Thursday, June 11, 2009

Bullies Complaining About Bullies


My Granddaughter Graduating from Plant: She goes to college to become a grammar-school teacher. I know she will love it.


http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/09/health/09klas.html?em Times article on bullying


The school board Hillsborough County is singing a different tune on bullying than it did a few years ago when I became acquainted with Bart Birdsall, who along with the mother of a gay son at Hillsborough High was trying to get the board to do something about the bullying of gay children.

Bart, who is gay, had gay students' telling him they wanted to commit suicide because of the bullying they endured in the schools.


I recall running Dr. Lennard down at a Tiger Bay meeting in a pair of Manola stilettos to catch him and get him to promise to have the seminars Bart pleaded for that has worked in Miami schools to quell bullying. He promised he would. He lied.

I also recall my first encounter with Candy Olson at this time. A teacher had a Bible on his desk and used it to proselytize a gay student, telling him he would go to hell for being gay. Since this school was in Olson's district, I wrote her to complain about this teacher with his Bible's torturing the gay student.

Ms. Olson, who now gives full-throated support to the new awareness of the need for controlling bullying, sent me back a snippy email in which she said, "The last time I heard, we still have the First Amendment."

She has not shown much fondness for the First Amendment in my observation of the board for two years. Nor did she fulfill a promise to Bart Birdsall to attend to a gay student being bullied at the time when she was sending out asinine emails to people complaining about a teacher with a Bible on his desk torturing a gay boy by telling him he would land in hell for being gay.

I am never one to suffer obnoxious public servants in silence. I wrote back to La Olson with one of my crisper rebukes and called the principal. She stopped the teacher from torturing the student and made him remove the Bible from his desk, good administrator that she was.

Suddenly, bullying is getting not only local but national attention, and things are looking up for abused children. This is no thanks to board members like Ms. Olson who has sat on the board forever and never raised a finger to intervene, although she promised Bart Birdsall that she would.

Now she is in full-throated praise of the bullying situation's coming to the attention of the flaccid group of administrators who sit on the board and never see what's before them for the needs of the students. They are too busy scurrying around trying to propitiate bully Elia and get on her good side, a fruitless task since Ms. Elia has no good side.

Ms. Olson, Dr. Lamb, and Ms. Kurdell, all on the board when Dr. Lennard and his two ghouls Hamilton and Davis, were systematically torturing Mr. Erwin, trying to run him crazy, claiming his was crazy, trying to fire him, and trying to deprive him of his pension until Mr. Erwin shut them down with the jury's help in his Whistleblower suit against the board.

Bullying is just fine with board members if it's the administration's bullying teachers with the Professional Standards bullying machine or an administration's bullying an administrator who asks the superintendent and board to do something about rampant crime on campus or some other pressing need not felt at ROSSAC.


This situation is political hypocrisy of elected officials if anything is. Ms. Kurdell called Mr. Turlington a liar for not devoting a hundred percent of the lottery money to the schools instead of only 33 percent. Now she knows how people who wanted her and the rest of the board to protect gay children from bullying feel.

The board is all hat and no cattle in the things that count. If Ms. Olson and her board colleagues were any less active in protecting the county's children with both academic and social problems, they would be motionless. lee drury de cesare

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I have to say with complete honesty that my time on the Anti-Bullying Committee back then (I am guessing around 2000 or 2001.....sometime around then) was one of the most frustrating experiences of my life. I felt like I was in the Twilight Zone. We sat around thinking up slogans, logos, wondering if pencils should be ordered to pass out with the slogan. I kept bringing up the specific problems glbt students have, and little by little people agreed, but then I was put on a subcommittee, and I sometimes wonder if that was to get me away from the larger group and hush me up. I hope I am wrong. It is a long story. What I learned is that many people care only about appearances and not true compassion and solutions to end bullying. I offered to meet with anyone from the district to plan out a voluntary training that I would conduct for free (I would accept no money) on my own time (even Saturdays) just so teachers could have access to info. I attended a training on glbt issues in Miami where teachers were thanking the presenter b/c these issues were popping up in their classrooms, and they had no idea what to do. It was the first time in my life that I saw teachers THANKFUL for a training. Usually they are there against their will or just because they had to choose something. A right wing Bible thumper attended (she thought it was a training on fire safety) and even admitted that what was being said about protecting glbt teens was excellent and that she agreed with it. I offered to give the district veto power over anything in the training. I was 100% sure that teachers would attend after hours or on Saturday to get this info. It is info that teachers want and don't know where to get it. This was around the time when I lost respect for a certain school board member. It is sad to see that a horrible incident at a school would finally wake the board up. I predicted something terrible was going to happen years ago. I really find it incredibly sad that my prediction came true.

Bart

Anonymous said...

"I felt like I was in the Twilight Zone. We sat around thinking up slogans, logos, wondering if pencils should be ordered to pass out with the slogan. I kept bringing up the specific problems glbt students have, and little by little people agreed, but then I was put on a subcommittee, and I sometimes wonder if that was to get me away from the larger group and hush me up."

This is right out of the Delphi technique:

http://www.eagleforum.org/educate/1998/nov98/focus.html