Joplin R-8 Superintendent C. J. Huff says that in order for a school district to function effectively the superintendent and the board of education must be joined at the hip.
That reference is made during the accompanying video of the superintendent's speech from the Missouri School Boards Association's annual conference at Tan-Tar-A in 2011. It was made in reference to the aftermath of the Joplin Tornado, but it can also be reflected in the long list of 7-0 votes recorded by the Joplin R-8 Board of Education, which has an unwritten policy of having its final votes listed as 7-0 no matter how divided or contentious the discussions leading up to those votes in cloced sessions may have been.
That gives the impression, encouraged by the MSBA training board members have undergone, that the board is speaking as one, and not as individuals.
The only problem with that is that it gives the public no idea of how board members really stand on anything.
References to MSBA training begin at the 5:30 mark of this video, while the "joined at the hip" comment can be found at about the 6:30 mark.
Dr. Huff's praise of the board of education for giving him and his administrative team carte blanche to spend whatever they needed to without receiving board approval can be found beginning at around the 3:20 mark.
2 comments:
At least they're upfront about this much. We kind of knew that already though, didn't we?
It's time for some surgery to separate this bunch.
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