This Trump Public Schools?
There needs to be a new creep popping up everyday
Launch him into the sun.
“God, it’s so hot…”
As a reminder, escape velocity of the sun is far less energy taxing than reducing velocity to zero to launch them into the sun.
Why waste the fuel on a waste of space? Solar sails and the ultimate banishment
Is the girl in question the one blurred out? And is he not touching her? How is that appropriate? It’s not JUST the inappropriate sexual comment, but also TOUCHING of a minor, during a public meeting.
Yup, blurred out cause under the age of 18.
Well… that tells us all we need to know then
Off to the dungeons with him
EDIT: Aaaaaand I’m now finding out they didn’t even stop the meeting. Come the fuck on
“TSSSSSSSS. GOD, YOU’RE HOT. YOU KNOW THAT?”
🤮 🤮 🤮 🤮 🤮
I became involved because I reside in Washington County, I went to school my entire life in these schools. The things that are happening now have happened for as long as I can remember. It’s the “good ole boy” system. They protect each other and let each other get away with whatever they want, and it needs to stop.
Many such cases, tale as old as time, etc.
Them “good ole boy” s have infested the government at every level. May not be rid of them til they age out.
I’ve been hoping for that for a long time, but for every one that has the grace to age out and die, at least one more ages in.
This is the problem. I’m in my mid-40s and I have seen new “good ol’ boys” move into the system as their predecessors die or retire.
The system is self-perpetuating.
Mr. Ervin has explained that he meant nothing offensive and that we have simply misunderstood his intentions,” the board said.
Uh huh, we just misunderstood (slightly paraphrased) “god you’re hot, what school do you go to?”
There are SO many ways to interpret this, you don’t know what he meant, except for that all those ways are all fucked up in the head
The reply from the petitioner is great. We can’t know his intent, obly he can, so we can only judge his words and actions. Nips that excuse right in the bud.
Maybe he just checked her temperature? And noticed she had a fever? And knew about potential contamination risks, and wanted to know which schuto quarantine?
/s
Watch the far right rally around this.
I’m sure you are correct, but is there a non-far right anymore?
Neoliberals?
Gotta test that purity. What else would I have to do if I didn’t!?
I’m confused. Calling neolibs centre-right is leftist gatekeeping?
Purity testing is a good thing, quality control is as important for political movements as it is for food
when you are that far right you are in Far Reich terroritory
The people you disagree with are far right… or far left, depending upon your political orientation.
No. I disagree with you, and you’re just an idiot.
What do you disagree with?
You said one thing. Put on your thinking cap, I’m sure even you can figure that one out.
the majority of people are not far right.
the issue is that people who are far right, are far more likely to run for office than moderate candidates are. and run better campaigns, and win more votes.
I think they were asking if there was a non-far “right,” not if there was a non-“far right.”
If they’re voting for the far right candidates then they are far right.
I would say they’re heavily misled. What may seem obvious here is invisible on their Twitter feeds, on TV, in their communities, and even Google due to “search customisation”.
Yeah, they are being lied to but part of the problem is they like the lies.
And I would say that’s bullshit.
I find this to be an altruistic if naive mindset.
Ah, so they get elected through divine intervention, then. Logical.
I don’t know. I ask because I cannot explain anyone even tolerating Trump’s actions in any way unless they are far right. I still know people defending his actions… Anyone opposing him in any way, the rest of America thinks is “far left”. So it’s a weird time…
You are captured by the false media narrative that you are one thing or the other.
The vast majority of voters are neither far right or far left. They are moderate. However, moderate people dont’ get any airtime because the extremists here, and everywhere else, paint everyone as either FOR or AGAIN things.
Moderate voters went for Trump because he offered them a better platform to vote for, especially economically. And Trump’s tanking now that his policies are showing to be horrible. But he has 2.5 more years in office.
They’re not moderate, they’re the people who will say “they just need to drop a bomb on that neighborhood” talking about the black neighborhood of course. They love acting moderate in public but they really want genocide against brown people and they want poor people without healthcare to be left in the street to die. Trump is doing exactly what they’ve been saying in private for decades.
You’re talking about the far right, not the moderates. You’re just proving the other commenters point.
I’m literally citing personal experience.
Why?
Because they can lie with impunity while the rest of us have a conscience.
And he is sitting next to her and grabs her when he says it… Ewww.
Definitely investigate this guy, i bet he has a BAD history. May be some criminal charges in the future.
He is already not allowed on school grounds unsupervised because of his sexual comments to children from before this incident.
So agreed on the bad history.
sexual comments to children from before this incident.
WTF? Why is he still part of the school board what the fuck
White House chief of staff: “Mr president… we’ve found your new Secretary of Education sir”
Might end up attorney general. Have they been on TV before?
Conservatives are all pedophiles. This cannot be stressed enough.
Not all of them, but an uncannily high number.
slogan phrase about the enemy here!
Statement of observable fact and extremely good reason why non-pedophiles would consider them an enemy
Observable fact that includes a blanket statement? Like seems like we have plenty of reasons to consider them an enemy than needing to add stuff. Like conservatives enable pedophiles and are war mongerers. Thats pretty bad, right?
Why add “and they all dont floss!” ?
Cry about it
“God, you’re hot. Do you know that? Where do you go to school at?”
How do you possible make this worse? Ask them where they wll be later.
Not calling for violence but how does this not get you tarred and feather in the parking lot?
Not calling for violence but how does this not get you tarred and feather in the parking lot?
Haven’t you noticed? pedophiles are in fashion now… they can even be presidents
If my kid was speaking in front of the school board and subjected to that kind of harassment I’d be in jail right now.
Heard, one use to be a prince…
yeap… green prince instead of blue
🔫always have been
Not calling for violence
the reason this keeps happening is because people refuse to call for violence against filth like this
He’s a symptom. Violence against the idiots who can’t help but say the quiet part out loud on camera won’t stop the millions that do manage to keep the most blatant statements contained to men’s spaces.
What we need is a culture of nuanced introspection and personal growth, where people like him can admit that they’re pigs without it destroying their lives or moral standing, instead being a first step towards rehabilitation. Women and girls deserve to be kept safe from him and boys deserve better teachers, so he wouldn’t be able to work in education until he has done a lot of personal growth, but violence is just scapegoating.
Of course if the state threatens violence unless you pay taxes that pay for people like him to endanger women, then you can engage in organized mutual self-defense. Hard to get to that culture of personal growth otherwise.
In the mean time, people are entitled to organised mutual self-defense against him, which might also include violence but probably won’t.
That wouldn’t be scapegoating? He did actually commit the offense. It’s punishment.
Scapegoating does not require the scapegoat to be innocent of the thing they are rendered a scapegoat of. When a bunch of kids smash decorative plates and they all say afterward that only one of them did it, that one kid is a scapegoat even if that kid did smash some plates, or even the most plates.
And yes, punishment usually is scapegoating. “The offense” is some narrow, visible, and clearly defined thing that makes someone the convenient target to pin all the blame on, regardless of who was responsible for everything leading up to it.
There is more effective ways of dealing with it, outside of violence. I do like tar and feather though, just the right amount of violence
Just so we are clear, tarring and feathering is an extremely violent act. I’m not arguing against it, but covering someone in molten tar is not non-violent in the slightest. I’m personally all for it.
What are those more effective ways?
All the ones I can think of that don’t involve violence don’t seem to be working.
Thats because too many people sit on their ass waiting for other people to take care of it for them.
Coincidentally a lot of them are the same ones who call for violent action (and not all of them lean right).
These actions only work if a majority of citizens actually take them, not sit back and complain about how they dont work because things dont magically get fixed the instant a minority of people do it once.
Bingo.
my biggest complaint about the liberal/left is they will do anything but take charge. they seem to love sitting around and quarter backing and demanding someone else do something in their name… and a lot of them don’t even vote, because ‘what is the point’.
Here’s why:
“Boys will be boys.”
“He’s not wrong, she is hot.”
“Little slut deserves it for dressing like that.”
“Why didn’t I think of this? I wonder if he has any videos.”
“Note to self: accept his 4th of July pool party invitation this year.”
Pedophiles are praise worthy unless you are trying to make it big on the Internet, then you beat up random people who cant fight back and pretend they are this guy.
Everyone is willingly living a hypocritical lie these days.
Priorities, we got’em!
The only response to that is, “what the f*ck is the matter with you?”
Sir…I need to see your search history.
Thats what you get when you choose your leaders by popularity contest. That wouldn’t be appropriate even if she was an adult.
how else are you suppose to select school board members?
In a sane world, by ability and competence
As defined by our able and competent political leaders? Ha ha ha.
How do you assess that exactly? What are the qualifications or objective measurements of competence as a school board member?
And furthermore, according to whom? your personal assessment in particular?
Better that people vote for metrics than candidates I would suggest, and measure against those. If we gotta vote for questions too, so be it.
There isn’t a single right answer to that and I’m not going to suggest there is.
How any organisation operates, be that public or private, is down to the culture of the organisation, and culture comes from people, process, motivation, legislation, and a whole bunch of factors.
If an organisation has a clear mission, is held organisationally accountable in appropriate ways to that mission and makes people feel professionally enriched and valuable, it will attract competent people. And importantly, an organisation full of competent and principled individuals will attract other competent individuals.
On the flip side, if an organisation is subject to decades of mismanagement, has very poor oversight, doesn’t reward people for being good at their jobs and in fact rewards the wrong behaviours then exactly the opposite will happen. People who are competent at what they do will either leave or be crushed down, while those who know how to play the bootlicking game will be raised up, and this type of organisation again becomes self-perpetuating.
None of this happens overnight, in either direction. Failure can take years or decades, and so can the reverse.
The issue is that it’s self-referential. The org itself gets to define what is good management or bad. Outsides parties, have no say.
And that’s how local school boars work. They are local politics and they have very little external oversight, if any at all. Sort of criminal acts, like a board member embezzling school funds, that violate state law, there isn’t really much criteria over which they can be held accountable, other than winning votes from their local voters.
I live in Boston. I can harp all I want about a local school board in TN, but the only power I have is over my own local school board here, where I can vote. And man the candidates we have… are usually a mix of nutbags and slightly less nutbags. School board elections tend to attract weirdos more than sensible people, IME.
By merit??
who judges that merit? how is it defined?
I hear schools are pretty good at giving people these funny things called “tests” to assess an individual’s knowledge on a certain subject. Not only are schools good at testing, I hear there is a WHOLE INDUSTRY built on creating and running them.
You know, they could give those to other people too I’ll bet! In fact, I’ll bet you can use them to qualify doctors, lawyers, barbers, auto mechanics and all sorts of people!
Oh wait, these are politicians. We shouldn’t do that to them. I don’t know why, but it just feels wrong. Never mind.
Absolutely! It’s just a complete coincidence that the people who the school system is failing are barred from fixing it because in order to pass the test you have to have done well in school. It makes perfect sense.
It’s not like the US has a history of refusing to educate people, and then refusing to let them participate in civic matters by gating that access behind tests. The US certainly has never, say, made passing a test a requirement to vote to disenfranchise people.
And we all know that, of course, that any test would be super effective at preventing the abuse the above article is about. You just put the question “are you sexually attracted to children,” on the test. That way you’d keep out creeps. And no one would ever lie on a test. That’d be ridiculous.
I don’t know why people are disagreeing. It’s a perfect system!
How about a polygraph test/examination. I understand they are known to be inaccurate sometimes. I doubt someone could suppress their deeply held lifelong urges enough to fool one with a question about their sexual desires.
Setting aside the fact that polygraphs are pseudoscience mumbo jumbo that don’t work in any meaningful capacity, and the results of which are really just the vibes of the person running it (with all of their bigotry/biases on full display.)
The bigger issue is that there are over thirteen thousand school districts in the US. If each school board is four people on average, that’s over fifty thousand people you’d have to do polygraphs for. And that’s if all you wanted to do was school boards.
Trying to get all of those people polygraphs would be an absolute logistical nightmare. There aren’t that many polygraphers out there.
And we shouldn’t be legitimizing polygraphs anyway. They have time and time again been shown to be absolute bunk, and to discriminate against people with issues like anxiety (or really, anyone who gets agitated when you accuse them of something). The only people who can reliably pass polygraphs are sociopaths, which feels like the opposite of what you want to be selecting for here.
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there is no test to run for, or be on a school board.
what would this test be, exactly? are you saying school board members should have to pass a civil service type of test before they can run, or after they are elected?
Shhhh, don’t overload them with reason, it’s rare to see this kind of naivete in it’s natural form.
edit: some salty salty lurkers around today, come on in, the waters fine, i’m sure you have coherent arguments to add.
Oh come on, but it’s fun!
Yes, but you have to go slowly or it’ll overwhelm them.
In typical fediverse fashion, the users responding to you have no answer so they get stuck on semantics and counter arguing your question rather than the intent.
I genuinely would like a well thought out response to this too. Would merit be someone with many years of teaching experience? Maybe school administration?
Do those things make that person capable of performing board responsibilities? Do those things preclude them from making creepy remarks (I highly suspect they don’t)
For the record, the dude here has been on the board for 12 years, which should be more than enough time to learn the necessary skill set to do the job. Doesn’t make him less creepy though.
Perhaps the argument that it isn’t possible to assess merit for a job position is so far outside the realms of reason that asking for clarification is the only way to formulate an answer.
But if you want a simple, quotable answer for the obvious question as it is written, here you go:
- Asses the criteria for which a job would be considered to be successfully performed.
- Check if historical evidence/experience/current skill/expected future growth gives indication that the candidate could meet or exceed those criteria.
- Rank the candidates, based on how well they match to the success criteria.
- ???
- Profit?
It’s tremendously disappointing to see people act like assessing fitness for a role isn’t a thing that has been going on since the dawn of civilisation.
Get a grip.
Now, if you want argue that this isn’t how things are currently done ? I’m right there with you.
The system is a shambolic remnant of what it should be ? couldn’t agree more.
A lot of it is probably by design ? sure, i’m down for that perspective.
But “It isn’t possible to assess merit for a job role”, is a troll at best or extreme ignorance at worst.
If people weren’t asking “are you sure that this is what you meant?” i’d be worried for the state of basic reasoning.
Just to be clear, you’re arguing that merit/competence can’t be accurately judged and therefore should be ignored in favour of popularity ?
it can’t be judged without well-defined criteria, no.
seriously, what is the qualification or criteria for being a good school board member? tell me. I’d like to know.
because as far as I am aware, there absolutely is none. anyone can run for school board.
it can’t be judged without well-defined critical, no.
That’s a partial answer at best , a nice deflection though.
So your argument is that there is no possible criteria by which competence/ability can be judged for a school board position so popularity is the best option ?
seriously, what is the qualification or criteria for being a good school board member? tell me. I’d like to know because as far as I am aware, there absolutely is none.
Once you answer the original question or the newly revised version above i can give you some idea on this.
anyone can run for school board.
Who can run for a school board and how a school board member is evaluated for the position are unrelated.
It’s not an argument. It’s a fact.
My local school board anyone can run. The only requirement is you are a resident of the district you represent, and you are over 18, and you are a registered voter. That’s literally it. There are no other requirements, qualifications, or criteria for running for school board.
You should ask people in a professional setting that work with schools this instead of demanding the answers from the black box of the internet.
No u!
Seriously, do you even vote in your local school board elections? I do. If so, what criteria do you use? I vote according to the educational platform they propose.
None of that has anything to do with merit of qualifications that are hypothetically being raised as criteria for evaluating a school board member’s performance or competency.
It’s not demanding answers, it’s pointing out the typical lemmy/reddit hypocracy of sitting on a illusory high horse, getting outraged, and refusing to actually deal with the problem on your local level where you do have the ability to make a difference.
or if you want to be really extreme, you could move to this district in TN and run for school board yourself.
That’s not even required (though it would most likely be more accurate ) , there are some easy , low-hanging fruit answers to this question that don’t need expertise.
I’m just interested in seeing if they really think popularity is the best option here.
Do you know what a bad faith argument is?
Yes, and it’s not this. I’m not making an argument either. I’m asking you a clear and obvious question.
Pretending you don’t know what merit is is a bad faith argument
So your general point is a concern. Who can you trust to make the judgement. But that doesn’t mean you should just toss up your hands either. As was pointed out, tests of various sorts could be done and the results presented to the voters so that they have more to go on than the number of lawn signd they have seen for a person. The write ups in the guides are nearly pointless. They can say anything they want in there. For a person running for reelection, their voting record would be nice to give voters easy access to. There are lots of ways to present the voters with objective information so that they can choose based on thier preferences. But none of that happens today.
it’s a democratically elected position.
the judgement is the judgement voters of that district.
do you vote in your own local school board elections? I do, and yeah you vote based on the person’s policy stated positions. however, just because I do that, doesn’t mean lots of candidates I don’t vote for, don’t get elected and push policies I don’t agree with… because they get more votes than the candidates I vote for did.
Also, why do you assume that the voters in this school district, don’t want this guy? He may very well be who they think is best for the job. If you don’t live in this district… you don’t get to vote for the school board there.
As a voter, I have found that there is a significant lacking of useful information to make a decision on. I put in a fair bit of effort and often feel like I have nowhere near enough. And that is how the politicians want it. That way the majority of voters to have very little information of substance to go on. That way they can win on charisma. And they don’t have to do anything positive for the voters to move up. They just have to please the political powers in the area to get endorsements, campaign help, and straight up donations so they can move to the next level. But when it comes to school boards. Most won’t move to the next level. But they take advantage of the way the system is set up to get elected. They probably even believe that their opinions are the will of the voter, when the voter barely knows anything about their real opinions.
anyone else in that room who did not immediately stand up and drag this douche out by the ear is complicit.
Didnt hear them laughing at it and the one older lady going “ohhh you” as if he does this all the time to children?
Cause they are accpeting of it. It comes from being bigger than the allegations.as if he does this all the time to children?
It wasn’t just “a child”, it was a fellow board member. Guy has zero respect for the office, the students, or women generally speaking.
Yeah, I am just using the word cause the article doesnt bother with it.
I honestly don’t get how that makes it worse. Like, doing this to a board member is worse??? I don’t get this stance at all.
Like, doing this to a board member is worse???
Doing this to some random student is gross.
Doing this to another board member is also gross. But it signifies a kind of structural disrespect that undermines the office as well as the individual. It’s symptomatic of a general institutional disgust for student involvement in school affairs.
Like Bush Jr doing the creepy shoulder rub on Angela Merkel or - in a more extreme example - UN staffers who were “approached, accosted and raped” by fellow officials and dignitaries. It isn’t merely a personal transgression. It undermines the entire function of the representative body.
I think they meant the “oh you” comment was from a board member. The article says he said it to a student.
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They… just… laughed?
He probably could have grabbed her by the pussy.
The member would never have said it in the first place, if the school board culture was not already like that.
They laughed at the “alriiiigggght” to her going to whatever school.
Although that only makes sense if they ignored the “for you’re hot” as just normal or joking around or whatever bullshit.
Everyone in that room is older
?
Wow, that’s… that’s pretty cut-and-dry. Like honestly what the fuck? How the hell did literally no one stop that meeting right then and there?
He only wrapped his arm around her and asked where a
hotchild could be found later…She was in no immediate danger. Didnt you hear the school board’s statement?
Adult: ‘What school do you go to?’ -child answers adult- Adult: ‘Allllriiiiiiiiiiiiiight!!!’
The lean in…gross. All of it, disgusting and completely unacceptable. I feel sorry for that child, and can’t believe not a single board member stood up and called it for what it was and immediately stopped the proceedings. That was my first instinct imagining myself there. Full fucking stop, protect that child and bring that nasty man to account.
Are people in such a true state of psychosis these days that we just ‘heh heh this is fine’ fucking everything now?
We only interact with things that make us happy or joy.
I wouldnt feel joy calling out his behavior so I don’t.
Tennessee not exactly known for being civilized and Trump won Washington County by 39 points over Harris in 2024. These people are exactly who’d you expect in Appalachia.
