Lady Whistleblower Dearest Gentle Reader,
It has been said that, “Gossip is just news running ahead of itself in a red satin dress.” If this is true, then the very streets of our Kingdom must be adorned by an abundance of well-coutured subjects.
Social Media for Me and Not for Thee??
The majority of reports coming out of the latest bored meeting tell of a red-faced, and barely contained monarch who deigned to lecture the rabble about social media. It was definitely a cataclysmic mask-cracking moment.
Given time, it was inevitable that there would be such an event, whereby the Queen’s facade would slip, but I fear the irony was lost on her. For the Queen was actually admonishing the professionals in the audience for putting negative things about the Kingdom on social media. Now let us not be fooled that I, Lady Whistleblower, have become, “she whose name must not be said aloud” because there simply is no one else to whom the Queen could be referring. As much as it pains this author to have to scan the vast quantities of both public records and social media available, the Queen quite confidently believes that it must be an internal conspiracy against her. Unfortunately, this author could expound upon this ad infinitum, but that would be a distraction…
What should be called out here is the Queen’s hypocrisy, for it is also said that, “The only time people dislike gossip is when you gossip about them.” To illustrate my point is that in the past there was a fairly active Instagram page called fh_meme. (As of this writing it has been abandoned for about 6 months. One can only guess by the timelines that the directing student has graduated and none have stepped forth to take up the mantle.) This anonymously created student-run page posted a wide variety of memes aimed at airing various student grievances and sometimes, vicious gossip, much of it unproven.
Certainly most discerning readers would not interpret this page to be positive towards the Kingdom, so what I would like to ask the Queen is – why is she a follower of this page? Just in case of a dirty delete, here is a screenshot.
Could being a follower of such a page be interpreted to mean that she is a supporter of it? One could certainly make that assumption based on the Queen’s stated dislike of certain personages targeted on the page.
Now this leads this author to examine another common thought, and that is, someone’s personal social media is just that, personal. And yes, my dear reader, that was exactly the reaction the Queen had when confronted with the King’s social media posts. (Sorry, if you didn’t look for it before, don’t bother now, since the King has since deleted his account. Don’t worry though, I believe many citizens took screenshots, because again, dirty delete.)
In those social media posts, which were very sparsely quoted in the last On Dit, the King proudly announced his position as our King and then, quite simply, miffed a lot of people. Much about his posts lacked professionalism in tone, demeanor, and content.
So what is it? Can the King and Queen do, say, and follow whomever they wish in their personal social media without censure or reproach? Probably not – because no one can. Here is the problem in as clear of terms as can be stated. The King did not simply go and comment on other social media pages purely as a private citizen who is interested. He went into a post where he publicly used his position as THE KING OF FEDERAL HOCKING while making numerous highly inappropriate posts. By virtue of how he presented himself, he turned his personal account into an extension of his official one, and as a result his posts reflected poorly on our Kingdom as a whole. This could have been a non-starter had he not had to drag his kingly ego into it, nor had he commented respectfully and professionally.
That being said, he turned a negative spotlight onto our Kingdom by virtue of his actions and by unofficially making his personal statements somehow more “official” by connecting everything he said to his status as a King.
Many people were upset to be associated with the King’s posts. However, THE QUEEN WAS OK THAT HE BROUGHT NEGATIVE ATTENTION TO THE KINGDOM AS LONG AS IT WAS UNDER THE AUSPICES OF HIS “PERSONAL” ACCOUNT – despite the fact that he chose to speak as a representative of our Kingdom while using his personal account.
Given this, the Queen is a complete hypocrite. She wants any and all public criticism to be squelched, and if she has to take off everyone’s heads to do so – she would. What she needs to understand is just because one lives within the Kingdom or works for the palace does NOT mean that our citizens give up all of their autonomy and rights because of it. No one has been speaking with the authority of the leadership of the Kingdom on a personal account outside of the King.
One of the first lessons a public figure must learn is that they will be held accountable for those things that they do and say. Heavy is the head that wears the crown, and finally our Royalty is learning that with power comes a price. Up until now, the Queen has enjoyed this unchecked power and this author predicts that her latest outburst will not be her last.
Boohoo.
To Cut or Not to Cut
Of course, dearest reader, the latest issue on everyone’s lips is the intention to cut positions in order to balance the Kingdom’s budget. To remind everyone, the Kingdom found itself in trouble last year when there was a major unforeseen increase in health insurance. This was not a failing of Bryce Flexistick, our Duke of Coins, but rather an increase coming from the consortium that provided such services.
It has always been understood by anyone with a modicum of sense that as enrollment falls, staffing has to be adjusted. Historically, this was one of the issues that led the Kingdom into insolvency in the past, and why THE STATE came in and put the Kingdom under fiscal emergency.
No one wants to go back to that.
NO. ONE.
Given both the staff’s and the royalty’s unification on this particularly singular point, you might think that the various stakeholders would be willing to work together. But, dearest reader, you would be oh so wrong.
Here is the crux of the problem, even before I lay out the criticism of the various solutions: our Kings (both this one and the previous one) did not want to do any work and wanted to expend the least amount of energy solving the problem as possible.
King David thought that all could be sorted by just doing it through attrition – a solution that sounds great – and even logical – but is bound to fail.
Why is that? Because attrition is simply waiting for people to leave (ostensibly for “family reasons”), retire, or die. And it doesn’t take into account that many of the positions are specific to certain licensure requirements. For example, under this strict “attrition-only” policy, all three of the high school’s intervention specialists teachers left last year. If they were not replaced, there would not be the proper staff to meet both student needs and the requirements of THE STATE.
One simply cannot “wish away the problem” by avoiding taking responsibility for solving it.
On the other hand, King Spinster thinks that everything should be done “by the numbers.” In this example of mindless number crunching, all position reductions will be done by turning every kid into a singular piece of data and resources allocated that way.
While this might require some math to do at the beginning, no arduous task I assure you, it is also too simplistic. This does not take into account the individual needs of students, it assumes that each child needs the exact same thing and doles out resources in strict proportion. This does not take into account that some classes just have a higher number of high-needs students in them – particularly when it comes to behavior management. While some groups of kids may be fine in a larger group, there are just some that won’t be. And it is hard to imagine 30 elementary school children in a single class, which will happen if the current plan is strictly followed.
This data-only plan is also a very lazy approach to solving the district’s fiscal woes.
What SHOULD happen is that everyone works together to find places to cut that will affect students the least. Let’s be clear here – cuts will be negatively affecting students. The key here is to mitigate as much potential harm as possible.
Why won’t this happen? Because it takes time and work to have meaningful conversations about what to do – and these conversations should be rooted in a philosophy of “what’s best for kids.” This past mantra has been relegated to the rubbish pile of history, as our Kingdom has increasingly moved in the narcissistic leader stage.
Another result of this “Age of Narcissism” is that leaders are increasingly unwilling to take accountability for the decisions that they make, and are constantly looking for scapegoats. This author predicts that the victims themselves, the staff, will be the ones who will be blamed for the cuts should they somehow be involved in the decision making process.
It’s a vicious circle where the terminated will themselves be blamed for the termination while our overlords still sit in their offices dreaming of $5000 bonuses while paying exorbitant amounts of money to lawyers telling them how to do their jobs.
The long and short of it is that there are many places that the district could be trimming to stem the financial bleeding, but in the end the only ones they want to bleed are the staff and students.
Because it’s easier that way.
This author would like to end with some commentary about Future Wars and Neighboring Queens. Given that K-Spin has deleted the one social media account known probably means an end to the hostilities with citizens of the neighboring Kingdom, and also any hope for cashing in on the neighboring Queen’s gratitude for his stalwart, yet damage-inflicting defense.
Of course, this is always assuming that there aren’t other media accounts lurking in the background, just waiting to be exposed.
And until the next time,
Sincerely,
“She Whose Name Must Not Be Said Aloud”
Lady Whistleblower
Lady Whistleblower
Lady Whistleblower
