Trifecta

This week the leadership team drove me to leave the school at exactly 3:15. Normally I don't get frustrated enough to feel like I had to escape the windowless confines of the school, but this time I'd had it and needed a release.

First, we had a documented case of MRSA. A student in the school had it, but no one was notified until after the fact. We were notified this Wednesday. Initially I was told the admin team first knew on Monday. Then I found out a district office official discussed the issue with them on Friday. Yesterday I learned the Athletic Office knew last Monday.

No one let the staff know of this situation until 9 days after the case was at least suspected. For a week everyone was at risk! One teacher asked the Boss Lady (at a staff meeting Wednesday when we were first notified) why she didn't trust us enough to inform us of a possible contagion in our midst. I thought "why not care enough to let us protect ourselves?"

Secondly, we have a decision-making body in our school consisting of parents, students, teachers, other staff members, and the Boss Lady. For some unknown reason the Boss Lady and her lackey (who got voted in as co-facilitator because the team's teachers wouldn't step up to help lead the group) decided to stop recording who votes what way.

This is our only means of holding our voted-upon leaders accountable! How do we know if our wishes as a constituency are being promoted if we can't see how our leaders vote? The response: we (the royal "we") decided to stop doing it. This means a practice which has existed for over a decade was stopped without a group vote, discussion, or consideration of why it was there.

Thirdly, we no longer receive the meeting agendas and meeting minutes in our e-mail. While this may sound like a small issue when the information is available on a website, it follows the series of actions attempting to hide information and skew information. By making the information less readily accessible, fewer people will see it and hold the decision-makers responsible.

Overall, the leaders in the building continue to want to hide information of paramount importance and desire to decrease accountability for themselves. Grrr!