Our little thing – 2

Last spring I learned that my daughter was applying for a position with the Duluth Schools. I quietly cringed but said nothing. There is more than a whiff of favoritism about our District which only seems to have intensified during the Keith Dixon years. I would hate to have my daughter suffer for my perceived crimes.

The thing I regret most over the past four years was my reluctance to visit schools early on. I stayed out of them because I had taken Art Johnston’s side in an almost unfathomable war and was worried that my comings and goings would be reported to higher-ups who would not forget the transgressors willing to talk with me. It’s often said that no good deed goes unpunished and associating with lepers is not popular.

Sometimes it was painfully obvious that the District’s employees felt the same. For instance, I made a date to speak with one principal but when I arrived at the office learned that she had decided to travel up the North Shore with her husband instead. She had called my land line to warn me but I rarely answer that phone anymore and missed the heads up.

In recent weeks something else has become painfully apparent to me. When I was defending Art Johnston back in 2014 one Board member had inside knowledge that could have supported a claim I made to the investigating attorney hired to flay Art Johnston alive. I gave evidence of an earlier attempt to give false testimony to the District by one of the chief witnesses against Board member Johnston. That employee’s former boss was on the Board with me and read the claim but never stepped in to support my testimony. He also helped the same employee exit her school gracefully after her colleagues learned of her actions. She later became an administrator and once again supplied misinformation, in an attempt to give the School Board grounds to remove Art Johnston.

Old friendships die hard in our District and it pays to be a favorite.

The night the attorney made her report to the School Board I ended up looking like a fool by attempting to act out what I guessed had taken place after the East High School graduation. My mistake may have given the Board more confidence to embark on the futile year-long fight to remove Art Johnston that would mar our reputation and waste $200,000.

For a long time I believed that Mike Miernicki had honestly described his interaction with Art Johnston following Art’s argument with the Superintendent. I no longer believe Mike was being honest. I know Mike willingly, if reluctantly, agreed to make racism one of the complaints against Art. They were the foul harvest of a spy network set up by the staff member who had attempted to subvert the 2004 investigation.

This is what I now suspect happened on that fateful night. Art Johnston found Mike Miernicki and expressed his outrage with the Superintendent for the harassment of his long-time partner. Shortly after this Mike was besieged by three irate female Board members who insisted that Art had assaulted the Superintendent. (The Superintendent himself denied any assault) In an attempt at gallantry Mike embellished his account of being accosted by Art explaining how he had been spun around. That charge forced his best friend, the former supervisor of the spy mistress, to either back Mike up or undermine Mike’s testimony. I believe friendship prevailed once again and recall how uncharacteristically passionate Principal Westholm was in defending his own honesty.

Of course, Mr. Miernicki suffered a few slings and arrows himself during the two years he fruitlessly attempted to kick Art off the Board and I’m sure he nursed his wounds carefully. He wrote two savage critiques of Art this election season. One came before the primary and the second arrived before the general election. And the false claims leveled against Art will not die in the public imagination.

During the campaign the spouse of one of the “positive” candidates posted on Facebook the claim that Art had assaulted Bill Gronseth. When the spouse was informed of her mistake she took the post down with a replacement explaining that she guessed she had gotten in trouble for posting it. She chose not to admit any mistake.

It is important to discredit such uninformed thinking and to make sure the heads of our new school board members stay free of fog. They will face enough of it for the next four years.

I’ve been lauding the book “Last Hope Island” a lot lately and I’m reminded of the story it tells of Czech President Edvard Benes. The British forced Benes to hand Czechoslovakia to Hitler at Munich. Fleeing to England afterwards Benes was ill used by the British government which blamed the Czechs for not defending themselves even though they agreed to let Hitler take it over. One British diplomat said of Benes’s treatment that it was “a tragic illustration of the dislike that men feel for those whom they have wronged.”

Et tu, Mike?

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