Trevor Baptiste, Vira Douangmany Cage, Regional School Committee
Select Board Chair Alisa Brewer briefly allowed a discussion about a strongly worded email they received today from School Committee member Vira Douangmany Cage asking why they have remained silent on the matter of Aisha Hiza.
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Ms. Hiza you may remember was issued a "stay away" order on March 15 by Amherst Regional Public School Superintendent Maria Geryk after she vigorously demanded school officials do something about the bullying of her young daughter at Pelham Elementary School.
School Superintendents have extraordinary power when it comes to issuing such an order, kind of like the combined power of a Clerk Magistrate and District Court Judge, but without much due process.
Alisa Brewer: "Silence is not ignoring. We're not taking the easy way out"
The Select Board tasked Temporary Town Manager Peter Hechenbleikner with coming up with a statement by their June 6th meeting so they can't be accused of remaining silent. Mr. Hechenbleikner told the Select Board he "knew more than they did, and there's no social injustice being done."
Chair Alisa Brewer said "We are supportive of solving the stay awat order as quickly as possible" and then added, "The situation has been a very tension filled conversation across the community."
That it has.
40 comments:
"The situation has been a very tension filled conversation across the community." - Larry, I hope you take ownership for your part in furthering the divide in our community and not being a neutral source of information. I hope you held accountable for your actions.
I hate Vira. She is toxic. She is self-serving. She is only in it for the attention.
I know. Vira.
"Are we in the deep Jim Crow south?"
PUH-LEEESE.
The tragic part is that when people make statements like that, they totally undermine and make ridiculous any point they hoped to make. It actually TURNS people against them.
The part of this post I like the best is Mr. H saying that he knows more about the situation than the SB and there's no social injustice being done. I bet he can't wait to get out of this toxic community. Made toxic by the likes of Vira and Aisha.
Over played their hand ....where's the beef?
When Vira loses the State Rep. election, she can look back at this divisive. letter as the beginning of her downward spiral. There is no way she could fill Representative Story's seat.
Those shoes are way too big for a small, petty person like Vira to fill.
Wouldn't it have been more productive to approach the SB and ask them to make a statement? Has it officially been brought before them yet?
Political grandstanding at its worst.
Who's extolling BLM? Racist cop haters. How about we chant "pigs in a blanket, fry 'em like bacon" at some of these people . How d'ya think they'd like that?
Keep it up lefties. You play right into Trump's hands. TRUMP 2016
Why would the SB want to get involved. It has nothing to do with them. If I was them I'd stay out of it.
I can't believe how easily people take sides when they don't even know the facts. Reminds me of that pedophile principal a while back that people wrote letters to the gazette aghast at his reputation being being questioned. You're kind of quiet tonight larry.
Sometimes I like to sit back and let all the Cowardly Anon Nitwits show their true colors.
Good larry...then why allow anons to post? How many comments would you get? One...maybe two? Maybe you should apologize to Maria?
Anons who disagree with Larry are CANs. Anons who agree with him are the salt of the earth.
Does that mean, LK, that you support Vira in this? And other points she has raised over the year?
I support the First Amendment, and giving voice to the voiceless.
"... Mr. H saying that he knows more about the situation than the SB and there's no social injustice being done."
He's not allowed to know more than they do!
"I bet he can't wait to get out of this toxic community."
I'll bet he likes even less getting dragged back as a defendant in the lawsuit I'm hoping Aishia files. Bottom line, if you have access to secret information that you aren't able to reveal, you also can't comment on it.
What part of this do people not understand?
And drag Amanda Drane from the Gazette back in as a defendant for allegedly knowing what was discussed in an SC executive session and writing a "news" article about it.
As a matter of fact, there are a lot of things that a lot of people have stupidly said online that reveals that they have been privy to "secret" information all along the way.
Yo Eddie
Mr H may have gotten his info directly from the police department. I don't think they are under any rules of confidentiality. As town manager he probably called the police chief and asked him what's up here?
My guess is that Vira is the source of many leaks.
I have many reliable sources for information.
And I always corroborate a major story with at least two of them before publication.
If Vira is leaking confidential information it doesn't matter how many people you get to corroborate it. It's still wrong and she should be called out on it. And no way should she be rewarded for this unethical behavior with a seat in the State House.
I never give up a source.
What if the New York Times had never printed The Pentagon Papers?
Yo MoFo
Ever hear of CORI?
TM can call anyone he wants, but police can GO TO JAIL for telling him.
And Larry, there are some potentially interesting aspects to this matter.
Larry, Pentagon Papers became public when some Congressman read them into the Congressional Record.
We owe a debt of gratitude to whomever elected him.
What is Amherst Together doing on this--and the Director of Equity and all the central adminstrators? Has anyone noticed how poorly school committee members of color are treated? First thing being that no one listens to what they are saying or just tells that they are dead wrong on race issues.
Larry ...if your source is via and you personally commented (not just reported) on the situation that was unprofessional and you may have been duped!that would make you a (gossip) columnist and not a reporter.
I can assure you, Via is not my source.
Larry...can we assume by your lack of contrition that you know something that The TM doesn't know that the select board doesn't know....and on and on?
Ah good one...is Vira your source?
I never give up a source, or answer any questions that could narrow down who they (pleural) are.
In other words, "Nuts"!
Larry, you ought to have posted all of Caligula's missive, the part you left out is even worse anl almost certainly a FERPA violation.
If you are bound by confidentiality, absent some very specific things that either release you from confidentiality or provide you a limited exemption from confidentiality, you remain bound by confidentiality even if doing so makes you look bad. A citizen's "choosing" to exercise her First Amendment right to petition for redress does not constitute a waiver of this legal duty!
Furthermore both FERPA (I know) and CORI (I'm told) make no distinction between releasing "personally identifiable information" with name included and without it if it is possible to identify the person from the information released. For example, if you only had one Black student taking the MCAS exam and you released a racial breakdown of the scores, everyone would know exactly whose individual score you were releasing -- which is why you can't do that.
Legally (and ethically) it makes no difference that mother's & daughter's names were on that document or not and Geryk ought to have known that! Furthermore, regardless of what Hiza chose to say, both she and Appy ought to know that "reputation of the school" isn't an exemption, and Hiza was wise not to be bullied into signing a waiver, because Caligula has now really f**** up -- she admits that she was bound by confidentiality (which isn't clear) but claims a nonexistent right to now violate that confidentiality in retaliation for what Hiza has said about her.
Ummm....
Second, it is not a violation of confidentiality to "leak" public information, it is not illegal to provide a member of the public (e.g. reporter) information that the public legally has a right of access to and which already should have been provided to the public. Furthermore, the State Whistleblower Law articulates specific circumstances where non-public information may be revealed to the public.
http://www.mass.gov/eopss/whistleblowerfraud-waste-and-abuse-information.html
Third, the reason why one has a right of access to the information in government files is because it often is incorrect. US Senator Ted Kennedy on the "no fly" list being but one example -- and if they won't tell Aisha what's in the file on her, how do they honestly know that it's accurate? (Assuming they even care...)
Reading Caligula's Circular in it's entirety, it's clear to me that they don't. Aisha is the victim of a "Star Chamber" inquisition, a lynch mob of sorts, and don't think for a minute that stuff hasn't been fabricated about her -- that's a standard tactic of the SPED folks, and look at who is running the schools.
And Larry, your point about the Pentagon Papers is quite relevant -- the US Army fabricated so much stuff that press briefings were referred to as the "Five O'Clock Follies."
"I never give up a source, or answer any questions that could narrow down who they (plural) are."
My point about why Caligula's statement constitutes a FERPA violation, even though Ashia's name doesn't appear on it.
Yes Larry has both sides of the story so he's made a decision based on both sides
ckened by admin in Pelham said...
Vira isnt leaking any information.. I had lunch with her today and She was not talking about this I tried and she knows Im on Aishas side. She wasn't having it. It wouldn't surprise me if Marias sc buddies are doing it to make Vira and Trevor look bad. If there isn't transparency then manipulation is easy
Larry only has one side of the story. Just like the rest of us.
Yes 9:36, I'm sure that the National Socialists probably had a reason for perpetrating the Holocaust, it's just that I don't particularly care to hear their side of the story.
Same thing here -- I don't particularly care to hear Caligula's side of the story because my issue is with what Caligula did and not why she did it, I don't particularly care why she did it -- it's like the guy beating on his girlfriend; I don't particularly care whom she slept with last night, or whom she might have slept with, or anything else -- the issue is him hitting he, and that's not acceptable.
Like I asked earlier, was the Rodney King beating justified because he'd been driving 90MPH? NO.
And Caligula's actions aren't justified either.
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