It's not the City Council that is out of step; it is the Joplin Globe

The question that is asked in the editorial in today's Joplin Globe is an excellent one.

How did (Mark) Rohr go from hero to goat in so short a time?

The Globe Editorial Board says the City Council must provide the information on why it voted 5-4 earlier this week to fire Rohr. "Without an explanation, clouds of suspicion, doubt and mistrust will haunt this council and paralyze it for some time to come, regardless of who is elected in April."

The Globe, which has stood steadfastly in Mark Rohr's corner, ends the editorial by saying, "City leadership and the community cannot move forward unless they are in step, and right now, it is the council that is out of step, not the community."

Anson Burlingame is an idiot; the Joplin School Board race is not about me

I don't make a habit of calling people idiots, even when their behavior would certainly seem to indicate the label applies.

That being said, Anson Burlingame is an idiot.

One sign of how far the Joplin Globe has fallen over the past few years has been its eagerness to make this man out to be some sort of wise thinker whose columns should appear in the newspaper's pages. The Globe tried a failed experiment a few years back of setting up certain people in the area as bloggers. At first glance, it seemed like the blogs were a success; they were filled with reader comments.

Unfortunately for the Globe, most of the comments were from their own bloggers, bickering with each other.

How much they were paying these people for their wisdom I have no idea, but the experiment came to a screeching halt a couple of years ago.

Since then, the Globe has propped up the two "conservative" bloggers, Burlingame and Geoff Caldwell, by providing them with regular space on the editorial pages as "guest columnists." Both of them were featured on today's opinion page.

Burlingame's column shows just how little the man knows about what is going on in Joplin.

2013 in Review: C. J. Huff $175,000 in 2012-2013, child porn criminal gets $67K

(From October 15, 2013)

The salaries for Joplin R-8 Central Administration shows 34 people who made $50,000 or more during the 2012-2013 school year led by Superintendent C. J. Huff’s $175,000. The 10th highest salary at 32nd and Duquesne belonged to technology employee Ronny Justin Myers who was paid $67,069 for duties that included monitoring high school students’ laptops and resulted in pornographic photos of 10 Joplin students winding up on his laptop.

Myers pleaded guilty earlier this year to child pornography charges and is awaiting sentencing.

Joplin R-8 Central Administration Salaries for 2012-2013

(taken from the central database set up by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch)

Things I'm Thinking About, Monday, December 30

A few brief items and thoughts-

-No More Fox Sports Radio in Joplin- When 1450 AM suddenly junked its programming and began playing Christmas music 24 hours a day a few weeks back, I figured the days of the station being a Fox Sports affiliate were numbered. When I tuned in to the station today it was something called "The Dove" and was playing all gospel music. I enjoyed the Fox Sports programming on occasion, though I never did understand why anyone would think that the Texas Rangers, Oklahoma City Thunder, and University of Oklahoma would draw huge audiences. Those interested in Fox Sports Radio can catch it on KSEK-AM, 1340 from Pittsburg.

-Problems With East Middle School and Soaring Heights- The story I am hearing from the Joplin R-8 School District is that there are already problems with the new East Middle School and Soaring Heights Elementary School. Teachers did not receive keys to get into the building when they were supposed to (and they are scheduled to move in next week), construction is not done, and leaks have developed.

-Ronny Justin Myers in Illinois Prison- The man at the center of what should have been the scandal story of the year (except the Joplin Globe and other area media ignored it) will be spending the next 17 years at a Pekin, Illinois, prison. Ronny Justin Myers, who was pulling down $67,000 a year from the Joplin R-8 School District for his job in the technology department, has settled into the medium security prison. Myers, if you remember, is the one who was arrested when he showed up at Northpark Mall to have sex with an underage girl was was greeted by the police. He later admitted that he had pornographic photos on his laptop of 10 Joplin High School students, information that was never told to parents, students, or the Board of Education, leaving questions unanswered about whether anyone should still be concerned about student and teacher privacy.

First Copies of Let Teachers Teach Arrive- The UPS truck arrived Friday with the first shipment of copies of my book of education essays Let Teachers Teach. I am not planning on having any official signing for the book until February or March and I only ordered a few copies, but I am planning on leaving some at Always Buying Books and Changing Hands Book  Shoppe in Joplin.

2013 in Review: Former Joplin Schools tech employee had pornographic photos of high school girls on his laptop

(From September 10, 2013)

After the arrest of Joplin R-8 tech employee Ronny Justin Myers on child sexual exploitation charges earlier this month, Superintendent C. J. Huff told media that Adams' job provided no access to children.

While he may not have had access to the students, Myers did have access to pornographic images of those students, according to a sentencing document filed today in U. S. District Court for the Western District of Missouri.

In the document, Assistant U. S. Attorney Abram McGull says that during a three-hour interview "defendant admitted that he has secretly stored child pornography on his computer. He stated he had approximately 10 child pornography images of Joplin School District co-eds on his laptop. Four of the girl have been positively identified as D. F. (age 15), LS (age 16), GS (age 16) and NC (age 15)."