Is there a candidate for school board who is in place to represent the interests of the teachers? I have my suspicions based on observing yard signs. I will admit my "sample size" isn't very large. But clues can be surmised - well, sometimes.
We know the Morris teachers have been very sensitive of late. You might say this sample size is not small. A routine check of the Morris newspaper every week had something begin to stand out. A chorus of "woe is me" from the Morris teachers. I will agree that life may not be perfect for these people. Life has its challenges and anxieties for everyone.
Teachers have an advantage of being able to act as a group. It's good old union power. I have seen public school politics become very disruptive to this community, even getting to the point where businesses were boycotted. By the teachers, I might add, with some of their friends thrown in. Social networks can take over with these things. We begin to sense that certain "personalities" have clout. I'm thinking back to the 1980s primarily.
I have seen the unpleasant underside of teachers' thinking and behavior. It reaches into the paranoid sometimes.
We have a current school board that I do not think has been co-opted by the teachers. The teachers usually don't do this directly but we can see teachers' spouses get involved. That's just as bad. So I have experience from seeing this in a past time. Two very good examples jump into my head and there were probably others.
The synergy of social networking in a small town can be insidious. I cannot overstate this.
The worst of the 1980s slowly faded to where today, I look at the board of education and feel fundamentally good about it. This is regardless of how teachers can show up one after another, not dissuaded by redundancy, and bellyache. That's exactly what it was. "Woe is me," or "us."
So I was amused when the board demurred a little and a member took it upon himself to remind teachers that "preventative health care" is important. Teachers can have the same problems managing their health as the rest of us. They apparently aren't satisfied with their health care package. I have definitely seen overweight teachers. I think a prime one has left the staff: I believe he requested a leave of absence and was turned down? And then he just resigned?
I'm not as familiar with all the teachers as I once was. One of them came to a school board meeting and accused the board of lying. It got reported in the media that way. Board members are elected by the public. They deserve a modicum of respect that way. But I have seen teachers show such an arrogant attitude all my life. We have been through quiet and pleasant times and then things can get nasty, really nasty.
And teachers have space in which to assert themselves that the rest of us do not have. Often they are sanctimonious in ways that can be like fingernails on a blackboard. They have power that sometimes must simply be acceded to. That's because at a certain point the show simply must go on.
Teacher strikes and threatened strikes were all over Minnesota in the 1980s. We were negligent for a time in not pressing our legislators to fix this. In Morris we had to lick our wounds a while. No there was no strike per se. I as newspaper photographer did photograph two teachers with strike signs they had prepared in case that eventuality arrived.
And then we'd hear the teachers say - cue the fingernails on blackboard again - "we don't want to go on strike but we will if we have to." The teachers in my photograph with the picket signs were (Mr.) Kern and Tschetter.
The end of the '80s was an absolute tumult in Morris. And it was really over nothing, I would argue. It got intense because certain people's toes were being stepped on who had social group capital in Morris.
People who were part of the problem would laugh at me for writing this. They'd laugh at everything I'd write and that's part of the problem. They just want to roll over everyone who they think is in their way. So they strive to discredit those who are critical of favored members of their group and not because those targets are necessarily exemplary in the education profession.
Eventually our school board as part of a recovery process decided that spouses of teachers should not be hired. Wait a minute, don't jump on me with the accusation that this was a mere rumor or suspicion. I remember a teacher/coach who was highly thought of for his work, a UMM product, who became distressed when his wife Jana was eyeing a job in the district but "couldn't even get an interview," the guy told me. It was because of her marital position.
Do I think that policy was fair? Unfortunately I do, yes, although in the case of the Courts I would say there would have been no problem. They were collateral damage of a problem that was not of their making. I hope they're doing well these days wherever they are. I think Paul left here for Cold Spring.
I can definitely think in terms of who the "bad actors" were, married couples who got too big for their breeches. And it's not as if I object to teachers asserting themselves if their motives are pure and sincere. Not at all. Too often their motives are not that way. They want more money, "better health care package" (in spite of maybe being overweight), more job security, and a whole lot of things that I guess we'd all like. Stress the money.
There has to be a limit to how much a school district can drain us. We just had another school district referendum that only narrowly passed. Referendums always passed routinely when I was in my journalistic prime with the Morris newspaper. Dave Holman told me that even though there was some sharp criticism of my work sometimes, "you're probably doing some good just with the amount of attention you give the school."
Believe me I can remember long-ago times where referendums were like pulling teeth to get passed.
There are other government entities besides the school that want their own budgets filled out. I once read that your typical residents of an outstate Minnesota community view their local public school as a "money pit." But we passed our referendum narrowly. So, whistle past the graveyard a little maybe?
I feel one of the biggest dangers that could befall us, seriously, is representatives of the teachers getting onto the school board. And when I say "representatives" I mean in the narrowest, most parochial sense. The kind of people who have been calling our school board members "liars." I believe the football coach is in that category.
The worm could turn and people could start becoming skeptical of the school board. It can happen.
Do teachers have a "hard job?" I think it's in their interests to try to make us all believe it's hard. Maybe it depends on how you define "hard." Mark Dayton told me in a one-to-one conversation that "being a teacher was the hardest job I've ever had." I think that in a sense he's right. But that qualifier is important: "in a sense."
Be advised
Are we really starting to see school board candidates who will represent teachers in not the most wholesome way? I remember Jim Morrison characterizing the teachers' basic attitude as "us against them" all the time. It's correct in spades.
We don't ever want to see the day return where Morris businesses get boycotted.
Dennis Rettke took over in administration in the most stressful time of the Morris school's history. I think it was hard on him, maybe shortened his life. We had an activities director who just "had to go." And for that we went through so much suffering? Was it Switzer's fault? The board at the time? It's hard to take your focus away from the board. It had teacher spouses on it.
Back when I got a very nasty anonymous phone call at the newspaper - from the days when you could make an anonymous phone call - I told a friend later about it, to which he replied "was it a coach's wife?"
Addendum: Be advised that when teachers' interests seep onto a school board, one of the casualties can be co-curricular. And then we'll get the lectures that co-curricular is less important than academics. I will add that when I was forced to try to learn algebra in the ninth grade, it probably destroyed me.
- Brian Williams - morris mn minnesota - bwilly73@yahoo.com
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