School Superintendent Is On A Power Trip That Led To An Accident, So They Sue Her And Reinstate The Policies She Ended
The kids should make a hideous Sue snow woman.
There is nothing worse than an authoritarian leader who lords her power like a sword instead of making a difference.
When kids are involved, something has to be done, especially when someone could get seriously hurt.
See how this community restored peace and safety.
Both my children attended elementary school in the northern midwest.
As you can imagine, it snowed. A lot.
Even with all the snow removal infrastructure, when a particularly heavy storm came along, the town just couldnât keep up with it, and the buses couldnât run.
This messy situation is about to get even messier
For decades, the school district dealt with this by having five snow days built in to the calendar. If they had more than five snow days, the kids would go an extra day(s) at the end of the year.
For years, this system worked, and no one ever complained, except the occasional child that had to attend a couple extra days in June.
Then the old, mild mannered super retired and a new super took his place.
She was young, aggressive and almost immediately reviled by everyone in the district. Letâs call her Sue, because thatâs what we ultimately did to her.
Sue sounds horrible.
Sue came right out of corporate America.
I donât know how she got it in her head that she wanted to run a school district, but she did. She was so inexperienced that the school board had to give her a waiver to work in our district before she could even show up for work.
When the year started, Sue went on a power trip that made everyoneâs heads spin.
She slashed hours for support staff. Barred children from repeating a grade without her personal approval. âCracked downâ on teachers taking sick time, until the union pointed out that she was violating the CBA by doing that. Backed off a little but vowed to âgo afterâ any staff taking sick time. Stopped the weekly trip to the fitness center by the special needs class.
She was like a cartoon villain.
But it gets even worse than that.
Whatâs important to this story is that she ended the decades old snow day system. Took the days right out of the calendar and said we wouldnât be needing them, as she was âcracking downâ on snow days.
Hereâs how snow days work: the transportation department keeps an eye on the roads. If they are unsafe, or even if they are safe but the forecast is looking crazy for later, they tell the super they canât safely run the buses. The super then cancels school.
Itâs really supposed to be the transportation departments call.
Well, Sue decided that she is the sole arbiter of deciding cancellations, so even if transportation says itâs not safe to run the buses, she can say âtough.â
Which she did. Often.
It was a really bad decision.
As you can imagine, this led to a lot of awkward and even dangerous situations. Buses not being able to access rural roads. Buses running an hour late. Buses running their entire route completely empty because no sane parent would send their kids to school in a whiteout blizzard.
For two years we parents tolerated this dumb decision, but we were frustrated.
We tried going through the proper channels: contacting the transportation department, writing to the school board.
We even wrote a collective letter to Sue personally. If the rumor is true, she spit on our letter and tossed it in the bin.
We got a nice message on the school department website about how they are always thinking about the safety of the students, so thatâs nice I guess.
This sounds really scary.
Things finally boiled over the winter of that second year.
A bus went off the road.
Though my kids were not on it, it shook me up. There were numerous complaints on the schools Facebook from scared and disgruntled parents.
Two years of being the only district open in the county during storms was getting on everyoneâs nerves.
Then a lightbulb turned on.
My sister in law is a criminal defense attorney. I am a disability advocate with a state agency. We met for dinner and decided that, if and when the inevitable tragedy happened, we would sue.
We met a couple more times to work on our game plan. You canât sue a school district for making dumb snow day decisions, but if a kid gets hurtâŠ
The day finally came in the late autumn of the third year of Sue.
We had a big storm roll through in the early morning hours. Not cold enough to snow or freeze, thankfully, but extremely windy.
Most of the county lost power, including the schools. Thousands of outages. Power lines down, trees down, roads closed⊠It was a mess.
All the districts in the county closed.
All of course, except ours.
Sue was never one to turn down a chance at a power trip. She ordered the schools to stay open.
Finally, an excuse to sue Sue.
It was a disaster.
Buses couldnât access every road to pick up students. Buses were late. Individual schools were putting out bulletins that attendance was parents choice, students unable to make it to school would receive a Principalâs Excused Absence, stay home if itâs the safer choice.
All the schools were running on generators, so the high schoolers (who start an hour earlier) were sitting in the gymnasium bored.
There was literally no point in having school this day.
Then, the inevitable happened: a tree fell and hit a bus.
This time, my daughter was on it.
Thankfully, the driver did a good job of evacuating the children and there were only minor injuries. But injuries nonethelessâ all because of Sueâs absurd no cancellation policy.
Some ambulances showed up. Four kids went to the hospital as a precaution. It made the news.
It was time.
Things started to look promising.
The district sent forms to all of the parents of injured children: they would cover all medical costs and provide counselling for the kids in the guidance office, AND a small cash settlement, in exchange for the parents signing a release of liability (âyou canât sue usâ).
But my SIL and I had gotten to the parents first and advised them not to sign ANYTHING, as we were taking the district to big boy court.
Some of the parents did take the settlement offered, which is understandable since not everyone likes drama.
But some didnât.
Some told the district right where to shove that settlement. I was one of them.
The lawsuit got media attention.
SIL and I got together with a couple of the injured parents that were sick of the districtâs nonsense. We got our paperwork in a row and filed a suit. We filed the suit so fast that our hands burst into flames.
(The essence of the suit was that the district had failed their duty of in loco parentis by making unsafe transportation decisions, directly causing the crash and injuries.)
My SIL also pulled some strings at the local newspaper and got our lawsuit a small spot on the front page.
Parents came out of the woodwork to express their support. They were frustrated after years of Sueâs authoritarianism.
It turned into a small media circus.
Finally, they got what they really wanted.
The districtâs lawyers got to work and quickly really that this was going to be a mess.
A discovery process pulling up dirt, the parents of the injured children testifying, the general hatred of the district⊠Not to mention it appeared that they would, indeed, lose.
They moved to quickly and quietly settle this case. They basically sat down with us and said âname your price.â
While I cannot discuss the details of the settlement, letâs just say that all injured parties were made whole.
Also, the district changed their cancellation policy immediately. Now, if there was even a hint of snow or icky weather, they cancelled.
A welcome change of pace.
And the dictator lost her power.
As for Sue, she became very quiet.
She used to spend all day sending aggressive emails about her âpolicies.â
Now, hardly a peep. All she did the rest of the year was fill the seat.
As summer approached at the end of the year, Sue announced her resignation. She was leaving to âpursue other interests.â
We think she was asked to resign.
She was replaced by a superintendent who was much nicer. He rolled back all of Sueâs power trippy policies.
Sue was out of her mind to make kids go to school during dangerous weather conditions.
Here is what folks are saying on Reddit.
I enjoy them, too. Itâs good to see a community coming together.
Iâm sure a lot of people would have done that.
I bet this person would be furious if the US got universal healthcare.
Whatâs considered bad winter weather really depends on where you live.
We got a lot of snow when I was a kid! I kind of miss it, but mostly donât.
The kids should make a hideous Sue snow woman.
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