by Cynthia Durham, Deering
The first thing I noticed since I started attending Hillsboro-Deering School Board meetings were the attacks toward John Segedy by Babette Haley.
The school board doesn’t want to become involved with anything. As parents we follow their policies. When we have an issue that isn’t resolved by administrators, we take it to the next level. When it makes it to the school board, they shut the door on us and tell us that there is a process that needs to be followed. When their own policy tells us that the next step is to go the school board and they won’t listen, then what?
Haley doesn’t like the fact that Segedy is trying to make the board do its job. The board is required to listen to parents. We asked for a vote to keep our son at Crotched Mountain and Babette took a vote to not vote on the issue. We were asked to sign a notarized statement saying they could talk about our son among themselves and in public, and then told us they wouldn’t discuss it.
When the superintendent looks down on parents like they don’t know their child and throws around phrases such as “I have a PhD,” what does that say about the running of our schools? Where do parents go to from here? Most parents don’t realize they have rights and that they can call the state Department of Education for guidance.
[Note: Cynthia Durham is the mother of Joel Durham, the child who HD is trying to move from Crotched Mountain into the HD school system]