Critique: CPS Board of Education

Columbia Public Schools Board Meeting 11 May 2020, CPS Discussion/Agenda

Tonight, the Columbia School Board will most likely give a raise to a superintendent who answers to white supremacists and mediocrity in the name of progress. A superintendent who is not very honest and passive-aggressively deceptive because he can not manage any critical assessment of his so-called leadership -- especially around the issues of seclusion and restraint and recordings of IEP plan meetings. Columbia Schools’ Public Relations person and Custodian of Records are the same person -- and, to our minds, plays a dual role in misrepresenting the facts (with the support of EdCounsel) to play divide and conquer. The exact game Fred Parry et, al are playing with attorneys Eng & Woods.

CPS BOE and Superintendent Stiepleman have struggled on issues that matter to parents whose children have been marginalized.

There are some important items on CPS' agenda tonight (a lot under the consent calendar) -- but I doubt a single CPS board member has the courage to speak truth to power and hold Dr. Stiepleman accountable for a series of problematic responses in 2019. I believe the CPS board and their employee Dr. Stiepleman have struggled to be transparent on issues that matter to parents whose children have been marginalized and harmed by their institutional practices. Instead of engagement, they accused a rightfully angry public of trying to ruin their lives. Pathetic. Heads up. 

There is a draft COLUMBIA PUBLIC SCHOOLS PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT PLAN on tonight's agenda and contracts for various kinds of training relative to cultural competence in a broad sense. My interpretation? It is a token infusion of equity with behavior management programming mixed in for a performative effect to give the appearance of "we are doing something". Simultaneously, and more importantly, we still have no data or idea of how CPS measures the effectiveness of these contracted or free training services.

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