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Thursday, January 10, 2013

Tell Your School Board That You Are Tired Of The Lies and Deception

Recently, our community was shocked by the announcement of the hiring of our school board president's daughter-in-law Kelly Nash as the Food Services Director for the Fox C-6 School District with a salary of $65,336 while only having a high school diploma and 17 years of management experience as an Assistant Manager at McDonald's. In the school district's job posting for the position, the district preferred candidates with a bachelor's degree and asked that certification as a Registered Dietician or SNS certification be obtained within the first 2 years. School board president Linda Nash's daughter-in-law did not have a college degree nor did she have the certifications. However, the school district is willing to give her 2 years to obtain them. Assistant superintendent Todd Scott and Tim Crutchley as well as former School Nutrition Services Director Candy (Sengheiser) Gruenewald felt that Kelly Nash was the most qualified for the job. And, Dianne Brown told us in the Arnold Leader that Kelly Nash did not get the job because of her last name. Really? If Kelly Nash HAD the credentials for the job, then being hired into the position may not have become such an issue. But, without the credentials, our school board has really broken the trust of the community!

Dianne Brown and Todd Scott both stated on Channel 2 news when interviewed by Elliot Davis that Kelly Nash was the most qualified person for the job even though there were other candidates that had the degrees and certification that the school district was looking for. Linda Nash even had her time in the spotlight in the You Paid For It! story as well and gave quite an odd response to Elliot Davis's question. When you know something isn't right and you are asked a question, you aren't going to look too comfortable when answering.

You Paid For It!
Just so everyone in the community knows, I was not the person that contacted Elliot Davis to come out and do a news story on Fox C-6. I wanted to publicy state that as I have had a few friends of mine ask me if I called him to do the story. No, I did not! I'm sure the school administrators and school board members think it was me because I have been asking them questions about what has been going on in the district for several years now and they don't answer my questions. Also, Cheryl Hermann saw me introducing myself to Elliot Davis just as he was leaving the service center on the night of the school board meeting. Cheryl was walking out to her car to get something just as I was arriving. I am sorry to disappoint the school board members and administrators, but I was not the person that called Elliot Davis to come out and do a story on our school district. I'm sure our school board members and administrators also believe that I have been posting on TOPIX for the last 2 years. Why is that? Well, there were comments directed at me on TOPIX the Saturday after I spoke at the December 2012 school board meeting. Sorry to disappoint you again, but the last time I posted on TOPIX was January 11, 2011. It has been nearly 2 years since my last post on TOPIX. All of my posts were facts about what was going on in the school district as I was trying to get information out to the public. My facts obviously touched a nerve with some people working in the school district as I have been mentioned quite often and those comments have usually been quite defamatory!

I had no idea that Elliot Davis was doing a news story on Fox C-6 until a coworker called me just after 9pm right before the first story aired. He told me to quickly turn on Channel 2 news because he had seen a teaser saying that Elliot Davis had been at Fox C-6 and he knew I would probably want to see it.

Elliot Davis did call me on Saturday night though after the first You Paid For It! news story aired. A parent had emailed Elliot Davis about other issues in the school district and Elliot contacted them to ask questions. When Elliot started asking questions that the other parent couldn't answer, they told Elliot to contact me because they knew I could.

School Leadership Lacks Credibility and Integrity
Currently there are quite a few problems in our school district. One of them is the lack of credibility and integrity in our school district leadership. When school superintendents give false information to try and deceive you and the community, then it is time for new leadership. The community needs to let their school board know that we need new leadership and we need it now. You can read in my other posts where our superintendent informed me in an email that the new draft copy of the school board policies weren't available for the public to review until after the school board adopts them. However, after I provided her a transcript of what she actually stated at the March 2012 school board meeting, she changed her stance and decided to provide me and the community draft copies of the new board policies like she originally said she would at the board meeting.

You can also read in my other posts where she told me why the school district doesn't post the board meeting packets online like they do at other school districts like Wentzville. She told me that Fox doesn't have a full time person like those other school districts to maintain their website and that Fox would rather puts its money into the classroom. Well, after making a Sunshine Law Request for the board packets and reviewing them, I discovered that our school district HAS had a full time person working as a web designer for the district for more than 7 years. So, that was another false statement from our superintendent. I guess she was hoping that I would be happy that she was putting all that money into the classrooms for our kids.

In another instance, Dianne Brown informed the school board in an email that she had discussed with me all of the issues that I had brought to the school board at the August 2011 board meeting in a conversation right after the meeting. She even went as far as to say in her email that she had asked me if I had any further questions and that I had told her no. However, as I learned a long time ago, I must record everything in order to have documentation as to what really happened. I have an audio recording of the August 2011 board meeting which I spoke at and the conversation that started right after the meeting ended. Dianne approached me right away after the meeting and told me that she knows our school website and Edline are a mess. I hadn't even asked about Edline and told her that I didn't use it much. However, my point here is that she made false statements to the school board regarding our conversation. I guess she thought she could get away with it because she told me in a conversation after the December 2011 board meeting when I confronted her about that email, that she had 3 administrators to back her up. I told Dianne, Dan Baker and Todd Scott that I had an audio recording to back me up. Todd Scott had even interjected when I confronted Diane and told me that "we've always done everything on the board, I mean above board". And yes, I was recording that conversation as well because as I said earlier, you have to have some way of documenting what really happened.

Would you believe an audio recording or our superintendent and her assistants?

Speaking of audio recordings, I was quite surprised when I heard that the school district attorney told a parent during a conference call that, "Tape recordings are notoriously unreliable." and that "there's no law that would give you the right to tape record".

I thought her comments were rather odd given the fact that Dan Baker, Gee Palmer and Luann Domek had recorded a phone conversation back in 2010 with one of our doctors and submitted it as evidence in a Due Process Hearing. Dan Baker DID NOT inform the doctor that he was recording their conversation. During the Due Process Hearing, Dan Baker and the district attorney were working to discredit another doctor that he also called and spoke with. However, Dan only took "hand written notes" of that phone conversation to back up what the second doctor said. When I asked him why there wasn't an audio recording of that phone conversation, he stated that it was late in the day and the doctor said they didn't have much time to discuss things. Really? It was odd that Dan started the audio recording of the first doctor's conversation before he even dialed the number. So, why wouldn't he have recorded the second call the same way and not record because she didn't have much time to speak?

I believe that we have a very serious credibility issue in our school district leadership and things need to change. You need to contact your school board members and let them know that we need new leadership. We also need new board members. Things have gotten out of control and it is finally all starting to be aired in the open thanks to the school board's recent hiring of Kelly Nash.

Our school board is supposed to represent the community. They are supposed to make sure that the district is being fiscally responsible and following state and federal laws. They are ultimately responsible for the hiring and firing of the superintendent(s) and other staff. If the school board is unwilling to answer questions from the community or answer questions as to why they are unwilling to publish Public Records on the district website, I think we have a very serious issue on our hands!