LASD Board Meeting, March 21, 2022: Revealing Ugly Facets

[XLFD]

The March 21st, 2022 regular meeting of the Ludington Area School District (LASD) Board was a return to normalcy.  Throughout this school year following the adoption of a school mask mandate in August, a majority of the school board has itself masked up for their meetings, but those were noticeably absent.  It was the first time I ever saw board members Bret Autrey and Steve Carlson in person without a mask.  Leona Ashley was absent, there was about two dozen in attendance, almost all were school staff members.

The agenda itself was rather ambitious, with three presentations offered and eight action items to be voted upon.  The first two presentations were led by retiring elementary principal Brian Dotson and co-principal Katie Eisinger.  One was on March being reading month, with an interesting idea of brackets for favorite children's books, where the kids would start with the Sweet Sixteen of books, paired off against each other over fifteen days, voting on winners until there is only one left.

The other analyzed academic trends in the elementary, namely the NWEA, (Northwest Evaluation Association), a computerized test that is offered to measure student progress in Reading, Language Usage, and Mathematics.  These were somewhat revealing in showing how Covid protocols in school had led to bad results in learning.  Over the last school year, reading proficiency declined at all elementary grade levels by over 20% (i.e. if 50% were proficient before, less than 40% were this year).  The same happened with math, but were more drastically down in the 3rd and 4th grade.  

Athletic Director Randy Fountain explained the particulars of Ludington joining the West Michigan Conference for most sports during the last presentation, which led to public comment, where surprisingly I was the only one to speak this night.  I used my patented Jekyll and Hyde formula to speak of three topics, where I start off on a positive note with a compliment, transition to a left-handed compliment, then overwhelm them with a monstrous dose of speaking truth to power.  I ad-libbed the last sentence of the first paragraph, to incorporate the WMEA scores into the problem noted.

XLFD:  First off, let me thank the administrators for expanding the agenda packets with supplementary materials so that the public can better understand the deliberations and decisions of their elected school board members.  Secondly, let me congratulate the board for reversing the mask mandate policy at the last board meeting after imposing one six months earlier.  Last month's vote, however, shall not absolve from guilt the four of you who put that mandate in place for the better half of a school year without any guidance from the state or federal government forcing you to do so.  This quartet's freedom to choose that path led to the loss of that freedom for 2000 fellow human beings.  You can bet it had a part in the reduction of academic scores we saw earlier tonight.

I have devoted a lot of research time into discovering the truth of what happened at Ludington's Middle School on November 17th, and why it led to the arrest of a local man and the one-year expulsion of a student.  That day, a student told his friend that he was hoping to get an airsoft gun, that friend told school officials later that the student was planning on bringing a gun he didn't yet own to school that day.  This led to an investigation by the middle school principal and his assistant, that turned up no threats and no airsoft gun.  Nevertheless, on November 24th Principal Michael Hart drafted a letter that would be shared with this school board in a closed session at this board's December 6th meeting that stated the student made threats and possessed a dangerous weapon on school grounds in November, two untrue statements that this board took to heart in expelling the student.

Similarly, the school's resource officer, Austin Morris, conducted his own investigation in order to do a threat assessment.  Neither the district, nor the LPD, have drafted a threat assessment process, so Morris decided that to conduct one he had to search the student's home but was thwarted when the student's dad did not allow it voluntarily.  The record shows Morris created a false narrative, misused the law enforcement information network, and swore falsely on his warrant affidavit which allowed him to search the home, where he found several guns in the student's adult brother's room.  This led to the arrest of the father who had once been charged with a felony for marijuana possession way back when all marijuana possession was unlawful, for possession of guns that were never in his actual possession, just under the same roof he was. 

Principal Hart's shoddy investigation and false presentation of the facts in the case combined with Officer Morris' perjury on the warrant affidavit, shows that the school has conducted themselves dishonestly and dishonorably in this affair, which has led to the detriment of this family and a distrust of the district by the public [END comment].

The ballads of Resource Officer Austin Morris and Principal Mike Hart have been reviewed in detail, but we should not forget that these errant school officials were effectively empowered to lie by the school board's inability to look at the same records I looked at, come to a similar conclusion, and respect the basic rights to due process of the family they assaulted.  Why hasn't the school board developed a threat assessment policy and shared it and why would they condone the fabrication of lies found in Morris' and Hart's presentations to them?  I hope I can finally get those answers, they weren't forthcoming this night.

After receiving reports from their three subcommittees, the Soaring Oriole award for the month was given out to an often-ignored member of the school staff that makes everything run more smoothly, the janitor.  Dan Soneral was praised by many in a video that just wouldn't load at the meeting, but that we present here:

Ironically, Principal Hart is giving him the award, which appears to be a gold bag with a gold foil bundle inside.  In the course of your job, don't be using a staple gun or a caulking gun in the future, Mr. Soneral, or you may earn a different award.

The superintendent also went over some last-minute adjustments to the plans for rebuilding the high school complex, before they went through the discussion items and on to the action items for the night.  They decided relocations of the office and the choir room, and decided to sprinkle (their humorous term) more bathrooms around.

The most intriguing item was that they needed to relist the PM Elementary School property because FiveCap dropped their offer for some reason not offered publicly.  I always hoped that some proactive agency would have come forth with the idea of making a small charter or private school at either Foster and/or PM, since they are already designed for school activities.  Alas, if one had, I think the LASD would have tried to ignore their bid, just like they ignored the high bid, well over the assessed value, of Lakeview School by Gibson Custom Homes.  In that case the deciding factor working against them was that Gibson wanted to offer housing that some thought were out of character for that neighborhood.  

In other business, they designated Board member Stephanie Reed as their representative to the WSESD budget meeting on April 12th, approved $75,000 for replacing copying machines, and had the first reading of new policies (which weren't read aloud).  Those included:  "Optional language has been added to state what is legally required with regard to enforcing the dress code in a nondiscriminatory/uniform manner and affirming an employee’s and student's right to dress in accordance with their gender identity".  That optional language isn't found in the agenda packet, so the public and perhaps the board members, have no idea what they will be approving at the next meeting.

They also approved another $762K in spending on the Elementary bond, approved a contract with the United Way to provide services (Josh Snyder abstained due to his involvement in the program), adopted an Emergency Operations Plan that will remain unseen by the public due to security concerns, and approved the purchase of up to $50K in lawn maintenance equipment so that their own maintenance staff would take over landscaping duties for the district.  It is unclear as to why they have decided to end their contract with Larsen's Landscaping, a business that had initially gotten their contract after submitting a much higher bid than their competition, but it will save the district a lot of money-- the decision will effectively pay for the equipment purchases in the first year.

The meeting ended with the usual self-congratulatory rhetoric and a nod to the O-bots and the girl's basketball team by Board member Michael Nagel.  But there was no admissions from the board explaining why their own mask policy negatively affected the reading and math proficiency of their students, nor that they may have made a mistake when they decided to expel a student who never had a gun or ever made a threat on the record.  Hopefully, they will elaborate on these issues in the future.

[Willy]

Thanks for the analysis of the school board meeting X and excellent comments at the  meeting. You were right on the money regarding the treatment of the lad who was kicked out of school and your comments to the members who kept kids in masks was especially on point.  People should realize just how important local elections are.

[XLFD]

The only school board member up for reelection this year that chose to mask up the children for most of the school year is Stephanie Reed.  Josh Snyder is also up for reelection, but he voted on the right side of history.  I hope we can get some new candidates for the board that will zealously come out against Reed's decision to muzzle your kids, their rights, and each parent's right to choose the medical prophylaxis that works best in your child's situation.  

It's proper to ask what other liberties they are taking at your child's expense, and what rights they will strip off in the future.  As we can see in the expelled student's incident, they all seem not to care one whit about the truth or basic civil rights.  Very concerning.