How I Concluded Board President Dan Smith DID NOT Read My Email!

At the June 2013 Fox C-6 school board meeting, Superintendent Dianne Critchlow responded to my Public Comments. She rudely interrupted me when I tried to respond. She wanted to get the last word in. And, since I was given my 3 minutes to talk, it was now her turn despite the fact that I was addressing our school board and not her. Dianne wasn't going to be voting on the proposed nepotism policy. The school board are the ones that vote. She is ONLY the Superintendent. Our school board is there to oversee that she does her job and follows the law. She is employed by our school board. However, you might think otherwise based on how things have been run for the last several years in our school district.

Superintendent Critchlow was intent on discrediting my information and damaging my reputation. She basically made 3 statements after I spoke and each of them were either False or misleading. Would making those kind of statements in a Public Forum such as a school board meeting be considered slander? The school board did nothing to stop her nor did they apologize as a whole for her actions. I will address that issue with the board in the near future.

The point of the matter is that Superintendent Critchlow believes she is above the law and can do what she wants. She needs to learn how to conduct herself in a professional manner. She was far from professional at the June board meeting.

In this post, I want to address her comments towards me regarding board members deleting my emails. She clearly meant to imply that I was lying. Therefore, I think it's important that I explain to the community how I concluded that my emails were being deleted without being read.

Here is what Superintendent Critchlow so arrogantly said to me about the emails at the June 2013 board meeting:

 "And, to say that the school board doesn't read your email. You don't know that. You can't just throw things out that are untrue."

So, I'm going to run through the emails I received and the blog posts I made in regards to this topic. 

On April 18, 2013 I received the following email from then Board Vice President Dan Smith:

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From:  Smith, Dan - Board Vice President <SmithD@fox.k12.mo.us>

Subject:  Not read: RE: Fox C-6 Board Meeting Information Packets on District Website

Date:  April 18, 2013 9:08:01 PM CDT

To:  Rich Simpson

Your message was deleted without being read on Thursday, April 18, 2013 9:08:01 PM (GMT-06:00) Central Time (US & Canada).

================================================================

So, from the email response I received above from Dan Smith, I concluded that Mr. Smith had deleted my email without reading it. That's what the email told me. It clearly states, "Your message was deleted without being read on Thursday, April 18, 2013 9:08:01 PM."

On Wednesday May 22, 2013, the day after the announcement that the school board met and proposed making changes to the school district's nepotism policy, I made the following blog post:

Updated Nepotism Policy Proposed
at May 2013 School Board Meeting

In this post, I made the following statement:

"Perhaps Dan Smith should have told Elliott Davis about the fact that he doesn't read emails from citizens in the community and simply deletes them. That has been what I have found so far since he has gotten an individual email address from the school district. As the school board president, I don't believe that Dan Smith should be simply deleting emails from citizens in the community."

What happened next day was pretty funny!

On Thursday May 23, 2013, the very next day after I wrote on my blog about Fox C-6 Board President Dan Smith deleting and not reading my emails, I received the following email message from Dan Smith:

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From:  Smith, Dan - Board Vice President <SmithD@fox.k12.mo.us>

Subject:  Read: RE: Fox C-6 Board Meeting Information Packets on District Website

Date:  May 23, 2013 7:10:55 PM CDT

To:  Rich Simpson

Your message was read on Thursday, May 23, 2013 7:10:55 PM (GMT-06:00) Central Time (US & Canada).

================================================================

You will notice that this is the VERY SAME email that was previously indicated to me via a read receipt that had been deleted and not read. All of a sudden, the day after I posted on my blog, I received an email message from Dan Smith stating "Your message was read on Thursday, May 23, 2013 7:10:55 PM". How funny is that?

So, is it reasonable to assume that someone on the Fox C-6 School Board or Fox C-6 School Administrators are reading my blog?

Or, was it just a coincidence that Dan Smith just happened to open my email that I was previously informed was Deleted but Not Read in a Read Receipt message the day after I had written about it on my blog?  Probably not!

Since I received a new Read Receipt on May 23, 2013 stating that "Your message was read in Thursday, May 23, 2013 7:10:55PM (GMT-06:00) Central Time", I decided to write about that on my blog as well:

Fox C-6 Board President Finally Reads
Email After Two and Half Months!

That's how I concluded that our Board President Dan Smith had DELETED my email but DIDN'T READ IT!!

To Superintendent Critchlow, I didn't just "throw things out that aren't true". I thoroughly document things to back up what I state at board meetings and on my blog. If you send email after email to your school board members and don't receive responses, would you think that your board is representing you as a taxpaying citizen in the community?

I can assure you that I am not the only one that has written our school board and never received a response. That is why I encourage people to write to our school board. See if you get a response. You will probably get a response if you shower our Superintendent and School Board members with praise.

I have received a few responses from former school board member Ruth Ann Newman. However, that was a rare circumstance that I received a response. Most responses came from Superintendent Dianne Critchlow with her usual arrogant and snarky response!

Should the community care if school board members don't read their emails?

Or, is it OK if they just delete them or ignore them?

I know some of our board members read my email messages. I have gotten read receipts from them (namely our new board member Dan Kroupa, Steve Holloway and John Laughlin).

Fox C-6 Board Members Delete Emails Without Reading Them!

I received a couple of Read Receipt messages on Sunday evening from Board Vice President Dan Smith and Director Cheryl Hermann informing me that they deleted my email message regarding the Board Meeting Packets without even reading the email. Their decision to NOT READ my message could be seen as a violation of school board policy. Dan Smith is set to become the Fox C-6 School Board President at the April 2013 board meeting. Perhaps he doesn't take his job seriously. Perhaps he doesn't feel the need to answer questions from the community as to why the school board did not discuss the posting of Board Meeting Packets on the district website during open session. Perhaps he doesn't believe that decisions made by the school board need to be documented in board meeting minutes. I can't speak for Mr. Smith, but deleting email messages without reading them speaks loudly to the community to which he was elected to serve.

Board Members Should Read School District Policies

I would like to recommend that our school board members take some time to read our school board policies. I've made this recommendation many times over the last several years. I haven't seen much evidence that shows that they understand what their roles and responsibilities are to the patrons of the Fox C-6 School District. They took an oath to uphold the duties and responsibilities as outlined in our school board policies. Our superintendent Dianne Critchlow tells me in emails that our school board members are caring and competent. However, the actions of our school board members speak much louder than words!

The citizens of our community elected these people to serve as our voice in the school district. When they are asked simple questions that they don't want to answer, they simply ignore the questions. Or, in this case delete those questions. That type of a response DOES NOT show the community that they are "caring and competent" board members.

Here are the email messages that I received from Dan Smith and Cheryl Hermann:

From: Smith, Dan - Board Vice President
Subject: Not read: Fox C-6 Board Meeting Information Packets on District Website
Message: Your message was deleted without being read on Sunday, April 14, 2013 9:07:19 PM (GMT-06:00) Central Time (US & Canada).

From: Hermann, Cheryl - Director
Subject: Not read: Fox C-6 Board Meeting Information Packets on District Website
Message: Your message was deleted without being read on Sunday, April 14, 2013 9:08:22 PM (GMT-06:00) Central Time (US & Canada).

Board Members Not Answering Emails

I know of several others that have sent email messages to our school board members and haven't received a response from them. What is the point of having individual email addresses if your board members aren't willing to read your email and respond? Several people have commented on the Topix website about how they have contacted our board members and spoken to them and said how helpful they were. Perhaps the people posting those messages are board members and school administrators trying to fool the public! Or, perhaps those people were telling the board members what a great job they are doing. Our board members appear to respond to those types of comments.

Former board member Ruth Ann Newman recently stated in her letter to the editor in the Arnold-Imperial Leader newspaper that she "liked to think about the positive aspects of problems and concerns. Too many times, the focus is on the negative." Asking school board members to answer questions as to why they don't want to post public records or why they didn't record their decisions in the board meeting minutes IS NOT BEING NEGATIVE!! That is simply asking your school board members to do their job. Our district has been plagued for a number of years by a school board that has not been doing its job. I have been amazed by the number of people that have come up and told me how happy they are that our recent school board election ousted the two incumbents, Pete Nicholas and Ruth Ann Newman. My father even told me the day after the election that everyone he spoke to was happy with the school board election results including himself. I think that speaks for itself.

Were Messages Deleted By Board Members or Someone Else?

I found it odd that both board members deleted my message within 1 minute and 3 seconds of each other. Perhaps it wasn't the board members themselves that deleted my messages. Maybe they were deleted by our superintendent or the school board secretary. Or, perhaps my messages were automatically deleted by their computer system because the board members never downloaded my original email message that I sent nearly 4 weeks ago that they never responded to. Who knows? Are our board members getting their email messages?  Since they don't respond, it's hard to tell. The old schoolboard@fox.k12.mo.us email address went directly to our school board secretary and not to the school board. Perhaps this is just another way of keeping our school board members from being burdened with having to answer questions from the public.

Actions definitely speak louder than words!!