Stomping on the First Amendment

I am still around, and I have not abandoned my newly designed blog. Interestingly, after writing “Cruel and Unusual Punishment” the long arm of the district’s upper management reached out to give me a swat. They were none too pleased with that installment of the “Felony” series. When I say, “give me a swat,” I mean, through a third party, they actually contacted me by telephone to express their displeasure. I was encouraged to cease writing about that subject. For the moment, I have assuaged to their demands.

This above comment by Goader-Steve Kemp-shows the administration and board's either ignorance of the First Amendment or contempt for it. In any event, the ROSSAC Nazis don't think citizens and members of the public have a right to it when discussing the schools.

Jennifer Falliero goes bonkers when she gets a gavel in her hand: drunk with power. I saw her threaten to throw April Griffin out of the board room when Griffin asked for the newly revised traveling-money rules be waived so that she could go on a romp somewhere at the taxpayers' expense. You would think she would have better sense than request waiving of the travel-money rules that had been so abused in the previous year that even the somnolent press woke up and wrote about the scandal.

This request got a hostile response from La Falliero, egged on by Dr. Hamilton, who sat beside La Jennifer and coached her on how to madden Griffith. I have never seen these two exercised about anything that involves matters besides themselves. They don't scream about problems in the schools or abuse of the teachers by Elia et al.

In fact, when Steve Kemp's eight-month probation term came up, the board lapsed into obvious ennui during the discussion that suggested, "Why are we wasting our valuable time discussing the abuse of a mere teacher? I am interested only in things that involve me, me, me, me."

At the beginning of Board Member Falliero's incumbency as chair shortly after her in-school adultery had been spread about, she and the chief of the ROSSAC prison guards threw me out of the board room. The charge was that I had violated protocol by speaking someone's name at the podium.

Tom Gonzalez, ever prepared to cover illegal behavior of board members with faux-legal gloss, said later that my speaking someone's name might "violate the person's privacy." Tom Gallagher cares about as much about violating a person's privacy as he cares about the scandal of his holding the lawyer perch for 37 years, which his firm got on a good ol' boy handshake.

La Chair Jennifer was getting back at me for outing her adultery on my blog. I knew that. I acted well. I did not do cartwheels in a rage and show my underwear.

The sequel to this was that Tom Gallagher tried to give Ms. Falliero an understanding of the First Amendment in a between-board-meetings session. He started out, I wager, "Now once upon a time there were these three bears who lived in the ROSSAC building...." He wanted to keep her attention. Hers can be grabbed with a story she knows and understands like "The Three Bears." Chair Jennifer demonstrated the effectiveness of this lecture by opining from her chair position the next board meeting that "Mr. Gonzalez has taught me that the First Amendment means that people can come before the board and say any mean thing they want to."

That's right. People can. And people should if they don't want elected officials to morph into royalty. Power corrupts. We know this from the board's savaging of Mr. Erwin and teachers. And we know it from their regal airs on the podium and pissing away tax money to fly around the country on larks with a hey nonny nonny.

This continual administration problem with recognizing that teachers have free-speech rights gets exposure in the crude phone call to Goader from the administration to shut him up about a topic he discussed on his blog.

In addition to ignoring Steve's free-speech rights, this call suggests coercion in its premise that if Goader wants to go back into the classroom cleared of the trumped-up charge of child abuse that the sheriff threw out, he must muzzle his blog or better discontinue it. I see the quid pro quo of blackmail in that free-speech-squashing call. The administration will swap him his blog for his right for a return to the classroom. Pretty crude, isn't it? Pretty stinking awful, in fact. These administrators are moral and ethical brutes who can't make their subjects agree with their verbs. Fie upon them, I say.

I don't know what Steve Kemp means when he says he "assuaged" the administration's demands. I hope he used the word without knowing its full meaning. I hope he digs in his heels and does not abandon his blog. lee