What does a Totalitarian Regime Look Like? Look at our School Committee Plan for 2014!

In a totalitarian regime, what do you do when you don’t like dissent, you shut it down! At the recent school committee meeting on Thursday meeting, chairwoman Thorp took the 3rd of three steps meant to shutdown dissent and to gain full control of the committee process. The first step was to limit the pubic to 5 minutes of speaking no matter what the issues are and how important a matter being discussed. The 2nd step was the elimination of the second public comment session during each meeting. And now, Ms. Thorp is eliminating subcommittees thereby leaving her and the superintendent to report on matters previously covered by the subcommittees.  

 Ms. Thorp had previously informed the committee at an earlier meeting that she was going to propose new changes in member assignments with the aim of being more diverse and more inclusive in subcommittee assignments since she has been criticized by many people for not fully utilizing all members. Now she is recommending a liaison method to be tested for the next 6 months in which members will be assigned to attend specific school group meetings but they will be there only to observe and not to take part in these administrative meetings. They will then report back to the committee of the whole, when appropriate, but only if they request this time from chairwoman Thorp and they are only allowed to speak for a few minutes.

This isn’t a democratic way of running a school committee; this is the way dictators run countries - with an iron hand and with no dissent!