This blog represents my opinions and my opinions alone, and certainly doesn't represent the collective thoughts of any of the Boards or organizations that I serve on. Unfortunately I make all sorts of miistakes, I'm a picky eater, I can't sing and I just recently found out I have been spelling certain words in my vocabulary wrong my entire life. That being said, I still continue to muddle ever onward. Welcome.





Wednesday, March 31, 2010

Monona Grove Diversity Coordinator Responds To Reports of Racial Intolerance

Diversity Coordinator, Charlie Ellis, has a guest column in this week's on-line version of the Herald Independent.

http://herald-independent.com/main.asp?SectionID=5&8=SubSectionID=127&ArticleID=1640

9 comments:

  1. Did you read this before you posted it?

    This guy is the School District Diversity Coordinator (i heard we pay him almost $100k per year!!!) and he had to go to a CONFERENCE to find out that we had a gang at MG?? What the hell are we paying him for, if we have all these problems and a neighboring principal STILL has to tell him that we have a problem.

    And that's not all. THEN, he comes back and relays the information to a building principal who then in turn takes MONTHS to act on it??? Give me a break!!

    Holy Rip Off Batman!!! Now I know one area that we could save money in our district budget! This guy is NOT doing his job, for god's sake people, who DOESN'T see this??

    How embarrassing for the district and the board. How appalling for the administration. Seriously, who hired this guy?

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  2. You have absolutely no idea what you're talking about. Mr. Ellis has been trying to get the administration to pay attention to this and he has been repeatedly ignored. Doesn't it tell you something that it took months for administration to react and then didn't include Mr. Ellis? Something is rotten in this situation, but it isn't Charlie. It should also tell you something about our district that almost nobody is posting on this topic while we get hundreds of posts on Maywood and the budget. I'm surprised there are any minority families left in this district.

    Sounds like you have an ax to grind with Mr. Ellis because nobody who is close to this situation thinks he has been remiss. Quite the opposite - people have become angry at him for speaking out. Perhaps you are one of the people who has been remiss in his/her duties and now you wish to point a finger away from yourself?

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  3. I think Mr. Ellis AND the Administration have an extreamly difficult job to hadle the racist kids. It is going to take a lot of time to undo 15 years of hate, which is probably taught at home, and kicking out the kids would also take a lot of time. I don't think either Ellis or the administration should get a finger pointed at them because of how long it is going to take.

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  4. Can you explain what Leslie Ann Taylor's letter to the editor means when she says the per student budget allocation to Winneq will go down.

    What does that mean? It sounds like a bad thing?

    I assume that the amount Ann gets to run the bldg goes down because we moved 6th grade and that is a bad thing, but please explain.

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  5. The $250,000 to keep maywood open has to come from somewhere doesn't it? To make up the difference the district has proposed reducing the per student building budgets, district wide, by $25,000 - this includes thousands of dollars from Winnequah on top of the reductions for fewer 6th grade students.

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  6. Oh for crying out loud! How selfish can we get in this community? Why do we only care about things when it affects us directly? This thread is about some fairly serious racist stuff in our middle and high school which is a problem on many levels. It is not about the budget and Maywood issues!

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  7. Thanks, above-poster- exactly my original point. To answer the question about the per pupil allocation, that would be correct. Per pupil state aid goes with the student, not the building. The proposed district-wide building budget 5% reduction has not been approved. Please join us on April 7th for a special budget meeting- GDS 7pm.

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  8. Did anyone read THIS last year? http://nycitymama.com/2009/08/white-people-can-live-anywhere-tales-of-a-latinas-travels-part-2-of-2/ Why won't we listen to the voices of color in our district? This is a travesty and a HUGE concern.

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  9. The blog from the former staff member in 2009 says they were told of a racist principal with the information:

    "how Black kids were being excluded from student activities, how crying parents would come in crying discrimination, how minority students were back to before I started the program…"
    (the last part references an earlier part of the post where minority kids felt excluded)

    I don't want to anonymously comment on a rumor from another blog, but mention it since it leads to a basic question which may be important:

    What is racism?

    That may sound silly, since most people feel they know the answer, but my point is the definition you get back may vary, and thus people end up fighting a definition instead of fighting a problem.

    Most people of all races feel the deer head instance was racist, but I do not think the principals were, while the blog shows that some people do. I suspect this comes down to answering the "what is racism" question with a different perspective.

    It would be very difficult to get one answer that satisfies everyone definition of racism, but I suspect listening would help identify 10-15 key points.

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