Education Reform and the Lingering Odor of Cats

Before my teaching career was halted abruptly, I already worked part time in residential real estate sales and had formed a number of "truths" about the industry.

One is that most people who live with cats forget what their litter box smells like.

Speaking as the best friend of both a cat and a dog, I completely understand the reasoning behind this smell.  The quality of living for many homemakers is vastly improved by the presence of the animals, despite their scents...quid pro quo.

However, when presenting a home to a prospective buyer, the influence of the olfactory senses is almost always apparent immediately.  Small children wrinkle their noses and innocently state the obvious, especially if they have never been exposed to the smell of an indoor animal. 

Uninhibited prospective buyers are usually blunt about the stink.

And many homeowners, understandably, have been blissfully unaware. Usually a little fresh paint and sometimes some new carpet and the issue is mitigated (Realtor's note: Easier for you homeowners with animal roommates if you can relocate before you go on market).

When people are accustomed to a situation or condition that might be unpleasant or undesirable to others, the awakening can be painful. 

As a peripatetic public school teacher and sign language interpreter, I learned how easily schools can become insular and administrators and teachers can become territorial.  I have been in classrooms in several states and have always seen hierarchies of space, time and resources.

Perhaps never quite so much as at my last place of work as a public school teacher, at Westview in N. Beaverton, where a "Camelot" of sorts, replete with royalty, had formed around our glamorous, big-budget theater department.

Because people are who they are, we have learned to create checks and balances for those leaders whom we choose or elect and on whom we bestow power and authority--by virtue of our democratic government. They are, after all, deciding how public resources are used.

When those checks and balances are not in place, when our government employees are blatantly circumventing oversight and accountability (and spending taxpayer money on lawyers to conceal it), we are obliged as citizens in our democracy to speak out.

When I experienced over-the-top waste and abuse of resources, inequities in assignments and pay, and other unfairness at the state's largest high school, the act of voicing my concerns caused me to be fired illegally and harassed for several years by complicit state employees, most of whom continue to draw nice paychecks from the public's account.

For the record, I made a new Beaverton superintendent (J. Colonna) aware of specific concerns--some that would later become known as "Katz' Litter", a phrase referencing former Beaverton School superintendent Yvonne Katz and coined by Rick Casey, a writer for the Houston Chronicle. I was fired several days later, by sneak attack, for sexually harassing a woman whom I did not.

Oh, and insubordination.

The next few years of my life were, by design, a nightmare created by greedy, ruthless lawyers, one of whom was paid by the OEA, an organization that accepted my dues fraudulently for a decade.  

The previous seven years of my work in Beaverton schools were publicly revised by dishonest lawyers and administrators being paid by oblivious Beaverton taxpayers, taxpayers I had served well as a teacher and school supporter.

The inequities I experienced began immediately in Beaverton, in 1997, when I and another teacher new to the Beaverton (Dan Jamsa, who has since won some nice national awards for the S-K district) were assigned an outlandishly oversized drama class, scheduled by the veteran school counselor and resulting in some VERY SMALL classes for some veteran teachers.

The counselor, a year from retirement (being paid for life) smiled smugly when I objected and explained that "this was the way it was always done" 

In the ensuing conflict, I discovered that our school principal was unaware of this inequity and, in a fair resolution, she decided in favor of Mr. Jamsa and me AND our students--and, by extension, those teachers and students who might be cheated by this process in the future. 

As a result, I was told portentously by another counselor, just three months into my Beaverton teaching experience, that I should watch my back.

Note: When, ten years later, the Beaverton lawyers had exhausted their efforts to slime me with salacious charges from five years of work at Westview High School, they went back to a undocumented allegation that had originated with this counselor at Meadow Park Middle School, a decade prior. They had included as a "finding" in a bogus "FDAB" hearing and were able to have it published in the paper.  

There is no documentation or testimony for this allegation, anywhere.

For years, I refused to sign an array of changing confessions for the TSPC that all included this charge (as well as, at first, instructions to get alcohol counseling--because I told an state investigator I had freely given up alcohol, before I moved to Oregon in the '90's and purchased a license to teach in Oregon schools.)  

My mother, a career special ed teacher, died watching me fight with dishonest people who still have unlimited public money and no accountability.

Because I noticed a smell that had been in Beaverton Schools for a long time. It is still there. 

When elected officials and administrators with big paychecks are held responsible for their behavior in the jobs they have assumed, we will begin serious school reform.

It is a big job, but some fresh paint and a new carpet in the education bureaucracy would be a start. After some of them move out.

www.statesponsoredtheft.blogspot.com 

June 2004 FDAB testimony of Linda Borquist, then-Associate Superintendent for Human Resources of Beaverton Schools, on her "unique" collaboration with Tom Husted, uniserve representative for the Beaverton Education Association. Husted was serving concurrently on the board of the Beaverton Education Foundation, a non-profit run by JANET HOGUE, a Westview parent with an office in the Beaverton HR building.
BORQUIST'S SWORN TESTIMONY JUNE 2004:
Q. Do you have contact with the Beaverton Education Association as you work with various personnel problems?
A(Borquist). Uh-huh. I think we probably are a little bit unique in how we work with our association. The person who is the administrator of certificated personnel, which is a job I have also held in the past, and I meet usually twice a month and go over any kind of what we call "issues sessions." We look at, you know, things that have been brought to either of our attentions, and we go through and have an open discussion about what we're hearing or seeing. The hope is that we would, again, resolve it at the smallest level. We are very frank with each other. We don't really hold any secrets or hold any information back. But we try to proactively work together. We've operated
that
(begin pg 47)
way for at least 12, maybe 15 years, ever since I can kind of remember with, you know, past association presidents. It is a culture that we have built. Because of that we have very, very few grievances. I can maybe think of three in my ten years in -- 12 years in HR. You know, I've never sat before this kind of a board before with a Fair Dismissal hearing. We're actively working together. Obviously they have a role of representing in this case a teacher, and we have a role that we need to play. But
we try and work cooperatively. When I have a meeting that I'm going to be setting up with a teacher, I give what I would call a heads-up phone call to the association president or the Uniserv rep saying that this person will be expecting a call from X because they'll probably be calling you. We're going to have a meeting. I want to make sure you're available when they call so they can have representation. That's how open our relationship is.
Q. You mentioned that you had these meetings generally twice a month. Who are those with?
A. It's my administrator for certificated personnel, the Uniserv rep and the BEA president.