Posted: Friday, April 26, 2013 2:00 pm | Updated: 5:08 pm, Fri Apr 26, 2013.
Pennsbury school board Director Simon Campbell’s knickers were in a twist over redistricting proposals, and Edgewood PTO President Amy Waters, who dared email the full school board on the subject, was going to hear about it.Campbell blasted her in a 720-word nasty gram he copied to the board, two principals, the superintendent of schools, and a state rep. (The full text of Wateroriginal email and Campbell’s response are attached to this column online.)The email has been widely circulated in the last two weeks by those who want Campbell and his knickers off the school board in this year’s elections. Ridiculously divisive, they say.
I asked Campbell if he realized what a jerk he’d been to Waters in his response to her. He didn’t see it that way. “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder,” he quipped.
Jerk, I say, because he began his emailed assault by mocking Waters’ salutation (She’d written, “Hello, Pennsbury School Board! My name is Amy Waters.”). It went swiftly, angrily downhill from there, accusing her in the end of a lack of regard for the district.
Didn’t see that coming, said a red-faced Waters. Her email wasn’t combative. It was, in fact, polite. She signed off, “Respectfully.”
The worst part was how humiliating it felt to let Campbell’s rebuff just hang there in the air. But answering him and copying the others to defend herself seemed a bad idea. She didn’t want to sound angry or shrill. So she sat like a scolded child and wondered why she was foolish enough to get involved.
Which, I suspect, is Campbell’s intention when he bullies.
There is a tendency by smart people to concede the last word to him. It has a chilling effect on intelligent, broad, thoughtful discussion of issues in Pennsbury.
There is no shortage of people willing to trade insults with him, but rather a shortage of informed, articulate, outspoken citizen champions for the schools.
To advocate, or lead a camp opposed to the bombastic Campbell’s way of seeing things, is to expose yourself to chiding at a taped public meeting, on Facebook, on YouTube, in news coverage and in emails copied to everyone and their brother.
Who needs it?
Waters is a reserved, married mother of two, and a former public accountant, internal auditor, and business manager for Merrill Lynch’s corporate audit department.
Her verbal whooping by Campbell came after she emailed the nine school board members suggesting that numbers used to decide Edgewood’s part in the redistricting seemed off to her. Way off. She offered to meet with them to explain her thinking. “Let us tell you what the numbers say,” she wrote.
If Campbell wasn’t impressed by her professional training in spotting garbage numbers, he might have rewarded her service with some modicum of respect.
Waters leads Edgewood’s PTO in raising considerable sums of money to pay for educational programs and materials that otherwise are unaffordable. Edgewood’s PTO at the Lower Makefield school also consistently collects truckloads of nonperishable food every year to stock a Lower Bucks pantry.
PTOs no longer are just about baking cupcakes and buying party streamers.
Waters is not actively involved in regional school board politics. She and other PTO parents involved themselves in the redistricting debate because they worry Edgewood’s enrollment is increasingly low. Could it be shuttered next if they don’t advocate?
And so, Waters was asking officials to hear her take on the numbers before sending 31 kids to Afton Elementary farther north in the redistricting domino.
Campbell, for his part, has publicly directed parents to “lobby” the school board on alternative suggestions to the redistricting plan and to lay off the 22-member committee that drafted it.
But in his email to Waters, Campbell seemed incensed that Edgewood parents and Waters took him at his word.
“I can tell you that your ability to influence me is not going to be enhanced by arranging for me to receive 100 emails in three days. Nor is it going to be enhanced by arranging for a crowd to talk ‘at’ me in a school board meeting. Nor does it impress me when you catch a public attitude with our superintendent.
“Nor does it work for me if anyone seeks to involve a state politician in their cause. Only school board directors have the legal authority to give any interest group what they might want. And none of us report to (state Rep.) Steve Santarsiero, who is welcome to express his view as a citizen but whose office has zero authority in this matter.
“Nor does it help if you seek to enlist (Edgewood’s) principal in your cause because your principal, at the end of the day, much like our superintendent, is part of the team who will have to administer the will of the board.”
“Elitist,” Campbell has said outside of the email in describing Edgewood parents. Selfishly seeking special treatment. Tantrum throwers. Childish.
Fighting words. And, if you are too grown up to fight back in the same way, as is the case with Waters, you are left standing before Campbell holding your hat in your hand, or in her case an email, with his words hanging in the air unchallenged.
As for the will of the board, one is left to wonder about it. So often the other eight board members go silent. Several are not seeking re-election. It leaves Waters to wonder if, they, too, can’t abide the public derision on Facebook, YouTube, at public meetings and in the press.
It’s a problem.
There’s so much at stake in the district. Reason to protect spirited, but broad, level, extensive discussion.
Redistricting. Outsourcing. Employee contracts. A suggestion by some that it’s time for pay-to-play to cover the cost of extra-curricular sports.
Only one school, Quarry Hill in Lower Makefield, will not be affected by the redistricting plan set to be voted on May 9. More than 650 kids to be shuffled in a move to save the cost of running Village Park in Falls.
“I guess the thinking is we all should share the pain,” Waters says.
Does that make sense? Hard to say.
Waters has asked for documentation to support some of the numbers central office provided the redistricting committee. Superintendent Kevin McHugh, who said in a statement to the school board that the numbers were based on “assumptions” and “criteria” consistently applied to all schools and which include “nuances,” has not provided it to her.
Every resident of the district should ask, why not?
I asked Campbell if he realized what a jerk he’d been to Waters in his response to her. He didn’t see it that way. “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder,” he quipped.
Jerk, I say, because he began his emailed assault by mocking Waters’ salutation (She’d written, “Hello, Pennsbury School Board! My name is Amy Waters.”). It went swiftly, angrily downhill from there, accusing her in the end of a lack of regard for the district.
Didn’t see that coming, said a red-faced Waters. Her email wasn’t combative. It was, in fact, polite. She signed off, “Respectfully.”
The worst part was how humiliating it felt to let Campbell’s rebuff just hang there in the air. But answering him and copying the others to defend herself seemed a bad idea. She didn’t want to sound angry or shrill. So she sat like a scolded child and wondered why she was foolish enough to get involved.
Which, I suspect, is Campbell’s intention when he bullies.
There is a tendency by smart people to concede the last word to him. It has a chilling effect on intelligent, broad, thoughtful discussion of issues in Pennsbury.
There is no shortage of people willing to trade insults with him, but rather a shortage of informed, articulate, outspoken citizen champions for the schools.
To advocate, or lead a camp opposed to the bombastic Campbell’s way of seeing things, is to expose yourself to chiding at a taped public meeting, on Facebook, on YouTube, in news coverage and in emails copied to everyone and their brother.
Who needs it?
Waters is a reserved, married mother of two, and a former public accountant, internal auditor, and business manager for Merrill Lynch’s corporate audit department.
Her verbal whooping by Campbell came after she emailed the nine school board members suggesting that numbers used to decide Edgewood’s part in the redistricting seemed off to her. Way off. She offered to meet with them to explain her thinking. “Let us tell you what the numbers say,” she wrote.
If Campbell wasn’t impressed by her professional training in spotting garbage numbers, he might have rewarded her service with some modicum of respect.
Waters leads Edgewood’s PTO in raising considerable sums of money to pay for educational programs and materials that otherwise are unaffordable. Edgewood’s PTO at the Lower Makefield school also consistently collects truckloads of nonperishable food every year to stock a Lower Bucks pantry.
PTOs no longer are just about baking cupcakes and buying party streamers.
Waters is not actively involved in regional school board politics. She and other PTO parents involved themselves in the redistricting debate because they worry Edgewood’s enrollment is increasingly low. Could it be shuttered next if they don’t advocate?
And so, Waters was asking officials to hear her take on the numbers before sending 31 kids to Afton Elementary farther north in the redistricting domino.
Campbell, for his part, has publicly directed parents to “lobby” the school board on alternative suggestions to the redistricting plan and to lay off the 22-member committee that drafted it.
But in his email to Waters, Campbell seemed incensed that Edgewood parents and Waters took him at his word.
“I can tell you that your ability to influence me is not going to be enhanced by arranging for me to receive 100 emails in three days. Nor is it going to be enhanced by arranging for a crowd to talk ‘at’ me in a school board meeting. Nor does it impress me when you catch a public attitude with our superintendent.
“Nor does it work for me if anyone seeks to involve a state politician in their cause. Only school board directors have the legal authority to give any interest group what they might want. And none of us report to (state Rep.) Steve Santarsiero, who is welcome to express his view as a citizen but whose office has zero authority in this matter.
“Nor does it help if you seek to enlist (Edgewood’s) principal in your cause because your principal, at the end of the day, much like our superintendent, is part of the team who will have to administer the will of the board.”
“Elitist,” Campbell has said outside of the email in describing Edgewood parents. Selfishly seeking special treatment. Tantrum throwers. Childish.
Fighting words. And, if you are too grown up to fight back in the same way, as is the case with Waters, you are left standing before Campbell holding your hat in your hand, or in her case an email, with his words hanging in the air unchallenged.
As for the will of the board, one is left to wonder about it. So often the other eight board members go silent. Several are not seeking re-election. It leaves Waters to wonder if, they, too, can’t abide the public derision on Facebook, YouTube, at public meetings and in the press.
It’s a problem.
There’s so much at stake in the district. Reason to protect spirited, but broad, level, extensive discussion.
Redistricting. Outsourcing. Employee contracts. A suggestion by some that it’s time for pay-to-play to cover the cost of extra-curricular sports.
Only one school, Quarry Hill in Lower Makefield, will not be affected by the redistricting plan set to be voted on May 9. More than 650 kids to be shuffled in a move to save the cost of running Village Park in Falls.
“I guess the thinking is we all should share the pain,” Waters says.
Does that make sense? Hard to say.
Waters has asked for documentation to support some of the numbers central office provided the redistricting committee. Superintendent Kevin McHugh, who said in a statement to the school board that the numbers were based on “assumptions” and “criteria” consistently applied to all schools and which include “nuances,” has not provided it to her.
Every resident of the district should ask, why not?
6 comments:
Campbell and Ledger must be on the same low fiber diet.
Typical. Jackass. Hopefully the people of Pennsbury do the right thing and get rid of him this election.
he looks like he is taking a poop, the kind that does not come out so easily. Ive seen that face on Ron Stout too
Ron Stout poops in his sleep? Messy!
Simon Scat Campbell?
Campbell denies making disparaging comments about special education students
Posted: Friday, May 10, 2013 12:00 am | Updated: 6:38 am, Fri May 10, 2013.
By Joan Hellyer Staff Writer
It's a he said-she said situation. He says no.
Pennsbury school board member Simon Campbell denies he recently suggested eliminating special education programs as a way to get special education students and their parents to move out of the district.
Judy Petrangeli, a former board member and parent of a special needs student, told the governing body during its May 2 planning meeting that she had heard about comments that Campbell allegedly made. She came to the board meeting to see if they were correct.
Campbell allegedly suggested that the district not offer a good quality program for special needs students, Petrangeli said. That would force their families to move elsewhere to have their kids educated.
“Mr. Campbell, you are rumored to have said that if the special education students and parents move out of district it would free up money for mainstream and gifted students,” Petrangeli said.
She asked Campbell if he said that. He denied making the suggestion.
But board members Jacqueline Redner and John Palmer said he made those comments during the board’s closed door executive session March 7.
According to Redner, Campbell said he assumed the district had a good special education program and maybe if it wasn’t available some of the special education students and their parents would move to free up money for the rest of the student population.
“I concur that statement was made. I heard it too,” Palmer said.
Campbell said he did not make that statement and that his comments during the closed-door executive session were being taken out of context.
He did not get a chance to explain himself further during the May 2 public meeting because board President Allan Weisel quickly ended the discussion. Weisel said he was cutting it off because the discussion had turned into an attack on Campbell.
The board member declined Thursday night to comment further about the allegation. "I don't respond to pure fabrications and outright lies," Campbell said.
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