Dear School Board Members,
How DID it feel watching your staff member being humiliated, in public, because of YOUR Policy JBAB that compels her to lie to parents? To ME?
This is what happens when Elected Representatives implement policies in which they will NEVER suffer the consequences from doing so – only others.
Did you ever think that a Parent would NEVER ask such a question? I’m betting that you didn’t – after all, how many Parents ever read the policies that you are putting into place. I’m betting that you ARE betting that JBAB would continue to fly under the radar such that very few Parents would ever know the evil you have unleashed. In fact, on that point, how many new policies are you getting ready to place upon the community that you lead – do you realize that you are following in the path of Laverentiy Beria in that having so many laws policies in place, you will almost always be able to condemn some student or staff member?
“Is my son transgender or not?”
“This is not a Question and Answer time”
“That’s a dodge”
“I’m just following this rule here (pointing and tapping on her notes)”
“I was just following orders”; does that ring any bells for you? It should if you know your history.
I am betting that when you went into non-public, I was mentioned and most likely not in a terribly good fashion. To be truthful, I don’t care. You invoked, unknowingly, the Law of Unintended Consequences when you rushed that Policy into place. Did you never give one thought that a Parent would ask that question at a public meeting? YOU ALL PUT HER AT RISK for having that question asked of her. In fact, all of your staff is now at risk. While I could not see their faces, I’m betting a few of the Parents behind had looks of disbelief as to what you have set into motion.
Engineers, when confronted with problems that must be solved will look at the symptoms, formulate a hypothesis as to what is wrong, and then work their way through that problem to find the answer – what we call Root Problem Analysis. THE issue/malfunction/”failed part” that causes the issue. Monday night, that root problem was not me – I was a symptom. Danielle Bolduc was also not the root problem – she was also a symptom; she was an “effect” of the “cause and effect” process that you, the Gilford School Board, put into motion.
Note that she is not the one at fault – you all are for putting her AND all other staff members into the same place. I have railed for two years that you CANNOT force government speech onto people – that you, as part of Government, are forcing your staff and students (and anyone else that comes onto school property) to speak only in terms that the Board’s Policy JBAB approves of in a mandatory way when it comes to using a very small subset of pronouns when talking about a transgender student. Government Speech, not Free Speech.
Coerced speech. A deliberate decision to remove one of America’s most valued attributes – the Freedom of Speech and the Right to one’s conscious of belief. I will be truthful – until Monday night, I had only concentrated on the situation where MY Freedom of Speech (and others) was being removed from me (in a mandatory fashion as told to me by Superintendent Beitler).
But I learned something new Monday night that I hadn’t realized. Watch the video starting at 8:41 – it has that partial transcript above at its start. However, you NEED to listen what I said afterwards which is also important
“I appreciate the honesty. But your employer has put you into the situation to lie to me…It also means that I can’t trust Principal Bolduc. I can’t trust his teachers because I’ll never know if they are lying to me or not.”
Your staff no longer has the Freedom of Speech and you have taken away their ability to tell the truth. This is “progress”?
No, not just in this but in ANYTHING. Ditto for the School Board but I’m figuring that you already knew that. Did you even THINK of the ramifications you were unleashing?
Member Sanborn wanted me to compromise in putting my lawsuit into abeyance until the Board could discuss it next month. My return reply was would the Board then pull JBAB for that period of time, in a show of returned good faith?
I dryly note that this compromise was a “one way” only; I was willing to pull my lawsuit as my part of the compromise IF and ONLY IF the Board pulled JBAB. After all, a one way compromise is no compromise at all. I waited for any of the members, especially Chair Jeanine Onos, to make that motion and vote to show good faith. If you had voted to do so, I would do the same for my lawsuit.
Silence was your answer – no motion was offered. If that compromise was a serious one, you could have had a motion right then and there and voted on it. Heck, you could have called either for another public meeting or a non-public meeting (with the required 24 hour proper noticing as required by RSA 91-A). In checking the SAU 73 website, I see that no such meeting has been noticed. Thus, the message that has been sent is that:
- no compromise is possible with this stiff-necked Board that can’t bring itself to say it was wrong – and apologize.
- you are willing to spend taxpayer money unnecessarily to defend something that, if it gets into the courtroom, you’ll be laughed out of the courthouse. And I hope your lawyer gets sanctioned for blatantly giving bad legal advice to you (akin to “no, there’s no RSA that give you the Powers to do that but we’ll keep stalling this”). My lawyer agrees there aren’t any such RSAs to support JBAB.
- once broken, Trust is a very hard thing to reestablish – but you decided to go that route and continue to lie about your Policy JBAB – in silence. And let it spread throughout the District.
So it seems that the Board is totally willing to foist a development of distrust within the District from Parents (and students) towards the Board and staff.
A DIFFERENT form of Coerced speech and as uncomfortable as Principal Bolduc was (clearly) uncomfortable in answering my plain and simple question, how many other Parents will start to ask that same question. How many more staff are you willing to put into that same situation. How many of them will either stare at you in rebellion or with smoldering anger that you did this to them.
One last thing – since when does a Policy trump the Freedom of Speech of any of the Members? I’ve never seen an RSA that forces a School Board Member to give up their Freedom of Speech and I’ve already debunked the School Board Ethics Policy that requires you to “shut your mouths”:
Turns out that when I asked, there were no signed copies (a Code of Ethics is a contract of sort – without signing it, it is unenforceable). Ditto anything that forces your silence in canceling your Freedom of Speech at any time.
I already fought this issue when Evans Juris (at the time, the Gilford Town Administrator) and Debbie Shackette (then Gilford Financial Director, now Belknap County Administrator) tried to force all of the Budget Committee members to sign it. Like several of the School Board policies, it was not about “Ethics”, it was a muzzling as I and another said thigs that were not welcomed by the “good ole’ boy” network that had run the town for years – we aired “the dirty laundry” they wanted to remain hidden. I refused to sign it (especially after I discovered they had plaigiarized it from Sunnyvale, CA and called it their own).
There is no RSA that allows a school board, or any other government entity, to require more conditions to the position to which you have been elected. Especially when it comes to the Freedom of Speech. To anyone who says otherwise, demand that they tell you the specific RSA. And remember, if they quote one, because I know which one they will use, read the last clause of “students and staff” and realize that you are NOT staff – you are Elected Representatives.
Be Brave. Do Something.
Sincerely,
Skip
