You've Been a Bad Girl, Mrs. Beasley

While I may not host the most popular blog in the world, I am lucky enough to have some devoted fans that check me out on a regular basis. Since signing up to a site that tracks visitors I’ve discovered that people from Brazil, India, Argentina regularly visit my site. Somebody from the federal government in D.C. has even checked out my words of wisdom…which may explain why my son’s tax return has arrived but not mine.
Some of these faithful readers occasionally send requests for this segment. While a lot of these are nothing more than personal vendettas against individual businesses in our fine little city, every now and then a good idea ends up in my mailbox.
Over the last few days, one name keeps showing up in these email requests – a person who I have attacked a number of times over the past few months. Normally, I don’t like repeat offenders but I think circumstances, along with the demand of the public, makes this person the right choice to kick out of town…particularly when this person doesn’t really care much about public sentiment.
Before we get to naming this person, though, I’m going to sidetrack a little. Over the past weekend, I was going through the channels frantically searching for something – anything – to help me waste away my boring day. I ended up on an old 60’s sitcom called “Family Affair”. Trust me, it’s a truly awful show, featuring a single father, his children (played by a pair of imbeciles who must have never taken an acting class), and a butler who I swear looks like a gay child molester. I was about to move on to the next channel when I spotted Buffy carrying around a doll that she called “Mrs. Beasley”.
Although I hadn’t seen this show since I was a child (and I hated it even back then) this doll looked familiar. I know I had seen it somewhere – and recently. Then it hit me – that’s Superintendent Pam Homan!
You may recall that originally I didn’t have much against this woman. She seemed no different than any other school administrator. Since my child was being schooled in another town, I really didn’t care too much about what was going on in our schools.
Things changed quickly. My son moved in with me, which resulted in an increased awareness of what happens in not only his school but all the high schools.
At the same time, Homan became a local next fixture. First there was her poor handling of the Roosevelt bus incident. Then her fumbling and bumbling allowed the fundamentalists to take over the middle school sex education program. Finally, there was her idiotic plan to close school board meetings from the general public.
A few weeks ago came her absolutely worst moments of her career. Two Lincoln High School students found themselves a credit or two short of the total required for graduation, and Mrs. Beasley was not going to let them attend graduation. Never mind that both of these students suffered from tragic medical situations. One student’s health problems even occurred during a school activity.
Yet Mrs. Beasley had no compassion for these courageous young adults. Time after time, she held to her belief that there was no place for these boys. When rising public sentiment caused the school board to reevaluate the situation, she fell into the Bush administration mentality of blaming the media. Then she came up with this asinine “separate but equal” plan that would put non-graduates in a special section at the graduation ceremony. Yeah, that’s nice. Let’s let everybody know that these people weren’t graduating.
For the first time in recent memory, however, the citizens of our city banded together and bitch-slapped Mrs. Beasley and the rest of the school board. While many board members initially appeared to support Homan’s plan, they escaped the wrath of the mob by creating a “special exception” rule for those with medical problems.
In my mind, however, this may have been a saving grace move for the two Lincoln students, but is not the perfect solution. I guarantee there will be future problems involving questionable excuses disguised as medical conditions.
The real solution should have been obvious to these highly paid professionals – adopt the method used by most colleges, including Augustana. If a person is close enough to meeting the required standards that summer school can fix the situations, then they can participate in graduation. Those that fit in this category are handed an unsigned diploma during the ceremony, which is replaced by a real diploma when they pass their summer school classes.
Doesn’t this make sense? Shouldn’t it be obvious to Mrs. Beasley and people of her ilk? She definitely deserves to be kicked out of town this week. Oh wait, she already lives out of town. I guess it’s okay when SHE’s the recipient of special treatment.