Friday, March 28, 2014

2014 Fox C-6 School Board Candidates Voter's Guide in the Arnold-Imperial Leader

The March 27, 2014 Arnold-Imperial Leader has a Voter's Guide page for the Fox C-6 School Board candidates for the April 8, 2014 election posted online:




I didn't find any information on Vernon Sullivan's education in his information. It's very evident that Vern Sullivan is a very busy person. I would be concerned that he wouldn't be able to dedicate any time towards being a Fox C-6 school board member with all of his other commitments.

It also appears that Vern Sullivan is the only Fox C-6 school board candidate that has someone working for the school district. It's reported that Vern Sullivan has two sons working for the district with one of them being in a supervisory position. Based on what's happened over the past 9 years with Superintendent Dianne Brown-Critchlow and school board members with spouses or children on the school board, I believe that having Mr. Sullivan on the school board would NOT be good for the community.

In 2008, Superintendent Brown had Vern Sullivan call my father into Dianne Brown's (now Critchlow) office and tell my father to tell me to stop pursuing our complaints with the federal agencies that the Missouri DESE compliance officer told me to file with the U.S. Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights (ED OCR) and the USDA's Office for Civil Rights. I didn't know that you could file complaints with the ED OCR until I spoke with the Missouri DESE compliance officer. He even walked me through the process while I was on the phone with him. He told me that we should file a complaint because what Fox was doing was wrong. To me, what Vern Sullivan and Superintendent Brown did to my father was a bullying tactic which runs contrary to Mr. Sullivan's campaigning for abolishing bullying. Perhaps Mr. Sullivan is only referring to student bullying.

In 2009, Fox C-6 signed a Resolution Agreement with ED OCR to make corrections to it's school board policies and other corrections. After 4+ years, Fox still hadn't fulfilled the Resolution Agreement. USDA OCR found the district Non-Compliant with Federal Laws in 2011 and was told to make immediate corrections. The district spent hundreds of thousands of dollars fighting ED OCR and USDA OCR over the past 5+ years. Superintendent Critchlow has brushed off the Resolution Agreement and the USDA Ruling as litigation even though there were NO lawsuits filed. The Federal agencies simply investigated and found problems in the district and with the law firm's interpretation of the law. By referring to them as litigation, Superintendent Critchlow has been able to hide the information from the public. Our school board has been willfully blind to these problems. You can easily obtain the information regarding these issues by filing a Freedom Of Information Act request with ED OCR and USDA OCR.

I didn't see any mention of transparency by Vern Sullivan in his campaign information as well. That is still a huge problem in the Fox C-6 School District. It appears that Superintendent Critchlow wants to keep as much information as possible away from the public. She obviously doesn't want school board meetings recorded because I've asked the board to record school board meetings many times over the past 3+ years and have never been given a response. It could be that she doesn't want to record them because another district attorney told a parent advocate that, "Tape recordings are notoriously unreliable." Fox used to record school board meetings in the past. So why did they stop?

I believe that Superintendent Critchlow doesn't want board meetings, IEP meetings or Section 504 meetings recorded because she can't refute what's been recorded. She's been caught having to change her story many times because of my audio recordings of Fox C-6 school board board meetings. If there's no audio recording, Superintendent Critchlow can document board meeting minutes with minimal information and the public will never know what the school board was asked during Public Comments.

It's very important for our community that you elect school board members that are honest and are willing to stand up for the community. Your school board members represent the community and are responsible for ensuring that your tax dollars are spent wisely. Please take the time to read about your school board candidates and ask them questions while they are still allowed to speak with you.