Lebanon School Board Meeting Part Three - The Superintendent's Report (with a special shout out to anyone interested in racist mascots!)

This is a new feature of board meetings, and it is supposedly designed to promote better communication between the board and superintendent.

Good idea. While it should have been done a long time ago - is communication really so bad between the superintendent and the board? - I am glad to see it done now.

Anyway, there were six items on the agenda. I'm going to skip some most of them.

One item that got some time was an update on the Unfair Labor Practice filed by Kim Fandiño over Jim Robinson's ridiculous information control policy. A lone administrative law judge had offered a preliminary ruling that included calling Robinson's policy illegal, so the district is appealing to the full panel.

Wineteer wanted to know why the board did not get to decide what to do, since the Board is usually responsible for ULPs, and Robinson responded by saying that legally, his actions up to this point are his purview - but anything beyond this, like actually challenging the ruling of the full panel, would require board action.

Robinson then some something transparently self-serving: He suggested that if there had been no Superintendent's Report added to the agenda, the Board would not know about this issue at all! Because it was THE ONLY WAY they could have ever found out!

Gag me. Sometimes his attempts at making himself look caring and communicative really suck, probably because it's not his inclination and he's forcing or faking it. In the long run, he's genuinely got to get this 'open communications' thing down - meaning really believe in it, not just hold his nose and pretend - or he's not going to make it, I think.

The only other item I'm going to mention was Robinson's reporting of his meeting with other Oregon superintendents regarding the proposal that's been kicked down the line to eliminate all mascots and logos that are Native American-themed. I could tell the second he brought this up that most people in the room were pissed - not at Robinson, but at the idea that they'd have to change at the behest of someone else.

In all fairness, Robinson did a damn good job explaining this while remaining neutral on the merits. He went over Che Butler's presentation for the benefit of the board, relayed the position he had presented on behalf of the district at the meeting and outlined possible futures.

I'm not going to rehash the following conversation in detail, since it resembled perfectly every other debate I've ever heard about this issue. To wit: I'm Native and I don't care! Self-identified Native students in this district don't care! This is just PC extremism! What's next, banning everything!? I think Warriors are honorable! It's been that way for years! They can pry my mascot out of my cold dead hands! It's all the victim's fault! Blah blah white privilege blah blah blah!

Repeat for 20 minutes with no one disagreeing personally, but with another white person (in this case Robinson) hypothetically & carefully pointing out the reality of the situation, and you've got the debate.

Robinson and Sprenger both pointed out - and I think this is absolutely true - that no matter what the position of the district was, the district had to develop one, and had to be prepared for the possibility that they were simply going to be told what to do with no say in the matter. This was not popular, but I got the sense the crowd actually agreed with it. I would consider such an acknowledgment of reality, however small, a good thing.

Robinson also pointed out - as I have before - that if the state mandates a change without buy-in from the relevant districts, things will not go well. There is some education and learning on the part of the districts that needs to happen for this to work.

On the other hand, making Che Butler go to 16 districts around the state is a pretty harsh example of a person of color educating white folks...again.... when the white folks can fairly easily educate themselves.

Josh Wineteer called Native Americans, or possibly the Warriors mascot, "stoic."

Education and learning indeed.

Robinson pointed out that Aloha High School is also the Warriors, but they are Polynesian Warriors, and that meant they were excluded from possibly changing. Robinson spun this as positive, noting that it might allow LHS to keep the name but not the mascot. (Bizarrely, he also noted that "we have many warriors fighting overseas at the moment," which I think was a mistaken sop to the conservative folks who oppose him - he can't really think that making the LHS logo a soldier is a good idea, can he?)

Wineteer complained that it was a double standard, which indicates to me that he really doesn't understand the issue AT ALL. He really put on a show over this one.

So it goes. I think there's going to be a lot more racist crap spewed unknowingly before this is over, and I think it's going to end in the Warrior mascot being changed, though it may take years.

Aside from Josh's outbursts, the anti-Robinson folks were pretty quiet. I think it was because they are way out of their comfort zone on this one, and probably afraid of saying anything racist.

One, maybe two more posts to go.