School board blogger shuts down after teachers' union objects

Drunk teacher in the classroom! Former school board member is an embezzler! Tedious, infantile teachers' union threatens endless, expensive grievance and arbitration procedures! Superintendent and school lawyer fold 'like lawn chairs'!

Wouldn't you read a blog about that stuff? Especially if it was published by a school board member with an inside view and apparently plenty of good sources from the very school district where this stuff was going on?

Municipalist lives for blogs like that. But it's gone, sister! Gone, gone, gone.

The blog in question -- or "message board," as some explanations have described it -- was shut down Dec. 4 by its operator, Dave Ash -- a trustee on the Churchill County, Nevada school board, after he was basically bullied for months by the school district's teachers union, as well as his own school district administration.

Ash will hereafter be known by us as Super Dave, after the fabulously determined stunt man who could survive anything. Super Dave Ash offered as his public explanation that he pulled the plug to save the school district money it would be forced to spend to fend off a threatened grievance procedure from the union, which began objecting at precisely the time a poster on the site revealed that a district teacher was drunk in school.

Local media round-up: December 2007 blog-demise story here.

May 2007 highly enlightening drunk teacher story here, which also includes this nugget:

Ash's site is also where first reports appeared about former school board president Debbie Getto-Smith being investigated for embezzling almost $300,000 from a client through her bookkeeping business. That topic was viewed 1,629 times.

Getto-Smith was arrested last week on two counts of embezzlement from a person over the age of 60. She is accused of taking money from Ross Investment Co., for whom Smith did booking, since 1999.

Yes, the woman's name really is "Getto-Smith."

Anyway: Super Dave has a nose for news, eh? But alas, all that is left at the site is the cryptic "DaveAsh.net is officially shut down."  However, the Nevada Appeal newspaper notes that Ash uses at least four email addresses, that he invites email from the public, and that he plans to blog at a community site. All as the superintendent and school district lawyer avoid speaking to reporters. So who wins the battle of ideas and transparency and public trust in this case?

Teachers' unions are not bastions of tolerance. They are relentless enforcers of orthodoxy. Status quo. Blogs by school board members, of all elected officials out there, can be change agents. Just look at the fear they inspire. Woodward and Bernstein famously wrote: Follow the money. As Municipalist has said: Follow the fear.

As always, Web commenters provide much wisdom and intriguing counter-argument to fatuous defenders of the status quo. A local newspaper Web site published a letter here from the teachers' union head, and immediately at the bottom of that piece a spirited and very public debate -- highlighted by plenty of free speech -- broke out among commenters, including this gem:

Ms. Villanueva does a very poor job of trying to hide the real goal of Teachers Unions. That is to promote mediocracy in teaching and place unqualified Teachers job security before the education of our children. Mr. Ash brought this to light and the Unions cannot accept it, so they threaten mega dollar law suits against the school board. Actually against the taxpaying citizens of Churchill County. Have you ever noticed how lawyers (on both sides) fold like lawn chairs instead of doing their jobs? They take their guaranteed annual salary and steal away into the night!

Mediocracy: We will have to drop that word into a post soon.

So this leads Municipalist to surmise: Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis should have been a blogger. He famously wrote: "If there be time to expose through discussion the falsehood and fallacies, to avert the evil by the processes of education, the remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced silence."

Also from Brandeis, in the same case, Whitney v. California:

"No danger flowing from speech can be deemed clear and present unless the incidence of the evil apprehended is so imminent that it may befall before there is an opportunity for full discussion. Only an emergency can justify repression."

And: " ... that the greatest menace to freedom is an inert people; that public discussion is a political duty; and that this should be a fundamental principle of the American government."

“It was a popular Web site. It really was,” Ash told one local newspaper.

Public officials who blog: The biggest threat to the Mediocracy!

On this blog, Dave Ash will forever be named Super Dave, in support of his fabulous work online, and his efforts to pull back the curtain to his constituents. Q & A with Super Dave Ash on the way soon.

[More on "counterspeech" here, in a pre-blog era article from 2000. One problem though: The article points to arguments some make that not all in our society possess proper access to 'counterspeech' tools or tactics that would essentially be adequate to get the job done, quoting a couple legal scholars "writing from a critical perspective, 'those who have power continue to have the greatest opportunities to speak in an effective manner.' " But guess what: With blogs now often free and nearly ubiquitous, as well as power-structure-altering and Earth-flattening, that argument no longer holds water. America's best defense against inane critical theory: blogging! Municipalist shoulda' gone to law school.]

Comments

[Dave Ash (a.k.a.)]

I am back up and posting on the url listed above. Thanks to all for your support.

[Dave Ash (a.k.a.)]

That URL was FallonTownHall.freeforums.org