Last week we found out that the long time superintendent at Wawasee Community schools would be stepping down effective January 1st. We were shocked by the abruptness of the decision, but not surprised overall. There had been so much negative press this year about the Wawasee school system on social media that we expected it to be his last year. There were two main topics that had seemed to be at the forefront of the dissatisfaction. First, a group of parents were upset about the tax referendum. Even though it didn't pass, complaints about poor timing and lack of fiscal responsibility in the past produced bitterness in the community. Secondly, a petition was brought to the school earlier in the year asking for the resigination of the athletic director for inappropriate behavior with students. It also claimed that the superintendent knew of the allegations but did nothing about it. Although we did not know for sure that those were the reasons for the decision, they seemed to be the most logical choices.
We talked about the news mutiple times over the past few days. The superintendent and his family were friends of ours from church. Our children grew up with theirs and we enjoyed talking to them. We obviously didn't want him to step down in a cloud of suspicion, but we couldn't disagree with the families who were upset with the school system. We had had serious issues with the lack of safety at Wawasee and the absence of high academic standards. Those concerns along with the poor treatment that I had received as a teacher had left us feeling skeptical about public education at least in our area. The recent turn of events had made me at least feel as though others finally understood our frustrations. We never needed our opinion validated or our decision to pull Meg and Cam out of the school system justified, but it was nice to know that the blinders had finally come off in our community. Although none of this affects us anymore, I am interested in seeing what happens next.
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