Offensive & Revealing Email from SC Chairman
Political commentator Michael Kinsley once said that the definition of a gaffe is a politician caught telling the truth.
On January 12, 2010, School Committee Chair Louis Jurist hit "Reply All" on an email received by his committee from a private resident.
He made a mistake that many have made, which he referenced in his printed apology in the Town Crier, by not paying close enough attention to who was listed in the "To" field before clicking "Send".
While his apology refers to his mistake of neglecting to delete the resident's name before replying to his committee, the real issue here was what was said in the email, and the fact that he sent it at all.
What's Wrong With This Email
Beginning at the top, here is a line-by-line breakdown of the email's content, along with notes that address the specific wrong-doing in each case:
"Agreeing with _____ is akin to agreeing with ______ - one must question one's sanity before proceeding."
In the interest of maintaining their privacy, we have removed the names of the 2 private residents that Dr. Jurist insults, as well as the School Committee members' personal email addresses. He is comparing the author of the original email that was sent to his committee with another resident in town who has earned a reputation for asking questions and being outspoken.
The email to which Dr. Jurist was responding was an impassioned plea for the committee to look more closely at the budget they were about to sign off, and for them to consider laying off administrators, rather than teachers, as was there plan.
"However, he is right. I had thought before the meeting that we had a near consensus that we needed to make an admin secretarial cut, for both financial and PR reasons."
There are two problems here:
1. For the Chair to think they had a near consensus prior to the meeting suggests that they broke the Open Meeting Law (OML), which states that all deliberations must be held in public. As there was nothing indicating a near consensus in their previous public meeting, one would naturally surmise that there had been some communication among 3 or more members since that meeting in order for him to think that they "had a near consensus". Such communication is expressly prohibited by the OML.
2. To make a cut for PR reasons is not illegal, just highly improper. What must it be like for the person who is losing their job for PR reasons, and how insulting this is to all residents, but especially to those who have been lied to for years when they've pointed out the political and PR rationale that seems to be at the heart of certain decsions made by the SC.
"When we have our most strident supporters saying we need to do this (not just me, whom no one listens to) we should pay attention."
The School Committee is supposed to be working on behalf of all of the town's residents. For them to be taking their cues from a small group of "strident supporters" is to leave the rest of us behind. Are they a weak enough board that they need to study the political winds before deciding what is the right thing to do? In this case, what their "strident supporters" told them was absolutely right, albeit for the wrong reasons. But they should have been able to arrive at that conclusion on their own, as it is in their own Budget Principles to make any cuts in personnel as far away from the students as possilble.
"Even a 0.5 cut will send a message."
Send a message?
To whom?
For what?
Are they making cuts to save money, or is it all just for show?
"The work will still get done. Gary is being quite disingenous when he says how vital they are while ignoring similar claims from depaartments (sic) he was quite willing to cut instead."
In other words, our Superintendent of schools who maintains 7 secretaries for himself and 2 or 3 other administrators at the Central Office, defended maintaining his staff while convincing the SC that the cuts would have to come from some department other than his. Isn't this a conflict of interest? While it was observant of the Chair to pick up on this, when the Superintendent's final budget came to the SC with only the 0.5 cuts at the Central Office totally $22,000, while there were $1,000,000 in cuts to "other departments", including 7 teachers, the Chair and his fellow committee members voted unanimously to make it so.
"A famous tactician..... said "We must always be fighting the NEXT battle. In this case, that would be next year's potential override, and I do think an Adm cut now would help us in that regard."
This needs to be said - if the School Committee would put half the energy that it puts into planning overrides (a year and a half in advance) into scrutinizing the $30,000,000 budget that they approve so cavalierly without understanding the details within, maybe we wouldn't need so many overrides. While their advance planning is admirable, they are planning for the wrong thing! It is extremely disconcerting that they are planning an override instead of planning the budget.
Instead of using them as a last resort, overrides seem to be at the center of their fiscal "planning".
"More to come after my next case!"
Once again, this suggests an OML violation. While Dr. Jurist would later state that he did not send a follow-up email to his fellow members, whether he did or not is really not the point. This reference, the earlier one, and the fact that this email was ever even composed and sent, illuminate an atmosphere in which they felt free reign to continue to flaunt the law only 12 days after being found by the Supreme Court of Massachusetts to have violated this very law following a 5 year battle through multiple courts at a huge cost to Wayland residents.
Not surprisingly, the District Attorney's office determined that this email of Dr. Jurist's was yet another violation of the Open Meeting Law.