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Dear Editor:
I’d like to start by noting I’m glad to see Jennifer Hendrix has such respect for the opinions of Indiana’s Public Access Counselor (PAC), Luke Britt. I’d like to point out one such opinion that calls into question why the campaign she’s running for school board candidates Brake, Brown and Sharp has repeatedly insinuated Carmel Clay Schools (CCS) have lacked transparency when it comes to curriculum on topics such as social emotional learning and sexual education.
In 21-FC-168, Mr. Britt, whom Ms. Hendrix repeatedly quoted as an authority in her letter, had the following to say in response to a complaint that CCS was not being transparent enough with regards to social emotional learning and sexual education curriculum:
“…it has not been reported to this office that schools have shied away from making curriculum materials available. If anything, they have been more proactive in order to demonstrate to parents and the public that materials are acceptable and appropriate for students.”
“Schools are indeed implementing procedures to make these materials available even without a request by giving access to programs like Canvas and holding town hall meetings. While this is unlikely to satisfy all constituents, it is hardly anti-transparency.”
If we weren’t so close to the election, I would look forward to the updates to the campaign website that Ms. Hendrix manages.
To address the thrust of Ms. Hendrix’s previous letter, it is worth clarifying what 22-FC-34 lays out as the chain of events.
1) CCS included parent members on some committees.
2) Ms. Hendrix requested the identities of the parents on these committees.
3) Carmel denied this request to avoid potentially subjecting parents to the same harassment and threats that some teachers and staff had experienced earlier in the year.
4) Ms. Hendrix filed a complaint with the aforementioned Public Access Counselor.
5) CCS had an attorney file a response making its legal case based on the relevant portions of Indiana Code.
6) PAC ruled that the law does not directly address the situation that was at hand, but that it was taking the side of Ms. Hendrix’s position until the legislature or courts say otherwise.
At that point, CCS allowed parents to resign from the committees rather than have their identities disclosed, then provided Ms. Hendrix with a list of parents still serving. They did this under the legal argument that the parents did not know their identities would be disclosed at the time they joined the committees. To the best of my knowledge, that argument has not yet been tested in court.
Given the selective quoting of the opinion in Ms. Hendrix’s letter, I think #6 above may have been misunderstood by some readers. Regardless, if Ms. Hendrix feels strongly enough to pursue unveiling the six parents who withdrew from the committees out of reasonable fear of harassment, she has legal remedies available and the courts will decide if they should be named to the public.
If any readers are unfamiliar with why some parents or others in the school system may fear harassment, I would recommend starting with the PAC’s Informal Opinion 21-INF-8: The Correlation Between Civility and Public Access, followed by looking up local media’s past reporting on what CCS’s board members, teachers and staff were being subjected to in the summer and fall of 2021.
Jim May
Carmel
It is important for readers to understand that Mr. May has a history of providing biased and inaccurate information within this community. This letter is no different. The first thing he does is to misrepresent the campaign’s position on transparency and that it is focused on curriculum. While he asks for a correction to the campaign website, the quote from the website as it relates to transparency is as follows: “All parents and citizens should be able to understand with full transparency the priorities, policies, programs, and allocation of funds in our schools.” Note that curriculum is not specifically mentioned. As such, Mr. May is attempting to deceive.
The example of lack of transparency being raised in these letters to the editor relates to CCS operation of the parental advisory committees and as such, the PAC opinion that applies is 22-FC-34. Mr. May raises 6 points intended to represent the chronological occurrence of events, and states that readers may misunderstand point 6, that “the law does not directly address the situation at hand.” The only person who misunderstands (or likely misrepresents) #6 above in the letter is Mr. May. If one were to go directly to the PAC opinion, they would find the following:
“Ind. Code § 5-14-1.5-1. If these words and the provisions that follow mean that a public agency can establish secret committees populated with agreeable external stakeholders for the ease and comfort of vetting controversial topics, this office will leave that determination to the legislature or the courts. It will not happen right now on the PAC’s watch.
The law simply does not contemplate a public agency hand-picking groups of select community members as an established deliberative assembly to operate behind closed
doors to receive information, deliberate, make recommendations, or set policy outside the view of the remainder of the public. Contrary to CCS’s arguments, this position is in no way dissonant from the rest of the Open Door Law.”
PAC goes on to say “As a result, unless an exception applies, the meetings of the
Committee must be open to the public. Additionally, the public is entitled to notice of any meeting or executive session and the creation of a meeting memorandum (i.e.,
minutes)……However, to the extent a community member chooses to avail themselves of the responsibility of establishing policies of a public school system, they cannot hide their identities or activities while doing so. Therefore, the roster of
members and their selection—to the extent they are documented—is public record. CCS does not cite a statutory exception to disclosure for these materials.”
Mr. May creatively and deceptively tries to make 2 points – the first being that the issue at hand is the identity of the 6 members left off of the list. It is quite obvious to those that have followed this issue that the larger concern at hand is how CCS has operated its committees in a shroud of secrecy which the PAC clearly finds in conflict with Open Door Law. Secondarily, Mr. May makes it appear as though there is a legitimate question to be answered by the court but this is not really the case. PAC rightfully defers to the court as the authority in ruling on the law, yet he makes it abundantly clear that CCS is not operating within the spirit nor the intent of Open Door Law and does not have sound basis for their actions.
As such, in spite of his creative and deceptive attempts to the suggest the contrary, there are no issues with what the campaign or Ms. Hendrix have laid out, and the PAC has clearly stated that CCS is operating in conflict with Open Door Law.
Thank you, Jim, for clarifying all of this.
I am not a lawyer, and so was only attempting to counter Ms. Hendrix’s misrepresentations with what I already knew to be true. I had not realized the full extent of her dishonesty!
Thank you for actually going through Mr. Britt’s materials and showing what they actually said, rather than what she and others misrepresented them and him as saying.
I particularly am grateful that Mr. Britt highlighted how forthcoming CCS has been, as that has been my experience as well.
Carmel appreciates your hard work, Jim!
(For those who do not know, Jim, a CCS parent, has been wading through the toxic disinformation of the campaign Ms. Hendrix has been running, and he made a website to host it all: nobbs4ccs.com)
Mr. May,
In response to your critique of my original letter, I would like to reiterate my utmost respect for Mr. Britt, Indiana’s Public Access Counselor. There is absolutely no reference in my letter to 21-FC-168, an opinion based on a formal complaint by another individual seeking records on social emotional learning curriculum and sexual education.
Your letter seeks to equate curriculum requests such as 21-FC-168 to my request 22-FC-34, which had to do with operating committees behind closed doors. I have taken no issue with being provided curricular materials if they exist. I do take issue with public committees operating behind closed doors while concealing their members due to some perceived agony of the public being aware of their identities. This is outlined in the Indiana statutes, as discussed in my previous letter.
Carmel Clay Schools being transparent with “curricular materials” does not mean they are transparent with the committee information I requested due to the school’s own documents stating the committees would review Panorama data. It’s in their own words and according to the school’s technology director, Panorama collects personally identifiable information, or PII, of my children including name, grade, gifted status, ENL status, lunch status, race, counselor, teacher, and gender. My children should never be put at risk of exposure to committee members who have not been thoroughly vetted and provided a background check. It’s more important to me, as a parent, that my child’s privacy is protected from closed-door committee members rifling through their private data than to worry about the committee members maintaining privacy rights they are not entitled to under Indiana transparency laws.
The argument has been tested in court under these legal definitions, as Mr. Britt references on page 7 of 22-FC-34. Leaving the “courts to decide” is in reference to a portion of the statute that reads “it is the intent of this chapter that the official action public agencies and conducted and taken openly unless otherwise expressly provided by statute in order that the people may be fully informed.” Mr. Britt continues, “if these words – and the provisions that follow– mean that a public agency can establish secret committees populated with agreeable external stakeholders for the ease and comfort of vetting controversial topics, this office will leave that determination to the legislature or the courts. It will not happen right now on the PAC’s watch.”
He continues, “The law simply does not contemplate a public agency hand-picking groups of select community members as an established deliberative assembly to operate behind closed doors to receive information, deliberate, make recommendations, or set policy outside the view of the remainder of the public. Contrary to CCS’s arguments, this position is in no way dissonant from the rest of the Open Door Law.”
The disinformation contained in the original letter continues with the second comment above. As Ms. Hendrix points out above, PAC opinion 21-FC-168 that Mr. May deceptively includes in his letter focuses on curriculum and names Michelle Ball as the complainant – it has NOTHING to do with Ms. Hendrix. Mr. May’s effort to associate Ms. Hendrix with the completely unrelated PAC opinion on curriculum as well as Ms. Hannah’s praise of him for “clarifying things” indicate they either have terrible reading comprehension skills OR they are deliberately trying to mislead our community in a repeated and unrelenting effort to discredit Ms. Hendrix. I believe it is the latter.
The issue that Ms Hendrix raises and the PAC opinion 22-FC-34 that names her as complainant relate to the secretive closed door parental advisory committees that CCS is using to conduct school business. In this opinion the PAC makes it clear that CCS has not been operating transparently, these meetings are subject to Open Door Law, and the associated records are subject to Indiana’s Access to Public Records Act:
“The law simply does not contemplate a public agency hand-picking groups of select community members as an established deliberative assembly to operate behind closed
doors to receive information, deliberate, make recommendations, or set policy outside the view of the remainder of the public…….
Based on the foregoing, it is the opinion of this office that the Social Emotional Learning Parent-Caregiver Advisory Committee at Carmel Clay Schools is subject to the Open Door Law and its associated records are subject to the Access to Public Records Act.”
As such, it is not Ms. Hendrix running a “toxic disinformation campaign” but rather these two Carmel citizens who cannot put their own personal bias aside. Anyone reading these comments should take a serious pause before EVER believing any words that these two Carmel citizens have to offer about other community members.
Let me begin by saying how refreshing it is to see Ms. Hendrix laud Carmel Clay Schools for their transparency on curriculum. It is not what I would have expected based on the general tenor of communications from the campaign she is managing.
For example, the campaign’s position on the ‘sexualization of children’ begins with ‘Responsible sexual education should be our goal irrespective of any child’s sexual identity or orientation and should always embrace parental involvement.’ I certainly took that to be an implication that the schools lacked transparency regarding their sexual education curriculum.
I believe there were also some posts from the campaign’s Facebook page regarding curriculum transparency. Unfortunately, I cannot review those as you, Ms. Hendrix, or some other admin of the page blocked me from being able to view it nearly a month ago, claiming that I was not a real person as justification for shielding the candidates from having to explain why their claims conflicted with available data from the state.
Regardless, let’s not get off on that tangent. Carmel Clay Schools are wonderfully transparent with parents regarding curriculum. I’m glad we’ve found something that you, Ms. Hendrix, you, Mr. DeBoer, and I can all agree on!
Also, one point of clarification, Ms. Hendrix: perhaps it’s just unfortunate word choice, but you seem to be going to great lengths to insinuate that committee members had access to PII from Panorama without actually saying it. Are you claiming that the schools made PII available to the committees? Because my understanding is that committees were only provided with access to anonymous, aggregated data that provided no detail on individual students.
Regarding the legalese, I read the phrase, ‘The law simply does not contemplate…’ as indicating that the issue at hand is not explicitly addressed by the text of the law. I have reached out to Mr. Britt’s office for clarification and will gladly share whatever he provides when he responds. I am always quite glad to acknowledge when I find I’ve been mistaken about something.
Which brings me around to your claims, Mr. DeBoer. First, I have no pre-existing bias. I knew nothing of any of the school board candidates prior to researching who was on the ballot. I was highly disappointed to find that there was a slate of three who were posting misleading and/or false data. Pushing back on that is not bias, it is acting on my convictions and defending the schools that my children attend against those who are denigrating them.
Second, I most certainly do not have a history of providing inaccurate information within our community. I’m not sure what has caused you to drop the civility you put forth in our previous exchanges. As an example of what I reference, allow me to remind you of most recent interaction, when you mistakenly criticized my analysis of student flight on October 16. You initially misunderstood how I had conducted the analysis and made some critiques. I responded with an explanation of my methodology. This was a public exchange that is still available to view on Sheldon Barnes Facebook page, unless you go back and delete your half of it. Two quotes from that exchange…
From you:
“It sounds as though you completed your analysis as I suggested, so I apologize that I didn’t pick up on that.”
From me:
“You’re also free to submit feedback on the site itself. I assure you that I care deeply about making sure the data and analysis are as correct as I can get them.”
We haven’t had an exchange since then and you’ve submitted nothing to me via the site, so I’m not sure what changed your opinion of me or the level of discourse you prefer to engage in, but so be it.
Regarding the actual provision of inaccurate information to the community, let’s compare one aspect of my site to the campaign that Ms. Hendrix manages and that you now carry water for.
My website, http://www.nobbs4ccs.com, has not removed nor edited the content of a single page since I established it to counter the misinformation being spread by the Brake, Brown & Sharp campaign. And if any aspect of it had been shown to have been in error, I would have gladly updated the relevant page and added a note at the top explaining why and when it had been updated.
The same cannot be said for your campaign’s site. I haven’t kept tabs on all of the pages, but do note that it finally took down the page that deceptively used slides from Assistant Superintendent of Instruction Amy Dudley’s presentation devoid of context.
Sadly, another parent forwarded me a Facebook post from the campaign that was made this week that said the following in regards to comparing ISTEP and ILEARN results: “Ask the assistant superintendent of instruction to quit comparing them, tell her she was wrong to begin comparing them.”
This is a bald-faced lie from the campaign, as it has been pointed out countless times that Amy Dudley never compared them and, in fact, explicitly pointed out that they could not be compared during the board meeting presentation from which the slides were taken. This has been rehashed again and again and again, and yet the campaign seems committed to openly lying about Ms. Dudley, despite the fact that anyone can go to the school’s YouTube page and watch the recording of the July 26, 2021 meeting and see the truth.
Ms. Hendrix & Mr. DeBoer, let me close with a question to you.
I’m going to quote a line that appears at the close of your campaign’s wildly incompetent attempt to use Excel’s regression analysis function to refute my page on the effects of redistricting on proficiency rates. The line I’m quoting is a bit insulting towards me, but that’s fine. I’m perfectly happy to let voters view my website and your campaign’s site/Facebook page, and come to their own conclusions as to which one is more accurate and truthful. On to the quote:
“The fact that there are significant issues with the validity and truthfulness of the claims that Mr. May makes here and the analysis provided as it relates to Academic Decline – part 2 call into question whether or not anything on his site can be trusted.”
Let’s ignore any differences in analysis, how to look at the data, etc. At a bare minimum, your campaign, the Brake, Brown and Sharp campaign, has explicitly and repeatedly lied about Amy Dudley comparing ISTEP to ILEARN results. By the campaign’s logic, does that call into question whether or not anything these candidates say can be trusted?
Jon—
You were on the SEL Committee. What private student information did you have access to?
The answer is NONE.
And I know this because if you or anyone *had* been given access to that information, Ms. Hendrix would not have to stoop to insinuation and misrepresentation.
And you have the audacity to write to this paper and complain about “false allegations.”
At long last, Have you left no sense of decency?
Hi Diane,
I see that in your effort to play “GOTCHA”, you either failed to go back and re-review all of Ms. Hendrix’s letters and comments or you again have chosen to mis-represent the facts. In each one of her letters or comments that relate to Panorama data review, Ms. Hendrix never specifies which of the two committees (DEI and SEL) have done so. Had she specified, I certainly would have picked up on that as a former member of the now defunct SEL committee. I have never had access to Panorama survey data as member of that committee, but I also was not able to attend all of the meetings.
Now, while Ms. Hendrix certainly labels the Panorama data as SEL data, it’s important to note that the data taken from the surveys include characteristics that would fall under the DEI umbrella as opposed to the SEL umbrella such as, but not limited to: “gifted status, ENL status, lunch status, race, gender, etc.” as noted in the letters and comments. As such, it is certainly plausible that the DEI committee may be the one that has reviewed the Panorama data and therefore that could be the committee Ms. Hendrix is referencing. Given that there is a lack of clarity as to which committee Ms. Hendrix is referencing with regard to review of Panorama data, unlike you, I refuse to accuse her of misrepresentation at this time.
As such, I would encourage you to have the “sense of decency” to stop making false accusations against me when the facts are unclear and incomplete, and instead engage Ms. Hendrix to clarify which committee she is referencing that reviews Panorama data.
Hi Mr. May,
Thanks for your lengthy reply which mostly references and should be directed to the campaign in spite of your efforts to rope me into it. Ms. Hendrix, Ms. Brake, Mr. Brown and Mr. Sharp run their website and their campaign, so any associated issues or questions you raise need to be directed to them and not me.
Secondarily, with regard to our previous exchanges, you are correct that I misunderstood part of your analysis and apologized for that misunderstanding. I’m not sure why you bring that up (perhaps to attempt to demonstrate your lack of bias and misrepresentation which I will refute in a moment). What it clearly shows is that I take accountability for my mistakes and that I am able to operate in an unbiased fashion.
Finally, I want to re-direct back to the issue at hand that I raised in my initial comment about you which is your bias and misrepresentations. I will highlight this with two more examples from this letter. First of all, you make the claim in your letter that I have stated you have pre-existing bias:
“Which brings me around to your claims, Mr. DeBoer. First, I have no pre-existing bias.”
This is not what I said. The quote from my comment above is:
“Mr. May has a history of providing biased and inaccurate information within this community.”
So why do you misquote me? It seems to be so that you can set up your defense and use this mis-quote as an opportunity to share a previous experience to try to prove you don’t have pre-existing bias. While your previous experience may be true, this is a strawman argument given that you have mis-quoted me. I find that your use of inaccurate quotes and strawman arguments representative of your bias and misrepresentations.
Secondarily, I find it both curious and informative that nothing in your lengthy response above even attempts to defend the points I raised in my initial comments about your conflation of the two PAC opinions, misrepresentation of the true issue at hand being raised by Ms. Hendrix, and misrepresentation of the PAC opinion. Your previous conflation and misrepresentations must be indefensible.
Given your inaccurate representation of my words, your strawman argument and your efforts to shift the goalposts rather than address your previous misrepresentations, I’m confident that readers will see your misrepresentative approach and bias shine through.
Point / counterpoint .. till the end of time apparently.
Congratulations folks, you’ve reached the behavior level of the average six year old.
Although, they are far more concise in their arguments.
.
Hi Frank:
I take your point to heart. I wish I didn’t have to spend my time doing this, but when members of our community spread misinformation and make unwarranted attacks against me, I’m not going sit idly by and let it happen.
Jon
Thus underlining the problem in our modern civic / political discourse ; no can let ANYthing go, ever.
Everything is a personal attack .. even if such originates from an empty suit.
The sum total of things that get resolved in a forum like this one = zero.
I’d tell you the same thing I’d tell that six year old, it begins with ” sticks & stones … “
This is interesting. I think the school should know and thus advise parents that they are a public agency and that certain information, notably their name, could be disclosed in a records request if they are doing important business for the school. If these parents want to be private citizens, they should limit their deep engagement with our schools. It seems dubious that the school shouldn’t disclose their name because these parents resigned.