Its one thing for the boss to blindside his subordinates like President Trump does with every tweet. Its quite another for a subordinate to blindside his or her bosses. That was a rule I learned right away from my fellow school board members even before I was first elected to the school board in 1995. So, I am left scratching my head that David Kirby and Rosie Loeffler-Kemp are so silent, repeatedly, when their employee, the superintendent of schools, puts them in the public eye with their pants down.
I’ve ridden on the elevator with Mr. Horton. He is a very personable fellow. There is a big “but” here. When Dr. Tony Kinkel, executive director of the Minnesota Board of School Administrators, correctly explains that people can learn from their mistakes I am at a loss. I’m not sure Mr. Horton has learned from his mistake. He’s had a third strike just two years ago. I’m hearing crickets from the two most recent school board chairs. They were similarly zipper-lipped when Art Johnston collected $55,000 from the School Board for the District’s refusing to hand over public data to him while he was a school board member! That severe penalty was unprecedented. Of course, Rosie was part of the cabal that saw nothing wrong in keeping Art in the dark in the first place and then was so eager to remove him that she squandered two teachers worth of salary in a thwarted attempt to remove him. And for what? For assaulting the Superintendent despite the Superintendent’s public denial that he had been assaulted. At least, David Kirby had nothing to do with that nonsense.
I am looking forward to finding a superintendent who doesn’t have the attitude Supt Gronseth shared with me…that he viewed his job as protecting the School District from the school board. Just maybe, he had that backwards.
