All the credit for his rehiring as principal of Harmony School goes to the many parents, teachers and fellow administrators who stood up, spoke out and showed their support for him over the past week and at tonight's meeting. Without the astounding show of support from all involved the Middletown Board of Education would not have been moved to change its mind.
There's an awful lot to talk about but at this time I'm a bit tired. I'm going to reflect on tonight's meeting a little and have video to post later.
But real quick though, here is what happened after the BOE came out of a special executive session to discuss whether or not to rehire (grant tenure) to Mr. Paulson.
The BOE came out of executive session @ ~ 11:45. Mr. Parton, the BOE's attorney, made a statement saying that there was some new information brought fourth during the session (but didn't say what it was). He made a statement that School Superintendent Dr. William George would like to amend his evaluation of Mr. Paulson to stated that he highly recommends his re-hire. After a motion was made to to amend the report and seconded, Mr. Parton didn't make it clear that they were voting to rehire Mr. Paulson, instead it seemed that they were voting on whether to have a vote or not. After all board members voted yes, Mr. Parton said Mr. Paulson was rehired.
Parton's statement had many confused at first but when those in the audience realized what had actually just happened - the BOE had voted unanimously to rehire Mr. Paulson - the crowd exploded with delight.
Tonight was totally out of character for the BOE, changing its position on something like this doesn't normally happen, but I'm glad it did! They got this one right.
Congratulations Mr. Paulson!
Middletown Patch has a brief article on tonight's meeting as well if you would like to check it out.
7 comments:
Yes, they did! They definitely got it right this time! Proud to be part of the family we call Harmony School!
"They're Singing In Harmony, Middletown BOE Changes Its Tune And Re-Hires Principal Paulson"
Nice one, the New York Post has nothing on that headline.
I am surprised that this article did not garner a lot of comments.
I think if you had an article about five members of the BOE voting not to rehire him the week before you would have had a ton of comments.
You were a little late to the party on this one Mike.
I am glad he was rehired Mr Paulsen they should of never of thought about not rehiring him. He is truly for the children first why would you not want someone like that in office.
Anon 8:34
I'm glad you liked the headline, I thought it was rather clever myself!
As for being a little late to the party that was due to both circumstances and purpose. I knew all about Mr. Paulson's what happened shortly after the special BOE meeting on the 13th when I was notified by a neighbor. It was late and I had work the following day and couldn't post about it.
I attended the special Harmony School PTO meeting the following Wednesday night and also found out what the PTO was planning to do in order to save Mr. Paulson's position. As a parent of a child that had attended Harmony School and who had had very positives experiences with Mr. Paulson I didn't want to post anything negative that may have jeopardized the efforts of Harmony's PTO. I could have gone on and on about the BoE's disfunction but that may have made the situation worse for Paulson. Instead I left it up to the APP and Middletown-Patch (still waiting to see the Independent's article), both of which had covered the meeting and had articles up rather quickly with lots of comments. If I had posted about it there would have been nothing new to add. I would have just provided links to the articles.
I attended the BoE meeting Tuesday night (will have video of it soon) and rushed home to post about it before others could.
Mr. Paulson is a great guy and I'm glad that the BoE finally made the right decision even though their process was wrong.
Anon 8:46,
I don't know what it was/is but someone on the BoE doesn't/didn't like Mr. Paulson. At Tuesday night's BoE meeting board president Aveta made it a point to mention that on two prior votes held on Mr. Paulson position as principal of Harmony the BoE was equally divided. How that could be is anyone's guess but I think there was more to it than just the issue of "tenure".
"Someone on the BOE"?
You think Mike?
I'll give you a hint, she is the de facto MTEA rep on the BOE and her initials are Joan Minnuies.
This woman is capable of screwing up a chinese lunch.
When will the people of this town realize what a destructive witch she is and get rid of her before she ruins anything else in our school system ??
Post a Comment