Chaos at Board Meeting

Last night's Richland 2 School Board meeting disintegrated into chaos during the discussion of Item 13.1, the plan (by some) to change the date of the second Regular Meeting in March. The superintendent wants to hop off to Los Angeles, and the board needed to approve the change, if it wanted to accommodate his absence.

I had written a email to the board members (and to the the two illegal Trustees-elect), suggesting a few questions and wondering why they didn't hold to the schedule and just have an Assistant Superintendent fill in. Separate articles will follow and will describe the superintendent's snide and demeaning accusation toward one of the trustees and the personal attacks on me by several board members. As soon as the video-recording is published on YouTube by the District, I'll identify the locations of these remarks by the timer on the recording.

You won't want to waste your time listening to the whole two-hour meeting. Frankly, the entire board shouldn't have wasted its time conducting the whole meeting.

All in all, it was a great way to spend the evening of my 81st birthday. I thought about using my three minutes during Public Participation to sing Happy Birthday to me, but I figured that my presence was enough torture for them.

Several thoughts came to mind last night, and I'll expand on them in the following articles. One was "There is no such thing as a short answer". Another was the need for a new honorary degree of M.B.S.  The name of the first honoree is ...  (I'll delay the surprise.)

The disrespect for the Board Chair is amazing. Most board members are either ignorant of meeting rules and just blatantly disregard them. I'll go with the latter. This board would do well to invite the Robert's Rules of Order expert back for a thorough training and ask her to explain the Rules to them in a way they can understand. Kindergarten-level might be needed for many of the board members.

McKie, Shadd and Caution-Parker really ought to think about choosing to bash the man who writes a blog. Their ugliest warts will be exposed - over and over.

The Board Chair should exert his proper and allowable authority over the Board for the conduct of a meeting. James Manning is a nice guy and doesn't want to rule with a heavy hand. The result? Same as in a classroom. A bunch of unruly colleagues just walk all over him. When a board member wants to go on a tear off-topic, he should interrupt them and bring everyone back on topic.