Citizen Journalist: Fear and loathing in the Chase Administration

by Mike Martin

April 4,2008

My college European history professor used to tell our class how monarchs, kings and despots kept power over the people. "The king would keep the peasants fighting with the merchants, and the merchants fighting with the landowners, and the landowners fighting with each other," he explained. "That way, no one was fighting with the king."
That ploy also plays out in modern-day Columbia. But instead of merchants versus landowners, it's teachers versus taxpayers—the two voting blocs most likely to remove or retain our well-paid army of superintendents.
Columbia got a glimpse of this medieval strategy when Columbia Daily Tribune education reporter Janese Heavin published a series of emails sent between Columbia Public Schools Superintendent Phyllis A. Chase and school board member Michelle Gadbois.
the empress of openness Hearing rumors that Chase was threatening teachers with budget cuts if they didn't get out and sell this year's controversial tax levy, Gadbois e-mailed fellow school board members and principals. "The Columbia school board is planning cuts that would first include new teachers, literacy coaches and assistant principals," Gadbois wrote.
The e-mail set off a "they said-she said" e-war between Gadbois, the empress of openness, and Chase, whose administration bears more resemblance to a Nixonian monarchy than school district superintendence. "No decisions have been made concerning reduction priorities, nor was I aware of anyone making such statements," Chase told Heavin, who reprinted the exchange on her Class Notes blog. Gadbois visited Rock Bridge High School faculty to make sure she hadn't been hearing things. "All reassured me that it was you, Dr. Chase, who provided them with the list of possible cuts to the budget. The group was puzzled that you did not remember making the statement to them," she said.
Chase then made a threat, Gadbois claimed.
"I visited two other schools.… Teachers in both buildings … all did confirm you spoke of reductions in teacher positions and subsequent larger class sizes if voters do not vote for more funds for our district in April," Gadbois e-mailed Chase. "They also reported that you told them they would each have to convince four voters to go to the polls to support our schools."
"Let me assure you there is no ‘list' [of possible budget cuts] that has been provided to anyone," Chase replied, adding that she does "review with staffs what we as a school district are required to do."
Heavin – who's become a seasoned observer of school district intrigues – wrote that she was "not sure what this exchange means, other than someone isn't being completely honest." She also wrote that it had a familiar ring. "In May, Columbia National Education Association president Laurie Spate-Smith accused Chase in an open meeting of misleading teachers just before voters approved the $60 million bond issue in April. This was the month Chase was recommending a $500 increase to teachers' base salaries."
"When Dr. Chase asked for our help in passing the most recent bond issue, she told our membership that teachers could expect a ‘significant increase to the base,'" Spate-Smith said at the meeting. Then Chase pulled a baitand- switch, proposing a comparatively paltry $500 addition to base pay.
"Publics" and "staffs" The world Superintendent Chase neatly divides into "publics" and "staffs" locks the taxpaying public and teaching staff in an eternal conflict over higher pay versus lower taxes.
Vote down a tax increase, and hurt teachers.
Ask for a raise, and hurt taxpayers. In this clever puppetry, the highly paid superintendents who decide how to allocate tax dollars hover above the fray. They act aloof. They refuse questions. They work in secret. And they blame their minions—teachers and taxpayers—for any pain their decisions create.
Volunteer, unpaid school board members end up in the middle—an easy sacrifice to the gods of war who govern these perennial battles. "Dr. Chase has three people on the board who speak the truth," wrote a Class Notes blogger recently. "You can easily identify them at board meetings because they've all lost weight and look like they haven't slept in a week."
Pitting taxpayers against teachers and naively positioning himself to take heat at the ballot box, school board member Darin Preis recently told reporters, "It will be up to voters to prevent classroom teachers and additional programs from being cut next year. I don't want to fear monger, but that is the reality of these cuts." Unwittingly or not, fear monger Preis did—a strategy that sadly works year in and year out. Voters pay more, teachers get less (in real dollars), and superintendents continue their climb up the salary totem. Case in point: the nearly 63 percent salary increase—from $120,000 to $200,430—Superintendent Chase enjoyed over the four-year period 2003-07.
history repeats With this year's 54-cent tax hike—three times the 19 cents levied five years ago—voters expecting teacher salary increases and more money in the classroom will once again be surprised if they haven't been paying attention.
On David Lile's KFRU radio show recently, school board member Jan Mees said the district had no plans to raise wages, which she admitted lag behind those of other districts. Janese Heavin put the same question to Phyllis Chase: How would approval of the tax increase affect salaries? Even if the levy passes, Chase told Heavin "she doesn't think the district could afford to increase the base salary at all."
If the levy doesn't pass, the long knives will come out for cuts where it hurts publics and staffs the most. Meanwhile, superintendents will continue pretending to hear, speak and see no evil as they feather nests of quiet denial readied by seven well-meaning volunteers, who every year brave the wrath of teachers and taxpayers in defense of the status quo. Editor's note: Chase said in response to Martin's editorial that she began her tenure with Columbia Public Schools at the same salary her predecessor, Jim Ritter, was earning when he left, approximately $143,000.

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