Monday, 09 August 2010 21:07
Last Updated on Tuesday, 10 August 2010 08:21
If you missed last week's Sun Current, you missed a doozy of a report on the EP School District...sort of a swan song from the departing editor Chris Olwell who has moved on to a bigger and better job as a reporter for the Panama City News.
Sources tell me that Melissa Krull and Kim Ross went to Mr. Olwell's boss asking that he be fired for daring to actually report on the School District vs regurgitating their PR as does the EP News. Orwell has the last laugh in this piece and one can only hope that his replacement has a similiar gift for unbiased reporting.
From the piece...."The Culture of Secrecy in Eden Prairie Schools"
For a public institution, there are a lot off things about the Eden Prairie School District that seem distinctly private.
Superintendent Melissa Krull is something of a recluse. She rarely grants media interviews, and when she does she's always flanked by her Communications Director Camie Melton Hanily. She never deviates from the script.
Reporters who want to interview any staff or faculty member must go through a single point of contact, again Melton Hanily. This is the Media Policy.
Members of the School Board, the governing body elected to represent the citizens of Eden Prairie, are reluctant to speak publicly. Instead, the board is represented by Chair Kim Ross, who alone has the authority to speak for the board.
Requests for public information are rarely fulfilled without a struggle.
Indeed it seems everything about Eden Prairie Public Schools is shrouded in secrecy.
Recluse is right. Paranoid is the other thing I most often hear about the Superintendent.
The report later notes that the School Board members refused to comment to the reporter....refusing to talk to reporters is never good when you're an elected official. (Case in point our Republican Mayor....you must talk to the media.)
Here's my little bit of the piece:
Sheila Kihne started out asking questions of the school district informally and became frustrated by the lack of a timely response. Her first request for information from the school district under the Data Practices Act was in August of 2009, but she was already familiar with the act. In 2008, she was interviewed for a report in the Star Tribune about her problems getting information from the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency.
Kihne is a Republican blogger and an outspoken critic of Eden Prairie Schools. Her young children attend private school. She's opposed to political correctness generally, and in particular she opposes anything related to diversity training.
"I just sent an e-mail and asked a couple questions and then once I wasn't getting any answers I'm like 'oh great, you know? I've gotta play this game,'" Kihne said. "And that's been sort of the game, if you will, with Eden Prairie Schools. Everything has to be a real formalized request...I don't think it should be that way, especially at the most local level of government. I should be able to call my school, my city and just ask questions and get answers."
When she wanted to find out how much the district paid a group of actors to reenact the Underground Railroad, Kihne submitted four questions: How much did the district pay the actors for the presentation at the high school? How much did the presentation at Oak Point cost? On which dates did the actors visit Oak Point, and which Oak Point classes participated in the program?
She sent those questions in an e-mail to Melton-Hanily on Jan. 26, and Melton Hanily responded the same day, saying only that the request had been received and the district would gather the information. There was no mention of when the data would be available.
After waiting 36 days, Kihne learned all the Oak Point fifth-graders participated, some in March and others in May, and that the total amount paid to the group of actors for the performances at Oak Point and the high school was more than $30,000. Thirty-six days.
Kihne blasted the district on her blog, The Activist Next Door, in a post on March 10.
"I've done data practices requests all over the state with various state agencies and throughout many school districts," Kihne wrote. "Eden Prairie is the worst with response time, bar none."
She thinks the district was reluctant to answer her questions because she's been critical in the past. She doesn't hide the reasons for her requests.
"There's no doubt that I have a political spin, but it doesn't change the fact that if I want someone to tell me how much a city budget or a school budget - that's public information," she said. "I'm entitled to that information. I don't care who I am."
I sound like a Valley Girl....like, you know?
I've had people who work for the district contact me because of this piece and reiterate what I've been hearing for years: There is mandatory diversity training for all full time and part time district employees that is based on the notion that if you're white you're racist. This training not only costs the district money in direct cost paid to the consultants...but in paid-staff time as they are compensated to attend.
I've also heard now from a staff eyewitness of the Underground Railroad simulation this year who said that she saw a 5th grade girl at Oak Point visibly upset and crying during the exercise as all the kids were told to lie down on the ground of the Oak Point atrium head to toe as they would on a slave ship...(beeeecause the Middle Passage and the Underground Railroad were the same thing?) Some kids had ropes put on them while a paid actress was going around crying loudly about her baby dying.
The actors were all in character and were also yelling at staff to "SIT DOWN!!!" They're doing this to 10-year-olds...TEN YEAR OLDS. Hazing to instill cultural empathy all without permission slips. I wonder at the end of the exercise if kids even know the basic facts about the dates of the slave-trade and the real history of the Underground Railroad which involved white Christian abolitionists? I'm sure they know that they should feel awful if they're white and probably worse if they are black.
While Orwell's piece is about data practices, it's the indoctrination practices of the schools here that I'm most upset about... If foolish people want to do this to their kids- fine by me, but not with my money. No way. I will continue to expose this stuff so that people know exactly what they're getting in this school system.
I'm also informed that this is the second year that actors have come in-- so let me assume that instead of $31,000 of taxpayer money wasted, we've spent double that. There are staff members who think this is nuts, yet it continues and we'll assume will continue again in 2010-2011.
The School Board sits silent because they think this is hunky dory I guess. Of course they all go through the same brain-washing--sorry-- I mean "diversity training" so they've all bought in.
My email file on the schools grows-- I get tips from parents and staff constantly. There are stories I haven't even had the time to dig into...but I will...eventually.
I've never even blogged about Islam Awareness Week at EPHS this year with school-sanctioned extra credit for girls who try on Islamic head scarves? oh yes!! With the pictures to prove it! The year before they made women sit in the back...oh yes they did. Separation of church and state? Only if it means you can't say that offensive Pledge of Allegiance...Answering the question "who is Jesus Christ?" and being told that the Koran is the only "authentic text" by a Muslim religious scholar? You get extra credit for your social studies class at Eden Prairie High School for participating in that bit of evangelizing and writing a report about it!
I'm busy getting my own kids ready for Kindergarten...I'm excited that they'll be at a school with no state-mandated testing.....one where kids get to celebrate Halloween and Christmas and say the Pledge. A school without a political Teachers Union who financially supports (with my tax money) candidates who are completely opposed to everything I believe...I'm sad that our public schools are so wacky, so political and so far-removed from a true classical liberal education. Yes- liberal- the staunchest conservatives have the most liberal view of what education should be.
Another time.... I'm sorry to see Chris Olwell go....and hopeful that we continue to get some "hard-hitting" local investigative journalism because I think it's pretty darn cool.
