Thursday, 11 May 2000 07:20
Last Updated on Friday, 29 April 2011 19:21
Written by The Editor
There's Little Time Left & A Shocking Revelation
TVCSD's Board of Education and Superintendent fear the budget's defeat. And their concerted efforts to denigrate the efforts of and bring down the Waking Bear are failing miserably. Board President Bill Connors and Superintendent John Sonedecker continue to dismiss the merits of the Waking Bear by attacking its "anonymity!" Sonedecker's summary depiction, in a recent Village Times article, being, "Its one thing to complain and criticize, but it's another to have enough guts to really come forward." Basically, the same senseless argument provided by his predecessor, now kicking cow manure from her pumps.
Neither he nor Connors have much to say in rebuttal to Bear content, except with the most general and dismissive of terms and in ways former attendees of BOE meetings are quite familiar with, i.e.: "The Budget's too complicated for mere mortals to understand. You don't have all the facts. Thank you for your input. " Always with the implied suggestion that, "We're in command of things here. You really don't have to worry. Trust me, I'm from the government" It's a well practiced illusion ladies and gentleman: "Attack the messenger and ignore the message."
Well, THE fact is they want to raise the budget more than 12%. It's comes down to just that. Twelve and one-half percent: yes or NO??? Their rationalizations for it are without redeeming value. The amount is absurdly high. It is a harbinger of still greater economic waste and still higher budgets in the future. Therefore, it must be defeated.
Two points. Both are important. The first will come as a shock to some, but certainly not to the more alert TVTA membership. The second is something I want you to do for all of us: the children, parents and the empty nesters.
First, for more than five years, emails furious about Waking Bear revelations have crossed my computer screen. Some expressed such things as a desire to rip out my heart. One said its author wished to tear off my head and spit in the hole. Whew! More vivid examples of "attack the messenger and ignore the message" you could not find.
These strokes of brilliance usually came from parents and teachers, outraged that an uninformed lout such as myself existed and, perhaps far worse, lived in their midst.
Once in a great while, a writer would attempt a rational discussion, explaining away my failing as being the result of some tragic and traumatic injury in my academic experience that had "forever sullied my opinion of" the gods that are "teachers."
Now, stay with me on this, please. Its important, as what I'm to say destroys the validity of the arguments offered by every Board member, Administrator and union official the Waking Bear has ever taken to task.
Occasionally, I would continue my discourse with the empathic, who assumed me to be but one more of life's lost souls. Then, something would happen. A sort of epiphany. They saw that I knew more about teaching than the uninitiated should. And, they were right.
I was a licensed teacher as early as 1974, in New York City.
One former disabled teacher of this district and shortwhile writer for one of our local "newspapers" thought me a professor. He was only half-right, I'd only been an assistant professor.
I was really very good at it. But, like all those capable of "doing" and not just teaching, I moved on.
Then one day, five years ago, because of the growing hubris and sheer arrogance seen in union greed and weakness in this district's administration and Board of Education executives, I sat before this computer and tackled one of the largest tasks imaginable in these United States, assaulting - as a former participant - everything I've seen wrong with the education system. Most importantly, I sought to expose - brutally, if necessary - leadership's failure to truly seek or respect the opinions of the general public, the body that feeds it. To them, you and I will always be "anonymous" and disenfranchised.
I've attempted to shed light on something that shall never be a profession in the truest sense but something more approximating an artistic skill, a really special talent that cannot be acquired in textbooks or the pursuit of graduate degrees in educational methodology.
I've read the disgruntled rantings of those of you manipulated, intimidated and disregarded by PTA leadership and teachers. I've been privy to the lies and back-stabbings perpetrated by administrators to control individual teachers, their unions and the public. And, just like those of you paying attention to the goings on of this district over the last six years, I've watched as the Board of Education so often chose submission rather than conflict.
Education, it has been said, is too important to be left in the hands of educators alone. Over fifty years, politicians and misguided doctors of education have turned our nation's system into an international embarrassment. Why then should we believe, without question, in the decisions of our local examples of such otherwise abysmal leadership?
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