Clock Boy

[Benton]

(11-24-2015, 05:03 PM)Au165 Wrote: No, a teacher was hired by a principal, who was hired by a superintendent, who was hired by a school board, who was elected by a community. That is too many degrees of separation from the community to say because a teacher (or even a small group within a school) did something racist the whole community should give a family $15 million.

I can't say how it is in every state. In Kentucky, we have Site-Based Decision Making Councils. One for each school. It's made of parents, teachers and administrators. They have input on hiring, discipline, firing, teacher pay, school policies, etc. 

And the teachers (at least here) aren't hired by the principal. They're hired by the super. Who is appointed based off the elected board with input from the SBDM. Principals are hired by the super also. So... at least in my state... if you don't like what your super is doing or who he has hired, you're responsible as you put the board in place that hired him, and the SBDM council in place that went along with his actions.

Quote:There is no way a community can make a conscious decision about the beliefs of a person within it's school district. People that are part of an organization are still free thinking humans that can change their view at any time, if someone wakes up one day and has a change of heart on how they feel about a certain ethnicity there is no way a community can reasonably be expected to know that.

That's the rub about representative government. At the end of the day, we elect flawed people because people are flawed. But it's still better than most other options.

Quote:As I said if there were comments made from the top down influencing such behavior it is one thing, but I highly doubt that is the case in most issues were a single person does something stupid and an entire organization receives punishment for it.

Silence is equally as big a problem as promoting it. If you elect a board that does not have policies in place to deal with racism (or even just perceived racism), you elected a bad board. If they had policies and hired a super who didn't enforce them, that's still on the voters for voting in an ineffective board.

Look, I get that it stinks. But people are ultimately responsible for their associations. If you elect dumb people, you get dumb problems. If you know a problem exists and do nothing to stop it (which Mayor McNuttyPants was running around for months whipping people into a frothy fervor over the looming Texas Jihad she foresaw coming), you are condoning it.

I live in Kentucky. For most of my adult life I've voted against Mitch McConnell, but, at the end of the day, his cronyist policies are as much my fault as they are every person who voted for him. Why? Because all I did was vote. I've never ran against him, I've never supported anyone who ran against him, I've never started a campaign against him or his legislation. In my job I've written some not nice things about him, but that's not exactly the same. So, even though I'm far removed from him, I'm ultimately as responsible for my representation as every other Kentuckian.