To the person who just asked about how to recoup the Spring money: you are entitled--any citizen is--to get the total information package on the Spring.
If the administration is getting any sweeteners, that will be in the information packet. Send a request to Linda Cobbe of the information office. She will send it to you. Be persistent. If you don't get what you want, try again. One of the charges I have against the board lawyer with the Florida Bar Ethics Commission is that he didn't acknowledge my requests and send me public information.
The only way people ever get any action on what concerns them from the government is to complain. Not once. But constantly. The School Board is a bunch of politicians. They are not interested in the school system. They are interested in getting elected to public office because that makes them feel important. A few will be interested in education--miracles do occur, and for those we should thank Our Maker.
Four are up for re-election in August. If you want Spring dumped, contact these incumbents and their challengers and tell them what you want them to do about the Spring program. They won't know and won't care unless they think it will cost them votes.
Teachers outnumber administrators. Any politician can count noses. So point out that teachers are against this program and that they will hold the board accountable for letting Elia dump it on them with no teacher assessment.
There is nothing to do but fight. People don't give up power unless you fight them for it. Too few people are willing to take the risk. Fortunately, I like to fight. Show me a controversy, and I'm there--right in the middle of it, giving my two cents.
When I taught at HCC for 28 years, I was always on the front lines of protest. That's the safest place to be--right out in front. Elia and Kipley won't dare try to fire you if you are at the board meetings every week not begging and pleading but demanding. If they try to pick on you, don't whine in the halls and cafeteria. Gird up your loins and wade in.
If they touch you, you can always ask the ACLU to take your case or get a young lawyer hungry for the fame of fighting a free-speech case for an aggrieved teacher whom the board has tried to flatten.
Poor Mr. Erwin was too nice. That was his problem. I wish I had been around to be his publicity agent. I would have leafleted, complained, trumpeted, blasted, and made a to-do about the board and administration's--along with Tom Gonzalez's firm, I infer--skullduggery until its members would be sorry they got up in the morning. Turn over the rocks and let the roaches run out and be seen is my motto. Roaches are bold only in the dark.
Look how Bart Birdsall has immunized himself against retaliation by fighting the administration's made-up charge against him. A trustee at HCC said that I would be the hardest person at the college to fire.
Wrap yourself in the First Amendment and say what you want to say against the Spring gimcrack program. Nobody can kill you. And nobody can shut you up.
Not protecting the free speech of the citizens who come before the board--and teachers are citizens--is one of the charges I have made against Tom Gonzalez with the Florida Commission of Ethics. This week he must answer that and my other three charges in writing to the Ethics Commission and send me a copy so that I can make my rebuttal comments for the Commission. Mr. Gonzalez tardily took La Belle Dame Sans Merci aside and told her the facts about the First Amendment after she kicked me out for citing Bruce Burnham by name. She tremulously said at the next board meeting whilst seated on her board throne that she now understood that citizens can get up and say any "mean and hurtful thing" they want to.
That's right. They can. That's the magic of the Constitution in our democracy. The First Amendment protects what you say from Falliero's gavel. I cannot believe that a 45-year old woman pushing 50 years of age--all spent in a democracy--did not know this information.She took an oath of office to defend the Constitution and doesn't know what the Constitution says.
Every citizen should know how ignorant board members are about the laws they are supposed to uphold; and the teachers should be teachers and spread this information to voters.
Ms. Ethridge just got an opponent. He has a degree in physics. We need that kind of brains on the board. Get in touch with him and discuss the Spring problem. Ditto for Valdes and Lamb. Both have an opponent. Ask Valdes and Lamb why they sat by and let Elia dump this program on teachers without their input. Talk to all incumbents' opponents. If they can't prevent Ms. Elia from downloading an extra a period on teachers, grade-inflation schemes, and this Spring dodad program that is bound to be a pricey howdy-doodie toy by the vultures who produce such things to feed off education, then make sure their opponents will do those good jobs for the integrity of education and work to support the opponents.
I don't know if you were in the group of teachers for whom I arranged the Tribune visit recently. You should have been if you were not. The group educated the editor of editorials about their concerns. And she took them seriously. Had you been there, you could have talked about the Spring gimcrack.
And cheer up Goader, pray. He's crying the blues about not enough teachers' being concerned about all the board and administration wrongdoing. Wrongdoing is a growth industry. That's life. A handful of teachers is all you need to start a revolution--not a bazillion--only a handful. One person can do it in a pinch. When you start winning, the others who hung back will join you--and claim they were there from the get-go. I learned that fact from 45 years in the Women's Movement. Some of the most obdurate Aunt Toms in the Bay Area are now claiming they were right there on the front lines instead of sneering at us radicals and calling us "unladylike" in the beginning years. I don't refute them when they parade around and give interviews about how they were on the barricades. Let them posture and tell fibs. They are a piece of the continent, a part of the main. The world needs its quotient of cowards.
Cowardice is human nature: to hang back and let others do risky work and take the blows is what most people do. But only with the resistance of a few pathfinders to wrongdoing will the world change.
lee
