Lady Whistleblower Dearest Gentle Reader,
A wise woman, Ms. Brown once said, “If you think dealing with issues like worthiness and authenticity and vulnerability are not worthwhile because there are more pressing issues, like the bottom line or attendance or standardized test scores, you are sadly, sadly mistaken. It underpins everything.”
And with that, shall we dive in?
The Season of Testing Stress
High stakes testing season has begun, as evidenced by the social missives posted to the Kingdom’s socials and various school newsletters. The King even graced us all with a short video of himself. I guess that $5000 bonus is some sort of appearance fee. For certainly, the King rarely puts forth in-person staging, unless it is to show up to the schools to bribe students with gaming consoles should they happen to do well on the test. Of course, the consoles are limited, and as one person put it, rather discriminatory towards students who have not historically tested well and particularly puts unfair demands on students with learning disabilities.
This author thinks that the $5000 could have been put to somewhat better use by rewarding all students who showed improvement from the last testing cycle. The concept of sharing is not strong with our leadership, though.
In any case, the lack of working on such untestable intangibles like worthiness, authenticity, and vulnerability, or any type of social and emotional well-being has been cast aside in the face of superficial measures like standardized test scores.
Why does this author poo-poo test score results? Because it only takes looking around our community to see happy, successful adults, many of whom were not good testers in school, and who would probably fail many of the exams required of our students today. These exams are not like the proficiency tests of yesteryear. And this author would be purring with delight if our esteemed bored and supreme leader had to take these tests and be judged for them.
Wherefore Art Thou, Kingy?
As our students and staff returned to school after a much needed spring break, our dear leader, the King, was nowhere to be found. This is not unusual, as reports from palace insiders say that he is often absent from work and no one knows where he is. Also, he reportedly does not like to meet in person and runs the vast majority of his meetings remotely.
This author suspects that if he were to meet in person, it would be harder for him to covertly access ChatGPT to formulate his answers for him.
In any case, this author would dearly love to know who is responsible for tracking the King’s comings and goings – and whether or not he is actually attending any of the meetings away from school that he says he is attending. For certain, being in the Caribbean the week after spring break seems to indicate very poor planning on his part – particularly as it marked the beginning of testing.
It can only be hoped, dearest reader, that you are now understanding another core reason for the King’s overly abundant social media postings – and it is to create a false narrative that he is actually here and working. If he shows up a couple of days and takes a ton of photos, he can then post those over time and create the illusion of actually being present.
The Bored Meets Yet Again
Next week is the regularly scheduled monthly bored meeting and this author urges all of you fine readers to once again be present as witness to what they are doing. Or not doing as the case may be. (You may also get to see the elusive King in person!) As the queen so stoutly put it at the last meeting when an audience member asked for an answer to a question, “We do not have to answer,” she said. “This is a board meeting. The public participation part was at the beginning.”
So this begs the question, can the public demand answers during public participation? Because it seems that there are some bored members who don’t think they have to provide anything back to the community in terms of accountability.
Oh you dear Americans. Luckily you have democracy, and four of the bored members are up for election in the fall. It may be time to exercise your ultimate right to be heard and vote in officials who will actually listen and respond appropriately with answers, rather than make high-handed dictates. They only serve at the public’s will, and it’s time to elect people who understand that.
The next bored meeting will be held on Tuesday, April 15 at Coolville Elementary School at 6pm. If you care, be there!
And that closes this week’s On Dit. Wishing you all the best!
Sincerely,
Lady Whistleblower
P.S. If you are not following on this author on social media, IG or FB you are missing some fine meme content. Fine, meaning, normal meme content.
