Stop the Woke-ness in Richland 2

 Every teacher and administrator should read and print this article from FoxNews yesterday.

The first sentence in the story reads, "A public university in Ohio will pay $400,000 in damages and attorney fees after punishing a professor for declining a male student's demand to be referred to as a female."

Read "Ohio public university to pay $400,000 in damages after punishing professor over preferred pronoun controversy"

The world does not need to conform to a few people who think they are special. 

Trustee-elect Teresa Holmes, acting Board Chair since July 1, 2021, told the audience and online viewers at the end of the February 8, 2022 board meeting to "Stay Woke". No, Teresa; sorry, you are wrong.

How many teachers and administrators are being threatened right now in Richland 2 for the same reason that professor was punished?

Holmes and the board should be telling the superintendent to direct his staff to eliminate wokeness from their signature lines on email and other correspondence. Eliminate that line with "personal pronouns she, her". If I see the name Carolyn (an example (apologies to all Carolyns)), I know she is female. I don't need to see "she, her". Of course, the issue in this article is different.

Why do I refer to Teresa Holmes as "trustee-elect" and "acting" Board Chair?

Holmes is "trustee-elect" because, although she was elected to the school board on November 6, 2018, she has, to this day, never taken the oath-of-office legally. She did take an oath on November 13, 2018, but that was three full weeks before she first became eligible to take the oath on December 4, 2018.

And why "acting" Board Chair? Only legitimate Board members can be elected as officers of the Board. The board was reminded of this on June 29, 2021, during Public Participation before the nominations were opened for the board election for the 2021-2022 school year. 

As soon as nominations opened, the first very nomination was made to Trustee Manning. He was present during Public Partipation and heard my plea to the board to nominate and elect only fully-qualified board members. Yet the call for nominations for board chair was hardly out of the mouth of the board-election moderator, when Manning popped up and nominated Holmes.

By that time in the meeting, I was watching from home. Good thing, too, or I might have sprung from my chair and shouted, "Point of Order"!

Look at the chaos that has enveloped the board since July 1, 2021. The public can thank the board majority and especially James Manning.

So, if you are "woke", stay home

New McKie Ethics Complaint Heads for Hearing

An ethics complaint against Richland School District Two's trustee-elect Amelia McKie is headed to a hearing before the South Carolina Ethics Commission.

When McKie filed her 2021 Statement of Economic Interests Report (Disclosures for 2020) with the Ethics Commission on January 12, 2021, she did not report her income from Richland School District Two. 

A really good question is why she would fail to disclose that $9,600 received from Richland Two. Did she just forget it? Or neglect to enter it in the very simple form on the Commission's website? She had reported it in previous years. Why not in the 2021 Report?

The Commission will hold a hearing on June 16, 2022 at 9:30AM at its offices at 201 Executive Center Drive. The hearing is open to the public.

McKie did file an Amended SEI Report on December 23, 2021 and disclosed the income from Richland 2 at that time. 

McKie has other woes related to Ethics Commission filings. On July 10, 2019 the Ethics Commission filed a judgment in Richland Count Common Pleas Court for $51,750.

Since the filing of that judgment, she has had additional problems with the Ethics Commission, and her total debt, as of February 22, 2022, is $57,100. Three Default Years are shown: 2016, 2020, 2021. Why is her debt going up, instead of down? Why isn't she paying off her debt? If she paid just $100/month, it would take her 47½ YEARS to pay it off.

This is the person that your Richland 2 Board of Trustees trusts to be Secretary of the Board.

Her $57,100 amount makes McKie one of the top debtors of the S.C. Ethics Commission. McKie is in the Top Ten of Debtors; in fact, she is Number 10. 

To read its report of Debtors, go to ethics.sc.gov  At the top right corner of the homepage, click on Debtors. At the bottom left of the page, click on Debtors List (PDF). Unfortunately, the List appears to be a Word document, not Excel. It's not sortable. There are 25 pages of names, and the total owed to the Ethics Commission is $2,638,375.04 as of 12/20/2021.

The top ten debtors owe $1,209,978!!! That's 46% of the total debts owed to the Ethics Commission.

Gov. McMaster ought to be shaking a big stick at the S.C. Dept. of Revenue, which is the collection agent for money owed to the State. 

Open Letter to Molly Spearman

The following letter has been sent to Molly Spearman, Superintendent of the South Carolina Department of Education.

Dear Supt. Spearman,

 

I am writing to request your help in dealing with Richland 2 School District.

You are probably already familiar with the January 25, 2022 incident at a Richland 2 board meeting, when Mrs. Pamela Davis, wife of Supt. Baron Davis, created a disruption that resulted in two white men being kicked out of the meeting and being put on Trespass Notice by Richland 2. The District failed to investigate the matter and did not discipline either Pamela or Baron Davis. I filed a complaint with your office against Pamela Davis and awaiting a determination.

I am writing to request your help with Richland 2's violation of its Administrative Rule KI-R, which allows a designated security officer to "issue a verbal or written 'no trespass' notice for the school facility". The District has issued a No Trespass Notice to me that bans me  from "...any and ALL [emphasis in the original] Richland School District Two properties, facilities, campuses and buildings..."

The District is apparently having difficulty in understanding that "facility" is singular; it means "the (one) facility" where an incident occurred. 

I have filed complaints against Richland 2's employee who has exceeded his authority by issuing the No Trespass Notice beyond its limited scope and also against the Administrative Rule itself. The Rule provides no guidelines for duration and no provision for Due Process. The employee has denied me access to a property other than R2i2 and also to the Richland County Public Library, which leases its Sandhills Library from the District.

The District refuses to process my complaints against the employee and the Rule.

Will the South Carolina Department of Education assist me to 1) requiring Richland 2 to process complaints duly-filed and 2) to require Richland 2 to comply with its written Administrative Rule and to cease improperly and unlawfully expanding it?

Sincerely,

Gus Philpott

Resident, Richland School District Two

847.971.7083

cc:  Gov. Henry McMaster

       Attorney General Alan Wilson

       Scott Price, Executive Director, SCSBA

       Jamie Devine, President, SCSBA

ESG and your Real credit worthiness

E S G

Consider this. You work hard, build a business, do things well, serve the public, borrow money, pay it back; pay your bills on time.

You ought to have good credit; right? You should be able to borrow money at a bank - at a fair interest rate; right?

Then along comes ESG. You've heard of the Cancel Culture; right? Have you heard of ESG?

Read this week's issue of The Nerve, published by the South Carolina Policy Council. In particular, read the article titled "Officials warn ESG movement heading to SC amid ‘woke’ power play".

What is ESG? Environment, Social, Governance

If your "scores" on ESG aren't high enough, your woke bank might just make your life miserable. 

The article is a worthwhile read. The Policy Council is worthy of financial support.

Racial Division - alive and well (unfortunately)

(Click to enlarge)

On September 24, 2020 Diversity and Equity Chief Helen Grant presented "Shifting to a Diverse, Inclusive and Equitable Mindset." While uclear on the first page of the presentation just who the target audience was, it appeared to be aimed at Administrative Professionals. 

Slide 29 is shown above.

This is what is being "done to" the Administrative Professionals. If I didn't know better, I'd say those are the Principals and Assistant Principals thoughout Richland 2. And probably the headquarters staff.

Those are the people who steer those below them in the ranks; i.e., the teachers, staff, secretaries, assistants.

That slide is a great example of the Critical Race Theory that Richland 2 "doesn't teach", if you want to believe Teresa Holmes, the woman who sits in the position of Board Chair.

Holmes wants everyone to Go Woke (or did she say, "Stay Woke"?).

But parents are waking up. Thank goodness.

Roll Call at Board Meetings?

Should the Richland 2 School Board take a roll call at every board meeting? 

How else would the Minues ever correctly reflect who was there and who was not, or who attended by telephone?

Roll call should be taken at 5:30PM, when the Public Session officially convenes. And probably again at the beginning of the Executive Session, just in case someone got lost on the way to dinner.

And then roll call should be taken at 6:30PM, when the Public Session reconvenes. How much time would that require? One minute? (More, if certain people didn't recognize their name or weren't paying attention.)

If a board member is absent in-person but attending remotely, that should be properly noted to the Public and in the Minutes. The reason should be clear. And those board members present in person should vote whether to allow that absent person to attend telephonically.

The Richland 2 school board is not an after-school club. It is the elected group that oversees a $300,000,000+ annual budget, 28,000+ students, 3,000+ employees, and assets worth $1 Billion.

Next time you are attending or watching a meeting, ask yourself this question. "If I owned that business, which of those eight people at the front of the room would I trust to direct it and run it?"

Remember this on November 8, 2022.

Are Rules for the Board and District, too?

Or is it, "The rules are for thee and not for me." Is that the attitude of Richland 2 School District?

I have at least four complaints on file with Richland 2 since February 22. They are about actions of Safety & Security Director Marq Claxton and the Administrative Rule (AR) KI-R that is not being followed.

Remember the board meeting when Trustee Caution-Parker said that there are rules and that the District will follow the rules. Do you remember there was no objection to her statement by Board Chair Holmes? Or Supt. Davis. Or by any other trustee? Perhaps somebody should have said right then, "Wait just one minute! We are not going to follow all the rules!"

In a wordy email sent to me late last Friday afternoon over Teresa Holmes' name (but clearly not written by her), the District informed me that my complaints were being considered part of the original grievance that the Board discussed on February 22 and would not be considered separately.

I responded (again) that the complaints were separate and distinct from the grievance, which I could not attend because the Security Director denied my request to enter R22i2 to attend the grievance. (Gee, I wonder who told him to make that decision.)

Did Claxton make that decision on his own? Not likely. Did Will Anderson direct him to make that decision? Probably not. Did Harry Miley direct Will to so direct Claxton? Did Marshalynn Franklin tell Miley to tell Anderson to tell Claxton to deny me? Did Baron Davis tell Marshalynn to tell Harry to tell Will to tell Claxton?

Or did Baron Davis just save time and skip over Marshalynn, Harry, and Will and tell Claxton "Just say No"?

But back to Rules.

The District has Board Policies and Administrative Rules. If they aren't going follow them, why have them? Just because the South Carolina School Boards Association says so?

When Teresa Holmes writes at 9:53PM on a Monday (April 11), "Mr. Philpot, You have received our official response.  Have a nice day, and this matter is closed", I recognize that as coming from her.

Won't she be surprised, when she finds out that the matter is not closed?