I know there has been quite a bit of unbalanced truth and fake news on television and in our newspapers about SUSD, but I am resolute that as the President of the Board we have nothing to apologize for.  How would it be possible for the Board to know that Dr. Birdwell was a criminal?  How would it be possible for any of us to know the mind of the Arizona Attorney General and that bid rigging is such a big deal?  I'm no lawyer.  Are we responsible for the bid rigging, the nepotism?  Exactly my point.  Any sensible person will know that we go to the meetings, and that I use my knowledge of parliamentary procedure to conduct the meetings.  We should not be held accountable for the actions of others.  And of course I have read the awful criticism about the fact that we ignored the constituents of our district, but I say that is false.  We ignored no one, we had our counsel craft cease and desist letters and they were sent to these people spreading this poison.

​

Now, when our greedy and self centered teachers are about to start striking, we are all, as board members, proven right, secure in our beliefs that the teachers are the problem.  Teaching is an easy job, and by my calculation, teachers do not even work for more than like 34 weeks per year, so I think it is ridiculous that they want to be paid more money.  Right now, some of them are getting about $18.00 an hour.  I remember when I used to babysit for my neighbors, I only got $3.00 per hour.

​

Anyway, this is my favorite quote, and it is from an article I wrote (actually, I got some help because I was never much for grammar) but here goes:

​

....Unfortunately, that pride is frequently drowned out by another voice.

Actions needed to move SUSD forward have been criticized, undermined, attacked, or simply dismissed by union leadership. Connecting with disgruntled community members, they fueled a movement based on anger, and thus began an onslaught of personal attacks, crushing demands on administrative resources, and a campaign of negativity. With irresponsible disregard for balanced truth, the integrity of due process, and the real price our community pays for theatrics, this group makes their demands on the backs of threats, fear-mongering, and defamations.

​

What I was trying to say in this article is that the teachers, and specifically the teacher's unions, are the ones spreading these rumors about the district.  The fact that the rumors ended up being true and that the actions we undertook, like hiring Dr. Birdwell and allowing her to hire her sort-of family members, and that woman Laura Smith who was our CFO (I never could understand anything she said, but Kim Hartmann, who is a CPA, said that Laura was super talented - so that might be Kim's fault, just sayin), or that we allowed Birdwell to pay District money to a convicted felon (that guy was not even an architect - what a jerk) and then that same felon wrote checks for like $30,000 to Kay Hunnicutt (who deposited the money into a joint bank account she shares with Denise Birdwell) were not the problems.  Now I hope you can see that it is the teachers who are the problem for complaining about things like this.  It is none of their business and they should shut up.

​

I know this is getting confusing as I write this, but I am trying hard and that is what you get with me, hard work.  Don't give up on me yet, please!  Sorry about the grammar.