Prodded by conscience and a blog critic I offer…

…the Duluth News Trib’s take on I.V. Foster the six-month superintendent that I suggested was harassed out of Duluth.

This is what was reported shortly before he meekly departed:

Foster spent 31 days out of office

Former Duluth school Superintendent I.V. Foster was out of the office for more than a quarter of the time during his 5½ months on the job, employee records obtained by the News Tribune show.

According to public data the News Tribune requested in January, the new superintendent used 21 days of combined vacation, personal and sick time and 10½ days of professional leave from July 1 until he was put on paid administrative leave Dec. 19. The 31½ total days away from his office represent 27 percent of the ….

You can read the rest of the story at this link.

Here’s a follow up story.

My critic is in no doubt that Dr. Foster was a ninny. Certainly his many days out of office in his first five months in a big new job raised eyebrows. We have a President who seems similarly disengaged.

My suggestion that the powers-that-be in the District helped undermine the Music Man (Foster was a musician) is still likely true. Ask President Trump about all his administration’s leaks. Whether the new Supe had good reasons for his many early absences has never been addressed publicly. He did take something like seven sick days and as far as I can tell he had every right under his contract to take the personal leave days off. That leaves the issue of the Minnesota Superintendent license which he failed to apply for in a timely fashion. That is harder to explain although I’ve had some ameliorating suggestions offered to me.

For the record, I always thought Dr. Foster would have a tough time after a bruising Red Plan Civil War. He seemed to shrug off the seriousness of the war’s aftermath which struck me as naive. His previous superintending experience was limited as well. He’d been in a small district that only had elementary schools. I honestly don’t know what to make of what happened and at the time I felt no impulse to investigate. Last night I briefly imagined conducting such an investigation with a flurry of after-the-fact interviews. Silly me! I’ve got too much on my plate as it is.

Still, What happened to the good Doctor was embarrassingly consistent with several previous unhappy experiences that our District’s minority teaching staff have encountered. The District may not have failed I.V. Foster but it did him no favors either and this in a District with a damn near criminal gap in achievement between white and minority students.

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