Randy Watson is taking a timeout.
The Kansas education commissioner, on the job since 2014, has been suspended for 30 days after making an ill-conceived joke about American Indians during the Kansas Virtual Learning Conference in mid-February. But what struck me most watching the video of Watson wasn’t the joke — it was his peculiar manner.
He rocked back and forth in his chair, at times coming jarringly close to the webcam. At other points he raised his voice to a near shout. As Kansas Reflector’s Sherman Smith pointed out while describing the video, Watson at times rambles through his remarks.
He recalled his college days in Manhattan fondly:
“It took me a long time. I went to Kansas State. My fraternity and campus were separated by this great parcel of land called Aggieville, all right. Unfortunately, sometimes I didn’t navigate going to class as well as I navigated going to Aggieville, and I had to figure out that Aggieville wasn’t going to get me to any goals, other than I got to meet a lot of people that were very happy in Aggieville and a lot of different places.”
He later turned to tornados:
“You guys know what do you do when there is a tornado in Kansas? Not if you’re born in Massachusetts, OK, or you’re Canadian — hey, hey, you hoser. You’re a Kansan, and the tornado sirens go off. What do you do? We run outside, right? Where’s it at?”
He adds, “There’s sirens going off. There’s warnings. There’s danger Will Robinson.”
Beyond the question of whether his joke was appropriate, those watching the video might well ask: Is this really the person leading Kansas schools? Should Kansas children really run out into the street during a tornado? Do we really need to hear drunken college memories?
Watch Watson’s monologue from 38 minutes to 43 minutes into the video. See what you think.
Perhaps this is how Watson regularly acts during online conferences. Keeping a group’s attention can be difficult in such situations. But he still feels comfortable enough to digress, exhort and say things he shouldn’t.
I also need to clarify a point the education commissioner makes during this excerpt. Watson displays great excitement about post-secondary effectiveness increasing by 6% in five years. His slide shows that a five-year effective average went from 44% to 50%.
But that’s not a 6% increase. It’s a 6 percentage point increase, and a 13.6% increase.
One would hope that, beyond restraining himself while on camera and refraining from making racially insensitive jokes, our state’s education commissioner could get the math right. Both personal impressions and accuracy make a difference.
Watson has led Kansas schools through waves of difficulty. He took the job during the dark days of Gov. Sam Brownback’s tax “experiment,” and he held on as legislators finally funded schools adequately. He then piloted the ship through the COVID-19 pandemic and the fantastical accusations of critical race theory.
Given that context, the state board of education’s decision not to accept his resignation letter on Friday makes sense. But after seven years on the job, one might expect Watson to behave more conscientiously.
Kansas Reflector is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Kansas Reflector maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Sherman Smith for questions: info@kansasreflector.com. Follow Kansas Reflector on Facebook and Twitter.