Bob McCarty Writes

Yesterday, I published a post, Contest Rewards Kids for Pro-Union Thinking, in which I offered details about an effort to expose elementary school children in Missouri to pro-union propaganda and reward them for practicing pro-union writing skills. Today, I offer a follow-up piece.

My efforts yesterday included contacting both the publisher of Missouri Studies Weekly, a four-page mini-newspaper touted as offering mostly-historical content that meets state education standards, and the school district that includes MSW as part of the fourth-grade curriculum at the school my son attends. My goals were:

• To determine what, if any, role district and/or state education officials played in developing content for the publication; and
  

• To determine who was responsible for choosing this material for use in the classroom.

“North Mountain Publishing” appeared on the back page of the newspaper, so I concluded that it must be the publisher. A quick online search turned up a phone number for the company’s headquarters in Alpine, Utah.

I made the phone call and quickly learned two things about North Mountain:

• The company had, indeed, been the publisher; and

• It had recently been purchased by another company, American Legacy Publishing, based in American Fork, Utah.

After I had the opportunity to express my interest in MSW to the American Legacy representative who answered my call, she took my name and telephone number and promised to have someone contact me. A short while later, a managing editor of MSW, called me back.

The ME gladly provided information, including the fact that the purchase of North Mountain by American Legacy had taken place soon after the MSW issue in question (Vol. 8, Issue 3 Third Quarter Week 20) had been published and distributed to schools.

Regarding the matter of what, if any, role district and/or state education officials played in developing content for the publication, the ME explained that North Mountain had always relied upon teachers and former teachers to help write a portion of the newspaper’s content. In addition, the company had always worked in concert with those teachers and school officials to determine the nature of that content, all of which met state education standards.

Because American Legacy had only recently purchased North Mountain, the ME could not tell me who, specifically, within the local school district or state education infrastructure, had been responsible for working with the previous publisher to develop MSW content. Similarly, she could not tell me who was responsible for making the decision to use MSW in the classroom, so I decided to make some local phone calls.

Monday at approximately 1 p.m. Central, I contacted the superintendent’s office of the school district and asked two questions:

• Did anyone within the district work with the company to supply content for MSW? and

• Who made the decision to purchase MSW subscriptions for the district and/or to use MSW in the classroom?

An assistant to the district’s director of communications fielded my call and logged my questions. Unable to provide an immediate response, she promised to call me back. After three hours passed, I decided to call back. Another person answered and informed me that the person I was trying to reach was not available, so I left a message on her voice mail.

Twenty-five minutes later, I received a call, but not from the superintendent’s office. Apparently, the “buck” had been passed to an assistant principal — make that a substitute assistant principal — at the elementary school. Hereafter, I’ll refer to her as “the SAP,” not intending it as a slur of any kind, mind you.

The message wrapped inside the “buck” received by the SAP appeared, unfortunately, to have been garbled during transmission. If you’ve ever participated in one of those party games/workplace exercises that involves a message being whispered from one person to another until it has made its way around a room, you know what happened. As a result, I had to explain the nature of my inquiry one mor time.

The SAP was very friendly and promised to respond as soon as she could locate answers to my questions. She located them and delivered them to me via phone a short while ago this morning.

As for the question of who within the school district had worked with North Mountain to provide content for MSW, the SAP said no one within the district knew of anyone within having performed such duties.

As for the question of who within the school district had made the decision to use MSW in the classroom/purchase MSW subscriptions, well, it appears I’m partially to blame, though the SAP didn’t make an issue out of the fact. Instead, the SAP simply told me that parents like me had forked out $4 each at the beginning of the school year to cover the costs of a one-year MSW subscription — 28 weekly issues.

Buck accepted.

[Editor's note: I've withheld the name of the school and school district in question in order to minimize possible repercussions against any of my school-age children still attending district schools.]

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See also: Contest Rewards Kids for Pro-Union Thinking (Part One)