I unfairly slammed my school board colleague Rosie Loeffler-Kemp two posts ago. Please note the correction. I apologize to my readers. I ought to apologize to Rosie. She reminds me of this at every school board meeting when she reads our prescribed tools of civility which have also been adopted by the Duluth City Council. “Apologies” are called for in “tool” number 7 of 9.
I take no satisfaction from acting like an elementary school child but I’ve never believed that forcing anyone to apologize when they don’t feel like it is honest or useful.
Why don’t I feel like acting the part of a grownup? Rosie is busy organizing the next five months of school board campaigning with an eye to removing those of us who did not support extending a full three-year contract to the Superintendent. She has me in her sights and, truth be told, I have her in my sights.
Rosie hammered me during our closed teacher contract negotiations, as she regularly does, because she does not like what I blog about. I’m not a team player which means, I guess, that I don’t speak for her majority. I did not speak for the majority when Rosie called my colleague Art Johnston “violent” on television something for which Rosie herself has never apologized. Rosie’s majority was the prime mover behind a two-year attempt to remove Art Johnston from the Board thus reversing the people’s decision in an election. This in turn put the entire school board under the dark cloud of public ridicule from which it is only now slowly reemerging. Should Rosie survive the November election she will, in fact, be the only remaining member of the five-member majority which brought the school board into such ill repute.
I prefer honesty to apologies although I do recognize the decency of the latter even when I can not bring myself to fully embrace it.
