Reader: The arrogance of the Huff Administration will lead to its undoing

(A reader had some strong comments to make last night about the Joplin R-8 Schools and the C. J. Huff Administration.)

There's no point in listening to the current board and administration self-delusions - the numbers regarding student performance have been bad extending back beyond the tornado.

Nearly every district in the immediate area is outperforming Joplin. If that is the case, why debate? Why not do what Carl Junction or Webb City does? We're not talking different cultures here; if they can do it we should be able to at least approximate their success.

Graduation rates are apparently the most easily massaged. Let's not actually bow to the expertise of educators, let's pretend that a big personality and bullying your way to the top in "business" can substitute for knowledge. Let's pretend that friendships between administrators somehow translates to effective education, stretching legality in the interest of mutual backscratching.

When you look at the way things are done, from being inside the building in the middle of the night when registering for the ballot, to bloating administration and cutting education, to wasting more time and energy on political enemies than on the practical concerns of teaching... how can anyone look at this and see success? Only resident ball-boy Anson Burlingame is capable of those kinds of mental gymnastics, kissing the balls as he flips.

It is not wrong that some among our voting public want to give our leaders the benefit of the doubt, to try and look at things from both sides. The truth is there, however, in the student performance, in the barely-there accreditation last year, in the rejected federal funds due to "lack of transparency", in the teacher and principal turnover rate which is readily apparent to any parent of district students, in the sweeping away of Besendorfer, in the lawsuits against the district, and in the mere fact that such heated debate is taking place at all.

Some will say that there are always critics and bitter people. That may be, but where the bitter are truly extreme they do not gain traction. They remain on the outskirts and are laughed at or hated, not unlike the Westboro Baptist Church --- even people who agree with some of the WBC's beliefs tend to distance themselves from that church because of how extreme they are perceived to be.

Southernwatch and The Turner Report gain traction because there is something real there. When the problems as MSSU seemed to resolve with the elimination of Speck, so too did the internet debate die down. There is a relationship between smoke and fire, and while this relationship may seem obvious to some it requires pointing out in our current climate. There are those who either wish to deny it for personal and professional reasons (Huff, Flowers, Stark, etc.) and there are those who deny it do to a peculiar and otherwise inexplicable brand of self-delusion (Burlingame).

This situation with R-VIII will not be over regardless of how the school board election turns out, but it may move closer to resolution if we can issue a clear referendum on the Huff / Besendorfer / Flowers administration via the election of Fort, Koch, and Guilford.

This is what we build towards, moments where we can actually do something. I understand it will not be easy, especially difficult due to the influx of candidates, money, political influence, and deceptive practices. The little guys don't always win, but we have to try and keep trying even if we get knocked down.

Let us hope that the arrogance of this administration will contribute to its undoing. Just as they lacked the foresight to see that firing Randy Turner at all costs only made his influence that much greater - to the point that he is the biggest thorn in the side of Huff, Stark, et al - so too let us hope they have placed too much faith in their own "righteous cause," a cause which is ultimately nothing more than the big-fish-in-the-small-pond who are used to bullying their way around and have mistaken those successes for knowing what they are doing.

Bless this feast we are about to receive.

Amen.