Editor’s Corner: Trust and Onions Can Both Make You Weep

Trust and Onions Can Both Make You Weep

By Patric Hedund, Managing Editor

This past week I have received 23 phone calls, several passionate email letters and two fax transmissions regarding the Associated Student Body (ASB) class at Frazier Mountain High School and what some have dubbed "CartGate.

In addition, our newspaper staff has submitted public record requests, spent the equivalent of a full work week on the phone listening to state school administrators, El Tejon Unified School District parents and students.

All tell of their experiences and express their opinions. Some speak of a wish to trust that administrators will demonstrate they care about the difference between "handling a situation" and being willing to put the integrity of our students’ educational experience above any other consideration.

"These children are smart, they know what is going on," one father said at 1:30 a.m. at the end of a rigorous three hour review of the ASB constitution, state education code and his own child’s experiences, triggered by appearances in the ASB class Monday and Tuesday (Dec. 3 and 4) by Superintendent Shelly Mason, FMHS Principal Dan Penner and Athletic Director cum ASB Advisor Rob Roy.

Students are reported to have been asked to do the administrators’ work for them by "voting" whether Roy "should resign." More will be reported about this shortly.

Meanwhile, what the ASB officers who appeared before the ETUSD Board of Trustees last month respectfully requested has still not been provided: clear assurance that the ASB constitution, the California Education Code and established procedures for disbursement of student funds have been scrupulously followed in the purchase of a $4,558 golf cart by Advisor Roy in Fresno during October of 2006.

The next school board meeting is Wednesday, Dec. 12 at 6:30 p.m. at the FMHS library. The agenda for ETUSD school board meetings can be found at www.MountainEnterprise.com, under "Community FYI."

This is part of the December 07, 2007 online edition of The Mountain Enterprise.

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