School Super's War on Truth

Yesterday, Escambia County school superintendent Jim Paul opened a second and a third front in his continuing war on the truth. The PNJ's Michael Stewart was embedded to report on it.

Along the old battle line -- did-he-or-didn't he? -- Paul managed to imply simultaneously that he had only one glass of wine before getting collared for drunk driving and that he might have had three or four, too.

"If you have one drink a day, does that mean you have a drinking problem? It might mean that.
* * *
"Maybe it was three drinks," Paul said Friday, adding that the amount doesn't matter. "Whether it was two drinks or four drinks, I did something wrong."

At the same time, Jim Paul launched a new frontal assault on the breathalyzer results:

He chastised those who questioned his account of events — particularly the .128 reading after two glasses of wine.

"How terrible would it be to everybody if we found out, 'Oh my God, the breathing machine was out of whack,' " he said.

This is reminiscent of Paul's earlier insistence that it wasn't his fault; it was the fault of the arresting officer. As first concocted, the officer "asked me to walk the line, and I thought I walked it perfectly, but he didn't."

Confused by the fog of this war? No doubt that's what Jim Paul, who's up for reelection this year, is hoping for.

Just in case the pincer movement in this war on the truth doesn't work, it sure looks like Paul is preparing to buy more time with a surge of the Ready Reserves. That would be the regiments of reformed alcoholics and Born Again proselytes who are always in abundance in Northwest Florida.

Local businessman Quint Studer told Stewart he's already "talked with Paul about his own experience in recovering from alcoholism." And Paul got the message:

"I'm going to meet with a counselor. I've got to talk to people who are in the business of counseling. They diagnose these kinds of things."

If the 12 steps are waiting just ahead for Jim Paul, can the Army of Jesus be far behind?

It doesn't take "people who are in the business of counseling" to diagnose Jim Paul's real problem: he's a serial liar and a hypocrite.

News Flash: School Super Has 'Liver Problems'

UPDATED BELOW

"I didn't feel in any way inhibited," Paul said when asked if he was intoxicated.

-- School superintendent Jim Paul

This news about Escambia County School Superintendent Jim Paul almost brings tears to our eyes. In an interview with PNJ reporter Michael Stewart, Jim Paul has explained that before being arrested for drunk driving, he had consumed only "two glasses of wine."

Hey, that's not bad. Could have happened to anyone. Just two glasses. And only wine.

Then he fell sleep for five hours in the parking lot of a St. Petersburg gambling casino. Now, that shows good judgment, right? One almost wishes everyone who's had a glass of wine or two would be so safety-conscious.

Unfortunately, before Mr. Paul could finish getting a full night's sleep in his rental car he was rudely awakened by "a drunk" knocking on his car window at 1:30 in the morning.

A drunk, mind you! Gosh darn. Is there nowhere in America a law-abiding citizen can get a little shut-eye without being harassed by drunken bums?

After that, Jim Paul tried to find his way back to his hotel on Clearwater Beach, but he "got lost." Those rental agencies never give you a usable map, don'cha know.

After spotting Paul's rental car "speeding and weaving dramatically," a police officer gave the school superintendent a field sobriety test. Paul says, "He asked me to walk the line, and I thought I walked it perfectly, but he didn't."

So, Jim Paul was arrested. Quite possibly, the officer was impaired and didn't notice how "perfectly" Jim Paul was walking after his five hour snooze.

Oh, but there's more:

Paul registered .128 on an alcohol breath test that was administered, by his account of events, at least five hours after the first of his two drinks. The legal threshold for driving under the influence is .08.

An alcohol counselor in Pensacola, contacted by the News Journal, said Paul's account of how much alcohol he consumed before the .128 reading sounds unlikely.

After two hours, a person who drank two 5-ounce glasses of wine, which officials at the Hard Rock Casino said they serve, "should have a blood alcohol level of approximately zero," said Pensacola Naval Hospital drug and alcohol counselor Laurie Perkins.

Wait, wait... There's an explanation! Ms. Perkins says, "I'm not going to say it is impossible. There are cases where people have liver problems and their liver doesn't metabolize alcohol properly."

Paul concedes voters may no longer trust him, but adds that he can regain that trust "by accepting responsibility" for his actions. He's courageously begun to do that by blaming the two glasses of wine, the rude drunk who banged on his window, the confusing highways of St. Petersburg, and the arresting officer who didn't appreciate how "perfectly" Jim Paul was walking.

Once someone takes responsibility for all of these things, he says, "we need to move on."

But first, Jim, please have your liver tested.

UPDATE
01-12 pm

There's good news and bad news for Jim Paul over at Chris Olson's new Pensacola Blog.

The good news? Olson writes, "I don’t think Paul has a drinking problem." The bad news? Olson thinks Jim Paul is a liar.

High School Musingsville

In the most precise sense, perhaps this should not be considered a schedenfreud moment. It comes darn close, though.

There is a difference, after all, between illegal driving after drinking to excess and illegal drug use. Both are crimes and both can be just as deadly. But Pensacola's school district policy, justifiably or not, gives drunk driving teachers a second (or even a third) chance and none at all for drug offenses, however minor.

Rules are rules. Still, what other than the whiff of rank hypocrisy accounts for the venom these students and parents are expressing about Escambia County School Superintendent's arrest?

They know how unyielding and self-righteous he was when it came to another person's "mistake." They doubtless expect, now that the handcuffs are on other wrists, that Ron JimPaul suddenly will be pleading for mercy and understanding about his own lapse.

Other than the school district's draconian "zero-tolerance" policy for ingesting one kind of mind-altering substance and not another, there's no real difference between the two cases. Former Woodham High School coach and teacher Benny Washington didn't contest that he was caught with a small amount of "cocaine, marijuana and drug paraphernalia in his vehicle." By pleading no contest, technically, he may never be convicted of any crime. But he lost his teaching job anyway.

Escambia County School Superintendent Jim Paul came down hard on Washington by demanding he be fired or resign with a public confession that effectively bars him from reemployment. He also likely will not be contesting his own arrest for drunk driving. And he probably won't be convicted of any crime, either.

But Paul, you can be sure, won't resign his elected post. Instead, it's nearly a dead certainty he'll soon be begging for forgiveness from voters. Too bad for him that he couldn't find an equal measure of charity when it came to Benny Washington.

The real issue, as we see it, transcends these two individuals and any implications of hypocrisy. Alcohol and drug abuse are terrible things to see anyone suffer, and hardly less so when it happens to educators whom we rightly expect to set an example for young people. As one expert has pointed out at some length, however, "zero tolerance" policies do not work in society at large because "drug abuse and addiction are medical problems, not criminal justice problems... . "

There is no reason to believe a "zero-tolerance" policy -- whether for drugs or alcohol abuse -- is any more effective or rational as a school district employment policy than it is as a policy governing student enrollment. There are gradations to such offenses. There can be important individual differences among offenders.

Sometimes a child or a teacher -- or even a school district superintendent -- needs counseling and treatment, not umbrageous moralizing and one-size-fits-all punitive consequences. The objective remains to prevent to the maximum extent possible drug and alcohol abuse by teachers and students.

We hope Superintendent Jim Paul's arrest serves to inspire the school board to take a closer, more objective look at all of its drug and alcohol policies to see just where they have gone wrong.