Still worth fighting for?

My dearest friends,

I hope this letter finds you well. I must admit, I have not felt quite like myself lately.

Some outrageous news came out this week.

News so big it should blow your mind!

Information that ought to make every citizen of Pasco storm the Booth building with torches and pitch forks (PLEASE DON'T REALLY STORM THE BUILDING, THIS IS JUST A FIGURE OF SPEECH!).

If you haven't heard, the big news is the school board's action plan for dealing with the strike.  It's not really NEWS since it was written and signed by our board members way back in May. It's not really NEWS because it has been publicly referenced by board members since September. But it is news in that only a few people were paying attention before. So while it's not NEW, it is still news to us.

I will attach the document for you to read in its entirety, but for those who'd like a quick summary let me highlight a few key points.

The school board met with a consultant this spring who coached them through the process of dealing with a strike. So any pretense they may have made about being surprised that teachers were striking is a lie.

As a result of that meeting, the school board wrote and signed an agreement back in the spring about how they would deal with contract negotiations. So the idea that they were bargaining in good faith is a lie.

The school board had a plan in place to try to pit parents against teachers and make them selves look good in the eyes of the media. So any pretense that they wanted to do what was best for children is a lie.

The school board agreed that the only reason teachers would ever go on strike is for money and so no other issues were worth negotiating. THE SCHOOL BOARD DECIDED IN MAY THAT THEY KNEW THAT TEACHERS ONLY WANTED MONEY AND NOTHING ELSE. They agreed that they would keep offering teachers more money and ignore their other requests because they were sure that any other "soft" issue (like curriculum) were just a cover up for what the board believed was the real issue (money). So any notion that they were listening to teachers and trying to really understand them and come to an agreement was a lie.

With this knowledge the negotiations make a lot more sense.  The district decided teachers only wanted money. So they offered them money. Teachers said no. So the district offered them more money. And the teachers said no. So the district offered them even more money. And the teachers said no. And then the district said, "See! Those teachers are so greedy! No matter how much money we throw at them, it's never enough."

But of course it's not enough. No amount of money could make a teacher say, "Thanks! My students don't need curriculum after all."

They set us up.
They set up the bargaining team.
They set up the teachers.
They set up the parents.
And most disgraceful of all, they set up our kids.

They decided how this was going to play out long before negotiations began, and then they sat back and watched it happen. We begged them to step up and be the leaders we needed, and they did nothing. And when people raised concerns about the damage being done to our community, they said, "Don't worry, we hired a consultant to help heal the community after the strike."  And when teachers started fleeing to other districts, they said, "Don't worry, it's natural to lose teachers after a strike. We've been expecting this."

They expected it.
Of course they expected it! They planned it. They forced it into reality. Then they sat back and watched it.
THEN THEY PATTED THEMSELVES ON THE BACK FOR PREDICTING THE FUTURE!!!

This ought to be on the news.  People on the board and in the Booth ought to be resigning out of shame. We ought to be shouting in the streets demanding a recall.

But it's not.
They are not.
We are not.

Instead we are whispering to our neighbors, "Did you read that?" and "Can you believe that?"  It is so big and so important and so awful that as a community we almost can't handle it. We are still grieving. We are still in shock. We are still in denial.

In truth I feel paralyzed by sadness and completely overwhelmed by the enormity of this revelation.

And I guess that's why I'm writing this to you now. I need your help. I really really need your help.
Normally I'm full of ideas. I gladly tell people who to talk to, where to send letters, who to vote for, when to rally, when to sit down, when to speak softly, when to carry a big stick.

But not today.

Today I feel very very alone.

The district that teaches our children, the district that professes to love our teachers, the district that claims they want to heal our community has deceived us.

Over the past few months I have raised my voice for change because I believed Pasco was worth fighting for. I believed things could change. I believed we could do better. But today.... today I just don't know.  Today I want to throw in the towel.

So dear friends, I am asking you for another favor. Today I'm not asking you to write the school board. I'm not asking you to vote. I don't care about your letter to the editor or your comments at the next board meeting. Today what I need from you is a reason to keep fighting.

Please.
Please tell me why it is that you are all still here.
Why haven't you quit yet?
Give me a reason to stay.
Please.



Sincerely dismayed,

Alice

Big Foot Lives!

I try to stay off of social media. That place is full of trolls! But every once in a while I scroll through Facebook to check out the latest happenings. Recently I've learned some really cool stuff.

Big Foot lives! It's true. You should totally believe me. There are pictures. Seriously!

Unfortunately he tried to attend a board meeting and Saundra Hill had him arrested for speaking out of turn.

Area 51 has been relocated to the basement of the Booth building. On September first the US government relocated Area 51 to Pasco. In order to help cover up this move, PSD agreed to lock teachers out of their buildings so that no one would actually spot the aliens.   While picketing outside, however, one teacher snapped this amazing photo!

This alien would have gone completely undetected if he had remembered to wear his red tee shirt to blend in.

"The strike is a red herring that's been used as a political tool to discredit the board and gain significant ground on a much bigger cultural battle."
According to sources close to school board president Ryan Brault, the teachers' strike was a ruse contrived by Dr. Aaron Richardson as a means to fuel public rage and discredit President Brault in order to get himself elected to the school board so that he can fulfill his goal of re-instituting 1950's style segregation in Pasco. It is still unclear whether Dr. Richardson is also responsible for Ryan Brault's abysmal leadership skills and PSD's failure to provide comprehensive and up-to-date curriculum.


I have always had my suspicions about Big Foot and Area 51, but that curriculum=segregation story was a big surprise.  I never would have guessed that the teachers were lying about curriculum in order to get Brault fired and Richardson elected.  Thank goodness we've got Brault fans out there to set us all strait! But now that begs the question If Ryan Brault really believes that the teachers' request for curriculum is a red herring, how can we believe he has any intention of fulfilling the contract's mandate to provide that curriculum? 



We all enjoy a good tall tale now and then, but do you know what's not just a rumor?
So far two of the people who have come out with videos in support of Ryan Brault have been from two (out of only six!) families who signed statements AGAINST the teachers. That's a fact.

Let's say that again for those who were sidetracked by our Bigfoot sighting....

Two of Ryan Brault's biggest supporters are two of our teachers biggest opponents.
And that's a fact.

Aspirin for Cancer

Scott Lehrman initially didn’t have much of an opposition in his bid for re-election. I myself think he’s a great guy, and was my favorite board member for many a month, despite not being from my neighborhood. Then… there was everything that happened this summer. Then there was the disastrous “rescheduled” board meeting where angry community members and teachers watched our board do the unthinkable thing and go along with some apparently vindictive, power hungry administrators. Then there was an injunction against the teachers filed 12 hours after the strike became official, long before any harm could possibly have been done to children.

And Scott listened. He reluctantly listened when everyone else left but he listened. … but that’s all he did.

I hoped, watching him stand there and take an emotional beating from the difficult circumstances he went along with, that he’d stop going with the PSD flow. That he’d come to negotiations to listen to what was really happening. That he’d take the allegations of neglect and lack of curriculum seriously, that he’d listen to the hundreds and hundreds of parents who have had bad experiences working with PSD’s top administration. But he didn’t.

Scott Lehrman is a very nice and a pretty smart guy. And that’s all I can say about him now. He listens, yes, but then he continues to do what’s already been done, and what hasn’t worked for years. It’s not enough to listen if you don’t act. It’s not enough to listen if you don’t believe or at least even consider what’s being told to you. It’s not enough to listen if you let all that experience, emotion and fervor go in one ear and out the other because it would be too hard to act against an entrenched administration. So right now, Scott is good, but good isn’t good enough.

Scott is good, but Kathleen is amazing. Scott would be a good board member on any other board but right now Pasco needs Kathleen. Pasco needs a voice of dissent, one that will not simply listen but will also act. One that has the time and experience to represent the parents and teachers on the front line of education.

Kathleen Barton has spent her whole professional life in education. Further, Kathleen is a career educator, not a career administrator. One of the biggest problems we have in Pasco School District is everyone in charge has either little or no classroom experience. We have career minded administrators who spend a handful of years with students, then moved on to management decades ago. And that can be alright, but we have a board that listens to them and takes their suggestions as absolutely correct.

Kathleen is tough and intelligent, she is not afraid to say no when she smells a situation that has a suspicious odor. She’s been on the front lines of education, not directing pieces from a board room, for her whole life. She doesn’t feel the need to paint a rosy picture over the mess, she wants to get in elbow deep and fix what’s busted. Kathleen knows what’s going wrong in Pasco but loves students and education enough that she won’t give up and take the path of least resistance.

I won’t accuse Scott of always taking that path. He listened and even, very occasionally, agreed to disagree in the face of obvious bitter anger from the likes of Saundra Hill. But right now, Scott is an Aspirin when you’ve got cancer. He is simply not strong enough, simply not tough enough, not experienced enough, he’s simply not enough.

We need Kathleen Barton. We need her experience and strength. We need a long-shot write in candidate to come in and help make the change we all so desperately need now. I've read what she has to say and I can tell that all my concerns about our district are hers as well. We don't have to convince her there was a lack of curriculum. We don't have to talk her into considering that hundreds of parents aren't happy with how they are shut out. We don't have to cajole her into even considering there are issues with the way things are run in Pasco. She knows and she's just as upset about it as we all are.

Kathleen is exactly what our city needs to heal after this strike. She has the experience of living through it before and she knows how to actually do it, rather than just talking about it. She has the voice of the parents, knows their concerns. She is an incredibly popular educator and the teachers have faith in her. She is the right medicine at the right time.

I support Kathleen Barton. My spouse and I wrote her name in and put our ballots in the mail. So I know she’s got at least 2 votes. Will you join me and make it 3? 10? 1000? 10,000? A name for every one of us that sees, as our current board seems unable to, that we need change now and we are willing to fight to get it. We're ready to be healed. We're ready for something stronger than Aspirin.

Write in Kathleen's name on your ballot. Because good isn't good enough right now. We need better.

I don't always vote, but when I do I vote for Aaron Richardson

Some elections are trickier than others. Where I'm from we don't even have elections. We just have crazy queens filled with flower induced rage playing croquet and lopping off heads. But here in Pascoland, things are better. We choose our leaders and when we don't like what they do, we vote them out.

Man am I tired!

I'm tired of our school board president, Ryan Brault. I'm tired of his lack of leadership. I'm tired of the way he never appears to have an original thought and only does the bidding of the queen...er...I mean the superintendent.

I'm tired of him silencing the public. I'm tired of him not allowing people to speak in board meetings, at boundary discussions, or during the superintendent search.

I'm tired of the way he treats teachers. I'm tired of how he took teachers to court. I'm tired of how he illegally changed the day and time of a school board meeting. I'm tired of how he refused to come to the negotiating table and work with teachers. I'm tired of how he tried to withhold teacher pay and benefits during the strike.

I'm tired of how he lies to the public. Is it a kinder center? Is it something else? Was it on the bond? Did it pass? Did it fail? Ask President Brault questions about our recent Levies and Bonds and depending on the day you'll get a different answer. Is he deceiving us, or just himself?

But most of all I'm tired of a leader who doesn't even believe in the families he serves. He doesn't believe parents can participate in their children's education. He doesn't believe parents can be trusted to make good decisions for their own children.

Bottom line, I'm tired of Ryan Brault!

Thankfully there is a solution.

Dr.Aaron Richardson is a familiar face to many people in our community. Not only is he a pediatrician to hundreds of Pasco's children, but he is also a regular speaker at board meetings and district meetings of all kinds. If you been to any Pasco event lately you've probably seen him.

When teachers decided to participate in a walk out last spring, Aaron Richardson was there to speak in support of our teachers and our students.

This spring he also visited every single school in the district. When teachers went on strike, their concerns were not news to him. He had already be speaking with teachers about the problems they faced and asking questions to help work toward solutions.

All summer long Aaron held meetings (in both Spanish and English) at various parks to get to know more parents and their concerns. Aaron Richardson has five children, the oldest three attend school in Pasco. He understands what is going on in our schools because he has seen it first hand with his own children.

Aaron Richardson believes that every child can be successful if given the right opportunities. However, Aaron also believes that those opportunities are best found in the home. A child with an involved family will likely be more successful than a child without. That's why Aaron Richardson will work hard to help ALL families participate in their child's education. Aaron doesn't believe that the district always knows best. He believes in helping parents to take an active role in making decisions that impact their child's education.

(photo credit unknown)

The Real Elephant in the Room

Wow! Another doosie of a week!  How 'bout that last board meeting? Tense right?  I thought Sherry Lancon was going to jump out of her seat and strangle a teacher. Intense!  And did you hear what Steve Christiansen said during the study session? I have it on good authority, he repeatedly referenced "the elephant in the room."

Awe, look at this cute little elephant we wish were in the room!

That elephant that he was referring to was the teacher raises and what they will cost the district.  The board has made many veiled (and not so veiled threats) that the end of times is coming to Pasco all because of the teacher raises.  Bus routes will be canceled. Para-educators will be fired. Music programs will be cut. Sports will end. The levy rate will have to increase. Bonds will fail. Schools will go un-built. And children will suffer, starve, and die all because those greedy teachers got a super-big-out-of-control raise.

As if this dooms-day blame game weren't bad enough, certain board members have even gone so far as to keep insisting the strike had NOTHING to do with curriculum and was really ALL about teacher pay.

.........
I'm going to go ahead and take a time out here while your head explodes.
.........






























.........






.........
All done now? Ready?
.........

Okay, let's keep going.

The irony of Mr. Christensen's comment is that there really is an elephant in the room that they aren't talking about.

CURRICULUM!

DUH!

Meet Bob the Blue Curriculum Elephant. Bob would like to give a shout out to his special man, Steve C.

This new contract is expensive. It's true. I'm not going to say that paying teachers doesn't cost money, because you're not stupid. But what I am going to say is that we are spending a HUGE chunk of change on curriculum over the next two years as part of this contract. A REALLY huge chunk. Like "Sloth Loves Chunk" kind of a chunk. We will be spending far more than most districts spend on curriculum over the next two year period. If we're honest with ourselves, though, we all know why we need to spend so much on curriculum now. It's simply because PSD has failed to fund it for the past decade or more! 

Look at it this way, if PSD is a car, the teachers are the gas. We have to put gas in the car if we want it to go, that's just the way it is. And gas prices keep going up. That's just a fact of life. Curriculum is sort of like the engine oil here. And the situation we're in is like having to replace your engine because you didn't get the oil changed for more than ten years while driving the car 17,000 miles a month. It's really expensive to replace the engine but we didn't change the oil, so the engine seized up into a hunk of blackened metal and now the whole thing has gotta go. Now everyone inside the car has realized we are going nowhere fast, but they can't seem to decide what to do about it. Some people are griping about the cost of gas and still (STILL after all we've been through!) saying the engine is fine and we've got plenty of oil.  

This guy is wishing he would have adopted curriculum on a more regular basis, am I right?

Teacher salaries aren't as negotiable as they seem. We really have to pay a very similar wage to what the other local districts are paying if we want to keep teachers in our district.  So how do our numbers stack up?
Starting salary in Pasco is $38,997.  Starting salary in Richland is (not written as clearly as PSD's and therefor a little hard to calculate but my math tells me it's......) $38,339 per year.

Basically Pasco teachers make almost exactly the same as Richland's teachers. Except, of course, that the teachers around here for years have had to purchase their own classroom supplies and write their own elephants, er curriculum, so their comparative pay actually goes down...

So let's look at those numbers again. Are they that crazy? That over the top? About another 50 dollars a month per teacher which, let's face it, can be sucked up by glue sticks, pencils and white board markers pretty fast. Is this unreasonable? Actually, no. Teachers are in short supply, and high demand, so if we want to keep teachers around, we need to at least pay them what neighboring districts are paying. Especially if we want the good ones, the smart and capable ones, to stick around.

Now let's talk about the price of curriculum. Every year the district receives money from the state to pay for curriculum. Thousands and thousands of dollars, millions and millions of dollars meant for curriculum. Unfortunately they haven't been using that money for its correct purpose. I don't know what they actually have been spending that money on, but it wasn't curriculum. Now they even have a gigantic surplus of money sitting in the bank. Money that should have gone towards our children's education, but didn't. Money that was squirreled away for pet projects. Money that was spent on Saundra Hill's bonuses every year.

So how much is curriculum going to cost?

Nobody knows. Originally the board set aside one million dollars for curriculum and materials. But they later admitted that it was far too little money to be useful.  Realistically it shouldn't matter what it costs, should it? We are talking about a school here! If they don't have curriculum, what is the point!  Without curriculum, school ceases to be school! Teachers become highly educated babysitters. Is that what we want? Are our schools just a holding tank until graduation? NO. There is literally millions and millions of dollars sitting in "buckets" waiting to be spent on your child's education. Maybe not enough money to build a new school. Probably not enough money to build a Ferris Wheel in the parking lot of PHS. Not enough money to end world hunger. But DEFINITELY enough money to buy curriculum. We need curriculum and we need it now.  And we need to quit blaming teachers for the cost of running the district when it is poor central administration that has put us in this hole that we are in.

So let's talk about the real elephant in the room. Or maybe it would be more correct to say Let's talk about the elephant that's not in the room but should be!'

Let's get more of these elephants into our children's classrooms.

If you're one of the awful, greedy teachers who fought so hard to get the district to spend money on books for your students instead of just asking for a raise for yourself, please stand up and be counted.

Thank you teachers.

Little Orphan Pasco

With a name like Pascoland, you better believe I love Pasco! So it really drives me crazy after all these years that Pasco is still treated like the red-headed step-child of the Tri-Cities. Admit it, it's true!

When people move to Tri-Cities and ask, where should I live, no one says Pasco. Ever. Call up a realtor today and say you are moving from out of state and ask them to suggest a city. It won't be Pasco.

When people move from Kennewick or Richland into Pasco, people say, "You're going where? Why?"

When people move from Pasco to the other side of the river people say, "Of course you are, I don't blame you."

Admit it. You all know it's true. You hear it every single day. This is not a secret. This is just how it is here. BUT I'M SICK AND TIRED OF IT!

Pasco is a great place to live! First of all lets agree that the Tri-Cities is small enough that if there is a benefit to living in one city, the same benefit likely applies to all three cities. Great small town feel, good roads and quick access to anywhere in the the basin.  Awesome access to water and out door recreation. Adequate access to shopping, sports, and fine arts events. A booming economy against all odds. Affordable housing. Low crime, high friendliness. Tri-Cities has it! So what is different between the three cities? Not much.

But for some reason we've been moping around like an orphan waiting for someone to adopt us and tell us we have worth. I've got news for you: Daddy Warbucks isn't coming! 

There is no magic government grant that will give us the money to buy our way to greatness. 

There is no magic bullet teaching strategy that will cure all of our academic ills. 

There is no attendance boundary configuration that will cause the stars to align in our favor.

There is no single teacher, administrator, or school board member who will turn things around and make this a town people want to come to live in AND STAY!

The time for waiting to be rescued is over. No more scanning the crowd for our long lost mommy and daddy. We aren't that kind of orphan.
We need to stop thinking like the little Annie waiting to be rescued and loved, and start thinking more like Anne.

Anne was smart. Anne was brave. Anne didn't let anyone's opinion of her get her down. At times nearly everyone was against her, but she didn't give up. It wasn't always pretty, but she did her best, and in the end she proved to everyone that she could do things no one ever thought she could do.
Anne didn't let other people put limits on her. And she didn't wait for handouts from anyone either. She was a do-er.

It's time for Pasco to stop fussing and start doing.  For a long time we have hoped that someone else would do the doing for us.  But they didn't. We thought the school district had all the power to do, so we sat back and didn't. Now we know better. This summer 1100 teachers (and the families who supported them) showed the whole community what doers can do. When PSD said curriculum couldn't be purchased. The doers said it must. When the school board said they would not allow public comments at meetings, the doers held their own meetings. And when the district payed a consultant to "heal" the community, the doers held a prayer meeting in the park for free.

WE NEED MORE DOERS!

Not talkers. Not promisers. Not wishers. And certainly not whiners.
We need more people to do more things.

Do you want to see new faces on the school board? Then vote. Or better yet, run for office!
Do you want to know what is going on in the district? Go to board meetings and study sessions and ask questions.
Do you wish that reading scores would go up for students? Then get in the classroom and read to those kids.
Do you want the district to know how you feel? Write a letter to a district administrator.
Do you want the board to hear what you have to say? Speak up at a board meeting.
Do you wish your child's school had a new playground? Go join the PTO and help raise money for it.
Do you want a new middle school and high school built? Tell the levy committee.
Do you want the board to re-do the superintendent search? Then find a way to get it done.
Do you wish people knew more about what was going on in Pasco? Write a letter to the editor.
Do you think Pasco is an awesome place to live? Then tell everyone about it.

It doesn't matter what you do as long as you do DO. (yes, I just said doo doo.)

So go ahead and click like, and go ahead and click share, but then..... DO! Do something.

If we keep acting like an abused little orphan, we will continue to be seen as one. So stand up. Hold your head up. Quit feeling sorry for yourself. Be proud! WE ARE PASCO!

Healing like the Hunger Games

In the last few weeks we've heard a lot about healing our community. Now that the strike is over, the district claims they want to heal the city.
Maybe it's just me, but every time I hear them say this, I can't help picturing Senecca crane when he talks about how the Hunger Games is a way to help heal the nation and bring the districts together.

I'm not sure their definition of healing is the same as ours.


When we talk of healing, we mean being open and honest, admitting our mistakes and trying to do better.
When they talk of healing they mean hiring an image consultant to help spin the story and cover up the facts.

We want to move forward and work together, but it isn't always easy to believe those who have broken your trust in the past.  We want to believe that PSD is trying to honor the new teacher contract, but....

well....

hmmmm.... how do I say this nicely?

According to the boards own records they "knew" that teachers were going to go on strike since last spring. They wrote out an action plan for how they were going to handle negotiations. They hired a consultant to help them handle public unrest and to heal the community once the strike ended.

Several things are worth noting here.

If they knew teachers were going to strike, why didn't they handle it better? Why did they act so shocked?

If they had a plan in place, why did EVERYTHING they did only serve to escalate the drama? Canceling board meetings at the last second. Rescheduling board meetings at the last second? Refusing to let people speak at board meetings. Refusing to go to the bargaining table. Taking teachers to court. Twice! Planning to cut teacher pay and benefits.  Again this sounds like Hunger Games style healing.
And now that the strike is over why are members of the school board now out saying that the strike wasn't really about curriculum and that teachers are lying? How can we possibly believe that the district will honor teacher contracts in good faith when they are actively saying the teachers don't really need curriculum?
Why is the school board insisting on raising the levy rate and blaming it on teachers? Why is the school board saying they will threaten the community with taking away music programs if they don't get the levy passed?


Does the board not understand they are here to serve the community, not to defend themselves against the community?

If they already had a consultant on staff to handle all the healing going on, why is there still so much hurt? I'm guessing the consultant they hired to heal us all was about as qualified as the consultant they hired to choose the new superintendent last spring.

I hope they kept the receipt because I think we should be asking for our money back.