OZARK, MO — A veteran Ozark Middle School teacher says he’s being persecuted by school administration.
Tom Swift, a veteran teacher with more than 30 years experience, has Ozark R-VI administrators flummoxed.
“They don’t know what to do with me,” Swift told the CCT.
When he raised serious concerns about wood dust and mold on school property in 2017, officials were slow and even negligent in their response, Swift said.
Swift says a fellow teacher became sick from unsafe conditions.
Swift alerted the entire Ozark Middle School staff about the administration’s sloppy attitude towards health and safety issues in a mass e-mail.
That’s when the doo doo hit the whirly thingy.
Swift was labeled a troublemaker by the brass.
SHUT UP AND FALL IN LINE, SOLDIER!
He was given a warning to “shape up or else” on the last day of school last year.
He was drafted into a 6th grade math class this year, a position he didn’t want.
Classes where he was best suited (industrial arts and STEAM) were nixed because he raised health and safety concerns in those classrooms.
WOOD DUST BUST
In 2017, Swift wrote of hazardous conditions of excessive wood dust in his shop class.
Welp, the guy responsible back then was then Director of Operations Dr. Chris Bauman, who is now superintendent of the district.
Dr. Bauman put his sidekick, Dr. Curtis Chesick, on the case to investigate the wood dust situation.
Chesick shut down the shop for several days to allow the dust to settle before conducting the now non-conclusive test. Even so, levels were still suspiciously high, Swift said.
Dr. Bauman showed up on March 2, 2019 to point out the problem from water runoff into an electrical unit to Swift during his first period industrial arts class. “I didn’t need to know the details; I just wanted to provide a safe environment for myself and the kids,” Swift said.
BAD BREAK
But Dr. Bauman took Swift outside during class (Swift was uncomfortable leaving the students unattended with shop equipment) and pointed to the roof as Swift re-entering the building, distracting Swift. Swift fell on an entrance ramp and broke the bone below the elbow on his right arm.
Complications arose from the break, which wasn’t tended to right away because school staff determined it not to be a break initially. Consequently, Swift underwent medical procedures that prevented him from being able to retire from teaching at the end of the 2019 school year, as he was planning to do.
Swift says he builds decks and was going to do that after retirement, but cannot now due to his physical limitations from the fall.
Meanwhile, Dr. Chesick was assigned to the excessive wood dust situation. According to Swift, Dr. Chesick handled the situation in the most “reckless way of any administrator I have ever seen in my 30 plus years of educating.”
Later, an OSHA inspector told Swift Chesick’s air quality test was “entirely unacceptable”.
NO PROBLEM WITH DR. BAUMAN UNTIL APRIL 18, 2019
Stay tuned for PART 3 for what happened that day!
2 responses to “‘Corrupt’ School offers money to ‘shut teacher up’ (part 2)”
Sounds like that’s the way Chris Bauman operates: paybacks are he**, even if they have to come a few years later!
I like being able to see and read the story of what is happening in our school district — so we can bring awareness and put a halt to it!! But I DISLIKE it that those things are even being allowed to happen!!!! The school board needs to STOP that behavior by the admins!!!