It is my opinion that Sac school board president, Shirley Phillips took advantage of the turmoil that is being wrought by a group of 10 to 20 children in the middle school and used it to take a political cheap shot at the teachers and employees of our school district. I think her actions at the April 12, 2010 school board meeting were designed to make the entire school, and the residents of Sac and WLVA districts look like they are incapable of raising children that will become humans.
Shirley Phillips did not achieve her apparent goal of splitting the school districts up, but I guess what I percieve to be the hate in her heart will not let her stop continuing to try and split up East Sac County School through other means.
I suppose using fear and manipulation to get revenge on a school district that has no more need for her services are all she really has have left, (if that's what she's doing.). From observation I’ve noticed that the most effective weapon in Shirley Phillip’s manipulative handbag is the power to make people hate each other. (Check!)
I wonder if she regrets her fear inducing words of that April 2010 evening. I wonder if she has enough of a conscience left to feel shame about the turmoil she has caused. As the school board president she has a responsibility to chose the high road and figure out a way to work WITH the teachers, councilors, and administrators of East Sac County School to be part of the solution.
For the record, if Shirley Phillips at some point insists that she and her cronies were trying to work with the schools and that they were not listening, you can be safely assured that this is a lie. All preliminary indications are that no emails with the word bullying in the body of the email from any school board member to any school administrator has been exchanged in the run up to the April school board meeting.
No doubt, she and her followers tell themselves that bringing this issue to light DID do good, and I believe that they are partially right, because I too believe that good will come of her words. Unfortunately, I believe that because of the petty, short-sighted, and manipulative way in which she chose to deliver those words, that good will now take much longer to come about then had she said nothing .
What Shirley Isn’t telling you is that the school has a program in place that, at its core, is designed to gain bullying victims’ trust so that the school can then actually DO something about the problem.
I wonder why she doesn’t tell people that?
In FACT, in the last year, as a result of that program, the _reported_ cases of bullying went up, indicating that more students were starting to come forward so that action can be taken. (Unfortunately, this number, too, has been twisted around to suggest that there is MORE bullying. Shirley Phillip’s supporters will tell any lie as long as it benefits them.)
Now, because of the fear that Shirley Phillips words have spread, people seem willing to settle for nothing less than a zero tolerance policy that calls for (very expensive) juvenile incarceration.
There is a bullying problem in our school, in the school district over, and in all of the school districts everywhere, including in those schools that are actually FOR juvenile offenders. Kids find ways to be mean to each other, and at no age are they bigger monsters than in their middle school years. You can’t make bullies quit, and you can’t protect their victims if they don’t trust you. I believe Shirley Phillips deliberately misused her position as school board president to send a message directly to the victims and the parents of victims of bullying that the school is your enemy and that they do not care about you. I believe she did this because she is bitter about the results of the consolidation and subsequent interim school board election, and it troubles me that so many people are falling for it.
What happens next as a result of her words is predictable. At the next school board meeting there will be throngs of angry parents. The school, not able to actually snap their fingers and make bullying go away, (no one can,) and unable to explain to an angry mob that their policies are designed to gradually gain the trust of victims and curb bullying long term, will be forced to do something incredibly time wasting and counter-productive like forming a task force or committee, to “address” the problem.
This task force, which I have a pretty good feeling Shirley Phillips or one of her favored sycophants will volunteer to lead, will accomplish zero, and the actual plan that IS working will be put on the back burner.
About 2012ish, when this has all blown over and the bullying problem is bigger than ever, the task force will be quietly dismantled and the school will be back at square one… where they were in 2007 when they started getting serious about solving the bullying problem in the first place.
Shirley Phillip’s apparent message is that the employees of the school do not care about fixing the bullying problem. I know you are smarter than that.
COMMENT RULES
1. No trolling.
2. No referring to specific people by name or job.
You are welcome to bitch about the bullying problem as much as you want, the same basic rules are in place and I'm not going to hold you back, the only change is that I will not take the time to remove names from your comments, I will simply delete the entire comment if you've included any.
(Trolls don't deserve an explanation.)
have fun
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