Michael Hicks, TUSD board member and burrito conspiracy theorist, made the Star today with his complaint that all these pesky citizens keep wanting to talk at TUSD board meetings. Sure, there is probably a conversation to be had about the public comment time and whether something can be done to keep the topics germane to issues facing the board at that meeting. However, Hicks, because he’s Michael Hicks and is good at this sort of thing, managed to frame the issue based on the fact that he gets sleepy by nine-ish:
“It’s hard for me,” Hicks said. “Before you know it, it’s 10 p.m. and I’m making decisions that will affect every child in TUSD, and I’m not making good decisions because I’m not functioning well because it’s late at night.”
An unrelated note: Michael Hicks’ term ends in 2014.
This article appears in Aug 8-14, 2013.
Waaaaaaa…. its so late I make stupid decisions for the city’s children.
If this statement doesn’t scare the shit out of parents, then neither does a slumber party with Michael Jackson and Jerry Sandusky
Au contraire, that is a very related note!
This is why prospective candidates for any school board need to spend at least 3 months minimum attending every board meeting of the institution so they know what to expect. If you can’t stay awake, don’t run for the job. If you don’t make good decisions late in the evening, don’t run for the job. If you don’t like to listen to people complain about your work and your decisions, don’t run for the job. But the people have a right to speak even if you don’t want to hear them.
GReeeat title for this article! I agree with the above comment, and it is one of many reasons that I have been attending board meetings forever! I did indeed fall asleep at one or two of the early ones and have now developed strategies to make sure that doesn’t happen. As I said at the meeting last night, there are few opportunities to make a comment to the whole board, and they need to be preserved, not limited. Placing the call to the audience at the end means that comments come AFTER votes, and given that agenda items are not printed until a few days ahead of meetings, it removes the option to actually have input on agenda items. While teachers, presenters etc. have kids to put to bed (Hicks’ logic for why these things should happen earlier) SO DO PARENTS (!!!!!). Altogether this proposal was highly exclusionary, exactly the wrong direction to go in TUSD. Maybe a little less pontificating and raising specious arguments by the Board could help to shorten meetings.
Parents should spend less time bloviating at the board-which it always is-and more time supervising their children’s homework and bed time at that time of night. Half the parents merit gagging after they start in on their old tired complaints. Parents are what’s wrong with TUSD, not Hicks’ desire to get on with the agenda.
Start the agenda, discuss the agenda, allow parents to address the agenda discussion. Then the rest of us can go home and address HOMEWORK.
With all the incessant moaning about Mexican/Hispanic/African-American studies being taught, I have just one question: How do these classes improve the education and skill set of these high school students? Answer: Reading, writing, arithmetic, science, and the ability to speak intelligibly are job skills that employers are looking for. If you want to learn about your ethnic background, talk with your grandparents and go to the library (yes, the libraries are still open !!!) and read a book. Turn off the boob tube, put down your cell phone, stop tweeting, and START LEARNING SOMETHING USEFUL.
Is that you, Mr. Mitchell? Dennis (you know him as a Menace) and I are here at the library, on-line, doing our homework.
Old school thinking is just that…old school. Wake up “Grandpa in Tucson” and TUSD’s Mr. Hicks, and “smell the coffee”. Perhaps drinking it might help, too! Don’t assume our 21st century students haven’t already plugged into honest-to-goodness, living and breathing educational techniques, tools and topics.
The following IS a case against small thinking: My dear ol’Mom, born in 1920, was as a child and into adulthood, unable to converse at length with her aged Austrian grandfather because of the long-held stigma against speaking anything other than English, his somewhat-broken second language. I would really like to say how much more worldly, historically, and progressively-enriched we are, four or more, generations beyond those days. I can’t.
Our school boards, educators, taxpayers…all citizens… must continue to look back at our mistakes and resolve to endorse education having a local, regional, national and global perspective. We ADULTS, not just our children, need to go back, get “caught up” with what we’ve missed. We either have misinformation or no information to allow us to make a decision, either well-rested or otherwise. Yes, “Grandpa in Tucson,” let us all get back to school, the library, the History Channel on your generation’s “boob tube”. (Let someone else do the McCoy feud-watching or perhaps learn the dangers of perpetuating a feud!). Perhaps, you may even come to tweet about an enriched education filled with opportunities to learn about the past, to help us in the here and now and we will say how much more worldly, historically, and progressively-enriched we are beginning with your, my and our children’s generations beyond these days.
@Getaclue, could you please clue us in on that unintelligible rambling.