Day 35: Sunday, 14 January 2007
Well ladies and gentlemen, the cover-up begins. Mr. Sennett is being transferred to a school in Korea, leaving Mr. Werner nicely positioned to be Principal without the painful process of advertising the position, interviewing, spending the money to move someone – and why is Mr. Sennett suddenly moving to Korea? No doubt there was a dire need there that justifies further interruption within the Vilseck High School community at mid-year.
Let’s take bets on who becomes the new Assistant Principal, shall we? My money is on Chip Bassett. Now, I don’t know Chip. Never met him. Emailed with him twice two years ago when he left Vilseck and moved to Iceland to take an administrative position there. I inherited his 8th grade English classes, the yearbook, and the Journalism class – which, for that year was not combined with the yearbook class, unlike last year. Then the Iceland schools closed rather suddenly and Mr. Bassett came back to a school in Germany. I don’t know which one. I know he remains on very good terms with several of the teachers at Vilseck and I hope he will be an asset to the school at this point in the on-going insanity. Sadly, Mr. Bassett’s chance to return to Vilseck may actually get twisted away from him because of my publicizing that Mr. Werner had pre-selected him back in October. If that’s the case, chalk up one more victim to the underhanded maneuvering of Mr. Werner and Mr. Thompson. If Mr. Bassett is the right choice for Vilseck, then the District ought to be fearless in bringing him in. What are the odds?
On the entirely mindless and personal side, I went to a Dairy Queen tonight and indulged in a chocolate dipped soft ice cream cone. Hadn’t even thought of Dairy Queen in the last two years. Then, although it was 7 p.m. on a Sunday night I stopped at the Ohio home-grown version of Walmart, a store called Mejiers. My son was looking for an electric tea kettle – like the kind that are all over Europe… -- the only thing he could find was an electric coffee pot with the percolator inside of it. He took the percolator guts out and now he has his tea kettle. And, we bought it on a Sunday night. Could get spoiled this way.
Please parents and students, if you find any of this whole personnel swaparoo to be at all disturbing, please go to the next town hall meeting and demand answers. Don’t let Mr. Thompson tell you that personnel matters are confidential. At the administrative level he owes you an explanation about why the school Principal of six (?) years is yanked away in mid year. And for sure he owes the students an explanation about why it was necessary to lie about my performance in order to fire me. The law does not require any reason to be given. I didn’t want to be fired – for sure! – but that act was legal. It is the lies about my performance and my actions, and the quality of the work my Journalism students have done this year that is so unkind and unethical.
By the way, I think I have electronic copies of the newsletters produced this year. I look for them and post them. You can count the errors yourself then and make your own determination if the product “reflects badly on Vilseck High School.” Anyone seen any newsletters since I left? Anyone talk to the Journalism students? My guess is the First Amendment – Freedom of the Press – which does apply at many levels to student journalists – has been trashed. Any stories about the change in school personnel? Two members of the staff have been fired and in less than a month’s time, plus a change in administration. That seems newsworthy to me!
