I first came to know my school board when I had to advocate on behalf of my child, and ran into road block after road block. I followed the chain of command, ultimately ending up at a school board meeting. I was appalled at how the taxpayers were treated, and had some very obviously difficult questions for the board. I have been involved ever since and it gets worse and worse and worse.

Relating all this to the open records and public right to know law, our superintendent’s stepson was hired as a FLOATER (substitute without a teaching degree), and was there almost every day of the school year, and my interest was that I thought that a job had conveniently been created for him via the substitute list.

I wrote my letter to the district asking to see the substitute call in list from the beginning of the school year. In addition to finding that this person indeed had been called in almost every day, I found out some other very disturbing issues. In the first 110 days of school of this particular year, I counted up the teacher absences and there were 1,104 teacher absences in 110 days of school. There were days when there were 45 teachers absent from the district. I of course brought this up at a board meeting, which angered everyone, and they said that I was wrong. Since the school district charges us $.25 a page for copies, I made another appointment to go in with my own copying machine. I requested the same documents, but instead of the original documents that I saw the first time, I was given copies the second time around. I questioned this fact and was told that these were the originals. It is very easy to identify copies, as where there had been highlighting which I saw on the original, this area was now gray, and whereas paper that is written on, handled and worked with, the pile tends to be more full, and with myself being a secretary, this jumped out at me right away. The pile of paperwork they gave me the second time around was about 1/2 of the thickness from the first view, and it had a months’s more papers in it. Well, the secretary came in to me very upset, and was questioning me as to whether or not I thought she was lying, to which I replied, if the shoe fits. That is all I said. Two days later I get a letter in the mail from the solicitor stating that if I continue to harrass the employees, I will not be allowed into the building any more.

I again wrote a letter stating that I wanted to view the original documents that were handwritten on, and again I received a denial for these items, as I had previously seen them, and the district would not honor the request. I brought this up at a board meeting and then was told that the secretary works from photocopies. Interesting, as there really is no need to waste the paper, secretarial time, electric, toner, etc., when you can work from the original. I asked that question, to which all I got was looks and no answer. Our board only looks around at each other with blank looks and then says nothing. They never answer any questions.

In addition, I noticied that most of the absences on this list were for approved absences and not sick time, which meant that the superintendent scheduled these teachers off (sometimes up to 45 a day, and we only have 162 teachers in the district) and these absences didn’t even count against them. I also found out that in addition to substitutes called in, we call FLOATERS in, just for the heck of it in case someone needs help. At this rate, our school district will have more employees than it does students. This also translates into approximately $85,000 dollars of taxpayer money for substitutes.

Our school board also tried to keep the public from speaking and asking questions at board meetings. Obviously we are asking the correct questions and making them quite uncomfortable, so they want to shut us down. That was another fun meeting.

We have the speediest board meetings in the world, lasting approxiamtely 45 minutes, and the story goes on and gets worse.

Thank you for your time.