Gov. Asa Hutchinson calls Baker Kurrus "the balm of Gilead." It's a biblical reference to a cure-all.
Hutchinson told me Thursday afternoon that Kurrus' strengths over the last several months as superintendent of the state-run Little Rock school district have been "enormous."
So let me remind you that Hutchinson and his education director are dumping Kurrus.
They have set off a firestorm of outrage that has galvanized Little Rock on a public-school issue like nothing in decades.
"He and I met yesterday," Hutchinson said Thursday afternoon, referring to Kurrus. "He sat right there in that chair where you're sitting, just before he took off on a well-deserved vacation. And I told him, 'I need you engaged. I want you engaged.'"
So was the governor saying he wanted to find a hired position in the Little Rock school structure for this man he'd rejected despite his being a popular, energetic and generally succeeding state-appointed superintendent?
"I'm open to any kind of arrangement," Hutchinson said, "but, of course, that would have to be worked out by Mr. Kurrus along with Mr. Poore [Michael, the governor's new Bentonville-departing Little Rock superintendent] and Mr. Key [Johnny, Hutchinson's director of the state Education Department]."
Hutchinson said he met with Kurrus on Wednesday morning to apologize for the "poor public messaging" of the way his removal was handled, to thank and applaud him on his hard work and successes, and to make the aforementioned overture about a continued role.
Kurrus was away on that vacation and didn't return my voicemail messages. Hutchinson said Kurrus indicated to him he'd entertain any ideas, if he chooses to entertain them at all, after he gets back midweek.
Poore has not returned my messages. A source close to him says he is avoiding the Little Rock media for now because of the community rage. He doesn't take the job until July 1.
So how and why did the governor's office and its education department so bungle what the governor calls the "public messaging?"
More to the point: Why was Kurrus replaced in the first place if his strengths were so enormous as to warrant analogy to a biblical healing balm?
Hutchinson sought to answer both by telling his version of the story, which--let me warn you--is about the same as Key's version Tuesday.
It is that Key came to him weeks ago and said he had the idea to move out Kurrus. It was because the Little Rock district's transitional crisis in finance and administration--for which Kurrus, a lawyer and businessman but not an academician, was appointed--had been dealt with well. Thus the "balm of Gilead" reference.
Key wanted to turn to a more traditional academic leadership and emphasis with Poore.
Key touted Poore's experience prior to his nearly six-year Bentonville stint. Poore spent parts of three decades in school administration in Colorado, and was chief academic officer and deputy superintendent in Colorado Springs.
Hutchinson said he listened, asked a few questions and acceded to his director's recommendation.
He said Key had been planning an announcement Tuesday, the morning after the news exploded on the Internet because Kurrus had shared it with a few people.
"I'm comfortable with the decision" to replace Kurrus, "but certainly not with the way it was handled," Hutchinson said.
Was he so out of touch with the city in which he lives that he thought a more orderly announcement would have defused this local uproar?
He said the blowback had not surprised him.
"I've had meetings all along with Little Rock officials and the black caucus," he said. "I knew of the resentment toward the state takeover and the good will toward Mr. Kurrus, who, if you'll remember, was not universally praised when we gave him the job."
The fear among regular public-school advocates in Little Rock is that Hutchinson is punishing Kurrus for opposing charter-school expansion and advancing the agenda of charter-school advocates like the Walton Foundation.
"No," Hutchinson said. "That had nothing to do with it."
He said I'd been "exactly right" in saying in a column that morning that the Waltons had been as surprised as anybody.
Poore has the following attitude toward charter schools, or so I am advised: Charter schools are here and part of the landscape, but may begin to lose allure in time, meaning regular public schools must compete effectively with them now and be ready to serve students who, over time, will return.
But we haven't actually heard those words from him.
And we don't know if he'll be working with Kurrus. I doubt it seriously. But I can always hope.
It would be the next-best thing to reversing this ham-fisted and destructive move altogether and letting Kurrus' healing balm work with enormous strength a while longer.
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John Brummett, whose column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, was inducted into the Arkansas Writers' Hall of Fame in 2014. Email him at jbrummett@arkansasonline.com. Read his @johnbrummett Twitter feed.
Editorial on 04/24/2016