Friends and concerned citizens, Thank you all so much for your interest in this past Thursday night’s presentation to hear about what we suspected was the Ozark School District administration’s dishonesty with the Board of Education and the public.
When I first reached out to solicit your help for our group to build a case to suggest to the school board that the information they’d been told about a targeted teacher might be a little distorted, I had no idea we would duscover how dishonest their investigation was conducted.
When a board member revealed elements of a discontinued slide presentation from five years prior had been included in the file as “evidence” for why the instructor needed to be dismissed, it was shocking, to say the least.
Let me explain a bit about that.
The administration clearly knew which presentation (“Personal Appearance, Personal Identity, and Value”) had been shown in class, as they referenced a few of its later slides when talking to the instructor about it (those unused slides from the end of the same presentation.) It was dishonest enough to keep showing those same slides in the file as “evidence” when administrators were told repeatedly that those had been cut from what was presented in the class.
But then, administrators must have realized that even those unused slides weren’t damning enough for conclusive proof to remove him, so they searched out and added in slides from an entirely different second lesson’s slides (a lesson for older students on how appearance influences perception.)
How do we know for sure it wasn’t an accident?
The principal to whom the instructor had emailed that second presentation for review retired at the end of the 2016-17 school year, so that file containing the second lesson’s more edgy slides was sent, at the very least, 6 years ago. (You’ll remember that even though that presentation was approved by that principal — and a repeat offering of it was solicited by a respected colleague — that Major Cazier voluntarily opted not to use it again.)
I don’t know how the administrators managed to find a file that was more than 5 years old when they were digging for dirt, but it must have taken some very deliberative searching. It certainly was not accidentally included.
Major Cazier’s situation — and there are other examples of distortions of fact in his case which are very similar to that — is merely ONE example of a pattern the district has been perpetuating against multiple District employees.
Four of them have spoken out recently in a local publication, and I am personally in contact with at least three others. In a little less than two weeks, on Thursday, 11/10, we will lay out that pattern more clearly and have a few more teachers briefly attest to their experiences in different but familiar ways with this pattern of harassment, intimidation, and retaliation which the district follows to remove targeted teachers.
On that night, Major Danny Cazier, the highly respected Senior Army Instructor for Ozark’s phenomenally successful JROTC program who has led them to multiple National championships as well as earned the gratitude of many, many parents for how he mentored our teens through the most important formative and sometimes tumultuous teen years, will explain that pattern used by the District against targeted employees along with describing what circumstances seem to trigger the District to target an employee in the first place.
Then Tom Swift, a beloved, respected teacher who is in his 28th year of teaching in Ozark and who likely has taught many of our own students, and Shelly Pettit, another loved and respected teacher of 21 years who spent the last 10 years of her career in Ozark helping our at-risk students find success, will share how they have experienced the same pattern of mistreatment in separate bids to force them out of the district because they reported concerns to the administration. Three other long-time District employees with whom we are in touch are still coping with the grave trauma associated with working in such a hostile and abusive environment and are not yet able to relive and then speak publicly about the damage caused by district administrators. As reported in the Christian County Trumpet, when asked about their responsibility to investigate the District Administration’s actions, board members claimed it’s “not our job” to investigate how the superintendent — whom they say is their “only employee” — is performing his job and what kind of environment he sets for the staff who choose to follow his directions.
After the meeting in two weeks, we believe there will be evidence enough which will fuel a demand for the Board of Education to request a thorough outside, independent investigation of the District administrators who have been involved in perpetuating these illegal workplace conditions and management methods.
Won’t you please join us in our quest to support District employees by identifying and addressing those abusive behaviors?
Feel free to bring along several friends to help us stand for what is true and just in our community.
We look forward to seeing you all on Thursday, 11/10, at 6pm at OTC’s Richwood Valley Campus in room 224.
P.S. I’m attaching a copy of an Open Letter to the School Board which Major Cazier just published. Soon, it will be posted on his website which is dedicated to bringing awareness and accountability to the Ozark School District by describing his experiences with a hostile administration. On that same website, you will also soon find options to sign a petition and/or quickly and easily send a letter to the school board members calling on them to appoint an outside, independent investigation into the falsification of records revealed Thursday evening as well as other teachers’ reports of similar mistreatment by a runaway administration.
Sincerely, Christina Tonsing, for the parent group Ozark, MO School District Awareness (OMSDA)
Thank you, Trumpet, for reporting about this!!!
We started because we were concerned about Major Danny Cazier and the HUGE impact his absence was having on our kids. But we are still going now — and WAY more concerned now — because we are learning that the wrong-doing against this teacher is not just a one-time anomaly. It’s a well-practiced pattern that has been repeated and is STILL being repeated against multiple teachers!!!!