At the end of this rumination I will post two emails sent after my long posted warning to MSBA members about engaging the legal services of Kevin Rupp. Twain says every man is a moon with a dark side he does not share with the world. Our School Board’s vicious ineptness is helping me get in touch with that dark side. What it does not have the capacity to understand is, that some nails resist being pounded down. I’m prepared to endure one more year of its damage to our schools – schools I worked hard to leave in wonderful shape when I left the School Board in 2004. My goal will be to restore some maturity and a humble spirit.
After a promising three month start to my newly regained seat on the Board I hit two walls. First, I wanted to slow down a financial train wreck by making sure we didn’t give away any more of our fiscal health with a teacher’s contract we couldn’t afford. To that end I attempted to join the contract bargaining process that our sly Superintendent Keith Dixon altered to bedevil Gary Glass. Ironically, the change helped, or should have helped, me. Dixon talked the board into giving every member of the school board a seat on the Negotiations Committee. My first post from the MSBA convention describes in 2000 words the utter futility of getting our Board to honor Board policies that they find inconvenient. I was pushed out of that committee with the complicity of our attorney, Mr. Rupp.
The flawed contract we adopted is doubly harmful because we signed two two-year settlements. This will keep our head under water like some poor kid in a bully’s headlock at the local swimming pool.
Second, I was also intent on shining light in on the mysteries of the Red Plan’s financing. I wouldn’t have been elected in the fall of 2013 without the voters who wanted transparency. My lawnsigns were all over town saying “Honesty is the best policy.” Getting full disclosure was board member Art Johnston’s baby too. For four years, he had been systematically denied this public information.
On my advice, Art held back asking questions for three months to build rapport with our suspicious fellow school board members. However, when the two of us began requesting the public data we ran into a stone wall of “NO.” Chair Mike Miernicki became especially resentful because he believed the past was over and he wanted to keep the rugs tightly sealed over what had been swept under them.
He autocratically denied our joint requests to put items on the school board agenda again and again. This was a shock for me because in my eight previous years on the board we had a policy requiring such agenda placement when two board members requested it of the Chair. Dropping that policy was another innovation of the Dixon years. As a coup de grace our Finance Director Bill Hanson told Art that he had to pay $500.00 for some of the public data he requested.
Oh, and a funny story from the MSBA conference on the four, now five, year conspiracy to hide public data from Art. For two years prior to Art’s election Board member Gary Glasses kept requesting the Transportation Analysis that had been done for the Red Plan. He was told there was no such thing. Art began requesting it too and was also told it didn’t exist. Ah, but when Art visited one of the vender booths at the MSBA convention he met the young man who did the study and wrote that non existent transportation report. The young man proudly described all the GIS work he did before submitting his report. This was a big deal seven years ago. From the Let Duluth Vote website from about 2009.
”Even though the MDE did grant permission for the District to finance and build much of the Red Plan its staff eagerly sought transportation and desegregation data from Let Duluth Vote which the District did not make available. Unfortunately, Let Duluth Vote did not have access to this information either. We have subsequently learned a few interesting tidbits like the estimated $400,000 increase in bussing costs. We have also learned that the District and JCI never did an energy study of the schools although they have touted energy savings as a major justification for undertake the plan.”
There is a four-letter word that well describes the sort of people in our district who would resort to such prevarication.
Since Art’s lawyers have made it clear he’ll likely remain on the board through most of May (that will be another MSBA Note’s post) he plans to ask for the Red Plan’s transportation report again.
So, after a couple months of push back from our Board and administrators for the unrelenting questions from two dissenters the board majority got hysterical about Art’s adamant defense of his life partner. They spread it across the front pages of the local paper that he was “violent” and had made racist statements. Then they spent money like a drunken sailor on an investigation of Art while the subject of education in our schools languished. It has been, and continues to be, a crude inquisition. I’ve not been spared. After turning their back on my heartfelt appeal to have some sort of peace, they censured me on Christmas Eve claiming it was done to spare me in my time of grief.
I feel a deep sense of betrayal from people I’ve had cordial relationships with for fifteen to twenty-five years. I feel little compunction at this point in pointing out how irrational their behavior and thinking have been and for turning our school board into a circus. They have accused Art Johnston of being a racist. Well, I accuse them of being all too human. I will be telling unflattering slivers of their life stories in the coming months.
I am not proud of what I intend to do but rather ashamed by the bitterness I feel and my gleefulness at the possibility of payback. Bear that in mind as you read what I have to report in coming months and read the two emails I mentioned at the beginning of this post:
To me:
On Thu, Jan 15, 2015 at 7:44 PM, ******** wrote:
I certainly hope when asking questions, such as the ones you posted on your blog Harry, that you are following up with questions such as ” if you are denied _______, who can I go to beyond my fellow board members to enforce a local board policy or state law” or even “what help can the MSBA provide to board members for support on ____”.
They exist to help you. Ask them for help. 🙂
My reply:
*******,
I put a stinking pile of crap at the foot of the folks who just censured me. Look in the Trib tomorrow to see who comes out looking worse – me or the Superintendent and his pals. I wish I could trust that the Trib will point the finger in the right direction.
I had a group of board members from Floodwood come over to me tonight to ask if I was the guy from Duluth they heard at that negotiations session last night. They wanted me to tell them the story and I handed them all my new business cards that take the curious to that story about our attorney. Then I told them the story so they wouldn’t have to spend half an hour reading it. I was much funnier than that post. I think they were pretty entertained. The worst punishment I can hand my fellow board members is ridicule. And they were afraid of my blog before.
It’s enough for me to have people who read that post ask the questions you think I should find answers to. BTW I already know the answers because they are as obvious as a fly floating in soup. It would be even better if their friends asked their buddies on the School Board why I was treated so shabbily.
This afternoon I went to a crowded session on the new PELRA law that our attorney Rupp was conducting. He did a good job. I just happened to pass my business card to every person in attendance at that seminar. Then at the end of the meeting I ran into Bill Kraut who told me there was no justification for keeping me out of the caucus. He said my finding him spared him having to give me a call. That’s because the Trib read my post too and had called MSBA to get their take on it. He wanted to be sure of the details I’d told him last night in case he had to take their call.
No wonder I was in such a good mood when the Floodwood board members found me.
Harry
