Request for Tom Long - 2011-06-01
Geo
Your response included this statement:
This evening, the board discussed at our workshop the
need to document and archive everything. Therefore, I
will not respond to any email, regarding school
district matters on my private email account. Any and
all distict concerns can be sent to my district email
account at lon...@osceola.k12.fl.us
Since these public requests for school board related information have
heretofore been routed to your private email account (per your original
request), I will assume (per your statement above) that you would prefer
that these requests now be routed to your public school board member
address. This has been done.
This approach would be consistent with the approach adopted by Commissioner
Fred Hawkins when he graciously agreed to join this public newsgroup (as you
did Tom). Fred provided his public county commissioner email address for
this purpose.
Currently both your private email address and now your public school board
email address are registered in this public newsgroup.
Please let me know if you would prefer that I now remove your private email
address from this newsgroup.
Geo
board email address to this newsgroup last night, this morning it is no
longer here. Your private address is still here though.
I tried again this morning, to no avail. As you can see in the snapshots,
even though Google Groups informs me that your public address was added, it
is still not here.
I created an email forwarding workaround this morning that should solve this
problem. The workaround has been forwarded to your public email address.
Unless you have decided to no longer participate in this public forum,
please follow through with the workaround.
Thank you for your cooperation with this and I apologize for any
inconvenience.
Geo
from this newsgroup last night.
A public records request shows that your public email address was added to
the group last night at 6:22:14 PM. We can know for sure that you were
successfully added because your public school board email account received
its first (and only) message from this group (ie. "[HarmonyFL:1092] Request
for Tom Long - 2011-06-01") at 2011 6:23:23 PM.
You must have therefore unsubscribed your public email address from this
group sometime after 6:23:23 PM last night by clicking the "unsubscribe"
link in the original "You've been added to HarmonyFL" email. That's why I
couldn't add you back to this group this morning - although I did try
multiple times (not knowing what was wrong at the time).
There is no need for such cloak-and-dagger stealthiness Tom. If you have
made the choice to no longer be responsive to your constituents in this
public forum, there is no reason why you can't just come right out and say
so.
Assuming that unsubscribing from this group was not really your intention
(perhaps you clicked the "unsubscribe" link by mistake), I have found a way
to still allow you to receive these posts at your public school board email
address. But sadly, since you already unsubscribed your school board email
address previously, you can't post messages from that address at the moment.
That can be changed, but doing so requires manual intervention on your part.
You just have to let me know that you really do want to respond from your
public school board email account and we can work together to get it fixed
right away.
In the mean time, you can still post responses from your private email
account. That subscription has so far not been changed.
If you would prefer that all messages sent from this newsgroup to your
public school board email account be stopped, please say so and I will have
them stopped immediately.
Geo
I have been unsuccessful in locating the unsubscribe
link to your group. Please remove this email address
from any future emails. To be perfectly clear, remove
me from your Harmonfl google group.
...
Do not contact me again at this private email address,
for any reason.
To be clear, "this private email address" is the same email address given by
Tom when he agreed to participate in this forum last year.
Although he ran for his school board seat on a platform of transparency and
accountability, Tom Long has apparently decided that being personally
transparent and accountable is not what he meant.
Tom Long agreed to be openly responsive in this forum to Harmony residents,
some of whom voted for him in the past school board election.
Here's what I wrote last year (see http://tinyurl.com/3zo8pze ):
Welcome Tom Long, Osceola School Board Member for
District #5!
Mr. Long has graciously accepted my invitation to join
this newsgroup for the purpose of being responsive to
Harmony residents. I'm not sure if Mr. Long would
prefer the usual formality or if "Tom" is OK, but I am
sure that anyone is free to ask.
Please feel free to ask Mr. Long anything of concern
about Osceola County Schools.
Thank you Mr. Long for your willingness to be open and
accessible this way.
Here's what Tom Long wrote in response (after the election):
Tom is fine with me, thank you. If anyone has
questions or concerns about the school district, please
send me a note and I will try to help.
I will also be holding quarterly "town hall" style
meetings in District 5 so that citizens can come ask
questions, offer suggestions and learn more about what
is going on in our local schools. Please come join us.
Tom
Since then Tom has responded several more times. In fact, I even asked him
earlier this year about his views on transparency and accountability (see
http://tinyurl.com/6kaorpu ):
Tom, I know that you ran a very successful campaign on
the issues of transparency and accountability in the
most recent election. I have little doubt that the
choice you made is an important part of why you where
elected. Sadly, when offered the same choice, Jay
[Wheeler] turned it down. Like public officials in
Harmony, Jay decided that he would rather not answer
questions from his constituency in a public forum like
this.
Here's what Tom wrote at the time:
I also asked Mr. Wheeler how soon he would be tendering
his resignation, knowing full well that it would not
take effect until November, 2012. Of course, Mr.
Wheeler was very evasive. My concern is the continuity
of the Board. I had heard for months that Mr. Wheeler
had decided to run for County, even before he was sworn
in for this term.
I decided to run on accountability, credibility and
transparency because I believed this was severely
lacking on the Board. I have made attempts, with the
support of the majority of the board to become more
transparent.
So while Tom doesn't like it when Jay Wheeler is evasive, apparently he is
OK with being evasive himself.
Since Tom Long is now above answering questions of voters, parents of
students or anyone else, we can only wonder why he's made this sudden about
face. Perhaps the short list of questions about the recent superintendent
search process can help shed some light on this conundrum (see
http://groups.google.com/group/harmonyfl/msg/d16e95546396b277 ). But then
again maybe not since the questions still remain unanswered.
Here's a hint. Public statements made by several members of the recent
superintendent search committee are contradicted by the facts. Public
statements made by at least one school board member about the recent
superintendent search process are also contradicted by the facts.
Tom Long is well aware of these contradictory facts, yet he refuses to even
look at them. It seems that he would prefer that the truth remain hidden
since it shows that the recent superintendent search process was seriously
flawed.