The Decatur school system s obsession with secrecy is a disgrace to the spirit of openness that has made this community great.
Trying to hide behind the Texas Open Meetings Act exemption on personnel issues will not work when dealing with a high-profile administrator or a teacher whose actions cost dozens of children an important half-credit toward graduation requirements.
Events of the past week have pointed out once again how the school district goes out of its way to keep secret what some consider bad news and, in some cases, threaten reprisals against teachers and others who might tell the taxpayers just what is going on in the school system.
As we have tried to find out the issues in the latest flap, we were forced to file an official Open Records request to get information provided the District 8-3A superintendents committee about violations of UIL policy that resulted in students not getting credit for a so-called Leadership class.
Only after a conversation with Athletic Director Kyle Story on Wednesday did I learn that the problem arose when the leadership class at some point late in the semester was reclassified as a physical education class, putting some female basketball and volleyball players, who also happen to be cheerleaders, in the position of having two PE classes a day a no-no under University Interscholastic League regulations.
Story said the kids weren t doing anything wrong they weren t shooting hoops or jogging around the track they were doing the same things they had always done in the leadership cheerleading class. But, because the curriculum allegedly wasn t being followed, the class had to be reclassified as physical education.
The class was originally classified as fine arts and then someone discovered in mid-November that the teacher wasn t certified to teach fine arts. To his credit, Supt. Gary Gindt immediately notified UIL district officials as soon as he heard about it. I couldn t find out if all kids enrolled in the so-called leadership classes were penalized one-half credit or just the ones in the cheerleading class because principal Melinda Reeves wasn t returning my telephone calls.
What a screwup and the blame lies directly with the teacher and his/or/her supervisors for not following the curriculum in the first place. According to the DISD Web site, the high school has a principal and four assistant principals and apparently none of them caught the problem, or if they did, did nothing about it. It seems the old Sam Walton business theory of management by walking around would have discovered this problem quickly instead of waiting until the semester was almost over.
Thank goodness, no seniors whose graduation could have been in danger because of the no-credit decision will be affected at least that is what we have been told.
It is long past time for the Decatur School Board to take control of the school system to ask the hard questions both in secret sessions they seem to love so dearly and in the public sessions of administrators who bring proposals and recommendations.
It is especially important that the board put a stop to what we have been told time-after-time in recent days of the atmosphere of intimidation of teachers with implied threats they will lose their jobs if they divulge any of the district s secrets to taxpayers, parents or, heaven forbid, the newspaper.
If the board refuses to act, then the district deserves every bit of bad publicity it receives. And that s a shame for the good kids, teachers and administrators who attend classes and work at the Decatur public schools.
