Hometown Insanity, Part One

I try to read the local papers on a daily basis now, something that I slacked off on for quite some time

Today, I found this, and my jaw dropped:

LEBANON — During a contentious special meeting, the Lebanon School Board voted 3-0 Wednesday to suspend, with pay, Superintendent Jim Robinson and arrange an outside review of his performance.

Robinson was out of town Wednesday because his mother had a stroke. Reached at home this morning, the superintendent said he had no comment for now.

First thing's first; the vote was 3-0, so that means the other two board members abstained. Good for them.

Second....um, what the hell is going on over there? After reading the article, I found another article on the Lebanon Express website that had more details and some explanation:

However, one board member claims the action against Robinson was really about the superintendent's removal of Bo Yates as the district's athletic director last week.

Turns out there's also some animosity regarding two employees of the Sand Ridge Charter School:

The school district's attorney, Paul A. Dakopolos, notified People Involved in Education (PIE) on July 10 that by operating a second charter school in Sweet Home, PIE is in breach of contract.

According to Dakopolos's letter, if PIE did not resolve the situation by July 30, district superintendent Jim Robinson would exercise the district's rights, which could include canceling Sand Ridge's contract with the LCSD to run a charter school.

The contract states that PIE must notify the Lebanon Community School District (LCSD) if it intends to run another charter school and if the two organizations cannot agree to mutually acceptable language, PIE must disengage from running any school other than Sand Ridge.

...

Two Sand Ridge teachers, Jessica Reynolds and Joanna Gosney, who are not licensed teachers and are not registered with the TSPC are causing concern because the district stands to lose state funding equivalent to what the two staff members have been paid in salary.

Robinson and the Oregon State Board of Education maintain there is no legal designation for instructor and Gosney's classroom responsibilities make her a teacher.

Yeah. In the case of Sand Ridge, it sounds like Robinson and the district are following the law. Following the law can sometimes be very distasteful, but it's generally a good idea for the Superintendent of a school district to do. And it's never a reason to to suspend him on such short notice. If the board members were really upset about this, or how it was handled, and not by something else, there are other ways to deal with it.

The other thing that stinks is that he was suspended for an outside "performance review." I see no reason a performance review can't be done while Robinson is working, since that's when performance reviews normally occur.

As for the thing with Athletic Director Bo Yates, it turns out that the reason he was removed from the AD position because he holds a full-time position as Assistant Principal at Seven Oaks Middle School. I can understand the LCSD not wanting to have one person holding two full-time jobs; it's really impossible to give both jobs the time they need. Therefore, having Yates in only one position strikes me as doing what's best for the district - and the students.

Now, depending on whether or not Yates was given a choice of what job he wanted to keep and what kind of process was used, I can maybe see the board members being angry. Maybe, but only if the process was bad. Thus far, there has been no evidence in either paper that this is the case; I hope that it's covered in future stories.

Finally, I can't see them voting to suspend the Superintendent at a special meeting while the Superintendent is out of town caring for his mother. That's just low and irresponsible.

Something else is going on.

I think this is the result of a long-standing animosity between two of the board members, Wineteer and Alexander; the Superintendent, Jim Robinson; the teachers' union, headed by the highly opinionated Kim Fandino; and the fact that Lebanon High School was switched to a small schools/academy system several years ago over the objections of some teachers, parents, and community members (there was and is lots of support for the idea as well).

However you cut it, what's listed in the various stories (there is another one here that contains some background, including a dust-up in which Robinson sued his own district over the poor behavior of Wineteer and Alexander) is not near enough to justify the actions of the school board members.

(And Debi Shimmin, you should really know better. You've had kids go through the schools there. Get a grip. I don't care who is whispering in your ear.)

I was a student in that district for 15 years, and a substitute for several months. The district, and the high school in particular, have a lot of problems (just like every school in a place with no money and a shaky industrial base). The academy system may or may not be one of them; that's something that it takes at least a shred of empirical evidence to debate, and thus far, I've seen nothing but complaints, platitudes, and whiny bullshit come from the mouth of its detractors. Personally, I have a whole host of concerns about the academy system, but they are based on spending 40 days at the school in question and talking to hundreds of students.

Besides, this whole mess is going to serve as a distraction from getting any actual work done. Again, not helpful for students.

It strikes me as humorous that I am passionately defending an institution and the law. Don't think I'm missing that particular irony. Based on my experience and understanding of Robinson, he's no genius, and he certainly comes across as very authoritarian. These are not good things. However, he is certainly better than the alternative.

Also, I have a habit and history of supporting guerilla politics like this - don't like the way the district is being run? Get elected and change things in a radical fashion! - but this is some seriously bad process, and it's headed towards nothing but bad outcomes. Ironically, I do support a more equitable balance of power between the Superintendent and the School Board, but I don't think a) these folks should be let anywhere near power, and b) the way they are going about this is going to result in anything good, especially a more equitable balance of power or division of authority. It's just going to destroy trust between three parties that desperately need to get along: The Superintendent, the School Board, and the Teachers' Union. (Don't even get me started on the fact that there are some teachers supporting Wineteer and Alexander; that's helping pull the trigger on a gun flamethrower that's pointed at your own goddamn union contract.)

What's going on here is pretty blatantly a power play on the part of some backwards-ass amateurs with nothing better to do than gorge their egos at the cost of students, and it needs to stop. Lebanon is succeeding in becoming the laughingstock of the valley, and with good reason: the needs of students are NOWHERE to be found in this entire debate. I know, because I've been following it for years. Lebanon and its residents need to get their collective heads out of their collective asses - and I'm referring specifically to you folks in the middle and professional classes who have avoided local politics because it's "ugly" - before ignorant, small-minded hacks like Wineteer and Alexander do anymore damage to the students of the district - students who happen to be your damn kids.



UPDATE: It has been brought to my attention that I was a student in the district for 13 years, not 15. My bad. Apparently preschool didn't count.