Wednesday, October 6, 2021

What is a School Board Commissioner (in Richland 2)?

Recently I asked Richland 2 to update the biographical profile of trustee-elect Teresa Holmes, who is being allowed to serve as board chair, because she was no longer employed by the Fairfield County School District. She was also identified as a "widower" which, I was pretty sure, was not correct.

Today I happened to read her Facebook page, and I see that she still describes herself as "Assistant Administrator /Guidance at Fairfield County School District", which isn't correct.

According to Fairfield County School District she was a "School Counselor/Lead Teacher" with some administrative responsibilities if the CTC Director was absent. She separated from FCSD on August 1, 2021. Shouldn't she change her Facebook page to reflect that as her former employment?

Separately, Holmes lists "Assistant Administrator/Guidance/Adjunct Professor at Guidanc [sic] Counselor/Adjunct Professor" (whatever that is supposed to mean).

I wonder where "Guidanc [sic] Counselor/Adjunct Professor is located. Is there any organization by that name?

I doubt that Facebook has a Fact Checker on titles like that.

And, on the very top line, she identifies herself as a School Board "Commissioner". Holmes was elected to the Richland 2 School Board on November 6, 2018, and she should know by now that Richland 2 does not have school board commissioners. Why would she ever use that title? Richland 2 has trustees. Did she think she was elected to the Richland 1 Board, where they do have commissioners?

What are your thoughts? Should people elected to public office kept their profiles and public information up-to-date and correct? Comments below, please.

The Power of the Cancel Culture

Take 5-6 minutes now and read this article about a University of Chicago professor whose lecture at MIT was canceled.

I encourage your special attention to the paragraph beginning "On August 12..." Just in case you don't take time for the article itself, here is that paragraph:

"On August 12, a colleague and I wrote an op-ed in Newsweek in which we argued that Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) as it currently is implemented on campus “violates the ethical and legal principle of equal treatment” and “treats persons as merely means to an end, giving primacy to a statistic over the individuality of a human being.” We proposed instead “an alternative framework called Merit, Fairness, and Equality (MFE) whereby university applicants are treated as individuals and evaluated through a rigorous and unbiased process based on their merit and qualifications alone.” We noted that this would mean an end to legacy and athletic admission advantages, which significantly favor white applicants." 

How often do you hear "Diversity, Equity and Inclusion" right here in Richland 2? Do you really understand what it means and what happens in the school system when those words become the rules, the process, the policy?

What happens to the rights of others? of everyone else?

The Richland 2 superintendent's pet project is "100 Premier Men of Color", because he and some on the board want a face at the front of the classroom that looks like the faces in the seats in the classroom. In other words, black students in the seats? Black face up front.

Isn't that really racism?

And the superintendent told the board that he is not even evaluated on that project. So, why is it in the  Richland 2 school system? 

Why doesn't the board direct him to submit his project to the board for evaluation, consideration and approval (or not)?

He might want to think about hurrying to do that. Should the composition of the board shift in November 2022, a new board might tell him to shut down that project.