I had kicked off yet another Right to Know (RSA 91:A) demand to my School Board to have them show me where they get the authority to lie to students’ Parents by either commission or omission (telling an untruth or leaving out the truthful bits).
And in doing so, in spite of NH being a Dillon’s Rule state and Gilford a subdivision of the State, how it gave itself yet another Power to grant an Individual (a minor child, btw) a new Right.
To recap from the Gilford School District, Policy JBAB: Part III, Section A. Privacy:
The Gilford School Board recognizes a student’s right to keep private one’s transgender status or gender non-conforming presentation at school. Information about a student’s transgender status, legal name, or gender assigned at birth also may constitute confidential information. School personnel should not disclose information that may reveal a student’s transgender status or gender non-conforming presentation to others, including parents and other school personnel, unless legally required to do so or unless the student or parent has authorized such disclosure.
Transgender and gender non-conforming students have the right to discuss and express their gender identity and expression openly and to decide when, with whom, and how much to share private information. When contacting the parent or guardian of a transgender or gender non-conforming student, school personnel should use the student’s legal name and the pronoun corresponding to the student’s gender assigned at birth unless the student, parent, or guardian has specified otherwise.
In essence, the Board has declared that a student has a new Right
And notice that “assigned at birth” phrase – the District is all in on the Language of the Left and the Transgender movement. So, I put in that RSA 91:A demand linked above – I’d suggest that if you are concerned that your School District is enforcing the Transgender movement’s demands, mores, and language, use it as a model. For the record, gender is created at birth, but you know, SCIENCE and all, seems to be a bit lacking lately.
So, I did get the requisite emails from Superintendent Kirk Beitler, the first one stating that they were still compiling their answer:
From: “Beitler, Kirk” <kbeitler@sau73.org>
To: “skipdcm” <Skip@granitegrok.com>
Sent: 5/14/2021 4:47:49 PM
Subject: Right to KnowGood afternoon Mr. Murphy,
We did receive your May 11, 2021 Right to Know request. We are still working on collecting some of the information you have requested. I hope to have information for you by Wednesday of next week.
Respectfully,
Kirk
Kirk Beitler
Superintendent of School
Gilford School District
2 Belknap Mountain Road
Gilford, NH 03249
(603) 527-9215
and then another one with his response to my RTK:
—— Original Message ——
From: “Beitler, Kirk” <kbeitler@sau73.org>
To: “skipdcm” <Skip@granitegrok.com>
Sent: 5/19/2021 11:26:37 AM
Subject: RTK documentsGood morning Mr. Murphy,
I have attached two documents in response to your right to Know request.
Respectfully,
So, a total of 8 days to send me two worthless documents if you review my original RTK? These are the two attached documents he’s trying to pass off as “Responsive Documents”:
(Kirk Beitler RTK Murphy 5-19-21 (1)and Kirk Beitler RTK Murphy 5-19-21 (2)).
Now look at the top of the first one. Er, my last name is NOT “Shea”. “Captain Kirk” (both of their sense of arrogance are similar, right?) decided that he could lazily get away with just shuffling off answers he sent to someone else, dust his hands off, and declare himself done.
For those of you who believe that a Superintendent is the end all be all in a District and “must be obeyed”, you are sorely mistaken – it is YOU elected Representatives making up said School Boards that are in charge. This is a clear case demonstrating that they:
- Believe themselves to be subordinate
- Believe themselves to only have to be concerned with Policy and Budgets
- That the Superintendent in their employ is competent and trustworthy to do what they tell him to do
- That they don’t have a policy for their Superintendent of “show all work”.
So, not so fast – I sent another email to every School Board member FORWARDING his answers and berating them for allowing it to happen. You can see why I put up #4 above:
—— Original Message ——
From: “Skip” <Skip@granitegrok.com>
To: “Gretchen Gandini” <ggandini@sau73.org>; “kthurston@sau73.org” <kthurston@sau73.org>; “ksanborn@sau73.org” <ksanborn@sau73.org>; “jonos@sau73.org” <jonos@sau73.org>; “AKelly@sau73.org” <AKelly@sau73.org>
Sent: 5/19/2021 2:25:11 PM
Subject: Fw: RTK documentsTo the Gilford School Board,
Are we going to play this game all over again?
Neither of two documents (attached) that Beitler sent in response to my most recently submitted Right To Know demand answered my actual questions. Throwing answers from someone else’s RTK’s demand that don’t pertain to mine is both insulting and starting yet another pattern of not acting according to the Law. Avoidance of direct questions, throwing non-responsive verbiage as if it was chaff, is both unacceptable and a display of slothfulness. Or worse, a display of disrespect.
It does not reflect well on the Board (having delegated this work to your subordinate).
So, consider my Right to Know under RSA 91:A reintroduced / resubmitted (your choice of words) – and this time, I would like a School Board member (since you all are my elected Representatives that are ultimately responsible for this) to review any further responses returned to me from the District. I am fairly sure that you may agree, upon your review of his attached documents, that they rise to the level just above “my dog ate my homework”. I doubt that this workmanship is how the Board wishes to be known by.
Speaking of responses – he has now reminded me of a previous response that he gave me while still a Budget Committee member and it was in the same vein as the attached documents. In fact, you may wish to ask him about that answer he gave to both me and the Selectmen Liaison to the BudComm, Chan Eddy, during the Administrative subcommittee hearing about funding for a new math program for an elementary school math program. We both asked that Steve Tucker (as the Curriculum Director at the time) give us his methodology and metric sets as to how he would determine if and how the new program (not cheap!) was better than the current one. Tucker literally had no answers when we asked about the simplest things like setting up a Control Group vs an Experimental Group, setting up baseline performance for the current program and what metrics would be in place for the new one. The basic question was “how will you tell which program is better?”.
Not a single clue – and our questions were about rather basic analytical items.
I will tell you that what Beitler sent me just now is just as bad as HIS answer was when he tried to take the heat / focus from Tucker from our questioning. Go ahead, ask him about it – for I surely will supply the answer if he doesn’t. Seven years is a long time to wait for measurements.
I don’t wish to wait that long for valid responses from the Gilford School Board.
-Skip
And you can see why I don’t trust most in Government entities. This reminded me of the Story of then Gilford Town Administrator Evans Juris and Finance Director Debra Shackett (he later fired by the Selectmen and she failing upward to be the Belknap County Administrator) decided to create a Code of Ethics to shut Doug and I. The “Good Ole’ Boys” network (both male and female) didn’t care for the fact that we had plenty of media outlets to talk about the machinations in town and how it was governed. This CoE was crafted similar to what most School Boards have – they silence their own members. Our School Board, for example:
- Policy BCA – School Board Member Ethics – #9, #10, and #11
- Policy BCB – Board Member Conflict of Interest – while correct in financial affairs and nepotism, it, too, muzzles the speech of individual members
- Policy BHC – Board Employee Communications – again, muzzles individual members subordinate to the Superintendent.
- Policy BHD – Communication with Public – again, muzzles individual members from opening their lips.
The message that all of these send are “you get elected, lock up your First Amendment Rights”. Since when does a School Board, large or small, have the Power to trample over anyone Individuals Constitutional Rights? These are policies that both disrespect and ignore normative barriers.
After telling everyone that they, Juris and Schackett, had spent “hundreds of hours” crafting it, I debunked that as being from the City of Sunnyvale in about 45 seconds. They quietly slunk away and the effort to shut us up was not heard again.
Both they and Beitler tried to pass off other peoples’ work as their own, simply to puff themselves up and shut down political dissent and quests for actual answers to embarrassing questions that some would rather keep in Dark Corners.
So again, where does the School Board think it gets these Powers that it keeps pulling out of its hat? Or at the other end of its anatomy?
You see, if they can’t answer a simple question of who gave you that authority in writing, they know they can’t be doing it at all. That’s how it works in a Dillon’s Rule State.
Because then it is just Parent Bullying. And their own Policy is supposed to prevent that, right?