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FCPS Board Member Attacks Disabled Kid
By Greg L | 12 December 2007 | Fairfax County | 9 Comments
Apparently, when Fairfax County Public Schools isn’t trying to figure out new ways to indoctrinate children in political correctness, it works pretty hard to show what a class act members of the school board are. To wit, courtesy of the DC Examiner:
Despite a sworn declaration from [School Board member Stuart] Gibson himself that no illegal disclosure had occurred, the state found him - and FCPS - in noncompliance with laws protecting the privacy rights of children with disabilities. No matter what parents themselves do, the Nov. 27 Letter of Findings concluded, school officials are not allowed to make a child’s educational record public without explicit parental consent.
But that’s not the end of the story. Christine Arakelian, the mother of the third grader in question, was running against Gibson for his Hunter Mill seat when he released confidential details about her son in a July 1 letter to the local PTA and again during a Sept. 19 newspaper interview. Incensed, she called Supt. Jack Dale’s office to complain: “Just because I’m running for office doesn’t mean my son is fair game,” she angrily told school officials. After receiving “absolutely no response” from Dale’s office, Arakelian says, she filed formal complaints with state and federal authorities and still plans to pursue legal action against Gibson.
And liberals are the ones that supposedly have the market cornered on compassion.
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9 Comments
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Stupidity and insensitivity are rampant in politics… She will win in court, but I hope that Gibson rots. That’s just cold.
“As a Justice Department attorney who campaigned on his expertise in education law, Gibson can’t say he didn’t know what he did was illegal.”
Oh yeah, the mother should try to get him disbarred as well.
More on Gibson:
“Gibson is the mastermind behind the controversial Western County redistricting, and has reportedly cut a deal with other Board members to exempt some areas from the controversial redistricting.” - Source: The Cuccinelli Compass.
This is even worse than what Mrs. Tom Davis did in publishing her opponents home phone number (or was it home address???).
Wait a minute, this guy works at Justice? Isn’t he under the Hatch Act? How does he get away with running on the democrat ticket?
This slime ball needs to go.
Can he be impeached? or Recalled?
Most schoolboard positions are considered “non-partisan”. There is no party affiliation (wink, wink) on the ballot, Making them independents (nod, nod). Hatch Act only applies to those running for office as the nominee of a party.
The headline evokes mental views of some mean adult beating up disabled kid, which is not the case at all!
What is really bad about the FCPS’s refusal to take any action is the double standard they use. When Steve Hunt stepped over the line on an internal policy by sending a letter to Principals warning against “gay rights” indoctrination, this same bunch wanted to hang him from a lightpost. But when one of their own BREAKS A LAW, they run to shove it under the rug like nothing happened. And these people are in charge of our kids! Pathetic
Ms. Arakelian is a highly capable attorney, btw. I don’t think this is over. The Examiner had an editorial piece on this situation on the op/ed page at http://www.examiner.com/a-1123482~Fairfax_schools_trample_citizens__rights_again.html.
John Light mentioned the Jeannemarie mailer, which as I recall contained both Chap’s address and his phone number. I think Chap is a great guy, even though I voted for Jeannemarie. Chap has never hidden where he lives from the public and pretty much everyone knows where he lives. But, even so, I think it was still 100% wrong for Jeannemarie’s camp to have sent that mailer without blocking his home address and phone number out. When someone does something like that it becomes far too tempting for the bored and slightly loopy to pick up the phone and dial the person’s house and be annoying or scary, which it seems a couple people might have done. So Jeannemarie should not have “approved that message” (as they say at the end of televised ads). That was a circumstance where a sincere and heartfelt apology was due in my opinion, but with the Stu Gibson situation, I personally believe it was at least a little more serious, and an apology is probably not really enough unless it is of the sincere, heartfelt and nearly grovelling variety.
The Examiner editorial linked above also mentions the case of Bruce Bennett, a citizen activist whose has been removed twice recently from public meetings for the high crime of trying to record them, which is apparently quite legal in Virginia. To me, FCPS has tried to dance around the meaning of public meeting. I hope Mr. Bennett, who is not a fellow to take abuse lightly, will take them on - and head on. I know him and he is not a guy who goes to meetings to make a scene or disrupt them; he is a very level fellow who believes (and apparently a state agency agrees) that he has the right to record public meetings under Virginia’s version of FOIA. I believe Bruce Bennett is owed an extremely grovelling apology from the County since they actually made the cops come out and get involved not once but twice. That, and they need to let the man make his doggoned recordings, as is his apparent right. They never should have interfered with him in the first place. I see is County officials trying to intimidate a citizen by getting the cops involved. It’s sad. Welcome to the People’s Republic of Fairfax, where citizens are the enemy.