There were several notable items during the board meeting that I wanted to get posted for the community and staff at Fox C-6.
One of those items was that acting superintendent Tim Crutchley handed out a draft copy of an updated Nepotism Policy and draft copy of a Whistleblower Policy to the board members during the Superintendent's Report at the end of the meeting. I've made a Sunshine Request for those documents and will post them for the community to review when they're available.
Employee Protection/Whistleblower Policy
The Whistleblower policy is meant to protect district employees from retaliation or intimidation if they speak up or ask questions about any wrong doing they see happening in the district. Fox's school board policies have statements regarding this already when reporting concerns to their supervisor or the superintendent that they would not be retaliated against. However, everyone working for the district knows that district policy wasn't followed. That's why very few people if anyone for that matter would ever speak up about what was happening in the district. I have heard numerous stories about what happened if you did. Many are still afraid to speak up even now. That's most likely why a Whistleblower Policy is being put in place.
A Whistleblower policy should have been in place years ago. Perhaps the district wouldn't be in the situation it's in right now had there been one in place and followed. Many of the sample policies provided to the board allow you to contact a school board member as well as well as a supervisor or higher level administrator.
However, I can tell you from experience that contacting previous board members including Cheryl Hermann and Dave Palmer resulted in Willful Blindness. It's just how it's been during former superintendent Dianne Brown-Critchlow's tenure.
Parents who spoke up about issues in the district were met with harsh remarks during school board meetings and in online forums. Some were even sent Cease and Desist letters!
Sherwood National School of Character Award
Trip to Washington, D.C.
In the September 16 board meeting packet there was a request for a trip to Washington D.C. for the committee that wrote the application for the National School of CharacterAward at Sherwood Elementary. The page in the board packet states that "We have put a stop to out of state travel..." My guess is that out of state travel was curtailed due to the reckless credit card spending by some of the district's central office administrators and the current financial situation of the district.
The trip request was discussed during the board meeting. The trip will be paid with Professional Development funds since the committee will be presenting at the National Conference as well as learning from other school districts. After a few minutes of discussion the school board voted to approve the trip.
Click on the link below to view the request for the trip from the board packet:
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