On the 6th Day Before the New Year!

The Building Blocks To A HAPPY Community!

7th Day Before 2011 : Closing A Chapter | Part II - The Other Stuff

REAL talk….

The concessions within the agreement only limits the school district. It speaks to what “we” could not do, what “we” had to do, what “we” could not say and what “we” had to say. If you know me at all then you know I have a visceral NEED to be able to share the TRUTH.

Even now I can’t discuss the details of the agreement. Contrary to what one blogger posits – yes, the information IS public, but that DOES NOT mean the Board can release it. It does mean YOU can OPRA it, and that is exactly what will have to happen if there is public that truly wants to understand all the nuisances regarding this ‘jacked up’ agreement.

It’s a sad commentary with regard to the authenticity in which ‘educators’ now pursue the field of education. It was an honorable pursuit and the reward was in the result of seeing students mature into successful adult citizens.

Today, however, for many (NOT ALL) it is just about the money. For those of you who are in this worthy profession, and do well by our students, I pray we attract more like you and less like the ones that have been prominently featured of late.

Just 7 days left before a new year. We’ve got challenges to face and options to exercise… students to educate, administrators to hold accountable, a community to engage and a district to revitalize. It’s not exactly a ‘blank’ canvas, and we certainly can’t gloss over all that has happened, but we can and must move forward anew.

“Slow and steady wins the race.”

8 Days Before 2011 : Closing A Chapter | Part I - The $$$

To be more specific than what has been reported my ‘primary’ reason for not supporting the former CSA’s agreement was more about the lack of contrition and the enormous amount of restrictions on the district. The money portion was inescapable and here’s why...

Federal statute only provides for the suspension of pay (that is to say to suspend someone WITHOUT pay) for up to 120 days and on the 121st day the individual starts getting paid again. That’s right folk our very own laws leave the people of this land powerless. My contention with the agreement was not the payout amount. Accordingly, I worked the numbers forward and backward, personally, and the amount of the settlement was truly at the least cost to our district.

Lots of folks speculated that the Board should have waited for the trial to conclude, and that somehow that would have prevented us from having to pay anything. That’s absolutely not true, nor was it ever possible as per the statute I stated above. I Wished!

The money meter was running and the only way to stop it was to reach a settlement. Look at the current circumstance surrounding this trial; it has been moved once again (this is about the 4th or 5th time) and no matter how long it takes the district would be required to continue paying the CSA’s salary. We just could not afford to go on paying out a hefty amount of money with no end in sight.

I was clear the bucks (literally) had to stop here; in fact the entire Board agreed on that point, but I wasn’t willing to sacrifice the district’s position for the sake of expediency. I felt like our students deserved a public apology, and I wanted to ensure we could prevent this situation from ever happening again. Yes I wanted an admission of wrongdoing, malfeasance -- as is the popular word of the day. Contrition! This was not to be the consensus of the majority. Some wanted to simply close the chapter on this horror story, while others – well -- wanted to spare a friend some dignity. I wanted the TRUTH  -- as usual!

You all can just imagine how that conversation went…

Good Works!

The Lady Princesses have been invited to perform for this wonderful occassion. They will be reciting an original poem as well as Marian Williamson's Return To Love accompanied by my very own guitarista.

Should be fun! 

10th Day Before 2011

Slow and steady wins the race!

Let the stories unfold…let the speculators extol – but when it’s all said and done let the truth be told!

Until then I guess, I like all you other truth seekers, will be stuck with the asinine remarks of faux residents with quips of concern that ironically only surface when there is some negative flow about –much like satan and his many minions.

That's why -- We need to get PRAYED UP!