Was Misinformation Intended to Fool the Community? Absolutely!

I never knew that speaking at the December 14, 2010 Fox C-6 school board meeting would lead to a complete turnover of Central Office administrators just a few years later. The article below was published in the Arnold-Imperial Leader the week after I spoke at the school board meeting.

Former Fox C-6 superintendent Dianne Brown (Critchlow), former assistant superintendent Todd Scott (now Seckman High School principal) and former Director of the Bridges program, Jamie Critchlow were interviewed for the article. The article covered the hiring of Jamie Critchlow as the new head football coach for Seckman High School. It also mentioned the hiring of Jamie Critchlow as a Behavior Intervention Support Team (BIST) Teacher in August 2009 and his subsequent promotion a few months later in November 2009 to the Director of the at-risk Bridges program.

The promotion from BIST teacher to Director increased Jamie Critchlow’s salary from $45,870 (per May 2009 board meeting packet Certified hires list) to $98,005 (as reported in the article). That salary increase was given without having a certificate in Administration. That’s why I went and spoke to the Fox C-6 school board.

The article stated that Jamie Critchlow could have been making $2,000 more than the $98,005 salary that he was earning as the At-Risk Director of the Bridges program because Fox C-6 administrators had given back their raises for the 2010-2011 school year.

According to the article, Todd Scott said that, “Critchlow’s salary is the same this year as last.” and that, “Critchlow’s salary is the same amount the previous at-risk director, Kolin Peterson, earned.”

I’m not quite sure how Jamie Critchlow’s salary of $98,005, “is the same amount the previous at-risk director, Kolin Peterson, earned”. After reviewing the following data from the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE), it appears that Mr. Critchlow’s salary was more than 2.5 times higher than the previous at-risk director’s salary.

Jamie Critchlow began working for the district in the 2009-2010 school year. Below are the salary amounts as reported to Missouri DESE by Fox for Mr. Critchlow:

2010 -   $98,589

2011 - $101,884

2012 - $107,813

2013 - $116,103

2014 - $124,079

Kolin Peterson began working for the district in the 2006-2007 school year. Below are the salary amounts as reported to Missouri DESE for Mr. Peterson:

2007 - $32,096

2008 - $36,567

2009 - $37,744

2010 - $38,552

2011 - $39,323

Dianne Brown (Critchlow) mentioned the district’s "stringent hiring practices" in the article.

In 2012, the district's "stringent hiring practices" made headlines while Dianne (Brown) Critchlow was still superintendent. That’s when Fox hired Kelly Nash as the district’s Nutrition Director even though she didn’t have a college degree or certification for the job. Kelly Nash is the daughter-in-law of former Fox C-6 school board president, Linda Nash. In January 2015, Kelly Nash’s employment was terminated by the district and she walked away with a $20,000 settlement.

Assistant superintendent Todd Scott talked about the credentials in the article that I had asked about at the December 14, 2010 board meeting. He said, "the district checks with DESE (Department of Elementary and Secondary Education) when hiring a certified employee, such as a teacher or administrator, to make sure the person has the proper credentials."

Missouri DESE requires the completion of a master's degree or higher in educational administration in order to obtain an Initial Administrator Certificate. Mr. Critchlow had a master's degree in Art which does not meet DESE's requirements for obtaining an Initial Administrator Certificate.

If the district had checked Mr. Critchlow's credentials with Missouri DESE like I had done back then, they would have known that Mr. Critchlow did not have a Principal/Administrator certificate when he was promoted to an "administrator" position in November 2009. Mr. Critchlow didn’t earn a Principal/Administrator certificate until May 27, 2014 but was paid a principal's salary for nearly 5 years without having the credentials required to justify the salary.

Mr. Critchlow was fired less than a month after obtaining his Principal/Administrator certificate.

In 2009, Fox’s school board policy “0340 - Code of Ethics” contained the following statement, “Employ only such qualified employees as are properly recommended by the Superintendent of schools.” That’s an important statement. Former superintendent Dianne Brown (Critchlow) was responsible for properly recommending only those employees who are qualified for the job.

It wasn’t until the release of the May 2016 Missouri State Auditor’s report that the public learned that Mr. Critchlow’s promotion was not approved by the school board. I recently obtained copies of the Contract Modifications requests that were presented to the Fox C-6 school board for the 2009-2010 school year by Dianne Brown (Critchlow) for approval. Mr. Critchlow’s name didn’t appear on any of those requests. His name only appeared on the May 2009 list of Certified Hires from the 2008-2009 school board meeting packets.

Dianne Critchlow improperly promoted and compensated her husband (before they were married) to a position/salary schedule that he was not qualified or certified for.

The difference between a teacher’s salary with a master’s degree and what Mr. Critchlow earned while working for the district was more than $300,000 and should be repaid to the district.

Arnold-Imperial Leader Article

Jag Coach had DWI in Texas (PDF)

December 23, 2010

Tracking Down TROOP From TOPIX.COM! - (Reposted)

The following article that's posted below was originally written and posted on the FoxC6Watchdogs blog on Saturday March 15, 2014. However, I pulled it down on Monday March 17 at the request of our attorney because he didn't want to "let the cat out of the bag" just yet. However, as you read about the timing of my article and the timing of former Fox C-6 superintendent Dianne Critchlow's FMLA leave, there's good reason to believe that my article did "let the cat out of the bag" so to speak back then.

My original article was written the day after I learned that our attorney had been able to obtain the IP addresses from the TOPIX.COM website for many of the defamatory and libelous posts that had been made about me and others. It may be difficult for others to understand the adrenaline rush of knowing that after several years of online bullying that the person or persons responsible for making the defamatory posts would finally be known.

My original article contained a "how to" for using Google to quickly search for posts made on specific TOPIX threads using their unique thread ID and specific keywords. I recommend reading that section because you can apply the same technique for finding things that are much more productive than trying to track down libelous posts.

My original article was written in order to teach others how to quickly and easily do their own digital archaeological digging into the TOPIX.COM website. Knowing how to locate specific posts by keyword and unique thread ID that were written over the last several years can save you a lot of time in reading since there were numerous TOPIX threads related to the Fox C-6 School District on TOPIX. So it's good to know how to narrow your search to a specific thread. It appeared that many of the defamatory posts had been made by only a few individuals based on their language and keywords used.

When I originally wrote the article in March 2014, I didn't have any solid evidence as to where the defamatory comments were coming from but I had a very good idea. It wasn't until May 2014 that it was finally revealed to the public via the news that my suspicions were proven correct. That's also when everyone learned that there were several individuals involved in making defamatory comments.

What A Coincidence!
One of the really interesting things that I thought was such a coincidence back in March 2014 was the fact that Dianne Critchlow took Family Medical Leave Act (FMLA) leave right around the same time that my article was published. In fact, there was a school board meeting on Tuesday March 18, 2014 right after my article was posted and former Fox C-6 superintendent Dianne Critchlow was suspiciously absent from that board meeting because she was on FMLA leave.

Critchlow had posted on her Twitter account that she would be taking FMLA leave. She has since deleted her Twitter account so I can't provide a link to her original post.

It certainly made me think that perhaps my article may have lead to Critchlow needing to take FMLA leave knowing that whoever had been posting on TOPIX as TROOP was going to eventually be discovered.

So, was it just a coincidence that former Fox C-6 superintendent Dianne Critchlow decided to take FMLA leave right around the time that this article was first published?

It definitely makes you wonder, doesn't it?

On March 20, 2014, I wrote an article documenting the fact that Fox C-6 Assistant Superintendent Tim Crutchley filled in for then Superintendent Dianne Critchlow because she was out on FMLA leave. Tim Crutchley thanked outgoing school board members Linda Nash and Dan Smith at that meeting and presented them with small thank you gifts for their service to the Fox C-6 School District.

Since March of 2014 we've learned a lot about who was behind the posts. It's been documented via a subpoena to TOPIX that the IP address for the very first post made by someone calling themselves TROOP 5 OR 6 was traced back to the home of Dianne and Jamie Critchlow. It's good to know and be able to document that my suspicions were correct all along.

Our lawsuit against "John Doe" has finally named names and has been served to all of those named in the suit. It has certainly took a lot longer than I ever thought it would to get to this point. It's even more understandable now as to why there was so much effort to silence any critics of our district.

Anyway, this was one of my favorite articles to date that I had written back then because I knew that the information needed to track down the person or persons responsible for making defamatory comments about me and others would finally be known. So I was definitely disappointed in having to remove it from my blog back then.

Hopefully republishing this article will help educate others as to why you should always choose your words carefully and thoughtfully before making disparaging remarks in online forums. You're not as anonymous as you may think you are!

I only made a couple of typographical and grammatical corrections to the article before republishing it. Otherwise, the article is being reposted as it was originally written and posted on the FoxC6Watchdogs blog on March 15, 2014. I also changed the color of the hyperlinks to red to make them stand out more. The title of this article is also the original title of the article with the exception of the "(Reposted)".

Below is the article that I originally posted on Saturday March 15, 2014 on the FoxC6Watchdogs blog.


Tracking Down TROOP From TOPIX.COM!
It doesn't take a Sherlock Holmes to have a pretty good idea who the person might be that was calling himself TROOP on the TOPIX.COM forum last year. Now, that a subpoena has been filed with TOPIX to obtain IP addresses for TROOP's posts or "TROOP like" posts, it will be interesting to see if my assumptions and the assumptions of many others turns out to be true.

If my assumptions are accurate, it will be interesting to see how things turn out for TROOP and those who have been protecting TROOP. TROOP 18 stated that he was an employee of the Fox C-6 School District on March 23, 2013 when he wrote:

Dear quintet of opponents... the threat of physical violence isn't tolerated nor even funny.. The fact that you are now all clearly visable and completely exposed does not favor you. The employees of this district have had enough and will faithfully defend their administration and board.(employed and loyal). If you want to go redneck Hoosier on this...all loyal employees will gladly find a place and time. Trust me, there are hundreds of us. Talk is cheap. As is your posts

TROOP attacked just about anyone who criticized Superintendent Critchlow or the school board and even threatened those who dared to speak at school board meetings.

TROOP Was Very Emotionally Connected to Superintendent Critchlow

For those who don't know, TROOP (5 or 6, 11 or 18) was an anonymous poster on the TOPIX.COM forum who appeared last year after learning that signs had been posted around the Fox C-6 School District about Superintendent Dianne Critchlow. I think that someone would have to be very emotionally attached to Superintendent Critchlow in order to write the things that TROOP wrote on TOPIX over the course of a couple of months last year. He was apparently very attached to Superintendent Critchlow's husband's ex-wife as well based upon his many attacks on her as well.

I never saw any of the signs, but since I've been considered a long time critic of Superintendent Critchlow and some of our school board members who have taken advantage of their position, I was immediately and falsely targeted by the person calling himself TROOP 5 or 6 as the person who had posted the signs.

I was definitely confused when I read TROOP 5 or 6's first post on January 24, 2013 because I didn't know anything about any signs that had been posted in the district. I go to school board meetings and email our school board members. I document school district issues on this blog and on Twitter. I don't hang signs!

However, it's good to know that others in our district have strong opinions about the problems caused by Superintendent Critchlow.

I always take the the high road when it comes to accomplishing my goals of cleaning up our school district. I've been providing facts and documentation for years to our school board about problems in the district but they've done nothing.

I've shared my information with others in our school district and for that Superintendent Critchlow sent me a Cease and Desist letter. I guess that's what superintendents do when they don't want the community to know the truth about what's been going on behind the scenes in their school district.

TROOP's assumptions that I was involved in posting signs was incorrect. The person who was posting signs and driving around the school district with them in the back of his truck was eventually discovered and he was sent a Cease and Desist letter as well for his efforts.

TROOP stepped way over the line with his very first post when he falsely accused me of being the person making and hanging the signs in our school district and posted that information online. TROOP also blamed another person that had spoken at a school board meeting and criticized our school district leadership.

The really sad thing is that TROOP made his accusations based upon information that could only have come from a school teacher at Lone Dell Elementary School. The comments that TROOP made in his first post came from a teacher wondering why a student appeared tired that day. The teacher apparently found out about the signs and made a very incorrect assumption that I was behind the signs and then told her principal or Superintendent Critchlow. That teacher's incorrect assumption somehow made it to TROOP.

It's quite easy to see that there are a few people in our school district who don't like me for documenting facts and asking questions about what's been going on in our school district over the last several years. That causes them to make incorrect assumptions about my character and how I work to resolve issues. 

It certainly leaves a lot of doubt about some of the people running our school district when they tout everywhere that Fox C-6 is a National District of Character when some of it's school leaders and staff act the way they do because they don't like people pointing out issues and concerns within our district.

I certainly had no idea what TROOP was talking about when I read his first post as TROOP 5 or 6 while at a basketball practice. But, I knew right away that TROOP had made assumptions that were wrong and he was making libelous comments that stepped way over the line. I had a pretty good guess as to who TROOP might be right away based on his language.

As TROOP continued to post comment after comment, he was making it easier and easier to narrow down the possibilities of who he might be. Very few people had access to the information that TROOP was posting online and knew the people to whom he was directing his comments.

Only a few people in the Fox C-6 Central Office could have known the information that TROOP was posting. So how did TROOP get his information? Did TROOP work in the Central Office or was he the spouse of someone who worked in the Central Office?

It didn't take too long for people who read and posted on TOPIX to start guessing who TROOP might be. Once they started to put two and two together and making suggestions as to who TROOP might be, TROOP went silent. TROOP didn't post for quite a while as TROOP after he posted on March 23, 2013 when he claimed to be a Fox C-6 employee.

TROOP made a revealing post on February 7, 2013 when he wrote, "Now, I will say this. From what I have heard there will be some sparks flying very soon for a few of you. Cue evil monster laugh...". 

TROOP's comment was made just a few days before a couple of other citizens in the district were sent Cease and Desist letters from the school district attorney for Superintendent Critchlow. Superintendent Critchlow or someone close to Superintendent Critchlow provided information to TROOP about the Cease and Desist letters. The school board members weren't aware that Cease and Desist letters had been sent out. TROOP must have a very close relationship with Superintendent Critchlow if he knew about the Cease and Desist letters before they were received by the individuals.

TROOP's comments focused on only a few people that he felt was criticizing Superintendent Dianne Critchlow and the school board. He focused on me and 2 others who had spoken at school board meetings; the person that was posting signs in the district; and Superintendent Critchlow's husband's ex-wife.

Who in the general public would care about Superintendent Critchlow's husband's ex-wife and make derogatory comments about her while making derogatory comments about people who spoke at board meetings?

Eventually, TROOP knew that I wasn't involved with the making of the signs after the person that was making them was sent a Cease and Desist letter. But, he was mad enough about the signs to blame them on me because he knew who I was.

TROOP went way too far with many of his comments and people called him out for doing so. Three of us that were bullied online and maliciously attacked by TROOP for bringing problems in the district to the attention of the school board filed a "John Doe" lawsuit last year against the person calling himself TROOP. The lawsuit has been filed and subpoenas were recently sent to TOPIX to obtain the IP addresses. 

Everyone should know by now that they aren't truly anonymous when they post online. I posted 18 comments on the TOPIX website between October 2010 and January 2011. I posted facts about issues going on in the Fox C-6 School District after finding the Fox High School Superintendent thread on TOPIX while doing a search for information about our district.

I was falsely blamed many times for posting comments on TOPIX over the last 3 years under different names. Superintendent Critchlow would like to think that I stooped to TROOP's level. I post facts and documents. TROOP attacked people for what they looked like and made defamatory and derogatory comments about people that warrants an immediate dismissal as an educator and a revoking of their teaching certificate.

If Superintendent Critchlow has been protecting TROOP as some have posted online, then the school board should have good cause for termination. Once all of this comes to light, our school board will have even more Public Relations problems to deal with.

The last post I made on TOPIX was a link to Mr. Critchlow's resume that he had posted on his LinkedIn account while looking for a coaching job in Texas. Mr. Critchlow removed his LinkedIn account shortly after I posted the link to his resume. My post asked why his resume didn't show any previous teaching experience. My post on TOPIX to his LinkedIn resume was deleted sometime after his LinkedIn account was deleted.

Supporters of Superintendent Critchlow and the board have been attacking me online for more than 3 years because I've been vocal about the problems in our school district.

Since people know who I am, they have a name to attack or bully me online because they can. I guess they think that they can say whatever they want anonymously and not get caught. But, it's just a matter of time.

One thing you'll notice is the language that TROOP uses over and over. He's so consistent that it also makes it very likely that TROOP was the same person that posted on TOPIX in December 2010 just one week after I first spoke at a school board meeting. TROOP may have also been the same person who was criticizing parents of Seckman High School students and defending the football coach at Seckman High School on another thread. You should search for and read some of the posts.

It's easy to find TROOP's posts because of the language he uses. He uses the word "inbred" quite often in his posts along with other words that I won't mention here. The word "inbred" was also used in the December 20, 2010 post that appeared after I spoke at the December 2010 board meeting.

At the 2010 board meeting, I asked our school board questions about their hiring practices. I asked them how they could have hired and promoted a person to a Director position who had only worked for the district for a couple of months and had been fired from a previous job for a DWI. I received no response from the school board in December 2010 but my questions provoked a response on TOPIX.

In December 2010 I found it strange that someone would post libelous comments on TOPIX.COM about me and my parents by naming me by my first name and inferring my last name by using TV character names for my parents first names. I guess that made the person making the comments feel pretty smart about themselves and think that their comments wouldn't be libelous if they didn't name me directly.

The post made on TOPIX on December 20, 2010 was made just two days before an article was published in the Arnold-Imperial Leader newspaper by Kim Robertson who had interviewed Mr. Jamie Critchlow. Jamie Critchlow is Fox C-6 Superintendent Dianne Critchlow's husband. The article discussed Mr. Critchlow's DWI arrest in Tyler, Texas and his being fired from Tyler Community College where he was the head football coach. The article also mentioned that I was at the school board meeting asking the school board questions about a person who had been hired by the district and promoted to a job paying $98,859 after only a couple of months working for the district.

Board member Cheryl Herman told me at the meeting to call the Central Office so I could be put in touch with someone who would be able to answer my questions. She obviously didn't understand that my question was meant for the school board. They were the ones who had approved the hiring of the individual. My questions were not intended for our school district administrators. The school board approved the hiring. That's why I was asking the board.

I asked the board at the time how they could promote someone to a position if they didn't have the certifications required for the position. I wanted to know how the school board could justify paying someone a salary of $98,859 to someone who had only worked for the district for 2 months after being hired as a Behavior Intervention Support Teacher and an assistant football coach.

I never received a response from our school board to my Public Comment questions after the December 2010 school board meeting. My comments were documented in the December 2010 board meeting minutes as "Concerns with the district". I don't believe Superintendent Critchlow wanted the public to know what my "concerns" were in the board meeting minutes. That's how Superintendent Critchlow can keep the public in the dark.

I received an email response in May 2011 from Superintendent Brown (now Critchlow) informing me that Mr. Critchlow was certified by MO DESE. She said that he didn't make the $98,859 that I claimed that he made, even though MO DESE records from data supplied by Fox C-6 documented his salary as $98,859 in their Core data. It also seemed as if Superintendent Brown took offense to my questions about Mr. Critchlow at the time. I don't know if her being offended had anything to do with the fact that she's now married to Jamie Critchlow or not.

It just seemed odd that someone out of the blue would post derogatory and libelous comments about me on TOPIX just prior to an article being written in the Leader newspaper about Jamie Critchlow. It was also odd that since there were only 8 people in attendance at the December 2010 school board meeting besides the Board of Education and Central Office administrators that anyone in the general public would even known that I had spoken at the board meeting besides those in attendance. People certainly didn't find out what I talked about from board meeting minutes. Back then, board meeting minutes weren't posted until after the next board meeting plus they only documented that I had "Concerns with the district".

So who could have been that upset to post the comments like those posted TOPIX on December 20, 2010?

It's definitely going to be interesting to see what turns up for the IP Addresses from the subpoena to TOPIX.COM. The findings may wake up the Fox C-6 community a bit more as to what's been going on in our school district for at least the last 5 or 6 years.

So how can you find some of the things that were posted on TOPIX.COM?

The easiest and quickest way is to use some of TROOP 5 or 6 or TROOP 11 or one of his other aliases favorite words in a Google search string like I've shown below. Using the Google search keyword site: allows you to restrict the domain name to TOPIX.COM (ie. site:TOPIX.COM).

Next you can add in the unique TOPIX thread identifier like the ones shown below to restrict the searches to a specific thread such as the Nepotism on Fox School Board thread or the Fox High School Superintendent thread or the Why Can't Fox and Seckman High Schools Win Football Games? thread as shown below:

TP57P8GF2PEQBL909 - Nepotism on Fox School Board

TUT6OGLPV1RMEEEO2 - Fox High School Superintendent

TG61O48KVPSPHOPUG‎ - Why Can't Fox and Seckman High Schools Win Football Games?

Next add in one of TROOP's favorite words that he used quite often such as "inbred", "dumba$$", "fat", "$hit", "nimrod", "a$$es", "disgruntled", "hags", "rejects", "tards", "demented", etc. to find some of the posts made by TROOP or those that used similar language.

TROOP also liked to make direct attacks towards me quite often so you can always use Simpson as another search word to see what a Fox C-6 employee who has adopted the Character Education Program thinks about people who bring concerns to our school board.

Here are some example google searches that you can use to find specific posts on TOPIX.COM:

Nepotism on Fox School Board

site:TOPIX.COM TP57P8GF2PEQBL909 inbred

site:TOPIX.COM TP57P8GF2PEQBL909 dumba$$

site:TOPIX.COM TP57P8GF2PEQBL909 fat

site:TOPIX.COM TP57P8GF2PEQBL909 disgruntled
site:TOPIX.COM TP57P8GF2PEQBL909 hags

site:TOPIX.COM TP57P8GF2PEQBL909 nimrod

site:TOPIX.COM TP57P8GF2PEQBL909 rejects

site:TOPIX.COM TP57P8GF2PEQBL909 tards
site:TOPIX.COM TP57P8GF2PEQBL909 demented

site:TOPIX.COM TP57P8GF2PEQBL909 $hit

Fox High School Superintendent

site:TOPIX.COM TUT6OGLPV1RMEEEO2 redneckery

site:TOPIX.COM TUT6OGLPV1RMEEEO2 inbred

site:TOPIX.COM TUT6OGLPV1RMEEEO2 dumba$$

site:TOPIX.COM TUT6OGLPV1RMEEEO2 fat

site:TOPIX.COM TUT6OGLPV1RMEEEO2 a$$es

Why Can't Fox and Seckman High Schools Win Football Games?

site:TOPIX.COM TG61O48KVPSPHOPUG inbred

Take note of the Locations listed on a lot of the posts that were made by TROOP and others using similar language. They typically came from Columbia, MO, Arnold, MO and United States (school possibly based on other posts). It's interesting to analyze the data when your tracking down those people who are anonymously attacking you and making false statements about you and others.

The post made by "redneckery" on December 20, 2010 a week after I spoke at the December 2010 school board meeting uses two of TROOP's favorite words, "inbred" and "dumba$$".

I wonder if it was just a coincidence or were they posted by the same person?

The original post from "redneckery" in December 2010 was deleted after I requested the IP information from TOPIX for the post.  I specifically asked TOPIX NOT to delete the post. Luckily, someone quoted the post on December 21, 2010 prior to the original post being deleted so it can still be found online.

TROOP and whoever else uses the same words as TROOP left a very nice trail of evidence for the Fox C-6 community to get a good idea of who TROOP might be.

Just recently, TROOP or someone using the same language as TROOP posted anonymously using the pseudonym of Nope and Milk sprayed from nose on January 28, 2014 on the Nepotism on Fox School Board thread using one of TROOP's favorite words, "inbred".

The comments made by TROOP and other pseudonyms over the last several years certainly demonstrate to the Fox C-6 community the incredible lack of commitment that some of our district employees have made to the Character Education Program as a National District of Character that's documented in our school district's Policies and Regulations.

Ideas For Recouping Taxpayer Dollars Due to the Latest Scandal

So, how can the Fox C-6 taxpayers recover some of the money paid out to the individuals involved in the latest scandal to hit our school district?

The Fox C-6 community seems to be a little more aware now as to how much Superintendent Dianne Critchlow and other Fox C-6 administrators have been getting paid with taxpayer dollars compared to other administrators across the state. Last year Fox had the 2nd highest average administrator salaries in the state of Missouri and Superintendent Critchlow was the 3rd highest paid superintendent in the state. Their salaries are set by the school board. Over the last several elections, the community has replaced 5 out of 7 of the long term board members. Current board president John Laughlin was just elected in 2011. He was the first to replace one of the long standing board members that was allowing administrative salaries to rise out of control.

Superintendent Critchlow's salary was certainly much more than it should have been. In fact, the first article I wrote on this blog was related to superintendent salaries back in November 2010. Superintendent Critchlow's salary wasn't well known to people in the community back then and probably wasn't well known until the news broke a couple of weeks ago about the latest scandal in our school district. She has been trying to keep her salary information low key for years. It was one of the reasons I received a Cease and Desist letter in August 2012. So, there wasn't much outcry over her salary until recently. But, now that people know what her salary has been, many seem to be pretty appalled by how high it is. That's why being transparent is important to keeping things in check by the community.

I wrote the article about superintendent salaries linked below in November 2010. It pointed out how the lack of transparency in school districts allows salaries to grow out of control. The article has links to copies of contracts from superintendents across the state of Missouri that you can compare.

One of the things that you'll notice in most superintendent contracts is that they have a Morality Clause. I noted in other articles that Superintendent Critchlow's contract did not have a morality clause in her contract. However, Fox's school board policy states that her contract must contain one. So, getting fired for conduct unbecoming is not a problem.

Transparency in Schools and Superintendent Contracts

It appears that one of the big concerns being voiced by people in the Fox C-6 community is, how can our school district keep from continuing to pay out these big salaries and cut it's losses? I've expressed some of my ideas below to school board president John Laughlin. I hope that some of the ideas listed below can be accomplished.

Since retirement benefits for educators are paid out for life with Cost of Living Adjustments each year, it would be good to reduce the amount of retirement dollars being drawn by any Fox C-6 employees involved in the latest scandal from the Missouri Public School Retirement System (PSRS).

IDEAS TO RECOUP TAXPAYER DOLLARS

• Make the firings of district employees involved retroactive to when their involvement in their bad behavior began.
• Attempt to recover the matching 14.5% that taxpayers paid into their PSRS retirement benefits for them going back to the start of their involvement. (I doubt the district could recover what the employees contributed to their own retirement.)
• Request that their retirement benefits calculation EXCLUDE the salary amounts for those years they were involved that are used to calculate their retirement benefits. (Missouri PSRS retirement benefits are calculated based on the 3 highest consecutive years of salary plus health insurance earned by the employee.) NOT including the last several years of high dollar salary into their retirement benefit calculations would help reduce the payouts from the PSRS system.

For more information on the Missouri Public School Retirement System: https://www.psrs-peers.org/

There are more articles on the FoxC6Watchdogs blog related to retirement benefit calculations and payouts as well as transparency issues in our district that have led to their over the top salaries.

Please contact your school board members and provide feedback for helping our district weather this storm. It is your school district and your board members were elected to represent you.

New Chief Financial Officer Hired at Fox C-6

Fox C-6's Chief Financial Officer's recent and sudden departure from the school district has been kept pretty quiet. The district hired a new CFO at the May 20, 2014 school board meeting during Closed Session. There was no mention of a need for a new CFO or any mention of the departure of the current CFO in the board packets that were posted on the website ahead of the board meeting. Fox's CFO was not at the May school board workshop held on Wednesday May 14, 2014. However, information about his departure was included in the Staff Separations in the Late Materials given out to the school board members at Tuesday night's board meeting. The Late Materials information was not provided to the public at the board meeting.

The May 20, 2014 board meeting packet was updated on Wednesday May 21st. The updated included Mark McCutchen, Fox's now former CFO, in the Staff Separations report. The report shows that Mark McCutchen will be leaving the district as of June 30, 2014.

From what I understand, the new CFO at Fox is Affton School District's current Chief Financial Officer who is John Brazeal. John Brazeal is a former City of Arnold councilman and former city administrator.

I look forward to working with Mr. Brazeal on making more improvements to Fox's Bill Payments and Credit Card purchase reports. Fox posted the new formatted reports in the May 20, 2014 school board packets but they didn't provide much more information than the previous reports. You can download and view the updated May 20 school board packet from the link below. The new report simply duplicated the Vendor Name in both the Vendor Name and the Transaction Description columns for the check payments. I mentioned this during Public Comments at the May 20 school board meeting. I also discussed it after the meeting briefly with Assistant Superintendent Rizzi and Superintendent Critchlow.

On Monday of this week I emailed the Fox C-6 school board members a copy of Wentzville School District's Bill Payments report as an excellent example of a bill payments report that Fox could use as a model report for enhancing Fox's reports. The public should be kept better informed as to how the district is spending taxpayer dollars especially when the district is trying to cut costs. Currently, Fox is set to deficit spend $4.5 Million dollars next year. The recent school board workshop had the Board of Education asking the district to cut it's deficit spending to zero by 2017.

Hopefully Fox will start publishing their credit card statements in the monthly school board packets like the Affton School District has been doing for years. Being full transparent is the only way for a school district to operate if they expect the community to trust them.

The Board of Education needs to realize and demonstrate that they understand that they represent the community and our concerns. It's their job to ensure that the Fox School District is nothing less than completely transparent. Sweeping things under the rug or hiding them from the public is not acceptable.

Fox's May 20, 2014 School Board Packet

View Wentzville's Bill Payments Report

New Bill Payments Report to Debut in May 2014 Board Packet

I received an email from Fox C-6 Assistant Superintendent Dr. Lorenzo Rizzi on Wednesday April 14, 2014 in response to my Public Comments about the Bill Payments and Credit Card Statements I made at the April 2014 school board meeting. I also commented about the Bill Payments and Credit Card Statements at the at the February and March 2014 school board meetings as well.

Dr. Rizzi's email stated:

"I am writing to inform that beginning with the BOE May meeting, the payment of bills will show more detail which includes credit card purchases. These will be included in the board packets and posted on the website each month. I have scanned an example for your viewing."

So, starting in May 2014, you will be able to download school board meeting packets and review the bill payments for the month in the new format. I responded to Dr. Rizzi and thanked him for the change. Hopefully, the district will update ALL of this school year's board packets to the new Bill Payments Report format on the district website. It will be very easy for the district to rerun the reports using the new format and replace the pages in the board packets. The district already updates the board packets on the district website each month a few days after the school board meeting to include the Bill Payments Report that was provided in the "Late Materials" just prior to the school board meeting. It should only take a few hours to replace the Bill Payments reports in the board packets for the entire year.

The updated report will be very similar to the old report that had been in use for years before the district switched to the Tyler Systems software last July. The new report format includes two new columns of data. There will be a TRANSACTION DESCRIPTION column and an ACCOUNT DESCRIPTION column for the the fund account.

View a Sample of the New Bill Payments Report

Each month you can download the public portion of the school board meeting packets from the district's website. The board packets contain the board meeting minutes, letters to the district, bill payments report, staff separation and new hires reports and other documents that are provided to our school board members each month a week prior to the next school board meeting. School board meetings are held on the 3rd Tuesday of the month each month (other than July when there is no meeting). So, you can look for the documents online a week before the next board meeting.

The school board meeting packets contain the Bill Payments Report that our school board members review prior to approving the payments each month. Not all of the Bill Payments are included in the board meeting packets prior to the board meeting. There is usually another Bill Payments Report included in their "Late Materials" which is provided to them just prior to the board meeting. The payments in the Late Materials can be anywhere from $1.5 Million to $4 Million dollars or more. The April 15, 2014 school board meeting Late Materials contained an additional $1,582,835.19 in payments for the board to approve. Having descriptions in the bill payments report will help our board members and the public.

You can download Fox C-6 Board Meeting Packets from the district website using the link below. Currently only the 2012-2013 and 2013-2014 school year board packets are on the district website.

Fox C-6 Board Meeting Packets on District Website

It's taken a while to convince our school district to put the payment descriptions back onto the Bill Payments report. Last fall I spoke to Assistant Superintendent Mark McCutchen at the Arnold Days parade about the missing descriptions. Since Mr. McCutchen is in charge of finance, I asked him if he could add the payment descriptions back onto the bill payments report because the public has no idea what the purchases were for without a description.

The public is certainly going to ask questions when they see a payment for $24,723 that was paid to The Bridal Shoppe and there's nothing describing what the purchase was for. The majority of people have quite a puzzled reaction when they find out that the district spent $24,723 at The Bridal Shoppe. Had there been a description column on the bill payments report documenting that the payment was for choir robes, then maybe there would have been fewer questions regarding the payment.

It's good to know that our school board is beginning to see the need to be more transparent. It's a very important step towards rebuilding the public's trust of our school board and school district leadership. Prior school board decisions and lack of communication with the public have caused a great deal of distrust in the community. It will take time to restore that trust. Superintendent Critchlow has made it quite clear by her responses that transparency isn't as important to her as it is to the community.

And, attempts to block the public from speaking with the school board without first speaking to a school district administrator regarding school board decisions also undermines the public's trust and it does not follow school board policy.

It's important that our administrators and school board members read and understand our school board Policies and Regulations and that they follow them as well. They clearly document the roles of our school board and our Superintendent. They were written and adopted to be the rules for governing our school district.

Per our school board policies, 

"As a member of the school Board, I shall: Accept my policy-making responsibilities and require the Superintendent to administer the school in accordance with those policies."

You can read more from Fox's school board policies about School Board Member Qualifications, their Role, Oath, Code of Ethics and more in the document below that contains just those sections from the Fox C-6 School District's board policies and regulations.

Fox C-6 School Board Member Qualifications,

Role, Oath, Code of Ethics and More

What About Those Bill Payments and Credit Card Payments?

The April 2014 Fox C-6 School Board meeting will have marked 2 months since I asked the Fox C-6 School Board the following two questions:

How can the school board approve Bill Payments when there are no payment descriptions documenting what each payment is for?

How can the school board approve paying the credit card bills when they aren’t provided the credit card statements to document what was purchased with the credit cards?

It's been nearly two months and these questions still haven't been answered by our school board or the school district despite several emails informing the board and Superintendent Critchlow that they still haven't answered the questions. Superintendent Critchlow stated at the November 5, 2013 school board workshop that every person who has asked questions during Public Comments has gotten answers to their questions. Obviously her statement wasn't true.

I continue to document all of the times that Superintendent Critchlow makes statements that aren't true so the public understands what they have been overpaying her for during her tenure as superintendent.

Will the school board ever answer the questions regarding Bill Payments and Credit Card Payments? 

How are they doing their job as a school board and providing oversight of our taxpayer dollars if they have no idea what the checks that they are approving are paying for if there aren't any descriptions on the Bill Payments?

How does the school board know what the more than $2.1 Million Dollars in credit card payments have paid for if they aren't provided credit card statements in their board packets each month?

Please call, email or ask your school board members some of these questions during Public Comments at a school board meeting and let me know if you get an answer. It appears that they can't or won't answer these questions which means that the school board isn't following the Code of Ethics that they swore to uphold.

Latest Emails Regarding Questions to the Board and Credit Card Statements

Below is the email I sent in response to the school district's Tuesday April 8, 2014 email. The district's Tuesday April 8 email included an attachment that informed me that the school district would need to charge me between $160 - $170 for copies of the credit card statements for the current school year. It would take 5 1/2 hours to search for and redact credit card statements and another 1/2 hour to copy the documents. It would cost $16.00 for the 160 copies the actual copies.

My email below refers to the Missouri Attorney General's website which states that a government body can waive the fees if the documents are not for personal or commercial interest. Since the credit card statements are public record and should be included in the board of education materials packet each month for our school board members to review, these documents should be made available to the public as well.

I emailed the board and superintendent my request for the documents and asked that they waive ALL fees for the credit card statements in the public's interest per the Missouri Attorney General's website. I received a response to my my email on Friday April 11 which included a copy of the 2013-2014 Fox C-6 Administrator Salaries and the 2014-2015 Fox C-6 Administrator Salaries as attachments. However, there was no response or reference to my request for the credit card statements and the waiving of the $160-$170 fee they wished to charge to obtain the credit card statements.

From: Rich Simpson
Sent: Wednesday, April 09, 2014 7:42 AM
To: Davis, Debby - CO Secretary
Cc: Hermann, Cheryl - Director; Cheryl Hermann; Critchlow, Dr. Dianne; Dan Kroupa; Smith, Dan - Board Vice President; David Palmer; Laughlin, John; Linda Nash; Steve Holloway
Subject: RE: Questions for the Fox C-6 School Board and Missouri Sunshine Law Documents Request

Thank you for your reply.

No one on the school board has addressed my questions that I presented at the February 2014 Fox C-6 school board meeting and that I included in my March 28 and April 4, 2014 emails regarding Bill Payments and credit card payments. When will these questions be answered by our school board?
The administrator salary schedule that I requested is the one that was included in the board packets in the past. It lists all of the administrator's names and positions along with their salaries for each of the upcoming school years. I have attached a copy of the report from the 2013 school board packets as an example. However, the Administrator Salary report that I attached from the 2013 board packet did not list the salary amounts. The report only had the letter “X” where the salary amounts were to be listed. Please provide the Administrator Salary Report in PDF format similar to the one attached for the 2013-2016 school years with salary amounts included. Also, please include Superintendent Critchlow’s 2014-2015 salary amount as well.

Regarding my question on “chain of command”, I have read the board policies on Public Complaints. My questions to the school board regarding Bill Payments are not complaints. They are simply questions for the board asking them how they can approve bill payments without being provided descriptions for the bill payments or the credit card statements for them to review each month. Nowhere in our board policies does it state that I cannot ask our school board questions at a school board meeting during Public Comments without first contacting district administrators or personnel for board actions.

As our elected school board members, Fox's Code of Ethics states that "As a member of the school Board, I shall:" accept and follow each of the items listed in the Code of Ethics; following our district’s Code of Ethics is not optional.

My request for the credit card statements for this school year was for the public interest and not a request for personal or commercial interest. Therefore, I am requesting that ALL fees for locating and copying the credit card statements for the 2013-2014 school year be waived as documented on the Missouri Attorney General's website so the credit card statements can be provided to the Fox C-6 community so they can review and understand where their tax dollars are being spent.

http://ago.mo.gov/sunshinelaw/requestform.htm  

Thank you,

Rich Simpson

From: Davis, Debby - CO Secretary
Sent: Tuesday, April 08, 2014 11:40 AM
To: Rich Simpson
Cc: Hermann, Cheryl - Director; Cheryl Hermann; Critchlow, Dr. Dianne; Dan Kroupa; Smith, Dan - Board Vice President; David Palmer; Davis, Debby - CO Secretary; Laughlin, John; Linda Nash ; Steve Holloway
Subject: RE: Questions for the Fox C-6 School Board and Missouri Sunshine Law Documents Request

Mr. Simpson,

Attached is a letter in regard to your Mo Sunshine Law request and the items that you requested that the District does have in a pdf format.  The letter will explain the procedure to follow in receiving the remaining documents you requested.

Thank you,

Debby A. Davis 

Administrative Asst. to the Supt/BOE

Persistence Pays Off! - Fox C-6 Finally Posts their Budget and Audit Report Online

Persistence pays off!

After asking the Fox C-6 district to publish the district budget online for the last several years, they finally did it. Of course, no one from the school board or the District responded to my questions asking for these items to let me know they were posted online. I even asked about this at the February and March school board meetings and in my last several emails. Needless to say, I haven't been impressed with the professionalism of our Superintendent considering the amount of money that she is being paid.

The budget and annual audit report weren't on the district website last month when I downloaded the monthly board meeting packet. I just found them the other day when I went to download the April 15 school board meeting packet.

I've been asking our school board to publish the school district's budget on the district website during many of my Public Comments over the years. On occasion, I've been given excuses from Superintendent Critchlow as to why these documents couldn't be posted online.

Here are some of the reasons:

• At the February 2014 board meeting, Superintendent Critchlow told me that I was the only one asking for the data. That's not a good reason for not publishing the data on the District's website. 
• She also told me several years ago that the district's financial data is on the Missouri DESE website. Of course, there's only summary data on DESE"s website; there are no details. 
• She also told me that the district doesn't have a full time person to maintain our website like they do in other districts. She said that Fox would rather put its money into the classroom.

If your school district is going to be transparent, then this information needs to be made available to to the general public and not just provided to just those requesting the data.

You can now visit the district's website and download the 2013-2014 District Budget and the 2012-2013 Audit Report produced by Daniel Jones & Associates. The annual audit from the Jones & Associates is nothing like having a state audit where they really dig into the data and look for problems as I've documented in recent Twitter posts. Fox hasn't had a state audit since 2000 or 2001. It's definitely time that Fox has another state audit which must be requested through a petition.

Visit the Fox C-6 Board of Education Documents Page to download the documents:
http://www.fox.k12.mo.us/board_of_education/board_of_education_documents/

Still Waiting for Answers to My Questions from the February 2014 Fox C-6 School Board Meeting Public Comments

The Fox C-6 School Board still hasn't answered my questions from the February 2014 school board meeting. No one from the Board of Eduction has even responded to my follow up emails requesting answers to my questions.

Perhaps our board members aren't familiar with our School Board's Code of Ethics that states, “As a member of the school Board, I shall: Maintain the public trust through full and open communication.”

The Code of Ethics also states, “As a member of the school Board, I shall: Insist that school funds be spent prudently and effectively to provide maximum educational benefits.”

Since I hadn't received a single response from my March 28, 2014 email to the board, I sent the email at the end of this article on Friday April 4, 2014 reminding the board about the Code of Ethics that they swore to uphold when they took their oath of office.

The only response I received yesterday was an email from Superintendent Critchlow telling me that, "I will forward to Ms Davis as a custodial request."

You'll have the opportunity to vote on April 8, 2014 to elect 3 school board members. They will be responsible for approving payments of more than $120 Million dollars per year of your taxpayer dollars. Should board members know what your taxpayer dollars are being spent on? Our school board policies state that they should.

Fox C-6 has a school board policy on Fraud Prevention. It is Policy 3106 in the Financial Management section of our board policies. Policy 3106 defines Fraud and Corruption and states that the District is committed to protecting the public funds with which it has been entrusted. Here is part of Policy 3106 from our most recent draft copy of our school board policies. If the board isn't provided credit card statements in the board packets as a supporting document, how can they ensure the public that our taxpayer dollars are being used for the purpose for which they are intended?

Policy 3106  

Financial Management 

Fraud Prevention 

The District is committed to protecting the public funds with which it has been entrusted. Minimizing the losses to fraud and corruption is an essential part of ensuring that all of the District's resources are used for the purpose for which they are intended. 

The public is entitled to expect the District to conduct its affairs with integrity, honesty and openness, and demand the highest standards of conduct from those working for it and with it.

Definition of Fraud and Corruption 

Although there is no precise legal definition of fraud, the term is used to describe a multitude of offences, including deception, forgery, theft, misappropriation, collusion and false representation of material facts. 

Corruption arises when a person receives any benefit which influences them and causes them to act differently when conducting District business.

Certainly you want school board members that are going to communicate with the public and answer questions. You also want a school board that realizes that it's their responsibility to run the school board meetings as documented in our board policies. The board needs to know that the superintendent works for the board and ultimately Fox C-6 taxpayers. The school board DOES NOT work for the superintendent. Therefore, if our school board is asked to provide documentation to the public, they should convey this request to the superintendent and they shouldn't accept excuses as to why the district can't easily and openly provide such documents to the public.

When your school district superintendent has a salary of $256,131 and your district's administrators have the 2nd highest average salary in the state, there really shouldn't be ANY EXCUSES as to why Fox can't do what so many other school districts across the state routinely do for their patrons.

April 4, 2014 Email to the Fox C-6 School Board

Date: April 4, 2014 7:49:32 AM CDT
To: Arbeitman, Andy - Assistant Superintendent, Dan E. Smith, David Palmer
Cc: Crutchley, Tim - CO Admin., Davis, Debby - CO Secretary, Critchlow, Dr. Dianne, Steve Holloway, John Laughlin, Cheryl Hermann, Linda S. Nash, Dan Kroupa
Subject: Questions for the Fox C-6 School Board and Missouri Sunshine Law Documents Request

Last week on March 28, 2014, I emailed everyone on the Fox C-6 School Board my questions which I posed at the February 2014 school board meeting. I have not received a response to my questions as required by school board policy. 

I didn’t even receive any acknowledgements that anyone in the district or on the school board received my email. I did receive two Auto Replies stating that Superintendent Critchlow and a school board member were out of the office. 

In last week’s email, I renewed my request for answers to my questions from the February 2014 board meeting and the questions posed in my March 18 email to the board. I also made a request for electronic copies (PDF) of the 2013-2014 and 2014-2015 Administrator Salary Schedule as well as electronic copies (PDF) of the credit card statements for the 2013-2014 school year that the school board approves payments for each month as listed in the Bill Payments. 

Please consider this email a Missouri Sunshine Law request for electronic versions of the documents requested above as well as the requests for information that I emailed to the board on March 18, 2014. 

I also requested from Mr. Arbeitman a copy of the board policy that states that persons wishing to speak to the school board must follow a “chain of command” for questions that are board actions. My review of our board policies was documented in my March 18 email. Please provide the policies as requested that states a “chain of command” requirement for board actions.

I also renew my request to the school board to post the 2013-2014 and 2014-2015 school district budgets on the school district’s website like they do in many other school districts such as Northwest, Parkway, Rockwood, Camdenton and many more. It takes less than 30 seconds of time to publish the documents on the district website. Hearing Superintendent Critchlow state that there is no state law or mandate that requires our school district to even have a website is not a good excuse for not publishing the data. As a school board, you should be requesting that this data be made available to the public on the district website.
As Fox C-6 school board members, you were elected by the community to represent us. You took an oath and are required to follow the Code of Ethics as documented in our school board policies. You are required by the Code of Ethics to “maintain the public trust through full and open communication” and “Insist that school funds be spent prudently and effectively to provide maximum educational benefits.”

Can you please explain how failing to respond to emails from parents or patrons or failing to respond to Public Comments follows our school district’s Code of Ethics which state, “As a member of the school Board, I shall maintain the public trust through full and open communication.”? 

Thank you, 

Rich Simpson

  

Date: March 28, 2014 7:34:53 AM CDT
To: Arbeitman, Andy - Assistant Superintendent, Dan E. Smith, David Palmer
Cc: Davis, Debby - CO Secretary, Critchlow, Dr. Dianne, Steve Holloway, John Laughlin, Cheryl Hermann, Linda S. Nash, Dan Kroupa
Subject: RE: Response to public comment at the February 18, 2014 board of education meeting 

Thank you for delaying the decision to approve the school board policies at the March 2014 school board meeting and for posting a link to them on the front page of Fox’s website.

Since the March 2014 school board meeting, I discovered that the entire section of Employee Evaluations was left out of the board policies Forms section even though they are listed in the Form’s Table of Contents. I was able to locate the Employee Evaluation Forms in the 2012 draft version of the board policies on the district website and review them. These should be added back into the Forms section of the document.

Contrary to Superintendent Critchlow’s statement at the November 5, 2013 board workshop, all questions from Public Comments are not answered. Many questions have gone unanswered.

At the February 2014 Fox C-6 school board meeting I asked the following questions that are still unanswered despite renewing my requests in my previous email:

How can the school board approve Bill Payments when there are no payment descriptions documenting what each payment is for? 

How can the school board approve paying the credit card bills when they aren’t provided with the credit card statements to document what was purchased with the credit cards? 

I also asked where I could find a copy of the Administrator Salary Schedule? Could it be found on the website? The copy from last year’s board packets for the 2013-2014 school year only had “X”’s for the Administrator Salary amounts. 

I haven’t received answers to these questions. I was simply told by Mr. Arbeitman in his email that if I wished to have him look into the matter that I should give him a call.

Fox has now paid more than $2 Million in credit card bills for the 2013-2014 school year and the board packets did not include credit card statements. There needs to be accountability for this spending. Fox’s board policies states that Bill Payments need to be supported by Invoices, Purchase Orders and Vouchers. Those aren’t provided in the board packets. If a board member wants to know what a payment is for, they must make a request for the documentation. If there aren’t any descriptions on the payments, it’s difficult for them to know what to ask for.

Please email me electronic copies in PDF format of the Credit Card statements for the American Express, Visa and Discover card for the 2013-2014 school year.
Also, please email me a PDF copy of the 2013-2014 and 2014-2015 Fox C-6 Administrator Salary schedules that include salary amounts. 

The Fox C-6 school board needs to request that the district post the school district budget on the district website like they do in other school districts. If Northwest, Camdenton, Rockwood and Parkway can afford to take the 30 seconds that it takes to copy the documents to their district website, Fox should be able to do the same as well.

I haven’t received a response from Mr. Arbeitman documenting the policy that he alluded to about following the “chain of command”.  Mr. Arbeitman spoke about this at the November 5, 2013 school board workshop.  At that workshop, when Mr. Arbeitman suggested that the district put a policy in place, Superintendent Critchlow stated that the district already had rules in place. Board member Cheryl Herman said that “It’s not a must.” that the community has to contact district administrators prior to speaking to the school board.

Please review our school board policies and provide me with the section that states that questions concerning board actions or decisions requires patrons to first speak with district employees prior to speaking to the board.

I look forward to your response.

Thank you,

Rich Simpson 

==============================================================
From: Rich Simpson
Sent: Tuesday, March 18, 2014 7:24 AM
To: Arbeitman, Andy - Assistant Superintendent
Cc: Davis, Debby - CO Secretary; Critchlow, Dr. Dianne; Dan E. Smith; David Palmer; Steve Holloway; John Laughlin; Cheryl Hermann; Linda S. Nash; Dan Kroupa
Subject: RE: Response to public comment at the February 18, 2014 board of education meeting 

==============================================================
From: Arbeitman, Andy - Assistant Superintendent
Sent: Wednesday, February 19, 2014 1:09 PM
To: Rich SimpsonCc: Davis, Debby - CO Secretary; Critchlow, Dr. Dianne; Arbeitman, Andy - Assistant Superintendent
Subject: Response to public comment at the February 18, 2014 board of education meeting 

Mr. Simpson, 

Thank you again for your time and public comments at our board meeting last night.  With regard to your requests to; 

-include more information in our board packets online
Yes, my request to the Fox C6 School Board on 2/18/14 included that all the credit card statements (full originals less account numbers) be included in board packets. 

-more detailed credit card bills
Actually, this statement is not completely accurate.  My request to the Board of Education on 2/18/14 was that the Board make available to the public the actual original credit card invoices/statements.  I asked the Board to provide the original statements from the credit card company to the public by including them, in their entirety, in the board packets that are then made available to the public on the District's website. By copying this correspondence to Dan Smith, I renew my request to the Board and ask that a member of the Board respond to my request.  

-the district budget online
My request to the Board of Education on 2/18/14 was that the Board publish the district’s budget(s) on the District’s website. The district recently provided the Board with the 2014-2015 district budget. Please publish the 2014-2015 budget on the district website like they do in other districts such as Rockwood. 

-more descriptions of payments
Again, this is not completely accurate.  My request to the Board of Education on 2/18/14 was that the Board include a description for each line item payment/disbursement.  Currently there is no description at all, so it’s not accurate to state that I am requesting "more descriptions" when none currently exist. The only information that the Board currently makes available to the public is the name of the Payee to whom payment is made.  No information regarding what the payment is for is included and, therefore, the information is not useful to the average citizen.  My request to the Board on 2/18/14 was that the Board provide information about the intended purpose for each payment.  The example I provided was the recent payment of $24,000 to "The Bridal Shop" which may seem unusual to the average resident but would be immediately clarified if accompanied with a simple description statement indicating that this payment was for  "choir robes". This was practice in our District previously and it currently is the standard in other area school districts. Since the Board that approves spending based on this information, my request is directed to the Board. Board policy 3150 states that list of bills for approval, “will be supported by invoices, approved purchase orders, properly submitted vouchers, or in accordance with salaries and salary schedules approved by the Board.” Therefore I renew my request to the Board.  

-the statement according to your calculations the district has approximately $2,000,000 in credit card bills to date 

The district actually has $1,993,799 in credit card bills to date and a lot of schools utilize credit cards/purchasing cards to pay bills for added cash back rebates.  This allows for more value of the school district dollar.  Most of the credit card bills during the current year are electric bills district-wide, monthly copier costs, and as much of our office/teacher types of supplies when the credit card was still allowed for those types of charges. We have received approximately $35,000 in rebates to date. 

Thank you for this information; however, to clarify, my concern was and is not that the District utilizes a credit card(s).  My concern is that the Board provides no descriptive information about credit card purchases to the public and does not include credit card statements like they do in other districts in their board packets.

In order to better meet your needs, thoughts, and questions, we would like to be more proactive with your monthly public comments rather than reactive.  That said, I am requesting that if you know what your questions, opinions, thoughts, or desires are prior to our board meetings, that you to please call me in advance so that we can better serve you and your comments.  This will in no way stop you or prevent you from making monthly public comments, but rather it will allow more validity and affirmation for our board of education that you are following the proper chain of command as per board policy.  If you choose not to contact me in advance, all further responses from your public comments will be a “thank you” response and that we look forward to responding to you in the future when you are willing to communicate with district employees first.  At this time, your request for more detailed credit card bill descriptions, the district budget posted online, and more detailed descriptions of monthly payments are being requested from only one individual and we can make those available to you upon request.  The board appreciates your comments and they will continue to be taken under consideration. 

This is where we disagree, and where I seek your further very specific clarification. Please provide me with a copy of the Fox C6 school board policy to which you refer above.

Perhaps you may be referring to school board Policy 1480 regarding “School/Community Relations - Public Complaints”. It states: 

“Although no member of the community shall be denied the right to petition the Board of Education for redress of a grievance, the complaints will be referred through the proper administrative channels for solution before investigation or action by the Board. Exceptions are complaints that concern Board actions or Board operations only.” 

Obviously, Policy 1480 is not applicable here since my concerns meet the stated exception, i.e. the concerns I addressed at the 2/18/14 school board meeting are about “Board actions” and “Board operations” and I am therefore not subject to any “chain of command”.  My concerns/questions were not about student or personnel issues, instruction, discipline, or learning materials.  But perhaps there is another policy that applies of which I am unaware? 

Furthermore, I find it shocking that you have made a threat to me on behalf of the school Board-- “If you choose not to contact me in advance, all further responses from your public comments will be a “thank you” response and that we look forward to responding to you in the future when you are willing to communicate with district employees first.” 

Therefore, at your earliest convenience, please provide me with any school Board policy, documentation, or correspondence that supports your claims that:

• the School Board may refuse to respond to a public question/concern about Board actions unless the resident “first” submits their concern to you

• you, Andy Arbeitman, an employee of the school district, hold the authority to prescreen questions and concerns from members of the public to determine if, in your assessment, the concern is “valid” or not “valid” for consideration by the Board

• the Board has made the decision to abdicate its responsibility and has expressly delegated its authority to you to determine if questions/concerns from the public are “valid” or not “valid” and deserving of a reply from them  

Finally, you added a comment about administrative salaries that was not on your public comment request sheet.  I will be happy to look into this for you upon receiving a return phone call.  My number is listed below.  I look forward to your call. 

Your request seems silly since my only availability for phone calls is outside of regular business hours when you would not normally be in your office.  My question, as asked to the School Board on 2/18/14 is that the School Board of Education include the administrative salary schedule on the district website. It should also be included in the board packets with actual salaries and not just “X”’s for the salary amounts. It doesn’t provide the public with any information to only place an “X” for a salary amount. Generally, I can be reached by phone at home between the hours of 6 and 7 a.m. or between 8 and 10 p.m.  Or, if it's more convenient, please simply include this information, along with your responses to my other questions contained in this email, in your response 

I also request that the Board of Education delay approving the Board’s updated Policies, Regulations and Forms until the April 2014 Board meeting. The District and the Board should have properly notified the public that they were available for review and recommendations. No announcements or notifications were posted on the district website or in the local paper notifying the public that the updated Policies and Regulations had been posted for the public to review. 

Prior to approving the updated Polices, Regulations and Forms, please remove Vickie Hanson as a point of contact. She retired from the district in 2008.

Thank you, 

Rich Simpson

Getting Answers to Questions from the Fox C-6 School Board Is Extremely Difficult!

Should the Fox C-6 school board answer questions from Public Comments per school board policy?

Asking questions during Public Comment or emailing the Fox C-6 school is like speaking to or emailing a brick wall. I emailed the board on Friday March 28 the questions that I asked at the February 2014 school board meeting that still haven't been answered. It's been almost a week since I sent that email and I haven't received a single response or acknowledgement from the board or the administrators that they even received my email. I did get two Auto Replies. One was from Superintendent Critchlow stating that she was out of the office and another from a school board member stating that he was out of the office.

As taxpayers who elect school board members to represent the community, I believe that we are being poorly represented by our school board. The board president should respond for the board. However, Assistant Superintendent Andy Arbeitman told me that our school board has asked him to respond for them.

So, if there is no response, who should the public blame? The school board should request that Mr. Arbeitman respond to the questions through the superintendent or acting superintendent.

In my March 28 email, I made another request for a copy of the administrative salary schedule for this year and next year. Mr. Arbeitman informed me in a previous email that I would have to make another request for the administrative salary schedule because it wasn't on my list of topics that I submitted for Public Comment at the February 2014 school board meeting when I asked the question verbally during my Public Comment.

So far there haven't been any answers to my questions despite what Superintendent Dianne Critchlow stated at the November 5, 2013 board workshop. You can listen to her comments below from that workshop. Her statement about responding to questions at Public Comments was simply political showboating and false. Cheryl Hermann asked the district to notify the board when the district responds to questions. That still doesn't happen either.

The school board or the district simply doesn't respond to questions that they don't want to answer. There have been numerous questions that have gone unanswered for years such as, why won't the district audio or video record board meetings? Or, why won't the district post the budget on the school's website? Superintendent Critchlow did state that Fox doesn't have a full time person to maintain our website as an excuse as to why the district can't post our budget online at the November 2013 board workshop. She also stated at that workshop that there's NO state law or mandate for the district to even have a website as another reason why the district's budget isn't online. You can read more about the November 5 workshop in my previous posts here.

Listen to Superintendent Critchlow's Comments
on Public Comment

"I can go on record saying that every single person that's made a comment has received feedback. It may not always be the feedback they want to hear. ... But, never is there a public comment, unless they're really just not asking anything and just stating a comment. But, if they ever want answers, they get them! We have a policy that says we'll get back to them within a week. The only thing that we probably fail to do all the time is to tell you."

At the end of this post is a copy of the email that I sent to our school board and administrators on Friday March 28. In that email I also included the email that I sent to the school board and administration on Tuesday March 18, 2014 since I never received a response to that email. The email sent on March 18 had my comments in red in response to Mr. Arbeitman's February 19, 2014 email.

Perhaps no one on the board or in the district noticed my requests for documents and requests for answers to my questions in my March 18, 2014 email. Therefore, I tried to make my questions and requests stand out more clearly in my March 28, 2014 email. Maybe I should have highlighted my questions in yellow and used red text to make them stand out even more.

According to school board policies, questions during Public Comment are supposed to be responded to within a week. As professional educators, I expect to at least receive an acknowledgement response from our school district or central office. Since, my email was copied to a several members of the school board, it is Public Record and can be obtained via a Missouri Sunshine Law request to the district.

Perhaps the school board secretary didn't respond to my request for documents within 3 business days as required by law because I didn't mention Missouri Sunshine Law in my request. It appears that I'll have to resubmit this email again and more clearly state my request for documents via Sunshine Law in order to obtain copies of the credit card statements for the 2013-2014 school year and administrator salary schedules.

Wouldn't you like to know what the Fox C-6 School District spent more than $2 Million dollars on so far this year with district credit cards?

The school board approved the payments but aren't supplied the credit card statements in the board packets.

So, how did they approve the payments?

Wouldn't you also like to know how the board approves check payments when there aren't any descriptions on the bill payments as to what the payments are for?

March 28, 2014 Email to the Fox C-6 School Board

Date: March 28, 2014 7:34:53 AM CDT
To: Arbeitman, Andy - Assistant Superintendent, Dan E. Smith, David Palmer
Cc: Davis, Debby - CO Secretary, Critchlow, Dr. Dianne, Steve Holloway, John Laughlin, Cheryl Hermann, Linda S. Nash, Dan Kroupa
Subject: RE: Response to public comment at the February 18, 2014 board of education meeting 

Thank you for delaying the decision to approve the school board policies at the March 2014 school board meeting and for posting a link to them on the front page of Fox’s website.

Since the March 2014 school board meeting, I discovered that the entire section of Employee Evaluations was left out of the board policies Forms section even though they are listed in the Form’s Table of Contents. I was able to locate the Employee Evaluation Forms in the 2012 draft version of the board policies on the district website and review them. These should be added back into the Forms section of the document.

Contrary to Superintendent Critchlow’s statement at the November 5, 2013 board workshop, all questions from Public Comments are not answered. Many questions have gone unanswered.

At the February 2014 Fox C-6 school board meeting I asked the following questions that are still unanswered despite renewing my requests in my previous email:

How can the school board approve Bill Payments when there are no payment descriptions documenting what each payment is for? 

How can the school board approve paying the credit card bills when they aren’t provided with the credit card statements to document what was purchased with the credit cards? 

I also asked where I could find a copy of the Administrator Salary Schedule? Could it be found on the website? The copy from last year’s board packets for the 2013-2014 school year only had “X”’s for the Administrator Salary amounts. 

I haven’t received answers to these questions. I was simply told by Mr. Arbeitman in his email that if I wished to have him look into the matter that I should give him a call.

Fox has now paid more than $2 Million in credit card bills for the 2013-2014 school year and the board packets did not include credit card statements. There needs to be accountability for this spending. Fox’s board policies states that Bill Payments need to be supported by Invoices, Purchase Orders and Vouchers. Those aren’t provided in the board packets. If a board member wants to know what a payment is for, they must make a request for the documentation. If there aren’t any descriptions on the payments, it’s difficult for them to know what to ask for.

Please email me electronic copies in PDF format of the Credit Card statements for the American Express, Visa and Discover card for the 2013-2014 school year.
Also, please email me a PDF copy of the 2013-2014 and 2014-2015 Fox C-6 Administrator Salary schedules that include salary amounts. 

The Fox C-6 school board needs to request that the district post the school district budget on the district website like they do in other school districts. If Northwest, Camdenton, Rockwood and Parkway can afford to take the 30 seconds that it takes to copy the documents to their district website, Fox should be able to do the same as well.

I haven’t received a response from Mr. Arbeitman documenting the policy that he alluded to about following the “chain of command”.  Mr. Arbeitman spoke about this at the November 5, 2013 school board workshop.  At that workshop, when Mr. Arbeitman suggested that the district put a policy in place, Superintendent Critchlow stated that the district already had rules in place. Board member Cheryl Herman said that “It’s not a must.” that the community has to contact district administrators prior to speaking to the school board.

Please review our school board policies and provide me with the section that states that questions concerning board actions or decisions requires patrons to first speak with district employees prior to speaking to the board.

I look forward to your response.

Thank you,

Rich Simpson 

==============================================================
From: Rich Simpson
Sent: Tuesday, March 18, 2014 7:24 AM
To: Arbeitman, Andy - Assistant Superintendent
Cc: Davis, Debby - CO Secretary; Critchlow, Dr. Dianne; Dan E. Smith; David Palmer; Steve Holloway; John Laughlin; Cheryl Hermann; Linda S. Nash; Dan Kroupa
Subject: RE: Response to public comment at the February 18, 2014 board of education meeting 

==============================================================
From: Arbeitman, Andy - Assistant Superintendent
Sent: Wednesday, February 19, 2014 1:09 PM
To: Rich SimpsonCc: Davis, Debby - CO Secretary; Critchlow, Dr. Dianne; Arbeitman, Andy - Assistant Superintendent
Subject: Response to public comment at the February 18, 2014 board of education meeting 

Mr. Simpson, 

Thank you again for your time and public comments at our board meeting last night.  With regard to your requests to; 

-include more information in our board packets online
Yes, my request to the Fox C6 School Board on 2/18/14 included that all the credit card statements (full originals less account numbers) be included in board packets. 

-more detailed credit card bills
Actually, this statement is not completely accurate.  My request to the Board of Education on 2/18/14 was that the Board make available to the public the actual original credit card invoices/statements.  I asked the Board to provide the original statements from the credit card company to the public by including them, in their entirety, in the board packets that are then made available to the public on the District's website. By copying this correspondence to Dan Smith, I renew my request to the Board and ask that a member of the Board respond to my request.  

-the district budget online
My request to the Board of Education on 2/18/14 was that the Board publish the district’s budget(s) on the District’s website. The district recently provided the Board with the 2014-2015 district budget. Please publish the 2014-2015 budget on the district website like they do in other districts such as Rockwood. 

-more descriptions of payments
Again, this is not completely accurate.  My request to the Board of Education on 2/18/14 was that the Board include a description for each line item payment/disbursement.  Currently there is no description at all, so it’s not accurate to state that I am requesting "more descriptions" when none currently exist. The only information that the Board currently makes available to the public is the name of the Payee to whom payment is made.  No information regarding what the payment is for is included and, therefore, the information is not useful to the average citizen.  My request to the Board on 2/18/14 was that the Board provide information about the intended purpose for each payment.  The example I provided was the recent payment of $24,000 to "The Bridal Shop" which may seem unusual to the average resident but would be immediately clarified if accompanied with a simple description statement indicating that this payment was for  "choir robes". This was practice in our District previously and it currently is the standard in other area school districts. Since the Board that approves spending based on this information, my request is directed to the Board. Board policy 3150 states that list of bills for approval, “will be supported by invoices, approved purchase orders, properly submitted vouchers, or in accordance with salaries and salary schedules approved by the Board.” Therefore I renew my request to the Board.  

-the statement according to your calculations the district has approximately $2,000,000 in credit card bills to date 

The district actually has $1,993,799 in credit card bills to date and a lot of schools utilize credit cards/purchasing cards to pay bills for added cash back rebates.  This allows for more value of the school district dollar.  Most of the credit card bills during the current year are electric bills district-wide, monthly copier costs, and as much of our office/teacher types of supplies when the credit card was still allowed for those types of charges. We have received approximately $35,000 in rebates to date. 

Thank you for this information; however, to clarify, my concern was and is not that the District utilizes a credit card(s).  My concern is that the Board provides no descriptive information about credit card purchases to the public and does not include credit card statements like they do in other districts in their board packets.

In order to better meet your needs, thoughts, and questions, we would like to be more proactive with your monthly public comments rather than reactive.  That said, I am requesting that if you know what your questions, opinions, thoughts, or desires are prior to our board meetings, that you to please call me in advance so that we can better serve you and your comments.  This will in no way stop you or prevent you from making monthly public comments, but rather it will allow more validity and affirmation for our board of education that you are following the proper chain of command as per board policy.  If you choose not to contact me in advance, all further responses from your public comments will be a “thank you” response and that we look forward to responding to you in the future when you are willing to communicate with district employees first.  At this time, your request for more detailed credit card bill descriptions, the district budget posted online, and more detailed descriptions of monthly payments are being requested from only one individual and we can make those available to you upon request.  The board appreciates your comments and they will continue to be taken under consideration. 

This is where we disagree, and where I seek your further very specific clarification. Please provide me with a copy of the Fox C6 school board policy to which you refer above.

Perhaps you may be referring to school board Policy 1480 regarding “School/Community Relations - Public Complaints”. It states: 

“Although no member of the community shall be denied the right to petition the Board of Education for redress of a grievance, the complaints will be referred through the proper administrative channels for solution before investigation or action by the Board. Exceptions are complaints that concern Board actions or Board operations only.” 

Obviously, Policy 1480 is not applicable here since my concerns meet the stated exception, i.e. the concerns I addressed at the 2/18/14 school board meeting are about “Board actions” and “Board operations” and I am therefore not subject to any “chain of command”.  My concerns/questions were not about student or personnel issues, instruction, discipline, or learning materials.  But perhaps there is another policy that applies of which I am unaware? 

Furthermore, I find it shocking that you have made a threat to me on behalf of the school Board-- “If you choose not to contact me in advance, all further responses from your public comments will be a “thank you” response and that we look forward to responding to you in the future when you are willing to communicate with district employees first.” 

Therefore, at your earliest convenience, please provide me with any school Board policy, documentation, or correspondence that supports your claims that:

• the School Board may refuse to respond to a public question/concern about Board actions unless the resident “first” submits their concern to you

• you, Andy Arbeitman, an employee of the school district, hold the authority to prescreen questions and concerns from members of the public to determine if, in your assessment, the concern is “valid” or not “valid” for consideration by the Board

• the Board has made the decision to abdicate its responsibility and has expressly delegated its authority to you to determine if questions/concerns from the public are “valid” or not “valid” and deserving of a reply from them  

Finally, you added a comment about administrative salaries that was not on your public comment request sheet.  I will be happy to look into this for you upon receiving a return phone call.  My number is listed below.  I look forward to your call. 

Your request seems silly since my only availability for phone calls is outside of regular business hours when you would not normally be in your office.  My question, as asked to the School Board on 2/18/14 is that the School Board of Education include the administrative salary schedule on the district website. It should also be included in the board packets with actual salaries and not just “X”’s for the salary amounts. It doesn’t provide the public with any information to only place an “X” for a salary amount. Generally, I can be reached by phone at home between the hours of 6 and 7 a.m. or between 8 and 10 p.m.  Or, if it's more convenient, please simply include this information, along with your responses to my other questions contained in this email, in your response 

I also request that the Board of Education delay approving the Board’s updated Policies, Regulations and Forms until the April 2014 Board meeting. The District and the Board should have properly notified the public that they were available for review and recommendations. No announcements or notifications were posted on the district website or in the local paper notifying the public that the updated Policies and Regulations had been posted for the public to review. 

Prior to approving the updated Polices, Regulations and Forms, please remove Vickie Hanson as a point of contact. She retired from the district in 2008.

Thank you, 

Rich Simpson