So as I’ve stated before multiple times in many school board
meetings, I think the board needs a better process for ensuring that decisions
that come from our delegated hearing officers are not defective. Under the current protocol, the status quo,
we are told we can do nothing to challenge a hearing officer’s written
order. I reject that notion. Hearing officers are humans, and like judges,
hearing officers sometimes make mistakes.
Unlike judges that routinely have their defective decisions overturned
by a vibrant and fair appeals process, however, our hearing officers are
apparently beyond reproach; their decisions, even if defective, MUST only
be “accepted”—is what we are told.
This mindset is garbage.
I reject this logic totally. I
mean, what happens when we get a hearing officer who comes back with an order
stipulating the “sky is green!” Are we
to blindly genuflect and accept something just as blatantly wrong as it
pertains to student discipline? I say no
way.
Simpletons that refuse to accept the reality of this problem
will be dismissive and say things such as “This is the way this process has
always been conducted here.”
The problem with this line of thought is that with no
appeals mechanism in place to challenge a hearing officer’s defective order,
justice is not served for victims or perpetrators --be they guilty or innocent.
Here is the thing: I have no problem adopting a hearing officer’s
recommended order---even if I disagree—so long as the hearing was conducted
appropriately, Board Policy was followed, and there are not blatant legal
problems with the order. I have accepted
and have voted for many of these orders throughout my time on the school board.
But when even a Blind Man could see problems with an
order---I will NEVER simply vote to accept such a flawed product.
Example 1: If the
hearing officer finds, to the preponderance of the evidence, that a student
committed what would be the textbook definition of a battery, yet such a
hearing officer fails to
