I’m not getting my undies in a bunch about the changes to our Ethics Policy that will almost certainly be approved at next week’s School Board meeting. I took some time outlining them at this week’s Human Resources Committee. One is directly pointed at me threatening me with possible removal from the school board if I break our confidentiality provisions concerning employees. Long time readers of LD will not be surprised to hear that I’m considering breaching this provision and I warned the School Board I might give them reason to remove me before the year was out.
My Buddy’s reaction to the Trib’s story which did not go into detail about my objections piqued my Buddy’s curiosity so he looked up the MSBA Code of School Boards model policy, looked it over, and sent it to me. His pithy reaction to it was: “for boys and girls who happen to be school board members? Jeez. There is no requirement to wear clean underwear to school board meetings.” Did I ever mention that my Buddy is something of a libertarian?
In one of Chuck’s emails to Art he taunted Art about his not having dropped his lawsuit against the school board. Here’s what I wrote in my humungus email to Chuck on that score:
In your email to Art you end it as engagingly as Art’s email engaged you. You sneeringly asked him if his lawsuit against the School Board was still on. That’s a good reporter’s question but you didn’t ask it as a reporter would. It was a cheap shot back at a guy you don’t like who had just poured out his understandable anger at you.
I think I’ve already told Jana the answer to your question. Since you’ve asked the question I’ll answer it. To all intents and purposes the only thing remaining to be done is having the judge rule as to whether Art will be reimbursed for the sixty thousand bucks he spent defending himself from a witch hunt. Once the judge rules its over. That won’t happen until the Board’s kabuki dance over the changes to our Ethics Policy are acted on. Unlike the Trib I’m personally offended that the Board punished Art over such a lame accusation of abuse of power in their attempt to subvert democracy. Its hard for me to disagree with Art. From your first request that he step down to spare the city the tawdry year that followed the Tribune’s editorials made it look like it was wearing the school board majority’s heart on its sleeve.
By the way, my only objections to the MSBA policy are the half dozen changes our attorneys made to it like the change that threatens me. The legal strategy seems to be to prove to Judge Davis that our contrite school board is making every effort to answer his objections to our treatment of Art. If we are good little boys and girls perhaps the Board will be excused from being ordered to pay Art’s legal expenses.
Through May and June we paid our attorney’s just under another Fifty thousand dollars for their work. Because I’ve never been shown the legal bills I’ve asked to see I have no idea how much our attorneys are charging us to adulterate the MSBA’s model policy.
