A New Home For A Teacher From Marshall County, Kansas

Michael Melcher, of this post, was arrested in the fall of 2016 for sex crimes against children. This happened in Butler County, Kansas. Prior to living in that area, Melcher was a native of Marshall County, Kansas, and taught at Marysville High School, in Marshall County, Kansas. Many, many people in Marshall County thought he was not guilty, and insisted that the charges had been dismissed, when in fact, the case had been bound over for trial.

Later on, in March of this year, Melcher incurred a guilty verdict, at which point, his employer, USD 490, finally terminated his employment. Had he not had so many enablers, tax payers would not have been required to pay for an extended leave of absence for this criminal. Melcher's picture also graces the sex offender registries, both state and national. Last week, he was sentenced to thirty-two months in prison.

Mr. Melcher's enablers can rest assured that the verdict is correct for three reasons. First, he finally came forward with an admission of guilt. He also offered a makeshift apology, which was never offered to anyone, prior to his arrest and court proceedings. Second, there was not only eyewitness evidence and testimony in the case, but electronic evidence, supporting the claims of the victims. Third, there was a victim statement at the sentencing. This is encouraging, because victims of these well connected creeps are usually not encouraged to speak in Kansas.

One question that is left unanswered here concerns how Mr. Melcher got away with these abusive predilections in Marshall County, Kansas; and specifically, who may have been paid to overlook the abuse. Marshall County attorney, Laura McNish, stated, upon running for election in 2013, that she wanted to "continue to partner with law enforcement, courts, schools and parents to promote justice, protect children, and uphold the law." Turning a blind eye to crime and allowing abusers to quietly move to other communities when victims file reports is obviously one of the county attorney's methods of protecting children! Finding out that crime and abuse are not accepted or appreciated in the rest of the known universe is always a shock for those who find favor with the court in Marshall County, Kansas.

Who Really Protects Children?

This past Tuesday, an Ohio headstart teacher got fired for dragging a small child through a hallway by the arm. The picture below was snapped by another teacher. Neither the teacher or student have been identified in the news.

This teacher did not work for any of the school boards in Ohio, but a private company called Alta Care Group, that "partners" with Ohio schools and provides teachers. Since Alta Care Group does not answer to the government or directly to the parents, it is possible for Alta Care Group to maintain different hiring standards, or no standards at all, for the important task of hiring teachers. Why would public schools in Ohio want to do this? Are they saving money, somehow, by using a middleman to provide their teachers?

It is abundantly clear that Alta Care Group is not concerned with the safety of children. Despite the fact that this teacher was terminated, the taxpayers are left with too many unanswered questions, such as the teacher's name. The people of Ohio are entitled to this information, and entitled to know why this aspect of teaching has been handled by a private company. Also, any time a private company supplies a teacher for children, the parents have a right to know the qualifications and the procedures used when a teacher fails to perform. When these questions are not answered adequately by the government, and freedom of information act request usually solves the problem, but what if the problem is encountered with a private company that does not follow the law?

The Satanic Temple has a short term solution. If you sign up for emails and newsletters from The Satanic Temple, you can register your information with the Temple's Protect Children Project, and your local school board will receive an email, informing the school that you do not wish to be abused, and reminding school administration of your first amendment rights.

Elizabeth Thomas Missing

Fifteen year old Elizabeth Thomas was last seen in Columbia, Tennessee, in the company of a teacher at her school, a fifty year old man by the name of Tad Cummins. Now there is an active Amber Alert. It seems that Mr. Cummins planned this disappearance. He researched possible methods the police could use to track him, and he also researched the possibility of marrying someone as young as Elizabeth. Something he forgot is that he is already married, and in America, one may marry as many times as one wishes, but one must get divorced between nuptials.

Below are pictures of Elizabeth, Cummins, and the vehicle Cummins used when he was last seen. There is also a number for anyone with information to call. Please, if you know anything or have seen either Cummins or Elizabeth Thomas, call law enforcement.

Former Marysville Kansas Teacher Guilty

In  November of 2016, yours truly wrote this, for another publication, about a former Marysville, Kansas public school teacher who moved to the Wichita area and got arrested in Butler County, Kansas for sexual abuse of a child. 

 "A brilliant special education teacher and basketball coach by the name of Mike Melcher has been arrested in Butler County, Kansas for the electronic solicitation of a child under the age of fourteen, and for inappropriate physical contact with a child under the age of fourteen. Mr. Melcher was a special education teacher and basketball coach in Marysville, Kansas, from 2008 to 2014. His first appearance in court was November 28.

This is not the first time Kansas has run into problems through the lack of background checks for teachers. Since 2002, Kansas has required criminal background checks for teachers, but any teacher who was hired before 2002 is not required to undergo a background check. This effectively "grandfathers" any and all teachers with criminal records who were hired before 2002. According to KSN, a teacher named Mike Burgan in St. Johns, Kansas, who taught for USD 350, was found to have a criminal record for indecent solicitation of a child, dating back to 1988. It was determined that Mr. Burgan had lied, numerous times, to the school board and the Kansas Department of Education. Can anyone see how easy it is to teach in public schools in Kansas with a criminal record?

The other problem which afflicts Kansas is cronyism and cover-up. How many child predators have enjoyed lengthy criminal careers because others have failed to report crime? The fallout from Mr. Melcher's arrest and subsequent court dates will hopefully yield more information concerning background check procedures for the El Dorado School District and the Marysville School District."

There is now an update. Mike  Melcher entered a guilty plea. He will be sentenced in May. While he has been on leave from his teaching position, he was still listed, on Monday, March 6, as an employee of the El Dorado school system. Hopefully, there will be no efforts among school boards in the state of Kansas to rehire him, because he has lived in Kansas all his life and has a lot of friends in Kansas.

First Day Of School In Frankfort, Kansas

It's that time of year again in Frankfort, Kansas, and this story will appear once again on this site, because the school here in Frankfort has not seen fit to come into compliance with safety standards observed by schools in other parts of Kansas, and has not come into compliance with federal law concerning the presence of weapons on school property, bullying, or student safety. The only change made is that credit shall be granted where it is due: the name of the errant and uncorrected guidance counselor who has been granted carte blanche to endanger children is Tom Schroeder.

Anyone who's listening, I will tell you a story. It's a true story, and it happened in October of 2009. Thankfully, it had a happy ending.

My oldest daughter used to be quite the avid cross country buff when she was thirteen years old. She was good at it, too. But one day, while she was at practice, and I was at home, just assuming that all was well, her coach drove past my house, stopping to talk to my eight year old son. Mr. Coach wanted to know if Mr. Eight Year Old had seen his older sister. Mr. Eight Year Old had not. No one had seen my daughter in over two hours. She was lost. Why was she lost? Because her coach had dropped her off by the side of a highway, four miles south of the town we live in, by herself, and just left her. It was part of cross country practice. No supervision. If she had been stung by a bee, had tripped and hurt herself, or had some other medical emergency, no one would have been there to help her. (at this juncture, you should know that I offered to volunteer to help with cross country, but since I do not attend a Christian church, my offer was rejected. The school staff thought it better to take chances with a child's safety in the way I just described) When my daughter realized that she did not know her way back, she started to wander on a side road, hoping it would bring her to a house, or another person. This area has a lot of commercial farms, and there were no houses or places my daughter could go to for help.

Back to my eight year old son.......Twenty minutes went by. While he did not realize the signifigance of his conversation with Mr. Cross County Coach, (also Mr. Guidance Counselor) he did realize that no one knew where his sister was, and it was getting later and later, and no one was looking for her. So he told me about it. I looked all over town, called all her friends, searched the school (why was the school left unlocked after everyone had gone home?) and finally started home to call the police, when a couple of senior boys drove up with my crying daughter in their car. It was still within a few minutes of when I found out she was missing, but this cross country coach had known all afternoon, and had not called the police, or spoken to me. Why? I guess whatever he cared about, it WASN'T my daughter. Well.........I actually DO care about my daughter. Nowhere else have I met a teacher that did NOT care, at least a little, about the children he teaches, but I think that is what the problem is with Mr. Cross Country Coach/ Guidance Counselor.

Suppose it was not young men from her school who found her, but a dangerous person? I have been told time and time again by the people who live in this small Kansas town that "those things don't happen here", and "there ARE no dangerous people here", but there was a sex offender whose address was within half a mile of where my daughter was abandoned. The police were quick to point that out, but the principal only argued his harmlessness as a sex offender with them and the school board is not worried about the incident.

My children no longer participate in cross country at their school. It isn't safe.

Wichita Public School Hires Sex Offender

You read the title correctly. One of the illustrious and brilliantly run public schools in Kansas has hired someone who has been charged with possession of child pornography to teach children. It seems that Steven Thompson resigned his teaching post at Garden City Community College amid an investigation about some kiddie porn that allegedly was found on one of his computers, and made way to Wichita. He was hired at the beginning of the 2015-2016 school year at a public school, only to be arrested on a warrant from Finney County, Kansas, to answer for the evidence that found. You might wonder how this could happen, since Thompson is, after all, out on bond for sex crimes. Susan Arensman, spokesperson for the public schools in Wichita has an answer: nothing showed up on the background check because Thompson had not yet been arrested or charged. But then, you might ask, do "unified" school districts in Kansas go the extra mile for the children they claim to serve, and check the references of the teachers they hire? While a former employer might not provide in depth details about a police investigation, it is hard to imagine that a teacher who disappears during a kiddie porn investigation.....on HIS computer......would get a glowing recommendation from his former employer. Common sense, Kansas. Common sense.

Abbie Hoffman Moment

Tim Black On Ahmed Mohamed's Digital Clock

Here's another, very straightforward perspective on Ahmed Mohamed's school project, and the community and police reaction.

Why Public School Teachers Should Not Have Tenure

After former officer Eric Casebolt resigned because he could not stop himself from the assault and battery of an innocent child at a public swimming pool, former fourth grade teacher Karen Fitzgibbons took to posting on Facebook about the incident, stating that she wanted forced segregation again. Luckily, the school board was not amused, and fired her. It rather frightening to think of what any minority students endured in her class, and equally frightening to imagine what she taught all of her students. Another termination from employment because of this is that of Tracey Carver Albritton, who had been employed with Corelogic, because she started the commotion with racist comments.

It's good to see that manners and empathy are still in the vogue among a few Americans. If Karen Fitzgibbons had some sort of tenure, or other guarantee of not getting fired for being a crappy teacher, the school would not have been able to dispense with her "services". We still apparently have a long way to go. Here's a public school teacher in Frankfort, Kansas, who also makes racist comments on the internet, yet does so with the approval of her employer, USD 380, Vermillion, Kansas.

Shangri La, Baby

Does anyone remember a time, about three years ago. when Terri Horman, sometime stepmother of missing Kyron Horman, who was last seen on June 4, 2010, thought she could find another teaching position?  No school in Oregon, public or private, was willing to hire Terri Horman, but a non-profit organization called Shangri La, which serves disabled and disenfranchised people in different parts of Oregon, actually hired Terri to be a "mental health specialist". She will render "mental health care", probably as a glorified orderly, to children with intellectual difficulties.

As Terri Horman was the last person seen with Kyron before he disappeared, law enforcement was particularly interested in her testimony and timeline on that day. Instead of coming forward with pertinent answers, Terri gave vague and conflicting answers and took two polygraph examinations which yielded results that indicated deceptions when compared against her baseline. Then, there were allegations about Terri conspiring to have her spouse murdered, and four years later, she attempted to change her name to that of a foreign national whose appearance is similar to hers, but this was not permitted by the court. In addition to all of the above, Terri Horman was discharged from a teaching position at an Oregon elementary school because she was unable to co-exist peacefully with the children she taught. All of these "items" would serve as reasons for your faithful blogger to dispose of her resume by way of the circular file, if she answered a classified advertisement, but Shangri La, evidently; is of the more daring variety of employers. At the very least, Shangri La should be able to see that Kyron Horman's missing persons case is still under investigation, and Terri Horman was actually referred to as a "de facto suspect" by a judge who presided over a related case. At any time that the "powers that be" decide to alter her "de facto" status to an active status, pending changes in the investigation, this will bring swarms of police officers of all stripes and temperaments, from all directions, to wherever Terri Horman may physically be located at that moment. If life at Shangri La is truly so dull that such excitement would be welcome, that may be a consideration, but can anyone's liability insurance countenance such risks?

Shangri La has been quite rude in response to questions posed by the general public about taking such risks. What they appear to have overlooked is that the disenfranchised people in their care have rights, along with those from whom they seek donations. Most donors to charities do not donate with the expectation of watching the very people who should be helped by donations become callously endangered and abused, instead. Just something for Shangri La to consider, while it works out new liability insurance rates and develops a linguistically pleasing answer to the queries of any visitor who recognizes Terri Horman.

Another Christian Pervert Teacher

Here's a little trivia from Virginia; a guy named Luis Mendez, a music teacher, is now in jail, without bond, for charges stemming from an inappropriate sexual relationship with a seventeen year old female student. Hmm...where has yours truly heard about things like that before? Any ideas, Frankfort Kansas? The community of Bedford County is duly disgusted with him, and the judge held him without bail because he's been determined to be a flight risk. It seems he asked his victim to let him know if the police were going to charge him, so he could flee the area before they found him! Oh; here's some more dirt that's been dug up about him.......he also once worked as a part time music leader at Blue Ridge Community Church and he left his wife after getting a nineteen year old student pregnant! He should have done all this in a tiny little town in Northeast Kansas, instead! The folks there would have allowed him to marry at least one of the victims and they would have covered for him, rather than holding him accountable, and he wouldn't have had to worry about being jailed at all, let alone held without bond! Location, location, location!

My Latest Troll

Not too long ago, someone asked me to whom the newest face on my "troll gadget", to the right, belongs. I looked at it, and realized that the latest addition is the face of a woman who lives in the same geographic area where I live, a postage stamp sized little town in Northeast Kansas, but unlike yours truly, she has lived here all of her life, and never leaves this town unless she experiences dire need to do so.  She amuses herself by bullying anyone she perceives as culturally different from herself, and she enhances her harassment efforts on Facebook and in person by engaging any and all who might enjoy mocking and threatening people they don't personally know, and these adults have all worked very hard to cause as much injury and unhappiness as possible to yours truly and and make my children miserable in school. My children were told by their children that the harassment would stop if they converted to christianity, and the faces of three or four trolls who have been involved in this are featured on that slideshow.

But what would make adults, in their fifties, act like fifth graders? Lets see: as nearly as I can tell, they do not like the fact that I married someone who lived here, already. They had no problem with my husband living here, but when I married him and we bought a house, they became nasty. The teachers at the school got angry because I insisted that my children, stepchildren, and an adopted child, get the same opportunities in school as all the other children. I insisted that the bullying stop. I got the ACLU to make them stop telling my children that they had to go to church. I became vocal both inside and outside the community when it came to my attention that children sometimes come up missing during the day at school, and there are no protocols to ensure that the children who are unaccounted for, after school events, are found. Because I reacted that way to the school, members of the local Catholic Church decided that they should protect their community by spreading as many unkind rumors about me as they could. They did not care what this would do to my children, my family, or my marriage; they just did it. It left me feeling very, very lucky that my family of origin is not christian. When my physician ordered me to take time away from work, the newest troll, and several of her teacher friends, harangued my children almost daily at school about how lazy their mother must be.......a couple of my children tried explaining life with severe anemia, (hemoglobin usually 6.5, hematocrit usually between 18 and 20, prior to diagnosis of the type of anemia) but one of them was insensitive enough to tell one of my daughters that "people like her mother" do not deserve blood transfusions"! So it appears that the impetus that makes an adult act like a fifth grade bully is the desire to pick on someone who does not attend his or her church, is more intellectually inclined than the bully, and is physically not as strong as the bully. And maybe Jesus factors in somewhere, too; but I am not sure exactly how. The trolls justify their crap to their own children by reiterating that Jesus hates people like me, and I can only look at the privileges I have enjoyed and the people I have loved over the course of my life and conclude that there is no such evil genie as Jesus, who hates my guts, as these people say. My trolls are not only immature, they are delusional.

Now let me address some of the concerns dwelt upon by the trolls in question. The newest one appears to think what she's told to think by her priest at the Catholic church and her small town neighbors. She's under no moral obligation to behave morally, because she can just go to confession. It doesn't matter if she drives drunk, or hurts someone doing the same....all she has to do is confess and try harder to conform. When conformity demands that she harm another, in order to make the christians at her church feel all warm and fuzzy, her priest tells her that it is good to hurt the families of those who are not christian. (Yes, he told me this; it was about an assault, though, not about a run-of-the-mill bully) After I got sick of her, and especially sick of trying to make friends with her and her ilk, I simply saved some of the more amazing examples of their bullying, electronic communiques and added their pictures to the "troll gadget" I created. Her dealio is that I criticize people who live in "her" town, and she and her little friends think that they should tell me not to live here, after buying a home and marrying. So does Mr. Catholic Priest. But the truth is, according to the Civil Rights Act of 1968, the United States grants me the right to live anywhere within it's borders that I damned well please, and I can bring my heritage, my culture, my complexion (if that's actually a problem for these morons) and my religion with me. I am under no obligation to be anything like these drunk religitards. I am also entitled to a public school that does not proselytize. There is no problem with their religion, either, but just as I ask my cat to excrete in the litter box, I ask them to excrete expressions of their religion privately, too. This brings me to the concern of a couple of the other trolls.....indeed; they are very, very concerned that I expect them to obey the law. My religion never should have mattered to them, and I actually don't think it does. They have some very valid reasons for not wanting to get to know anyone new, and those reasons have a lot more to do with THEM than with anyone who might move here. But why bring religion into it? Can't they stand on their own two feet without an imaginary accomplice?

The Last Turd In The Punch Bowl; Vermont Schools

Addison Rutland Supervisory Union, a Vermont school district, learned an important lesson last week about violating the civil rights of parents. A $147,000 lesson, to be exact. The school thought that a teacher who whined and complained about a concerned father was more important than the community, which included the father, so they barred him from attending any meetings about his child or any functions. They cited teacher fear as the reason, and the behavior they listed was simply the father's normal speaking voice, which apparently was not musically sweet enough for them, and his failure to achieve agreement with whatever silly-assed thingies had become all encompassing to the teachers and the school at the time. This is what a lot of public schools do when they perceive turds is their punch bowls......or, "koolaide" bowls, as the case may be!

A federal judge, on the other hand, determined that the school district was, (drum roll) wrong, and that the school had discriminated against Marcel Cyr. He was NOT required to belong to a protected minority, either; his rights as a member of the community and as a parent had been violated. His position as a parent was determined to be more important than a teachers desire for guaranteed and continued parental agreement. Since the ruling came from  federal judge, this is a bummer for public school teachers everywhere, not just in Vermont!

There was a principal in Northeast Kansas who tried something similar when a parent disagreed with one of his teachers. The parent, a mother this time, found herself in a state of disagreement with a teacher who dropped a female high school freshman off by herself on a highway and left her there; the only occupied house being the dwelling of a sex offender. When the parent discovered the latter, she dropped by the school to ask what protections are afforded children in the presence of sex offenders. She took a copy of the pertinent Kansas sex offender registry page with her. The principal, upon looking at the information, crumpled it, tossed it, and told her that the man was not really an offender! Seriously? The parent had only lived there for about a year, not long enough to peruse the criminal cases of individuals she had not even met, so she felt obliged to take the word of a Kansas jury or the plea of the defendant, himself, as the actual upshot, here. The principal ended his rant by leaning over the counter in the office, index finger extended, nearly taking a slice out of the mother's right eye! Not only did she disagree on many levels, she called the police.

Mr. Northeast Kansas principal ( also called Dean Dalinghaus) got a visit from an officer, who not only wanted to know why he had been so violent, but wanted to know what children were doing, unsupervised, so close to sex offenders and why a child had been lost for the better part of a day with no missing persons report. A whole slew of unanswered questions about school policy ensued, and it was perceived that there may be a "turd in the punch bowl". Since the koolaide previously served by the school to the community involved the lie that there was never any crime, nor any potential for the same, and no dangers that are not necessarily to crime: implementation of child safety standards used by the rest of the nation would never work out in this part of Kansas. So the mother was banned from school. But guess what? The principal's boss decided otherwise, he made the principal apologize! He not only cleaned out the punch bowl of the real turd, rather than the perceived turd, but he also dumped out as much of the koolaide as the local school board would allow. From the looks of things, he may have also saved USD 380 $147,000!

The superintendent of the school district in Vermont decided that if he could not discriminate against dissenting parents anymore, he would just have to take more money away from the children and education to hire an off-duty police officer to stand guard at meetings and other school events. Not only did he throw away the award of the lawsuit, he is willing to continue to throw away childrens' education dollars, over pettiness and perceived turds in the punch bowl.

Catholic Woman With Multiple Baby Daddies

Hey Melissa; if you have all your children with one sperm donor, it's a lot less paperwork to grant them all the same last name! Bwahahahahaha! How was church?

Convenient Time To Talk About Drunk Driving

 

Above is a comment posted by yours truly at WIBW beneath a story about an auto wreck near Frankfort, Kansas that involved alcohol. The fact that alcohol was a factor curiously did not appear in the story, but because Frankfort Kansas is such a "closeknit" community, (description borrowed from the author of the adversarial response) your faithful blogger was made aware, along with, probably, everyone else within a fifty mile radius, of the fact that alcohol was involved. So....since four young people, three of whom still attend Frankfort High School and one graduate, still under twenty-one, nearly got themselves killed while unlawfully combining substance abuse with the use of everyone's roads and highways, how is it that no one here in Northeast Kansas is talking about substance abuse among minors?

The three high school students mentioned represent at least five percent of Frankfort's high school students. Two of them are, or were, seniors. (is the principal still collecting enrollment dollars for these children, even though they obviously cannot attend school at the moment? Seems the dollar mill should be shut down for the moment, here) Since the senior class at Frankfort is not very big, this represents about fifteen percent of the graduating class at Frankfort. Of the remaining children who have either not been arrested yet or were not involved in this incident, there is only one child in attendance at Frankfort High School who does not drink, bringing the percentage of the students who drink up to about ninety-nine percent. These totals are a bit high, and compare unfavorably to the rest of the nation, where this kind of stuff runs an average of about seventeen percent of high school students who abuse drugs and alcohol daily. In a place with smaller numbers of students, one incident can bring per capita percentages up in ways that make statistics reflect awkwardly on the population. The lone student who does not drink usually serves as a designated driver, despite the fact that the law prohibits this type of enabling and prohibits alcohol and drug use by any child on probation, which is the unfortunate circumstance of one of the children in the accident.

That is the response left by someone who apparently feels that the problems caused by drunk teens should be addressed at a later date, at the convenience of the offender, if at all. This person is not concerned in the slightest about what criminals put their victims through; only the problems encountered by the drunk teenager and the enablers. It's okay to judge and bully anyone whose culture or lifestyle is a little different from that of the average Frankfurter, but not a child who causes traffic accidents by drinking and driving. How much mercy does the writer of this comment show the victims of these children and their enablers? By all appearances, not any. Along with very little comprehension of the language chosen for the comment, there is also not any comprehension of the fact that, while not everyone in the community was involved in the accident, everyone who drives on the highway shares the road with everyone else. That makes the problem of teens who drive drunk everyone's problem, not just the problem of those directly affected by one particular traffic mishap. As for Frankfort's description of being a "close knit town" creating an environment wherein "age is not an issue", federal law trumps this notion, along with the state laws of the very state that hosts this "close knit town". Anyone who buys alcohol for a fifteen year old commits a crime. If the person who wrote this comment does not like that, she should consider moving to another country. No one has a right to allow his or her children to inflict drug and alcohol abuse, and the accompanying pathos, onto anyone else's children. 

This is not the first time your blogger has heard howls and cries from Frankfort about her opinion of underage drinking and underage drinking coupled with driving. The spouse of one of Frankfort's teachers, upon hearing that the police were summoned when some drunk children drove on the sidewalk one evening, actually put in an appearance on the doorstep here to defend her son's right to drink and drive. The fact that this involved the family of a teacher at Frankfort High School truly spoke volumes. If the teachers at the Frankfort High School fail to teach their children to not to drink and drive, how can children from others schools safely interact with either the teachers or the students at Frankfort?

Maybe Terri Horman Does Tell The Truth Sometimes

It is, by now, a well known fact that Terri Moulton Horman failed several polygraph examinations after her stepson, Kyron Horman, disappeared from a science fair at Skyline Elementary in Portland, Oregon, on June 4, 2010. Above are some statements she made early on about the situation, and the questions investigators had. These remarks are interesting, because Terri makes no effort to tell anyone what she actually did, or where, exactly she went; she simply shifts the responsibility of seeing Kyron last on "kids" or "teacher"......and "teacher" doesn't even have a name in this comment, even though Terri knew the teacher by name.

"I didn't just drop him off"; okay, we all agree she didn't. It looks very much, as if Kyron actually accompanied Terri or one of her et els when she left the school. "I spent time with him, took pictures." That's obvious, but where did Terri spend time with Kyron and take pictures? It wasn't at the science fair! And as for thinking that Kyron was in "safe hands", she contradicts herself when she states that he was "walking down the hall". Which hall? Whose hands? She didn't say! It apparently was not anyone at Kyron's school! Who were the "kids" who saw Kyron after she "left", and from where did she "leave"? That information is conveniently omitted from her statement. There IS a grain of truth here, though; Kyron's teacher actually did mark Kyron absent at 10;00 AM. But then we move on to something more unsettling. Terri names a "place" between "9 and 10" as a possible location for "when" "it" happened. Time is a dimension separate from length or mass, and does not define or describe physical location, per se. Unless Terri was describing places called 9 and 10, her statement makes no sense. There is also no explanation of whom she meant by the pronoun "we" or to which event was referred by "it". Just a bunch of nonspecific gibberish immediately after a seven year old boy had disappeared. 

This is the kind of nonsense we get from people who do not want to take responsibility for oversights or mistakes, and from people who feel that the laws do not apply to them and that the rest of us are not entitled to the truth. 

In Case You Weren't In Church On Sunday

Can anyone say "overkill"? Responding with the words "bless you" when hearing a sneeze is not what our forefathers had in mind when they agreed upon separation of church and state. This Tennessee classroom has obviously gone overboard in giving a child in-school detention for instinctively using those words when a classmate sneezed. Now; if she seriously believed the archaic German/Christian superstition that one's soul disappears into the mists via the sneeze whenever this happens, and had reiterated that failing to say "bless you" could lead to eternal damnation, there may have been a slight violation; but this did not happen. Perhaps along with "overkill", she should say "gesundheit" next time.

What's Wrong With The Truth, Tom Schroeder?

About a year ago, your ever observant blogger was running an errand in the teeming metropolis of Frankfort, Kansas, and also minding her own business, when the Frankfort High School counselor, Tom Schroeder, pictured to the left, accosted her with loud accusations of "spreading lies". He then plunged into a loud verbal dissertation on the subject of out-of-district student transfers, despite the fact that no one had asked him about out-of-district student transfers, stating that there was no such thing in Marshall County. Curiously, your faithful blogger discovered this very application for out-of-district transfers right on his own school's website. That could only mean one of two things; either out-of-district transfers are only selectively offered for reasons of favoritism and the enhancement of football teams; or Tom Schroeder is a liar. Or it could mean both.

Guidance Counselor At USD 380 In Kansas Lies To A Parent

Interesting. In a state that allows students to transfer to different schools, outside of the student's home district, Tom Schroeder, the guidance counselor of Frankfort School in USD 380, noticed a parent in the public library who had tried to do this and accosted her in front of everyone about it. He insisted that Kansas offers no such options, which is contrary to what the superintendent had told the parent. Tom Schroeder's inappropriately and violently intoned rant was completely false, as the Topeka Capital Journal ran an article casually addressing the subject of transportation for out of district students! He may look enough like a circus clown to dance circles around the average frankfurter about this, but the parent he verbally attacked in public had actually heard an attorney at a USD 380 school board meeting discuss the ease and legal access Kansas parents have to schools outside their districts. So why did this parent have a problem? It all turned out to be a handful of teachers and a principal who do not understand what FERPA means. That's right, boys and girls, it wasn't legal to discuss, with cohorts, the horrors of parental disagreement with teacher criminality without a release of information from said parents. No more legal than a guidance counselor publicly yelling at the top of his lungs, before witnesses and cell phone cameras, about his lack of agreement with the parents of his students. Yet another reason to send one's children elsewhere for school; four or five children were turned into potential witnesses. Way to go, Frankfort. Thank the Gods for cell phone video, as well.

Something that the school in Frankfort would probably like to lose in the midst of all the faculty theatrics and administrative circus stunts is the reason a parent initially desired to send her children to school outside of the district. Tom Schroeder gets away with not only disrespect and public violations of federal confidentiality laws, but with driving student away from school property for sporting events and leaving them with no supervision. One child was abandoned by herself, and only made it home because she accepted a ride from a stranger. The rest of Frankfort Kansas, seven hundred and fifty people or so, thought this was funny, and the school board finds his tenure acceptable. This may be one of the reasons Governor Brownback recently signed a bill eliminating tenure for public school teachers. It sucks for the teachers who are decent, but one or two creeps like the above described guidance counselor ruins the profession for everyone.

In Hawaii, a man was recently convicted of second degree child endangerment for doing something similar, only the distance in this case was only a mile. The age of the child involved was not shared. The distance at which the Frankfort guidance counselor  abandoned his student was four miles. And when he realized she was officially missing, his response was that of going home and having dinner. Here's what the Hawaii judge, Kathleen Watanabe, had to say about cases like this: She said that it is dangerous for children to walk alongside the road due to potential pedophiles.  (Yahoo news)

Why would anyone of reasonable genetic variation want to send a child to Frankfort? Especially while Tom Schroeder is employed?

Kansas Gives Teacher Permission To Assault

According to Eyewitness News 12, a Kansas teacher and foster parent named Noble Rick Pendland was charged with sex crimes against three children, but the court accepted pleas to assault on the three charges, instead. His name does not appear in the sex offender registry, or even the violent offender registry. Each sentence is six months, eighteen months in total; and because he was held for over eighteen months in lieu of bond, his sentence was time served. He is no longer allowed to serve as a foster parent or a teacher, though. 

How backwards can Kansas possibly be? Pendland should at least be required to register in the violent offender registry, so that parents have access to his dossier when he teaches Sunday School or decides to become a priest! And telling him not to teach is useless because he does not need a teaching license to work as a para. He will probably move to Marshall County Kansas and find employment immediately at Frankfort!