Unfit Response

Yesterday, the State Board of Education delayed the release of A-F Report Cards for a little more than two weeks – to October 25. How Superintendent Barresi has responded to that speaks volumes.

Immediately after the meeting, she approached one of her board members shook her finger in her face, and told her she was out of line. All Joy Hoffmeister had done was ask why she and other board members had not been provided with the list of responses to the questions superintendents had asked the SDE a couple of weeks ago. According to The Oklahoman, Barresi did not appreciate the implication that her staff had intentionally kept information from board members.

As I wrote last week, board members had been asking for that information, and it was not provided for them. (Of course if any of them followed the blog, they would have found it here.)

Then Barresi went on the 4:00 KFOR news for a bizarre interview in which Edmond Superintendent David Goin was on set with Linda Cavanaugh, and she was in the newsroom. While appearing utterly spent, she maintained the posture that school superintendents were doing parents a great injustice. She neglected to mention that the hand-selected board Governor Fallin put in place to help her was complicit in that injustice.

Finally – and this probably is most revealing – she had an email sent out to school districts late in the day telling them that the A-F Report Card grades were no longer embargoed. After a steadfast six weeks of reminding schools that they can’t share the results until the State Board approves them, the SDE has now lifted the prohibition.

Let me get this straight…

The State Board tells you not to release the grades, but you tell the schools to go ahead and do it anyway? You insist that giving a high school without a senior class a D for graduation rate is appropriate because you have to follow rules, and then you defy the State Board of Education, just hours after they issue you a temporary setback?

That speaks volumes about you.