An offer you can't refuse: The empire that C. J. and Angie created- Part II

The work day began early and ended late for one of the best principals in the Joplin R-8 School District.

Beloved by parents and staff, she had every reason to believe that she would be staying in her current position until the day, far in the future, when she retired.

As far as this principal knew, she was still on the good side of Assistant Superintendent Angie Besendorfer, something that was not easy. She, like the rest of the principals in the district, spent much of her time attending a series of never-ending, totally scripted meetings called by Besendorfer.

They always began with celebrations, though many of those seemed to be forced, just because she required them to have something to celebrate.

On this particular day, the principal received an unexpected visitor from the central administration office.

The greeting was friendly, but the principal sensed something was wrong. That was confirmed moments later, when the visitor said, "We want your resignation effective at the end of the school year."

The principal asked why, what had she done wrong? It wasn't anything she had done, the principal was told. Room had to be made for someone else and she was the one who had to go.

"And if I don't resign?"

"Then we will make sure you never work again."

Suddenly, resignation became an offer the principal couldn't refuse.

For a brief time, the principal thought about fighting, but she had heard one horror story after another about those who got in the way of what Angie Besendorfer wanted.

She submitted her resignation.

Things did not quite turn out the way Besendorfer expected. People were upset about what had happened to the principal and the chosen replacement would have been walking into a buzz saw. So someone new was brought in at that school, while Besendorfer promoted another principal, Jennifer Doshier of McKinley Elementary to central office, and saw to it that the person she wanted as a principal, former director of curriculum and instruction Terri Hart was the new principal at McKinley, despite not having a principal's certificate.

This principal is not the only one who received the Besendorfer treatment. Two others reported that after they were ushered out of the R-8 School District through no fault of their own, potential employers received calls from Besendorfer suggesting that hiring them might not be a good idea.

In one of those cases, the school board, being familiar with Angie Besendorfer, immediately hired the former principal.

When Besendorfer decided she wanted someone out of the way, she had no problem with putting the people in the technology department to work digging up dirt on those people. She worked hand in hand during the past couple of years with the technology director and human relations director Tina Smith to usher out one teacher after another. Others, tired of dealing with a school district that held little value for teachers or staff, left on their own. Not many of them left because their spouses had found work in another community, as Superintendent C. J. Huff said, or because of lingering after-effects from the tornado.

By the time Besendorfer was done, more than 200 teachers had left the district in less than 13 months, or nearly a third of the teaching staff.

I was one of those people. In March 2012, I was called in to East Middle School Principal Bud Sexson's office after I had written a Turner Report post about Missouri Southern State University President Bruce Speck. I was told that H. R. Director Tina Smith (at the time I did not know who that was) had said I was not to write about Missouri Southern or Bruce Speck any more because Bruce Speck was a friend of the district and a "lunch buddy" at East. Furthermore, Sexson said "they" did not want me to write any more about politics or politicians because they wanted to get money from them. He did not say who they were.

At approximately the same time, I have since found out, Besendorfer ordered tech workers in the Administration office to "find something on Randy Turner."

This was four months before the book that supposedly got me fired, No Child Left Alive, was published, and a full year before the publication of Scars from the Tornado, the book that supposedly stirred the administration's effort and began the research that uncovered No Child Left Alive.

When something was found on me, it was taken to Besendorfer and miraculously at about the same time, Besendorfer's friend, Lisa Orem, the administrator who, according to DESE, is only qualified to be a K-8 teacher, began her own research on me and uncovered a little known website that I had used for classroom purposes three years earlier and had put a post on it offering free downloads of No Child Left Alive.

After that, someone in upper administration slipped word to the Joplin Globe about No Child Left Alive, virtually ending my chances of being hired by a school district and forcing me into the May 23 hearing, where Tina Smith referred to my students showing signs of "grooming," Technology Director Klista Rader said I tagged more photos of school girls than boys (though I have never "tagged" anyone), Bud Sexson called me a liar who had never told him about the tornado book, and of course C. J. Huff cried and said he couldn't sleep at night if I stayed in the school district.

These are just a handful of the lives Angie Besendorfer, with the look-the-other-way consent of Huff and the members of the Joplin R-8 Board of Education, have attempted to ruin. There are many, many more stories and with Besendorfer finally announcing her departure today, I have a feeling that finally, at long last, the truth about the last few years and the horrors that teachers and staff in the school district have had to live through, will finally be revealed.

The empire that C. J. and Angie created, was built on fear, and that kind of power never lasts long.

(More to come)

Bleeding the taxpayers dry: The empire that C. J. and Angie created- Part I