According to an article in yesterday's Delaware Gazette, the meeting last night went somewhere over the rainbow.
Here is what we have: The superintendent defines the role of the board, a likely board candidate defends the teachers, the union president berates a board member, and Dimon McFerson flip and flops. Oh, wait, that last one is an every meeting occurrence. It's the first three that are the bizarre events of the night.
Hooie: "It will hamper the real work of this board and secondly it will undermine the work of the staff and the administration.” So Hooie defines the role of the board? Folks, this is the same attitude you get when you have concerns about your children. If Hooie thinks she knows more than her bosses, and is willing to state so publicly, do you really think she has any faith in your ability to parent?
Dunbar: Sounds like Dunbar is seeking the union vote early this election cycle. When she runs again (if she runs again), keep her statements in minds. Dunbar is a proxy for the teachers union. Why waste a vote on Dunbar. Simply vote for Eddy.
Eddy: Who runs the show at Olentangy? Hooie made a power play but the real force is the out-of-control union.
Did Galloway put a stop to the nonsense? No way. He was too excited about the action items and his wife's new position.
note: Thanks Delaware Gazette. You got the quotes right but you failed to grasp the significance of the inmates running the show.
24 comments:
I used your link and read the article from the Delaware paper. I thought I had seen some of the worst possible behavior from school boards and school employees where I come from but Olentangy has them beat by miles. How is that a more highly educated bunch of people put up with more blatant chicanery than a mostly blue-collar community? Perhaps it has to do with how many years people spend in school. Perhaps those years spent in college just serve to make people that much more brain dead and easily manipulated. Olentangy has no need for a school board. They can just let the administrators and the school teachers take over the whole thing.
I was curious about this Galloway whose wife is now an employee so I went searching. I see he was not elected. Rather he was appointed.
He is a manager in merchandise planning and analysis for Big Lots and has his fingers in lots of other things including the county Republican Central Committee and the county transit board. Too bad there are so few residents in Delaware County that the same handful of "do-gooders" have to run everything.
Jim:
Can you go in to more detail about what happened at the meeting?
Unfortunately, I was out of town on business and unable to attend!
Thanks in advance!
Taxpayer,
Sorry. All I have is the DelGazette article. The audio should be up soon and then we can all hear the insanity.
Sweet set-up you've got there at Olentangy. The one board member has been totally shut out. She can't do anything. She'll be gone soon and they'll have it all to themselves. It's effectively all theirs now. Makes me wonder what the cops are like in your county (Boss Hog?) when your other office holders are like this? When did this get so far out of control?
Thanks Jim!
It might be helpful if the residents of Delaware County (and every other county) were to visit the web site of
www.iror.org to read their reference guide for recognizing political/societal control tactics by power brokers, large corporations, public relations firms and gov't entities (and school administrations).
4:17 --
Thanks.
Jim:
The link in your story now points to something else.
I'm listening to the audio now.
PL
Paul,
I figured the Del Gazette might recycle those links. Yes, it will all be on the audio.
I just listened to the audio and I can't say I heard anything that raises to the level of the attacks posted here.
Hooie made a point of what she believed on a topic. I don't agree with everything she said but her general position is correct.
It is not the role of a board, any board, to micromanage the organizations administrator/managers. That is true for both profit and non-profit organizations. The procedure as they exist today seem to allow relevant topics to be place on the agenda and discussed strategically. They do not allow every nitpick to clutter up the agenda.
As to community communication, has anyone ever heard of a telephone? I've never had a problem talking to the administration, including the superintendent, or a board member. I've asked for financial data and redistricting data and received what I wanted. I didn't go to a board meeting and grandstand to do any of this.
Finally, I see you couldn't comment on the Finance Committee's report. Good solid suggestions that were mostly accepted to help monitor spending, provide hard data to make decisions, and continue to efficiently spend taxpayer money. Since it is an example of how well this district is run, I shouldn't be surprised it was ignored here.
Neither
Clearly I'm intelligent enough not to get sucked into your wacky world of distrust and conspiracies.
I am a taxpayer who supports the schools and appreciates what we have here.
Evidently, a similar situation exists in every school system. It's the same in Dublin. I have newspaper clippings from years ago when the deceivers were propagandizing for their restructuring the system into Outcome Based Ed. With the most recent scandal involving the last superintendent and the school employee that she had a thing for, the "love triangle" and all that...after she had been hired, paid like a queen, then exposed, then supported by a big gaggle of the school teachers, then sent away, the morons here went out and hired a male version of her and offered him much, much more. The saps here just keep passing higher and higher taxes on themselves with the result being their kids are more and more indoctrinated. I'm wondering when the recession will hit this area and the ten-cent millionaires will start losing their Mcmansions around here?
Intelligent Anonymous Taxpayer,
If it isn't the board's responsibility to provide financial oversight and ensure fiscally responsible spending of our tax dollars, then who's is it?
Ralph
Of course it is the board's responsibility to provide oversight. But oversight is a long way from micromanagement.
It is not the board's responsibility to purchase paperclips or even decide where paperclips are purchased.
It is the board's responsibility to set policy, approve budgets and monitor progress. If the administration wanders from these decisions, then they need to get involved. If the administration doesn't, let them do their jobs.
Also, the board meeting is not the place to go through every detail of the district's operation and every parent's grievance.
Anonymous 12:07:
"It is the board's responsibility to set policy, approve budgets and monitor progress. If the administration wanders from these decisions, then they need to get involved. If the administration doesn't, let them do their jobs."
A member has placed evidence, time and again, of the "administration wander(ing)" from board policy--whether its shoddy financial processes or a Spanish V teacher making her kids commit acts in the classroom that equate to misdemeanor offenses, and the board does NOTHING about it.
"Also, the board meeting is not the place to go through every detail of the district's operation and every parent's grievance."
The board is there to provide oversight. Fair enough, the board pays people to manage the day-to-day operations of the district. The board thus takes it as an article of faith that those in the districts employ are doing their jobs. But when evidence comes forward--heaps of it--that those employees are not doing their jobs its the boards responsibility to take action. The board, again, does NOTHING about it.
Every citizen who goes to the board with a concern or grievance deserves a thoughtful response. Whether the answer is "yes" or "no" the board owes it to every citizen a thoughtful explanation for their decision. I've seen the blank, condescending stares and rolling eyes of Terri Meider and (then) Brad Reynolds several times and thought it was an outrage back then. Galloway at least is respectful in how he handles public participation, but it's still shameful how the board conducts that important feature of the meetings.
Anonymous: what is your definition of "oversight"?
Board member Smith has checked the work of the administration and has found glaring errors and issues that she has brought to the board's attention, with no action (not even a glance, for that matter) by the other board members. She has not told them how to do their jobs--she is pointing out issues and error. If what she is doing is not oversight then I don't know what is.
The only errors Smith has brought to light is her own errors. She has had trouble reading budget and financial reports and has embarrassed herself in public.
The problem is that your complaints have been based on nothing. I'm sure you believe they are transgressions of the first order but based on most of the charges on this board, I'm surprised the board gives them any time at all.
Conspiracies are not breaking out all over Olentangy.
Smith is implementing a methodology known as "Trust but verify." The rest of the board has "Trust" part down. However, only Smith is "Verifying!" During her verification process, she has found glaring increases in budget items, lack of fiscal accountability and discipline, lack of proper budgeting, and some cases where there has been a blatant misuse of funds (Was the levy needed to fund bagels for the administration... I guess so.)
The more she digs, the more she finds. As I listened to the audio from the board meeting three weeks ago, I heard Feasel dismiss $5K as triveal and unimportant. This is typical, as Feasel treats any fiscal issue with disreagard and arrogance, as if to say, "OFK will get the money we need. No one should worry about it.!" The district takes an approach of "Our cost per pupil is lower than everyone elses so we don't need financial oversight." It is their montra... "Low cost per pupil!"
4/5ths of the board are taking "oversight" to a whole new level, by over seeing their responsibilities. It is sad and disgusting.
If most of the taxpayers of the Olentangy District don't care if their money is frittered away then the woman is wasting her time. If they care then she needs to find another way to get her information to the public. Maybe she should have a press conference or a public meeting. She might as well strike while she can because she won't be in her position too much longer.
Anon 609... Help me out?
They can't oust her because they don't like her. So long as she can put up with their shenanigans, then she's not going anywhere.
I think she should be flattered that the district, the union, and the rest of the board are so afraid that they are going to great lengths to intimidate her.
: )
Smith isn't going anywhere. It's the other board members who need to think about keeping their jobs.
The board confuses silence with apathy. The public notices what is going on but, unlike the whackjobs on the other side (the OFK-OTA loons), the silent majority are not activists and don't shriek and flail when they're unhappy; they, unlike teachers and administrators, put in 10 hours a day of actual work and don't have time for such activity or have kids in the district and know that their kids may be mistreated as a result of speaking out.
Rest assured, the public make their opinions known at the ballot box next November.
Dumbo--er...DUNBAR...will be heartbroken to lose another election.
anon 9:21
I'd like to think good will prevail but I've seen these things before. The board members who answer to the taxpayers and expose the funny business are gotten rid of and the members who rubber stamp for the administration are rewarded. Where I come from, all sorts of dirty tricks are employed to keep the crooks in power.
I wouldn't count on it. The more Smith is attacked and demonized the more she digs her heels in and, despite the biased coverage in the local papers, more and more of the community "get it".
It's obvious that Smith is powerless on the board--all she has is her voice, and all of these district spending benefactors and sycophants coming out to condemn her shows just how afraid they are of her VOICE. Why? Because she asks questions in public that they cannot defend, or cannot justify. That has them SCARED TO DEATH.
The districts mission is built upon bogus ratings that increase while our scores decrease, and the high spending is justified against a bogus reason for our "lowest per pupil cost" among our peer cohort. Take out those two pillars and the whole image comes crashing down.
The administration has a vested interest in counter-transparency and need Smith out of the way to continue this wasteful spending and non accountability.
Keep it up, Mrs. Smith. Your adversaries think that you'll back down by pulling the kinds of coordinated stunts like the one they pulled last week, and by relying on the papers to report unfavorably about you. Keep doing what you're doing.
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