Minnesota School Board Association, homegrown authoritarians edition

Just when I started worrying about running out of dictatorial authoritarian types, a school board meeting is scheduled and a handful of authoritarians appear.. When ISD 728 held its meeting on Dec. 11, 2023, 5 dictatorial types did their best to intimidate John Anderson and Mindy Freiberg into submission. That's a stupid thing to do.

The ISD 728 School Board voted to censure John Anderson and Mindy Freiberg last Monday. If you're wondering what Director Anderson and Director Freiberg were charged with, the Center for the American is on the case. Bill Walsh wrote "District lawyer and paid attack-dog Michael Waldspurger then breathlessly walked through the charges as if he was their boss and this was a year-end employee review. Here are the charges:

  • Late for meetings.
  • Unprepared for meetings.
  • Talked to legislators about district priorities without authority.
  • And the ultimate sin: failure to follow Policy 209.

ISD 728 wants to know which people are voting yes or no before debating the issue. Isn't that interesting? Why have the debate if you've already made up your mind?

Walter Hudson lays things out perfectly in this tweet:

I'm totally certain that the tail isn't designed to wag the dog. This is how dictatorships work. This isn't how constitutional republics work.

Duplicating injustices

Good ol’ Policy 209. A similar policy was used against Hastings School Board Member Mike Reis in 2021 during his censure, by the same law firm. In both cases, the school board chair let the attorneys speak in a condescending and disrespectful manner towards these elected officials.

Policy 209 comes from the Minnesota School Board Association (MSBA) model polices for school districts and serves as a code of conduct for members. Most districts in Minnesota have adopted the exact language of Policy 209 from the MSBA.

Why would anyone copy disciplinary language so it can be used from district-to-district statewide? The language of Policy 209 is filled with weasel words that can get twisted in any direction the School Board Chair wants to fit his/her needs. Then there's this:
The purpose of this policy is to assist the individual school board member in understanding his or her role as part of a school board and in recognizing the contribution that each member must make to develop an effective and responsible school board.
School boards don't serve the Superintendent. School boards serve the people that voted for them. This isn'ta Mickey Mouse game where the achievement gap keeps getting worse. The blueprint we have now has failed.

It isn't that it isn't working. That's too polite. It's that the union-driven model has failed and it's too expensive.

This video is of the ISD 728 board meeting from this past Monday:

A little over 59 minutes into the video, the person speaking says "the training includes protocols for talking with the Superintendent. And among other things that document makes clear that board members are supposed to communicate through the Superintendent and not with individual staff members."

That sounds a lot like an order to an independently-elected candidate. In a constitutional republic, independently-elected candidates aren't subject to ticky-tack rules like Policy 209. They're subject to things like elections and the U.S. and Minnesota constitutions.

Based on what we've read about the MSBA and ISD 728, they see school board members as rubberstamps for the Superintendent. That isn't checks and balances. That's homegrown authoritarianism. This type of governance must be uprooted immediatedly.

The best way to stop this tyranny of the majority is by organizing the citizenry, then winning school board, county commissioner and city council elections. At this point, there isn't a moment to lose. ISD 728 is proof that the education establishment is pretty well dug in. They'll need to be defeated repeatedly.

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