May 27, 2014 - Critchlow Tells Crutchley and Scott That Her Husband Was Posting on TOPIX.COM

I'm glad to see that the Fox C-6 community is finally questioning all of those denials of wrong doing over the years by former Fox C-6 superintendent Dianne Brown-Critchlow.

Telling the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth was a huge problem for some of Fox's school district during the Dianne Brown / Dianne Critchlow Era of our school district.

Seeing some of the comments posted by parents, taxpayers and students on some of the news sites and Facebook helps validate years of work spent chasing down and documenting the corruption going on in our district as school board members turned a blind eye.

Below is a link to a few pages of notes written by former assistant superintendent Tim Crutchley and former assistant superintendent Todd Scott on May 25, 2014 soon after Dianne Critchlow informed them that she knew that her husband Jamie Critchlow had been making posts on TOPIX.COM. Dianne met with Tim Crutchley and Todd Scott shortly after the Post Dispatch newspaper published a story about the internet scandal lawsuit.

Their notes aren't very detailed. But, I thought it would be helpful for the community to get a glimpse at some of the things that were going on behind the scenes two years ago.

It's hard to believe that it's already been two years since the internet scandal broke things loose for the school district. It wasn't long after the internet scandal, that the credit card spending scandal hit the news. What a crazy time it was!

While Dianne Brown-Critchlow was touting Fox as being a National District of Character, she was busy padding her pockets and using district credit cards to pay for red light tickets and meals as well as purchase logging tongs, cameras and softball equipment on Amazon.com.

As documented in Tim Crutchley's hand written notes, Dianne Critchlow asked Tim Crutchley and Todd Scott to tell the board  "about her wanting to to retire right away and that she has gotten bad health news and was going on FMLA right away. She also wanted us to get board to move Jamie's retirement up right away because of her health concerns."

I'm betting that Dianne Critchlow didn't feel too well after being contacted by her Internet Service Provider and being told that their IP information was being requested for a lawsuit.

Crutchley and Scott's Hand Written Notes Document Critchlow's Knoweledge of Posting On TOPIX.COM

Recap of the November 3, 2014 Fox C-6 Board Meeting Workshop with Audio

Fox C-6 held a Special Board Meeting Workshop on Monday November 3, 2014. It began with a Closed Session meeting at 5:30PM followed by a Public Session meeting at 7PM.

Mr. Underwood from the Missouri School Board Association met with the Board of Education (BOE) and presented information about the 7 Superintendent candidates during Closed Session.

No time was scheduled for Public Comments at the Special Meeting / Workshop.

A Few Important Points From the Meeting

4 - Hodge Mascot Change  (1min 40s)
Hodge Elementary's new mascot will be the Hawks.


5 - Discussion on Nepotism Policy and Whistleblower Policy  (2min 44s)
There was discussion about the updated Nepotism Policy which is much stricter than before. It will be brought to the board at the November 18th board meeting for a vote.

Current Fox C-6 school board vice president Dave Palmer has been richly rewarded for serving on the school board over the past 8+ years. His wife was promoted to the Director of Nursing in June 2006 while Mr. Palmer was serving as the school board president. Gee Palmer was also given a 75% pay increase with her promotion.

The community should be requesting that Mr. Palmer resign his position on the school board and that his wife resign her position as well.

It would be very nice if they repaid the taxpayers for taking advantage of the community. Gee Palmer earned a total of nearly $250,000 more in salary than the highest paid nurse earned in the district during the same period of time. Several nurses in the district had nearly double the number of years of service in the district that Gee did.

Mr. Palmer doesn't give the impression that he was representing the taxpayer for the students as much as it does that he was able to get his wife a high paid promotion in the district. It seems very similar to the Linda Nash / Kelly Nash issue which stirred things up the community nearly 2 years ago.

The Whistleblower Policy was discussed as well to protect anyone working for the district from retaliation for someone coming forward about someone who is not following school district policy. This would have allowed people to speak to a school board member as well who might want to report a problem but were afraid to report it to their direct supervisor. Mr. Kroupa asked for additional time to discuss and improve the Whistleblower Policy.


6 - Board Vacancy  (14min 50s)
Mr. Laughlin told audience that it was the opinion of the district attorney that the Board of Education should appoint a replacement for former board member Cheryl Hermann. Mr. Laughlin is forming a committee and they will be seeking a replacement for Cheryl Hermann.


7 - Voluntary Separation Incentive Program  (16min 10s)
CFO John Brazeal presented some possible changes to the Voluntary Separation Incentive Program.

• Changes extended the deadline to January 16, 2015 to file for the VSIP.
• Payments would be made prior to the end of their employment so they could use the incentive money to purchase service credit to enable the retirement.
• In turn the staff would waive their claims to a variety of issues such as age discrimination or ADA discrimination. It would not include any open claims.

The board approved the changes to the VSIP.


8 - Employment of Certified Staff  (21min 19s)
Todd Scott presented two retired counselors were approved to work 1 day a week to help in the school district.

Approved by the board.


9 - Employment Modifications  (22min 20s)
Todd Scott presented Employment Modifications to the board asking them to approve modifications for 6 administrators to increase their pay by roughly $640 since they had earned their advanced degrees. There was quite a bit of discussion on this topic. In the end, the board voted NOT to approve the modifications.

The vote was 4-NO / 2-YES.

You can listen to the public session of the board meeting by clicking on the link at the bottom of this article.

Below is the agenda for the Special Meeting/Workshop from Fox's website:

Special Meeting/Workshop

for the Fox C-6 Board of Education

Monday, November 3, 2014

5:30 p.m. Closed Session

7:00 p.m. Board Meeting

Notice is hereby given that there will be a Special Meeting/Workshop of the Fox C-6 Board of Education, on Monday, November 3, 2014 and will begin with Closed Session at 5:30 p.m. The Board meeting will occur at 7:00 p.m. at the Fox C-6 Service Center, Roy Wilde Conference Room, 849 Jeffco Boulevard, Arnold, Missouri.

The agenda for the meeting is as follows: 

1. Call Meeting to Order/Pledge of Allegiance/Roll Call 

2. Adjournment to Closed Session: 

       610.021.3 Personnel

       610.021.13 Personnel Records

3. Building Improvement Plans

4. Hodge Elementary Mascot change

5. Discussion - Form #0342.1 Code of Ethics/Nepotism and Whistle Blower Policy

6. Board Vacancy

7. Voluntary Separation Incentive Program

8. Employment of Certified Staff

9. Employment Modifications - Advanced Degree Work

10. Adjournment 

The Public Session of the meeting started at 7PM. It began with 10 minute presentations from each of the building principals that had not yet presented their building improvement plans to the board members and the public.

After the presentation time was over for all of the principals the Open Session portion of the meeting continued. Below is a link to the original agenda that was posted on the district website:

November 3, 2014 Fox C-6 Board Meeting Agenda

Below is my audio recording of the Open Session portion of the board meeting.

Audio Recording of November 3, 2014 Fox C-6 Board Meeting Workshop

Some Highlights from the September 16, 2014 Fox C-6 BOE Meeting

There hasn't been much time to review all of the audio from the the September 16, 2014 Fox C-6 Board of Education meeting yet to write an in depth review. The district posted Highlights of the September BOE Meeting district's website. But, the district recap doesn't have a lot of the details. Hopefully, I can get a more in depth review posted over the weekend.

There were several notable items during the board meeting that I wanted to get posted for the community and staff at Fox C-6.

One of those items was that acting superintendent Tim Crutchley handed out a draft copy of an updated Nepotism Policy and draft copy of a Whistleblower Policy to the board members during the Superintendent's Report at the end of the meeting. I've made a Sunshine Request for those documents and will post them for the community to review when they're available.

Employee Protection/Whistleblower Policy
The Whistleblower policy is meant to protect district employees from retaliation or intimidation if they speak up or ask questions about any wrong doing they see happening in the district. Fox's school board policies have statements regarding this already when reporting concerns to their supervisor or the superintendent that they would not be retaliated against. However, everyone working for the district knows that district policy wasn't followed. That's why very few people if anyone for that matter would ever speak up about what was happening in the district. I have heard numerous stories about what happened if you did. Many are still afraid to speak up even now. That's most likely why a Whistleblower Policy is being put in place.

A Whistleblower policy should have been in place years ago. Perhaps the district wouldn't be in the situation it's in right now had there been one in place and followed. Many of the sample policies provided to the board allow you to contact a school board member as well as well as a supervisor or higher level administrator.

However, I can tell you from experience that contacting previous board members including Cheryl Hermann and Dave Palmer resulted in Willful Blindness. It's just how it's been during former superintendent Dianne Brown-Critchlow's tenure.

Parents who spoke up about issues in the district were met with harsh remarks during school board meetings and in online forums. Some were even sent Cease and Desist letters!

Sample Whistleblower Policies Presented to the 

Fox C-6 BOE at the Meeting

Sherwood National School of Character Award
Trip to Washington, D.C.
In the September 16 board meeting packet there was a request for a trip to Washington D.C. for the committee that wrote the application for the National School of CharacterAward at Sherwood Elementary. The page in the board packet states that "We have put a stop to out of state travel..." My guess is that out of state travel was curtailed due to the reckless credit card spending by some of the district's central office administrators and the current financial situation of the district.

The trip request was discussed during the board meeting. The trip will be paid with Professional Development funds since the committee will be presenting at the National Conference as well as learning from other school districts. After a few minutes of discussion the school board voted to approve the trip.

Click on the link below to view the request for the trip from the board packet:

Sherwood National School of Character Award

Trip Request

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