Lebanon School Board Meeting Part Two - Hiring and Transfers

In this installment I'm going to cover the consent agenda. I missed part of the discussion as I came late. Apparently most of the hires and transfers were uncontroversial except four: An interim AD, an interim Social Systems Principal, an involuntary transfer from LHS to Sand Ridge, and an Administrative Assistant for Transportation. Those four were pulled and discussed separately; in the end, the latter two passed and the former did not. Here I'll mostly talk about the discussion regarding the two that were rejected.

The discussion was so stupid when I walked in that I almost left without even finding a chair.

How so? Well, Rick Alexander asked what the difference between a substitute and an interim hire was....and he did not appear to be asking a rhetorical question.

I am still shaking my head over that. Who let him on the school board again?

Josh Wineteer then made the "point" that since LHS has three other principals, not hiring Dick Behn as an interim principal would not really affect the school.

That, I thought at the time, is the dumbest thing I've ever heard. Each academy has its own principal, so not filling position requires either a) the other three to somehow collectively fill in, which would be pretty difficult given the small schools structure, or b) to leave Social Systems at a severe disadvantage and without leadership (alternatively, they could just have Dick Behn as an indefinite sub). Either Josh was really, really fishing for a reason not to hire Behn, or...well, or he just said something monumentally ignorant. Again, this did not appear to be a rhetorical question.

Josh also complained that an internal candidate (which reportedly turned out to be Nancy Bauer) did not get selected, and he was confused as to why. I have no idea as to the internal hiring process, but that was the wrong time to ask about it. Seriously - again, it came off as a transparent attempt to get his way without a shred of supporting evidence.

I can only imagine what Ken Ray was thinking in regards to Josh's questions and comments. I consider the fact that Ray's face remained expressionless throughout most of the discussion to be evidence of his professionalism and experience, but damn, would I be furious were I in his position. He had both his interim principal and his interim AD hires rejected.

Speaking of that, Rick kept making motions to reject the hires, and Sherrie kept pointing out that there is no motion required to reject; the board simply lets the matter die. Motions are positive things. Despite this, Rick just kept trying to make the same motion over and over again, doing so at least three times when I was there.

I cannot believe that dude has yet to learn Robert's Rules of Order. I was once given two weeks to learn it - not a problem. This guy has had years and has not bothered. He does not belong on the school board. It's an insult to the students in the district, some of whom probably know Robert's Rules better than he does.

When I first saw the meeting agenda, I had thought that the only possible contentious items on the Consent Agenda would be the AD and Assistant Principal hires. I was told that was unlikely but possible.

I wish I had been wrong.

Let's face it: Rick, Josh, and Debi are really fucking the district over on this one. Yeah, you didn't get Bo Yates - so what? He's got an unresolved complaint against him filed with the TSPC and he's got another full-time job in the district. Once those are resolved, see if he is available next year. For now, deal. Hiring him as AD at this time is not a good idea, and is not in fact evidence of the evil of Sherrie Sprenger or Jim Robinson.

The same goes with Dick Behn - what does anyone have to gain by not letting him fill in as interim principal?

These are two cases where it's really obvious that the high school students and staff are being fucked over so that Rick, Josh, and Debi can throw a fucking temper tantrum.

Please. Grow the fuck up, people. Passive-aggressive behavior is only cute in toddlers.

I hate small-town politics. I hate the backstabbing and the unwillingness to deal with things honestly and openly. I hate the attempts at nepotism. I really hate the fact that the School Board is filled with people who honestly consider their own understanding of issues to be better than those of trained professionals, including the District's surely-insane-and-rich-by-now legal counsel.

Yes, I am aware that there is a huge class schism here between Lebanon's blue-collar, lifetime residents (Allen, Shimmin, Yates, etc.) and the mobile professional class of outsiders (personified by Robinson). I get that, and I even get that I'm coming down hard on the side of the educated. But such a divide in experience and education does not have to result in a mess like this.

More posts to follow.