What Teachers, Parents and Students Need to Prepare For
A BHCW Public Service Announcement
During the last Night Watch episode, Shauna shared a comment a teacher made after the 03/30/2023 BOE Meeting:
“Great…now they are going to pit teachers against Administrators.”
The facts connected to the number of positions in the Superintendent’s and Business Administrators’ office discussed publicly, along with public demands at the last BOE Meeting that these high-cost low yield positions be eliminated instead of teachers and supervisors, may have had an impact. As a result we can be somewhat hopeful that the current divide-and-conquer strategy will be abandoned as the public has become more informed.
If not, Teachers, Parents and Students can understand what they may be in for based on past events.
In 2021 Full Day Kindergarten was conflated with Reconfiguration to pit parents with concerns about Reconfiguration against those supporting FDK. Ms. Stanley, now a BOE Member, was one of the more prominent social media operatives advancing this false narrative.
The same feigned expression of heartbreak about an “unavoidable hard decision” she acted out in support of her vote to eliminate supervisors, was the same disingenuous tactic she used during that time.
Pamela Stanley was the same BOE member who lamented about the cost of caterpillars (to spin the impression that parents were harming students) before initiating a District Funded ethics witch hunt against a BOE Member. A large portion of her complaint has already been dismissed by the SEC but has resulted in many more validated ethics complaints against her and the other BOE Members who supported the action.
Ms. Stanley’s justification for the complaint? We must protect our staff (meaning “We need to spend a lot of money to prevent BOE members from asking questions and offering an opinion on the Business Administrators meeting minutes” ). I am not sure where the philosophy of “we need to protect our staff” went on the 30th when she voted to eliminate supervisory positions.
Parents and taxpayers continue to hang on the hook for Ms. Stanley’s actions as she and the other BOE Member who voted to fund her campaign against Sai refuse to admit they did anything wrong.
In 2022 parents with concerns about the District’s implementation of DEI were compared to segregationists (implicitly) by the Superintendent. There was also the implication that BOE Members who were asking that specific interventions and goals be added to the plan to make the program accountable were against Diversity and Inclusion. When asking for clarity on program objectives, evidence-based interventions and outcome designs makes one a segregationist – it’s a pretty good sign you walked into a BHPS BOE Meeting.
In 2023, for the Business Administrator to get yet another position and to prevent the public from discovering the bad actions by the BOE and Administration, a months-long narrative on how members of the public were weaponizing OPRA requests and costing the District Hundred of Thousands of Dollars was launched – only to discover that the District receives a fraction of the requests the Township does, typically responds by refusing or redacting data and passes on the cost of time intensive demands to residents (many of whom end up not pursuing them after they are informed).
Just this month, we got to see how the Superintendent twisted concerns that Parents and Students had about AP Classes and Athletics as “rumors” and “misinformation” in emails sent to parents throughout the District. The “rumors” and “misinformation” came out of the Superintendent’s own mouth.
It’s just so easy for this Administration and some BOE Member to smear and step on community members when they feel their interests are threatened…or if they just want to use their office to carry out a personal vendetta.
Again, we can hope that things will be different this time, but if they aren’t, teachers, parents, and students should be ready.
If you start hearing things like …..
“This is really a way to get rid of bad teachers”
“Well, it’s the teacher’s fault for fighting us on the Supervisor’s cuts.”
“A small group of students and parents who are unwilling to make sacrifices….”
“If we don’t do this then we will need to cut food and water supplies to the tri-state area”
“Based on the advice of our Attorneys the District will no longer follow State or Federal law”
“We have a new crisis [we need to replace teachers with robots], [a meteor is heading for the District], [someone criticized the Business Administrators minutes so we called the Chief, cancelled the meeting and put the District on a high state of alert- the terrorists can’t win]
You can know that you are about to embark on a very special journey many of us at BHCW are all too familiar with.
I hope things will be different this time…… just be prepared in case they aren’t.
THE ONLY SOURCE OF MISINFORMATION IN OUR COMMUNITY IS DISTRICT ADMINISTRATION
ADMIN STEPS IN IT AGAIN?
HOW TO DESTROY A CHANGE AGENT | PART I
PEELING THE SPIN: A CONDENSED LOOK AT OPRA REQUESTS
DEI: AN OPPORTUNITY TO IMPROVE OUR SCHOOLS AND OUR STRATEGIC PLAN
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