education similar to Tobin's in his native North Korea. 

 Associate Superintendent Cherie Swader, who has been named interim superintendent, was previously a principal in the Dade system, and seems well thought-of by local teachers and administrators. 

But the Turnip’s source says that’s the kiss of death with the Dade B of E.  “Forget it, honey,” the source told the Turnip.  “They’ll recruit from the prisons before they promote from within.  Hell, they’d sent feelers out to Kim Jong-un before Mr. T had even started packing his carpetbag.”

The source elaborated that proponents of the North Korean dictator have adopted as the slogan for their campaign for hiring him:  “Jong-un for our young’uns!”