10th Day of Christmas A

Well, there is only one thing my readers will be interested in and that is the big meeting to discuss the difficulties this Board has with Harry Welty.

I think the second most important thing I have to report is already old news. I voted to censure myself for spilling beans that I shouldn’t have. That was a very easy decision for me. I had incorrectly anticipated that the meeting would be about some really sordid information that I possess that if kept under wraps may help our School Board return to a more sane normal. That expectation kept me at a high a very high level of anxiety all weekend because I want normal much rather than the scorched earth I see on the horizon.

I demanded that the three board members who were well within their rights to call for the meeting be identified. I did not make it easy for them and getting me censured took a full hour and fifteen minutes. That was the price they had to pay for not putting the breaks to our increasing dysfunction. The vote to censure myself, however, was no problem for me after I had an opportunity to speak. I was a bonehead. I deserved to be censured. If the sale of Central doesn’t go through in three years the voters can exact revenge. Its as simple as that. I’ll only add that this is what should have taken place with Art. A quick slap on the hands and then we escape from being the circus’s center stage.

The only thing I regret about the censure was the Fox story I saw afterwards. The sound bite of me made me look like an arrogant ass. It was one of the few occasions that I was not in dead earnest. I was asked how the Censure would affect me and the simple answer is, not much. That is not properly contrite enough however and I launched into an accurate but silly metaphor. Pigpen from Peanuts came to mind when Fox questioned me and I began by saying I’d have a black cloud over me for a while. I should have stopped there but then I corrected myself about four times putting Linus under the cloud then remembering it was a dust cloud then remembering that it was Pigpen not Linus under it.

In that addled confusion I looked as though I was mocking the censure which when I saw that that was the chosen soundbite made me wince. It made Claudia wince even more than me.

So, anyone who is reading this please understand. I spent an hour and a half treating this episode like a big deal and only a fraction of a minute swatting it away like a fly. Though most of you didn’t see the hour and a half that is the more important portion of what took place not my confused arrogance at its conclusion.

In fact, what I hope is even more important is a new idea for redirecting the focus of the School Board back to our schools. That’s the next post.

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