LASD Board Meeting January 16, 2023: King in the Wilderness

[XLFD]

The Ludington Area School District's (LASD's) Board of Eduction always has its first meeting of the year fall on the Martin Luther King (MLK) holiday, and they always seem to have a perfunctory effort at these meetings to acknowledge that coincidence and say nothing more of it.  Perhaps it's better that way since almost all school boards during MLK's era were obstacles along the way (witness the defendants in the landmark cases against segregation in 1954, Brown v Board of Eduction and at the other end of the MLK's efforts in 1969, Jenkins v city of Bogalusa School Board).  Progress doesn't generally happen at the school board; it happens in spite of it.

Ludington's school board would have a special meeting convene at 5 PM, an hour before the regular meeting where they would meet for the majority of the meeting in closed session to adjudicate a disciplinary hearing for a student for some unknown infraction.  As per usual, they would finish the meeting by expelling the student for the rest of the year for some violation left unspoken. 

Unfortunately, the school board's lack of transparency in such matters does not allow for a review of the board's actions.  They could easily change that by allowing the facts behind such disciplinary hearings to be publicly known while keeping the student's name confidential; these eventually come out anyway when you have a member of the public always request the public records affiliated with such hearings, as has been done for this hearing.  These often become controversial, as the methods and protocols used by the school has been shown to be wrong at times, so it would be better for all if the school would be as transparent as possible in these uncomfortable situations.

This evening's regular meeting would start with an 'organizational meeting', where new board member Sarah Lowman was given the oath along with Stephanie Reed who was reelected and where the prior board office holders get quickly reappointed and unanimously approved, as happened with the president (Steve Carlson), the veep (Bret Autrey), and secretary/secretary designee (Mike Nagle and Penny Schultz).  Since the prior treasurer (Josh Snyder) retired they did have to think a moment before doing the same process with Reed.  Committee appointments followed the same protocol, inserting Lowman into the spot vacated by Snyder.

Four presentations started the regular meeting with the primary one being the yearly audit of the school's financials with Hungerford Nichols.  The fund balance for the district this year was small, around $100,000, down from $1.6 million the prior year, but projected to regain a couple million over the next year as ESSER III and II funds (issued by the feds during COVID) are used.  As such, the audit was positive, except that even with the projected balance it was still below the 10% of annual revenues threshold.  The other three presentations amounted to a meaningless word salad offering regarding PLCs given by Principal Mike Hart and little more than a nod given to the fact it was Board of Education Recognition month and that it was MLK Day.

Accordingly, the first public comment was from a teacher who obsequiously recognized the value of the board, followed by me who also recognized the board by its actions and the man of the day:

XLFD:  "We could learn a lot from the Reverend Martin Luther King if we truly look at his words and apply them to our eternal struggles.  Recently, our federal, state and local governments pooled their authority, their power, and spent our common resources on committing violence on school grounds with high powered rifles for the purpose of dealing death to its peaceful inhabitants whose only crime was existing.  Rather than resist the violent acts, this board unanimously and enthusiastically approved those violent acts in October. "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing."  

As someone who strives to be a good man, I could not 'do nothing' against this state-condoned violence.  Reverend King showed us all the best way to confront violence:  "Nonviolence is the answer to the crucial political and moral questions of our time: the need for man to overcome oppression and violence without resorting to oppression and violence."

I ultimately followed Reverend King's blueprint for exacting change against violence through peaceful means:  "In any nonviolent campaign there are four basic steps: collection of the facts to determine whether injustices exist; negotiation; self-purification; and direct action."

I determined that injustices existed, I tried repeatedly to negotiate with city hall and this board, I underwent the mental and spiritual self-purification process one needs when confronting a Tiananmen Square tank face-to-turret.  As for direct action, Reverend King once again laid the foundation:  "Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue."

Like the Ludington City Council, this board avoided negotiations in keeping on a violent course, namely they added the slaughter of deer to the agenda at the last moment in October and during their reconsideration of hosting the cull in December, failed to consider the morality, legality and the consequence of the violence they were allowing on school grounds.  Even those two who changed their mind did so expressly in order to make less work for their superintendent, much like the one councilor who flipped did so to avoid costly litigation.  This episode shows that our leaders need to drive out the inherited hatred, fear, and violence that lives within them, and replace those traits with love, courage, and peace.  In honor of Reverend King.  [END]

In looking at the board members faces as I delivered the comment, I doubted whether I broke through the echo chamber which allows them to only hear voices of those who recognize their hard work and sacrifices for the common good.  All I saw was laziness when they considered having the deer cull on school grounds and mandating masks on children when all health agencies were not talking mandates.  When one sacrifices public health and safety in approving policies that are not for the common good, you're an obstacle to progress just as surely as the Topeka Board was back in 1954 and the Bogalusa Board was in 1969.

The rest of the board's business was mostly routine as seen in their agenda packet.  These actions included:

- Approving the given financial and single audits presented by Marc Sawyers

- Approving the amended 2022/2023 budget

- Approving $184,000 in technology infrastructure purchases in the update of the MS/HS.

- Approving $23,500 to purchase mobile bleachers for the softball field

- Approving $12,900 to purchase a backstop system for the softball field

- Approving bond payments of $1.065 million for MS/HS construction

- Recognizing Karen Hamilton, LES librarian, as the Soaring Oriole of the month

- Increasing the rate for long term substitute teachers who were former/retired teachers to $200/day from $150/day.

The last action seemed a rather arbitrary move on the board's part to equate a sub's prior full-time teacher status to a 33% pay raise while keeping those without such credentials back at the old rate.  If former teachers won't work as subs due to $150/day not being enough, why assume others will when they hear of this disparity?

[Willy]

I'm curious X. The school property does not belong to the City so was the decision to call off the cull made by the City or the school board? The school board has the actual authority to cancel or approve a cull. My question is, did the board vote to cancel the cull which forced the City to stop the cull process or did they just go along with whatever the City wanted?  Was it a mutual decision and were there any negotiations between the two entities in order to make this decision? Was the public allowed at any of these meetings? Did the City or school board give any explanation as to why the cull was canceled? The reason I ask is that this situation appears to have been decided in the same way most of these types of decision have been made by those in power in Ludington on the Lake. 

I agree with your opinion on the pay per day differences.

[XLFD]

You are right about the property, but of interest is that the LASD never contracted with anybody, they allowed the City to cull on their property where the new elementary is, and the board was never told anything about methods or safety protocols, they just blindly voted yes.  You may have got confused because they did revote on allowing the cull by the COL and their agents in December but that vote failed 2-4.  They could not rescind the contract they never were part of, but they had the final say over whether it would happen on schoolgrounds.

The COL was the only one with a contract with the USDA.  The DNR permit for up to 40 deer was only for one property, not Cartier Park, but the school grounds.  Mitch Foster for some reason thought it could also have been held in CP, but the final contract and their DNR permit did not show that.  There are a lot of questions to ask in the end about the contract and the laws broken, but the City's act to call off the cull anywhere made the lawsuit moot-- which allows the City to save some face.

[Willy]

Thanks for the information X.  It's hard to believe that someone in authority expected to cull up to 40 deer on such a small parcel of land.