The Decatur School District Culture of Fear

Fear rules the MSD Decatur Township school district. Fear that if you step out of line, you will be gone. Fear that if you speak up, you will be gone. There is no recourse - the School Board just rubber stamps everything.

Superintendent Don Stinson doesn't handle the tools of fear mongering himself. He has Assistant Superintendent Jeff Baer and soon to be Assistant Superintendent Susan Adams for that nasty business. Baer is leaving at the end of the school year. But, according to what Susan Adams is saying around the District, she will be getting a promotion to take over the non-business activities that Baer currently handles, but his successor wants no part of. Adams will relinquish her head custodian job, and become the overlord of Transportation and Safety.

Now, I have heard Adams referred to as 'the dragon lady' a couple of times. And by criteria of how she has treated the custodians, she deserves that moniker. She has trimmed their ranks substantially. She cuts the heat off in the winter and the AC off in the summer - even while the custodians lug around vacuum cleaners on their backs and even while they clean carpets. The freezing cold and the sweltering heat and humidity she subjects the custodians to is immoral in my book. I think they should be complaining to the EEOC about their work conditions, quite frankly. But, they are afraid of doing so lest they be released from their employment as revenge. Don Stinson lets the dragon lady mete out this injustice and is ultimately responsible. Well, let me amend that - the School Board is ultimately responsible. If we had a School Board who actually cared to listen to the employees in the district, they might have a very different work environment - one that respected the dignity of all workers.

I will be referring to this again in the section on Security below - the custodians have been told by the dragon lady, that, should there ever be a bomb threat in a school that causes evacuation of the building, they are to remain behind and search for the bomb. Let me repeat that - should there ever be a bomb threat in a school that causes evacuation of the building, the custodians are required to remain behind and search for the bomb.

Now, should you not be that alarmed about the treatment of decent, hard working people in Decatur Township Schools, maybe you would be interested in another aspect of the no heat, no AC for custodians rule. It turns out that what mold needs to flourish is hot, humid conditions. Say, like the conditions one would find in the summer with the AC turned off and right after carpets are steam cleaned. Thanks to the no AC for custodians rule, the district now has a mold problem in the Early Childhood Center and the Decatur Intermediate Learning Center. The problem in the ECC is being 'solved' by moving the school to the Lynwood campus. There appears to be no resolution on the table for the DILC mold problem. Eventually the taxpayers will be on the hook to reclaim these spaces.

Even before assuming her new duties, the dragon lady and Jeff Baer have been 'working' on the bus drivers. The community needs to become more aware of what is going on in the Transportation Department. That budget is being slashed by Don Stinson - seemingly without any Board action or public disclosures. It would seem that the push is to 1) get senior drivers to quit and 2) cut benefits.

The first steps are in the works as we speak. The drivers' hours are being cut from 6 or 7 per day, down to 4 hours per day. Meanwhile more drivers are being hired so that the bus schedule can continue unabated. Dropping the driver's time immediately cuts their take home pay and puts their ability to get benefits in jeopardy. This again is immoral in my book. The bus drivers have families to support. With only 4 hours per day - two in the morning and two in the afternoon - the drivers are also precluded from taking second jobs. Clearly this is a move to get them to quit their jobs. Yet again I emphasize that I consider this immoral.

But it doesn't end there. Senior drivers are being targeted with 'non-compliance write-ups'. These write-ups claim that the drivers were tail gating or speeding. This will provide a paper trail should Baer, Adams, and Stinson want to remove more drivers than those who voluntarily leave their District jobs.

As mentioned in a comment to a previous blog entry, the drivers have now received letters claiming that the cost of repairing any damage to their bus will come out of their pay. One needs to ask what insurance is for?

That leads me to the Security Department. When the midnight shift in that Department was eliminated, Baer said 'that's what insurance is for'. Susan Adams claims that we can do away with the entire department because 'we have cameras on all the buildings'. As I spoke about in some detail in "Security is First Casualty of Budget Cuts", the dragon lady refuses to give keys or floor plans to the officers, as recommended by national standards promulgated by the Department of Homeland Security. Now she is being promoted over Security, which she believes can be handled by cameras and custodians. This is unbelievable.

As mentioned in comments to other blog entries, the custodians and the bus drivers are not the only employees in the District who are enveloped by this culture of fear. The teachers also must watch their backs and do not feel that they can afford to speak up or speak to the Board about mistreatment. Don Stinson, through Susan Adams and Jeff Baer, has created a hostile work environment, paid for by good hearted, hard working Decatur taxpayers. This culture is not in keeping with the attitudes of our community, and at some point we have to ask why the School Board allows it to continue.