I don't believe it can be done.
How in the world will the Joplin Globe, the area newspaper of record, be able to tell the story of why teachers are leaving the Joplin R-8 School District en masse without using anonymous sources?
The fear that has enveloped this school district is not going to be understood if the reporter or reporters who try to tell the story do so through quotes and manipulations of statistics by self-serving administrators or through quotes from teachers whose names have been provided to them by the same administrators.
That story is reportedly going to be in the Sunday Globe, just one week after the Globe told what was purportedly the full story of district administrators' travel since the May 22, 2011, Joplin Tornado, complete with cutesy quotes about Superintendent C. J. Huff's predilection toward white chocolate mocha at Starbucks.
In this past week, I have heard from teachers who have left the school district who are still afraid to talk about what they encountered while they were here, because they are afraid of what will happen if they incur the wrath of Huff or Assistant Superintendent Angie Besendorfer.
I have heard from two former employees, neither of whom left the district voluntarily, but both of whom had prospective employers receive calls from R-8 administrators trying to convince them not to hire them. With this kind of malicious conduct, it is no wonder people are afraid to talk. It does not take long for the word to get around.
Nor did it take long for the message to get around when some employees, (including this one) were railroaded out of the district on trumped-up charges and then escorted out of their buildings by police officers so that other teachers and staff will get the message that this is what happens when you mess with Administration. (Is this really the reason why Joplin Police officers have been stationed at our schools?)
When nearly every principal who was here when C. J. Huff arrived no longer is employed by the district, and most of those, even those who "resigned" left at the request of Administration, and more than 200 teachers have left in the past two years, there is something dreadfully wrong in the way business is being conducted.
I hope for the sake of parents, students, taxpayers, teachers, staff, and all others who are genuinely concerned about education that the Globe tells the real story in its Sunday edition, if the story is published tomorrow.
The Joplin Globe's nod and a wink to R-8 Administration, especially in the aftermath of the tornado, has provided a smokescreen through which Administration has been able to do whatever it wants, no matter what the cost in terms of money (millions) or in terms of the horrific atmosphere that exists in the school district.
This is your big chance, Globe. Don't blow it.
4 comments:
The Globe never followed up on the trip that 27 non classroom teachers made to Washington D.C. $30,000 is quite a bit of money to spend!
You're setting the bar way too high, Mr. Turner. They'll never make those standards. That's why I'm switching to Inside Joplin. So I can get the whole truth about what happens in this area.
I wonder what the Globe's silence cost, anyway? I guess more than they predicted they'd earn actually selling real news. Way to go, Bessie! Those Saturday breakfasts with Carol Stark paid off big time! Way to take a hit for the team.
The Globe hasn't followed up on the travel to these education conferences either. They take community people along to help spin their message when they return. It probably costs $250k per trip for travel, hotel and food stipends. Since the tornado, that is easily approaching 1 Million!
Prior to August of 2011, those extravagant trips were paid for with stimulus funds. Those funds were also used to pay for the salaries of the TLCs and various other nonessential staff that we were doing perfectly fine without. That money could have been used for additional teachers and materials, but that's water under the bridge now. It was just several million dollars. Nothing at all compared to the money being wasted these days.
Since 2011, though, how the trips and the HUGE number of staff have been financed has been a great curiosity for many of us. Don't you think it's time we found out? Yes, yes it is. I'm sure we'll know within a week or two.
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