Oh, When the Seabass Strikes...

At the school board meeting Monday night, community resident Roger Fetterly chastised the school board for incompetence...for first not administering the oath of office correctly to newly elected school board members, and also for "sloppy" minute-taking, as the minutes incorrectly stated that John Whalen (rather than John Welke) took an oath of office.

SCHOOL BOARD MEETING MONDAY, APRIL 26, 2010
M I N U T E S
1. Opening Items
1.01 Official Oath of School Board Members
School Board Clerk Jill Camber Davidson administered the Official Oath of School Board members to Caren Diedrich, Jim McCourt and John Whalen [N.B. should read: John Welke, not "Whalen"].

Tempted by the fruit of another bait offered by Mr. Fetterly, Jim "Seabass" McCourt decided this week to "jump" the bait and "strike" back at Fetterly with the following e-mail which we obtained.

James McCourt [jrmccou@spasd.k12.wi.us]
Sent: Wednesday, May 12, 2010 8:10 PM
To: fetterly@charter.net

Just as an FYI Roger, you might want to review the tape of your public comments about the minutes being wrong, you stated that the minutes should have read John Whalen - you made the same mistake....I know what you meant and it was an oversite,[look who else is having spelling problems] but perhaps you can understand how honest mistakes can happen since you made the same mistake! I am thankful you pointed out the error so our minutes are correct. For that I chose not to point out your error, perhaps I shouldn't have missed that opportunity in public?

Perhaps you also might like to learn how to spell peoples names in your emails, or is it just incompetence?

-Jim

Jim McCourt

Treasurer

Sun Prairie School Board

jrmccou@spasd.k12.wi.us

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Ole Seabass correctly points out that Fetterly himself repeated the error when he tried to correct the school board, but like Tim Culver, Seabass appears to have missed the point--and got "fished in" in the process.

Seabass leaped to the defense of school board member and board Clerk Jill Camber-Davidson. What Seabass --and Fetterly--forgot was that the board Clerk does not even record minutes of school board meetings. That duty is assigned to Culver's Secretary. Should Camber-Davidson have reviewed the minutes for accuracy before they were posted? Certainly. But seriously...how much of ANY of this stuff really, truly comes from school board members? Situation Reports, which provide the foundation for school board meeting agenda items, come from administration.

Seabass also threw decorum out the window by launching this e-mail response to Fetterly. His e-mail comes across as nothing more than a glorified playground quality, "Naaaah, Naaaah... I got you" sort of taunt. Model of decorum? We think not. Frankly, we think McCourt's response serves only to further tarnish the already heavily mottled image of the school board.

Jim...you and the rest simply need to be doing it better than the other guys. Period. No excuses. YOU are the elected official. YOU are our public representative. And, until you and the board fix your image, stop enRAGING, and start enGAGING the community...you will need to sit up there and take your medicine.

Poor form!