| Reclaiming Our Schools and Community in District 227 on April 9, 2013 An informed community is an empowered community. School improvement and public accountability must be led by school board 227, not left to our district employees with no effort on the part of the school board. It is the role of school board members to hire and evaluate the school district administration. But with a lid put on the act of full school board and community participation, this act is still not being accomplished. An ineffective and dysfunctional school board that declines to do its job and act collaboratively in the best interest of the public is a formula for disaster, and it shows. On school board 227, in its nontransparency, we see blacks trying to muzzle free speech and enslave other blacks. The fact that such a puzzling and explicable occurrence has happened for over a decade in America, failing our children in the process, without being properly adjudicated and corrected is one of the ironies and enigmas of the twenty-first century in the south suburbs. When only five people on the school board can debate and get their point across and not the entire school board and our community constituents at open forum board meetings, then we are living not in a democracy, but under a dictatorship and tyranny. When we have to sat quietly, in the absence of full board participation, and waste valuable precious time listening to nonsense, threats, and fluff with no substance, focus, vision or sense of goal direction coming from the lips of Betty Owens and the school board majority at every board meeting while blocking minority board members and any constituent who is concerned about the future of our schools and community, and, therefore, do not share her views, it is not because we are agreeing with the board majority. Rather, it is because Betty has blocked our response, right to examine what is being said before voting on it, due process, right to reason, appeal, common ground, and what is common sense. If everyone on the school board had a right to fully participate and be heard, if all views were allowed to be heard in an atmosphere of democratic participation, then the best ideas could win. But the board minority views are seldom given an equitable and full hearing. Usually, they're not given a hearing at all. Rather, the board chair continues to fight to prevent a hearing with the full board and our community. For this reason, we had to go online for almost four years now to speak with our community and constituents, since as public officials, we were blocked from getting our point across at open board meetings, denied our rights to speak, forced to resort to FOIA requests in writing as board members but still didn't receive them in a timely fashion, and denied our right to put items on the board agenda to be discussed addressing school improvement, . If everyone on the school board had an opportunity to participate and be heard, the board majority would learn their roles and began to do what school boards in successful school districts do to be successful, rather than wasting more time engaging in more fluff, speech suppression, nonsense, and bragging on themselves. But the school board majority is not interested in children, community, and school improvement, but only in themselves. Not being focused on goals and substance, but on fluff and nonsense while preaching "Let's stay the same," they have nothing but time to waste in resisting change and progress at open board meetings. At the September 18, 2012 at the Rich South school board meeting, the board majority, with its surrogates, resisted the art of dialogue and two-way conversations again, while refusing to answer questions, and then called anyone who didn't agree with them "thugs and bullies" while engaging in speech suppression with extreme control measures and still trying to limit both public participation as well as controlling and deciding whom we should associate with. With less than three out of every ten of our high school students at grade level in the 2010-2011 school year, without change this will not get much better any time soon. But like everything else that would move our school district forward, ( including district monitoring, data analysis, and evaluation), from tragedy and defeat to success and wellness, Betty Owens will not allow the school board to do our job in engaging in continuous evaluation improvement addressing her hired employees. Blocking professional data-driven accountability focused evaluation of our school district where the board meets first with itself and later with the superintendent to address our plight is state law. Dumbing down the school board, our children, and community in speech suppression in a district that has failed for twenty years prevents us from addressing and solving our school improvement problems. What are these people thinking to believe that this debauchery of our children and community's future can go on forever? The minority board members are representatives for the children and the people. There is no earthly reason to continue to illegally block full board and public participation efforts except to keep the status quo in failure, which offers advantages to a dysfunctional school board majority, but continued tragedy for children and our community' future. On April 9, 2013 we will take our schools and community back. The continued efforts of the board majority to suppress our vote in public participation, retard our children and community, dumb us down in non-transparency reminds us that by April 2009, and April 2011, the year of the present minority board members arrival on board 227, was the beginning of informing our community, the movement toward turning our school district around, and of reconstruction, and rebuilding our schools and community. What the minority board members and our school board on April 9, 2013 will offer is not non-transparency, but continuing enlightenment, not bullying and intimidation but collaborative progress in turning our school district around, not fear and threats but hope and meaningful self direction. We can learn how to rise above school board dysfunction, have no part of "business as usual" and work together to improve student achievement levels, academic disparity, and democratically engage our community to achieve this goal. Our victory at the polls on April 9, 2013 will be another great civil rights movement that will return democracy, progress, and human decency to our schools and community. Today, in their acts of desperation the school board majority and its surrogates have threatened to arrest us for speaking or disagreeing with them and have recently called our parents, community, and minority board members who wants better for our children "thugs and bullies." After twenty years of destruction in our schools and community, on April 9, 2013, we will engage in reconstruction. Against all the odds, we will win our victory for progress and freedom because the goal of America is freedom. We know in our hearts that for the 227 school district community, the best is yet to come. We are a district 227 in crisis academically, ethically, politically, and fiscally. Through it all, this board has never shown up to ask, "What can I do to help?" Rather, the board majority and its surrogates have labeled anyone who wanted best for our children or wished to speak or who disagreed with them at open board meetings "thugs and bullies." Instead of listening to what the community and targeted board members had to say and understand that they simply disagree with them, they have bullied, threatened to arrest, and then denied them freedom of speech and public participation at open board meetings. These illegal practices have cost the school district millions in court costs and is still going on. Instead of representing the children and people they were elected to serve, their only focus for being on a school board is themselves and their own needs. This is the kind of school board mentality that has betrayed and deceived our constituents and failed this community for twenty years. In many respects, this school board is still living a Shakespearan tragedy. We believe that the school board majority character flaws would have remained buried if the minority board members had not been sent to the school board by the community who needed representation at the district 227 level. After failing our community for twenty years, fighting our constituent in court wasting our tax dollars to do so, in an effort to suppress speech and public participation, and to keep our children and constituents dumbed down in silence, this school board has been relegated to the irrelevance and scrap heap of history from whence it came. After betraying our children and the rights of the board itself, it was easy to deceive and betray our constituents. We have never written anything making fun of the school board 227 majority. But their story is just too sad and costly not to learn a lesson from. David E. Morgan, Ph.D., Educational Leadership School Board Member Rich Township High School District 227 Olympia Fields, Illinois 60461 WEB ADDRESS: richthscoalition.org |
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