The application to include my name on the Board of Trustees election ballot was filled out, needing only my notarized signature, when I dropped it into the trash.  The problem was that my election would only mean my displacing merely one of several AISD Trustees whose unfitness for public trust I had personally witnessed in a cover-up of an AISD administrator's malicious negligence that nearly cost me my life.  "Winning" a Board seat would then yoke me to the remaining "trust-nots" for four years and, ironically, in the workplace harness of the hideously inept five-year Strategic Plan this gang created.  A strategic plan is a long-range organizational job plan, and this one reflects an intellectual grasp of neither AISD's job nor the concept of planning.  It does concretely establish the self-interest motives of its assemblers, along with astonishingly blatant evidence of their obliviousness to any conception of operational service to "education."  It is in fact not a work plan, but a ploy to enable, protect, and cover the pursuit of self-interest, readily recognized in common lore as an "old boys network," this one liberalized enough to admit a few old girls - provided they are administrators rather than teachers. 

As an organizational sociologist with a long history of guiding organizational performance and shaping workplace cultures, I know how to recognize such things, not only in the grandstanding of sham "strategic plans," but in real workplace behavior.  Pure circumstance gave me the opportunity to witness the shenanigans of AISD administrators, and the complicity of their publically elected supervisors, from a pair of unexpected and extraordinarily revealing vantage points.  My view had always been from above in a planning or executive position, or from outside as an objective academic observer or consultant, but never before from underneath, looking up.  Long before coming to Texas, I became enchanted by the thought of contributing my own education and experiences (decades in government, politics, business, community, & social movements) to new generations as a high school social studies teacher.  I had already taught in college, and in all the sectors just described, was fully credentialed, and with subject area experience that younger teachers could never match, but still "tested the waters" of secondary education at the lowest level within all public school systems, as a substitute teacher.

No one has more opportunity to see and compare more classrooms, more students, more schools, and more school districts right at the point of action than a substitute teacher - especially one who is a trained social and operational observer.  I was aware of that beneficial aspect of the substitute perspective, but what surprised me was a second perspective provided by the particular condition and character of AISD.  Organizations corrupted by self-interest foster internal bullying - self-serving central authority actually thrives on it - and no one gets a better view of bullying than its victims.  There is no more magnified view of a gun than the one looking into its business end.  Bullies target the vulnerable, often mistaking vulnerability for weakness rather than circumstance, and then let that lull them into false senses of security and stupidly brazen acts of self exposure.  All victims are not weak.  Even the strong can be ambushed, but they do not crawl away and hide, nor be intimidated by liars and cowards, even those brandishing the trappings of administrative office ...   When I fell afoul of malicious bullying that nearly became manslaughter at Bowie High School, I reported it, with specifically enumerated charges, documented evidence, and supporting medical testimony.  I was simply seeking corrective action from internal authority, not revenge, and the first reports were to Bowie authority, then to the Superintendant's office, and finally to Board members.  Not one piece of AISD response reflects the honesty or courage to even acknowledge that charges have been made, or what they are.  In particular, none of several AISD documents make any mention whatsoever that at the center of the whole thing was an actually-occurring on-the-job medical episode ending with emergency cardiac surgery.  And yet, every AISD person to whom this case was reported, including each and every Board member, was fully informed on every detail.  2010 is an election year - time for Austin voters to decide what kind of folks should be entrusted with managing the education of Austin children ...

My first impulse was to seek a Board seat for myself but, as noted above, that would change only one Board position. The worst of it all would be that the consumers of AISD education - students, parents, voters, and the Austin community itself - would continue as victims of an alliance of trustees and administrators putting self-interest above doing the job the consumers need (but have so-far failed to require).  Rather than fix the problem, my election would have the opposite effect, adding bitterness to a work culture of brutal vindictiveness.  Then, a second look following publication of this Board's professionally embarrassing Strategic Plan revealed the urgent need for a full-scale house-cleaning.  Rather than be even a successful candidate, I could best serve the greater good via a constructive non-candidacy!  It is simply not enough to replace one dysfunctional incumbent when, as a non-candidate, I can witness to the truth on behalf of all challengers for Board seats.

There are two issues, one relating to the heart, the other to the mind of the bureaucratic entity Austin voters trust to manage AISD and its influence on the hearts and minds of Austin children.  We can call them:

  1. The Bowie Bullying and Cover-Up, and
  2. The Five Year Strategic Ploy,
These two issues expose an ugly truth - that our teachers and students are subjected to an administrative bureaucracy that is both heartless and mindless.   The details of both issues are complex and quantitatively daunting, and yet, we can appropriately keep them simple here.  In both instances, the performance of AISD Trustees and administrators is so egregiously malicious in the Bowie incident and so outlandishly self-serving and incompetent in the Strategic "Plan" (Ploy), that the case for general unfitness and drastic need for reform becomes evident without ever going into depth of detail.  (Still, links to the detail are provided).

(1) The Bowie Bullying & Cover-Up                       

Shown here are three snipets from official documents.  One is an angiogram photo of my life-threatening 99% coronary blockage that caused on-the-job chest pain at Bowie High School and my reporting the need to get to medical assistance.  The second is the statement of Bowie's Substitute Coordinator (Hoenes) about how she told me that my job was in the classroom and not in some doctor's office.   Devoid of any sympathy for my chest pain or desire to continue living, she even charges that I was "belligerent," as if these life-threatening conditions wouldn't dictate a desparate effort to avoid stress.  The third is a prime facie lie from the AISD Superintendant's Office after having read the Coordinator's statement, saying that AISD always supports someone needing to seek medical attention, and joining in the delusion that someone in chest pain and fear of a heart attack would be trying to pick a fight.

The Hoenes statement was an astonishing self-indictment of malicious negligence, actually boasting of denying medical treatment and inflicting stress over a two-day period on someone in a cardiac episode.   On one day, she publically chastized him for planning to seek medical care toward the end of the day; the next day, she refused to read a written medical explanation, continued her chastizing, and even pursued him into the school corridors to continue the confrontation -- all stated in her report.  Written medical testimony documents a near fatality, something that would have upgraded the malicious negligence, a felony in itself, to manslaughter.  One does not have to go beyond the two clippings shown here to see the outrageous mendacity of P. Shooter who had read what Hoenes said.  P. Shooter's report is an utter fabrication contradicting documented facts, deceptively reconstructing the complaint he is to investigate, blatantly lying about the admitted attempt to deny medical treatment, and crafting a whole new and absurd fiction to deceptively place a cardiac victim's alleged belligerency outside the time-frame of the cardiac incident (note reference to an "office employee" as if it was someone other than Hoenes).  As already noted, a glaring omission in all AISD originated correspondence is any mention that at the center of the whole thing was an actually-occurring medical episode ending with emergency coronary surgery.  Also ommitted is any mention that the Coordinator's Supervisor, Assistant Principal Trevino, ruled against Hoenes on Friday, and that she then went around Trevino to file her charges to the Principal while expressly lying in writing about discussion with the Assistant Principal (all fully documented).  Incredibly, her charges were actually written after details of the upcoming surgery were made known to Trevino, and processed as I lay on the operating table.  All this is a matter of submitted documentation - all known to Shooter, and ultimately submitted by me to every Trustee.   Every Trustee received the information (verified by the Board Secretary), and not one responded, including my own Area 7 representative, R. Schneider.  NO HEARING WAS EVER GRANTED.   The Board Counsel explained the reason to me in the simplest terms: I was a mere substitute, and no one cares!

(2) The Five Year Strategic Ploy                        

Having ourselves once been teenagers, most adults see juvenile ploys for what they are.  Who doesn't remember being called upon to answer a question about something we just didn't study and trying to use the words of the question to fake at least some knowledge?  If asked to define the mission of education, for example, we might have tried to fool the teacher with something like, "The mission of education is to provide an educational experience."  That juvenile ploy is exactly how the AISD Strategic Plan describes the AISD mission!  Kids being kids, it is inevitable that we will have to deal with juvenile ploys as well as bullying in our schools; but in AISD, neither problem is confined to the children.  

I am a sociologist, with both Bachelor's and Master's degrees in Sociology, and all classwork completed for my Ph.D.  While my studies spanned the breadth of the sociological field - society, culture; social movements, problems, and dynamics - I worked primarily as an organizational sociologist within agencies fighting crime and poverty, and in both manufacturing and service industries to build a culture of devotion to consumer quality.  I wrote a book about the struggles of consumer-oriented real estate agents to bring the consumer quality revolution into their industry.  The common planning strategy in all these areas was to first develop a common vision of need and opportunity and then structure a mission tailored to the need/opportunity target, with success always dependent upon a top-down prioritizing of social responsibility over self-interest.  Done right, it works well.  Done wrong, it still sounds good, so self-serving administrators give insincere lip-service to strategic plans, vision statements, and mission statements.  Often they use them as busy work to tie-up and distract naive members of supervisory boards and commissions.

The AISD five year Strategic Plan for 2010-2015 reverses the logical order of vision leading to mission, a clear indication of short-sighted focus on status-quo and self-interest.   The Plan first states mission and then vision, and distorts the function of both.  It begins with what it calls, "what we do" (mission) and then envisions how good AISD will make it look (vision) to others...


                    Source: AISD Website

"Planning," by definition, does not begin with what we are currently doing, but with what we want to get done, and the scheme we put together to accomplish it is what we call a "plan."  In the simplest sense: the "strategic plan" is long-range, formulating the organization's vision of the future, defining its mission in terms of ultimate goals with measurable goal-serving objectives and performance standards; a "tactical plan" is a short-range schedule of operations aimed at achievement of objectives and standards pre-set by the strategic plan.  Thus, the tactical plan may start with "what we do" because the vision, ultimate goals and mission rationale are known elements - i.e., already stated in the Strategic Plan.

When executives and administrators expose their ignorance of sound planning by beginning a Strategic Plan with "what we do," we might still hope that they actually do indeed know what it is that their organization does.  Such hope is dashed in the AISD mission statement (above) - exactly the example given earlier, when an unprepared teenager asked to define the mission of education tries to bluff with, "The mission of education is to provide an educational experience."   Even worse, it does not end there, but stumbles on in characteristically adolescent pretension, mouthing impressive vocabulary words - "challenge," "quality" - and ironically failing to meet the educational challenge of quality grammar ("inspires" should be "inspiring").

Now, note what is missing!  Nowhere in the AISD statement of vision or mission is there any mention of teaching knowledge to students, no vision of any consumers knowing more stuff, and no mission to teach that stuff!  

At best, current AISD Trustees do not know what they are doing as enablers of an administrative system of self interest, cruelty, and cover-up.   On the other hand, it is most likely that the professional administrators behind this charade know exactly what they are doing.   Raising the notion of things being taught and learned to the level of Strategic Vision, and the promise of teaching students to AISD's Mission, restores teachers to their proper and common sense position along with parents of students in the formation of educational policy; and illuminates the job of administrators as one of support to those who actually deliver on the teaching promises, i.e., the teachers.

Despite the contention of the Strategic Ploy's mission statement, one very specific job of the Board of Trustees is to insure that AISD management fully understands that it does NOT exist "in partnership with parents and our community," but in subordinate service to the community.  That is the job entrusted to all corporation and government boards and commissions - to never let institutional management forget who actually owns the institution employing them.  Once managers get away with promoting themselves to partnership, the non-managing owners are reduced to junior partners.   For that reason, management is typically required to answer to boards and commissions elected by the owning citizens or stockholders.  Members of such boards and commissions are sometimes called "directors" or "commissioners" or sometimes simply "board members."  Here in Austin, we call them, "Trustees," another term we hope they will understand. 

The Trustees are in no way diminished by scrapping the Strategic Ploy in favor of a legitimate Strategic Plan, but are in fact re-enabled to better manage according to a better management plan;  the Teachers get a measure of control commensurate with their teaching responsibilites, including teaching-focused administrative support;   and those administrators who (along with teachers) are in fact true educators, gain relief from the obscured vision of colleagues with self-interest myopia.  Scrapping the Ploy does seem to begin with scrapping those who helped create it and do not now renounce it.   To repeat - 2010 is an election year - time for Austin voters to decide what kind of folks should be entrusted with managing the education of Austin children ...