Letter to the Editor

Board member loses faith in corporation

Monday, January 19, 2009

To the Editor:

Our school corporation had an emergency situation in the Clay City Elementary School that needed a valid understanding by a truly informed public.

A problem arose involving our elementary school staff, our elementary students, our elementary principal, our school board and our superintendent.

Our public serves as a judge in these situations and deserves an explanation that allows our public to judge correctly.

This situation surfaced when the question arose when our superintendent and board failed to satisfy our parents and public with an acceptable answer to our Kindergarten teacher staffing.

This created frustration between parents, teachers and principal. Our public received no valid satisfactory answer to this problem and could only guess who was at fault for this frustration.

Obviously, different public members guessed differently. An unacceptable answer was not a workable solution!

There was a failure for our school board to be fully informed. There was a failure of our school board to request full information. This resulted in leaving our teachers and principal having to solve this problem between themselves. This didn't work.

This created stress for everyone, including our students. This resulted in our principal resigning then later asking to be reinstated, which put our school board in an awkward position.

Both times, I voted with the board majority. Both times, I did not know enough to support my vote! Both times, I had faith in our teachers, our principal, and our public receiving a valid solution.

I believed that both our principal and our teachers could change, compromise and succeed with the right leadership. This leadership did not appear.

Our public, who do you think created this confused manner of operating our school's needs in this occasion? You are the judges.

I am giving you the truth as I see it from a board member's viewpoint. Our school board and superintendent are malfunctioning in multiple areas, including our elementary school building project.

I have lost any faith that I ever had in their functioning!

Forrest Buell,

Clay City