Welcome Back, and to those of you who are joining us for the first time I say, just “welcome to the party.” I had hoped after giving a little bit of time for common sense to set in that the Kennedale ISD and school board would finally choose to do the right thing by myself and my family and I would not have to escalate to the point of beginning the process of exposing their actions and dirty little secrets. As I predicted in my earlier post they have chosen to cut off their nose to spite their face. This was never the way I wanted to deal with this, but now I am left with no other option. I will begin today with the actions by a leader within the district that isn’t as big a deal to some, but I want you to see the ground work that it lays out. Today’s revelations aren’t too big on the scandalous scale but they show just how deep this “culture of corruption”, goes, to use a recent political saying.
Our first example of horrible and inappropriate leadership will deal with one of the women that began the whole charade against me. I have already shown that Myra Rickard was a willing and complicit co-conspirator in the districts retaliation and railroading me on bogus accusations, but for the good of those who just joined us I will give a quick summary of my opinion of why she acted the way she did. You see, Myra has always wanted to be on the “In” crowd. She has her group of girl friends from school back in the 60s that are just the best of the besties and she fought hard to be in that group. She didn’t get in on her brains like Wanda Hibbits or her looks like Rhonda Barnes, but she was one of them anyway. She enjoyed that idea of being in the “elite” group within the community. The “It” girls. Well, Karen Furman had been creating her own little coalition of “It” girls ever since she clawed her way into her throne of power within the administration building. She has thrown promotions to several of her “friends” (Jan Cleere who was elevated to “District testing coordinator” was not only her next door neighbor when teaching but is also her 50/50 business partner in the daycare, IZONE, run out of the districts own buildings for personal profit). Karen has created her own little bubble of girl power. You will notice that she has not hired a single man into any of the principal positions that have come up during her tenure as the all powerful person in charge of everything, except of course the paperwork (Rick Edwards was sidelined as the presumptive next superintendent into that black hole of a position the minute Karen set her sights on being the successor to King Dugger) and the toilets (Mark Biondi is more than happy to just get the super high paycheck while doing as little real work as possible, while his old college roommate is still King of the district).
You see, Myra saw how Karen ruled this district with the micromanaging, heavy handed, self interested, iron fist that would have made Hitler and Mussolini turn green with envy. Myra also noticed that she was not a part of the inner circle of girl power rising up within this district. Being the good Baptist and clique member that she is, Myra felt the innate desire to be within the circle of power too. This is where her slobbering love affair with gaining Karen’s approval began. She needed it, whether for job security (we all know what happens when you oppose the Empress of KISD, just look at what they did to me) or a desire for more power. Myra in my opinion really and truly thought that once Karen ran Danny Greenfield off she would be right in line for his job and the nice bump in pay for when she was ready to retire. Getting rid of me has been a pretty obvious goal of Karen’s since I ruffled her feathers by exposing her G/T program not meeting state requirements back around 2007. What better way to solidify her standing and get in the good graces of Karen than to serve me up on a platter. Apparently Myra wasn’t concerned that the platter involved lies and distortions from a mentally unstable, jealous liar who has a history of accusing people of things and spreading lies. She ratcheted up the issue anyway. You’ll notice that Myra put in her notice of retirement right when she got back from Christmas break. Bet you can’t imagine why. Oh I am sure she will say it is because her husband has been ill or almost died and she needed to spend more time with him. I will tell you what the truth probably is. I didn’t just walk away quietly. Karen Furman and Gary Dugger weren’t able to bully and threaten my into disappearing without exposing to the public what was going on (not that they didn’t try). So in the end someone was going to have to answer for it. Someone if everything really hit the fan and the media or the public rose up demanding a head roll for this egregious over reach and abuse of power was going to have to be the sacrificial lamb. Neither Karen nor Dugger would be that lamb. It would fall on the lowest man on the totem pole. You guessed it, Myra would be the one voted off the island. In her attempt to gain favor all she did was leave herself open to being the sacrifice when it all didn’t go as planned. She saw the writing on the wall and cut her losses. I can tell you she has repeatedly stated she wasn’t leaving until Danny left. You’ll notice he’s still there. So that only leaves you to assume she left earlier than she wanted. But enough about the history of why Myra Rickard chose her ambition over doing the right thing and my family that she has known for over 50 years.
Let’s instead talk about how she has repeatedly broken the law over the last few years! I bet that sentence grabbed your attention. I can personally say that I have witnessed several times when Myra’s actions did not follow with the laws and policies of the Texas Education Agency (TEA). One of the reasons she may have soured on her view of me over the years, besides rubbing her power crush Karen the wrong way, is the fact that I pointed out when I felt things weren’t right for our students. The TEA, several years ago, placed requirements on how much time 6th grade students spent in P.E. Based on the law each 6th grader is required around 30 minutes of P.E. every day. They are not allowed to count any kind of recess or activity like that as part of their P.E. time. As the vice principal of a school it is her job to be aware of these types of requirements and make sure any action she takes is within these laws. No matter how many things are on your plate or all that is required of you, she chose the position and the pay increase and therefor must meet the responsibilities of the job. I can personally and confidently state that with at least 2 of my former students, Myra Rickard placed them in tutoring during their P.E. times because they failed their benchmark testing. I can say that because on both of those occasions I had to go to her and point out these students had complained to me that they weren’t getting to go to PE anymore. The question that should then pop into your mind should be “how many 6th grade students weren’t getting their required PE time and no one noticed because the kids didn’t complain about it?”. The next question you should ask yourself is “If she was willing to ignore the laws on this matter what other laws did she ignore or over look during her tenure as vice principal?”.
I can honestly say that when I brought up the fact that at least one of these particular students needed PE because they were very ADDish and it helped them make it through the rest of the day by getting that energy out, she was very irritated with me. She came across as angry and a bit confrontational about having to even address my concern. I remember her talking about how hard it was to keep up with those kinds of details for so many students and that they had to be in tutoring if there was a chance for them to pass the TAKS test in the spring. Scores were more important than checking to make sure that each student wasn’t being shortchanged on their legal rights to PE. I would love to tell you that she kept those two students out of PE anyway, but she didn’t. I know that at least one of them to best of my memory did eventually go back to PE and had their tutoring at a later time. That begs the question though of how many students over the last few years didn’t get to go to PE?
Some of you are probably wondering why this matters. One, it shows that keeping scores up and the administration happy was more important than the needs of the students. It also shows that one of the leaders within this district was either choosing not to check to fully keep in compliance with the law, or that she was just not competent enough to have been in that role to begin with. If something as simple as not scheduling kids to miss their PE was overlooked and ignored when it comes to laws the district is supposed to comply with, what other deviations from the law have they taken? As long as they don’t get caught or no one ask questions what is there to keep them from continuing to subvert the rule of law for their own benefit? Maybe this is why the administration and school board rally against anyone who asks questions or presses them for any real information at all.
I can personally attest to the fact that though within their legal abilities the district is currently making it difficult to obtain various pieces of information through the Open Records Requests I have begun. I will admit that so far they have stayed within the lines of the law, but I will tell you that they are not helpful in obtaining information. The semantics and word games you have to play to get the types of information you need I would guess toe the line of legality very closely. For a public organization, I find it funny that they are very difficult to get transparency and records from. I am also finding it very interesting that there seems to be a lot of paperwork that should be on file that doesn’t exist (or maybe I just didn’t hold my nose just right and call the report or the list the correct title to make them call “uncle” and hand it over). If they have nothing to hide why be so secretive and not more workable with requests. Again I am not accusing them of breaking the law and not providing required paperwork by playing games (yet), but I will admit to you that they are not making it an easy process either.
October 24, 2014
Bryan Kuykendall
Extraordinarily Ordinary 