STAR's "Fool's Gold" is a Fool' Errand

Guess subscriptions must be down again for the Sun Prairie STAR, because recently the STAR's managing editor. wrote an OpEd piece casting aspersions on the Sun Prairie School Board's actions...and more directly at President Tom Weber.

Chalk one more up on the list of whiners in the "Bryan Davis for Superintendent" fiasco.  Or is it that outgoing SuperNintendo Tim Culver is trying to sow as many seeds of malcontent as he can during his final weeks (can't we just put him on paid administrative leave and avoid this nonsense?).  We wonder what the good doctor's correspondence records would show.

The coconut (emphasis on "nut") telegraph tells us that our local editor-in-cheek has either filed or is planning to file a massive open records request.  When you cast a net that large, be careful what you are fishing for!  You might find that some of your buddies are far more worthy of an investigative journalism article than the school board or its President. 

Our money is on Mr. Weber and the board landing squarely on their feet.  They did what the community wanted...went through a process.  The process ended poorly.  Then they went out and found a perfect fit for our district.  Instead of crying foul, why don't you thank them?  What?  You wanted ANOTHER lengthy, time consuming process that would drag into summer when most residents are gone?   Your thought process is misfiring!  They found a perfect fit, and the board was unanimous.  Note as well that when it came to RE-considering Bryan Davis, only John Whalen was a fan (and you understand that his vote has no value...right?).  They averted a potential train wreck and turned it into a huge success story. 

In fact, even new board member Marilyn Ruffin voted against considering Mr. Davis.   You don't think THAT caused some interesting dinner conversation in the Ruffin household after Jerry Ruffin pleaded with the board, on behalf of Sun Prairie African American Parent Network (AAPN), to hire Mr. Davis? (Hi, honey,I'm home...and hey...I didn't vote to hire Davis.  Sorry!).

And we hope, Mr. Managing Editor, that if you do get those Open Records, that you'll spend as much time exposing the multitude of district staff who we are willing to bet will be discovered to have spent much staff time involved in some grass roots lobbying for Bryan Davis...all on the taxpayers' dime.  If anyone should be worried, it's those folks.

9 1/2 Hours - When They Get Behind Closed Doors

9 1/2 Hours: The true story behind the Superintendent hire

It begins on March 24th.    This is immediately following current Columbus Superintendent Bryan Davis' candidate forum.  Internal candidate Erik Olson's forum was held the previous evening.

Two and one-half hours of discussion ensued, followed by a very specific motion by Steve Schoeder/John Whalen:  extend offers (note the plural)  to: 

--- Bryan Davis the Superintendent position and 

--- Erik Olson a Deputy Superintendent position (for strategic planning and organizational alignment) and 

to direct President Tom Weber to discuss with the candidates.

The vote was unanimous.

Then two weeks passed with no notification.  Of course, in there was spring break for Sun Prairie, as well as the Spring Elections when 3 shool board seats were up with 4 candidates including one incumbent.

On April 7th, the board met again for 2 hours and 22 minutes.  

Two critical motions were made:

The first was to offer the superintendent position to Bryan Davis.  That motion failed having only support from John Whalen.

The second motion was to offer the superintendent position to Erik Olson.   

That motion passed 6-1, with John Whalen in opposition (God love John Whalen for his fierce loyalty to the Culver regime!  It's cute; really it is).

The question is...what happened between the decision to make a tandem offer (David/ Superintendent, Olson/Deputy Superintendent and this decision?  And what about Bryan Davis declaring for all the many (???) STAR readers that no offer was ever made to him. If one digs a little, one will learn that in the world of Public Instruction, what the rest of us would call "negotiations towards making a formal contract offer" is viewed a "an offer".

We have no need to trash Dr. Davis' reputation or bona fides, but clearly the room turned dramatically against him (except for Johnny Whalen!).  Did he demand an outrageous salary?  Or were other demands simply not to the board's liking?  Or did something else come out during the background check (which--newsflash-- is a prerequisite before a contract is offered)? Perhaps we never need to know, but the vote on April 7 made it clear that Davis was no longer a viable option.

April 15th....an offer is rejected.

We now now that on April 15th an offer was extended to internal candidate, who subsequently declined for personal reasons.  We don't blame him.  The behavior of district "professionals" in this who process would turn most away. If it were up to us, the district office would be raining pink slips in the not too distant future.

Two weeks later....the drama further unfolds

We now have a new school board...3 new members in fact.  At the school board meeting on Monday May 27, more district staff come out to speak the praises of Bryan Davis and for the board to hire him.  There are rumors (which, if true, can be confirmed via Open Records) that Dr. Davis was heavily lobbying for himself with key district staffers (more on that to come!).  Several community leaders also spoke, including Jerry Ruffin, whose wife Marilyn is a newly elected board member.

The April 27 closed session brought two more very key motions during a 95 minute session.

The critical motion, passing unanimously, was--interestingly enough-- what is termed a "motion n the negative.  Normally motions are made in the positive...i.e., worded in favor of something.  This motion made it clear for those that hadn't figured it out yet, that the board would NOT consider any of the candidates from the failed search.  Instead, they would go in a different direction.

The second motion direct board president Weber to bring in Dr. Bradford Saron in for an interview.  So clearly, that name materialized on the board's rada, and in a relatively short meeting, they abandoned all candidates from the initial search and went after Dr. Saron.

April 28th...success!

Just a hair over 3 hours spent interviewing Dr. Saron, the board unanimously directed president Weber to negotiate a contract with Dr Saron.

--------------------------------------------

So there you have it, peeps.  These are the facts.   There was no formal contract ever offered to Dr. Bryan Davis.  In fact, the board was clearly opposed to offering one to him.  So disinclined were they that they actually made a motion in the negative to make crystal clear that the search had ended and none of the 18 applicants would be considered any further. 

We wish Dr. Davis luck in his quest to be somewhere other than Columbus.

Superintendent Saga: Whiners' ignorance makes them comfortably dumb

Boo frickin hoo!
The school board...your ELECTED leaders did what you elected them to do: they chose a superintendent.

You didn't like who they picked?
You didn't like how they did it?
TOUGH NOOGIES!

Option 3: Review and Reconsider from the Previous Candidate Pool
The Board considered our options and ultimately voted unanimously not to reconsider candidates from the initial pool. Please understand, because this is a hiring process and confidentiality rules apply, we cannot necessarily share details of the conversations that took place.  However, all of the Board members agreed that this was not a viable option.

Now why would the board vote UNANIMOUSLY not to consider Dr. Davis?

He came off so well during the public forum.  Except that to some there was an uneasy feeling that one definitely should not assess this book by its cover.

It would seem that the board had some pretty compelling information that you, the whining minority did not have.  Information that indicated that Dr. Davis was definitely not what Sun Prairie is looking for.

NEWSFLASH!  You're not supposed to have closed door session information!  Hence the term "closed door".  

Now, some of you seem to believe that you are privy to conversations that went on in that room.  There's this thing called "context" though.  Maybe someone is talking outside of class. But...if you just take a single piece of information it can suggest a whole lot more than when viewed with the surrounding information.  That's called the Fox New game plan, and we're really surprised that the Sparclers adopted that as their plan.

The rumor is that Dr, Davis was offered a contract contingent upon him retaining Erik Olson.  And that the vote was unanimous.  Not sure how it works in SPARCle-Land, but in our world, a "contract" means a firm offer with a salary, and clear contract terms signed by at least the board president.   And if he were offered a contract, don't you think he'd be here?

Unless you are one of the 7 board members or Dr. Davis, YOU DO NOT KNOW THE FULL STORY.

Perhaps the rumored "vote" was simply to open up discussions with Dr. Davis.  Certainly, if his salary demands were $500K per year, the decision would be a no-brainer...right?

Claims that Board President Tom Weber is lying to the public just sound so uninformed and juvenile.  Time to call the frickin' WHHAAAAAmbulance.

We suspect the unanimous vote was designed to see whether even the framework of  contract could be agreed upon.  Maybe the board learned that Dr. Davis wanted to work only Monday Wednesdays and Friday with no evenings or weekends.

Again...we don't know...and neither do you.  So be like Elsa and Let it Go.

The Chippewa Falls School District has an enrollment of over 5100.  That's about 3.5 times the size of Columbus, much more in line with Sun Prairie.  If one takes the time to read his curriculum vitae, Dr. Saron also seems to mesh very well with the structure, framework, and vision that the school board has worked so hard to build over the last few years (yet another thing---AHEM!--- that Culver should have done without cattle prodding).

Wouldn't you WANT the board to hire a superintendent that fits the vision, mission, and structure that we've built?

In the end, the list of candidates was whittled to 2.  The school board voted UNANIMOUSLY to extend an offer to Erik Olson.  For whatever reasons--it's NOYFB--he opted to decline the offer.  You do not HAVE to go to your number two.  It's like Peyton Manning and Ryan Leaf.  Don't you think San Diego would love to forget they ever took Leaf?  There's Peyton Manning or nobody else on that list.  Manning declined.  Give kudos to the school board who listened to you very carefully.  You wanted a quality superintendent to be hired quickly and you did not want an interim" superintendent.

They did just that...how about getting past yourselves and give them a round of applause.

So...enough of this crap.  It is done.  We hired a damn fine superintendent.

Readers Write: THIS is Lack of Accountability 101

Sometimes we can just leave it in the hands of our readers who know way more than we do...
This is precisely why Tim Culver had to go.  In fact, if we had our way, we'd send him packing early.  Good luck Oak Creek-Franklin!

You just can't make this shit up, people, truth IS stranger than fiction.  Enjoy this...we certainly did.

Dear SP-EYE,

Perhaps you noticed the district's $40K renovated varsity soccer field is not looking so good?  

Outside grass included to emphasize the piss poor field quality

Why yes...yes we did notice (after you pointed it out)!

Credible sources close to this issue have revealed that:

• The lead grounds worker has not turned on the water so that the field can be irrigated.  I'm sure that is a difficult task, you know, opening the valve and all!  Not sure this would really matter because the irrigation heads put more water on the track than the grass...but I'm sure that has been resolved with the installation of the proper heads (sarcasm intended).  BTW has the district installed the irrigation booster pump that they budgeted for a few years back to ensure proper water pressure to irrigate efficiently?  We think NOT!

Q: How many SPASD  groundsworkers does it take to open a single valve?

A:  Apparently more than we have on staff.

• The PE programs at the high school use that field exclusively over the other outdoor fields in the athletic complex.  And why not, with a newly renovated field why would anyone want to use the lesser quality JV soccer field that has not been renovated (that's another story) or the practice fields behind the varsity soccer field?  They are not as nice and they are another 50 feet farther from the PE door to the school! 

Good lord, man....do you really want to make our kids exercise? [SP-EYE snarkiness intended]

•  After $20K in drill&fill treatment to the JV baseball field why cant PE classes use that outfield?  After all, former AD Jimmy Mac, in his attempt to get that field renovated, argued that the field was really a PE field and should be renovated so that it could drain better, hence the drill&fill.  On a related matter, if all our fields are PE fields, why isn't Ashley Field used for PE programs at PPA or CHUMS? We wouldn't want to get Coach BK Football mad because someone was using "his" field for something other than the 5 football games he has in the fall now would we?  

Ouch!  Was that a direct blow to the knees of everything that is football in Sun Prairie?  Wasn't us!!!!

• The track team practices on the field and was doing so even before the athletic fields were "released" for spring sports.

• Whatever happened to rotating the use of fields?  Why would we want to do that because it would make too much sense.  

• A recent request to increase Buildings & Grounds staff to better deal with this and many other related issues got absolutely no support from outbound District Administrator Timmy Culver and his management team.  

Caren Diedrich is infamous for declaring, "I don't want to see one damn hole in one damn roof!".   We wonder how she feel about blowing $40K on a field and then outright murdering it?

SP-EYE, it looks like you need to get back to exposing the districts ineptness.  Sadly, we seem to be slipping back into our old ways. 

You've been slippin' into darknessPretty soon you gonna pay---War

This one falls squarely on the shoulders of Doctor Timmy and his travelling management team.  We get it.  Education is a priority.  But at the end of the day, taking care of the buildings and grounds is a priority too.  We're quite certain that Erik Olson and Jeff Butler made things abundantly clear and prepared quality and verifiable documentation.  But yet, their proposal got no love at the budget planning table.  You can only hang Tim Culver for this.  Add it to his Pandora's legacy box.  A 1-to-1 computer plan is an awesome goal/vision, but couldn't we go 1.5 or 1.75-to-1 and be good stewards of taxpayer dollars spent on fields?

There's a committee in place now working on a plan for school space that could involve 1,2, or even 3 new schools and a likely $80-$100 MILLION dollar referendum.  THIS is how we want to show the community we take care of our stuff?

The Reader writes right.

Fix it people!!!!