{"id":39899,"date":"2019-11-19T20:55:25","date_gmt":"2019-11-19T20:55:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=39899"},"modified":"2019-11-19T21:49:58","modified_gmt":"2019-11-19T21:49:58","slug":"i-thought-i-had-heard-it-all-then-came-this","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=39899","title":{"rendered":"I thought I had heard it all … then came this"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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I lost count long ago the number of public government hearings I have covered as a reporter. Over the span of many years in the trenches, I thought I had heard everything there was to say in a public meeting of elected officials and senior public administrators.<\/p>\n

Then came what I heard Monday night in little ol’ Farmersville, Texas.<\/p>\n

I was attending a school board meeting of the Farmersville Independent School District on behalf of the Farmersville Times, one of the weekly newspapers I work for on a freelance basis. The board convened the meeting, then went into private session to discuss matters exempted from public view by the Texas Open Meetings Act.<\/p>\n

The audience left the meeting room. We waited outside. Then the door opened and the board reconvened the open meeting.\u00a0I returned to my seat, with notebook and pen<\/em> in hand.<\/p>\n

The board and the superintendent began discussing the search for a new superintendent who will succeed the gentleman, Jeff Adams, who will retire at the end of the current year.<\/p>\n

Adams went through much of what was discussed in private session. He talked about timetables and assorted aspects of the search for candidates. Then he said, the following: He offered to “dig up dirt” on the applicants if there was any dirt to be found.<\/p>\n

I don’t recall flinching or reacting in any visible manner. I didn’t see any such reaction from the school trustees.<\/p>\n

However, I have slept on it overnight. I am now a bit startled by what the superintendent offered to do on behalf of the board.<\/p>\n

I don’t recall ever hearing a senior government administrator, let alone an elected official, ever make such an offer.<\/p>\n

I haven’t discussed this directly with Adams. Nor with any of the trustees.\u00a0I am left to wonder about the motivation for agreeing to do such a thing, or to saying it in public. The trustees and the superintendent surely knew why I was there and that my note-taking didn’t cease when I heard the superintendent make the “dirt digging” offer.<\/p>\n

I won’t pass judgment on the wisdom of the offer. I merely want to assert that I thought I had heard everything \u2026 until Monday night.<\/p>\n

Kinda strange.<\/p>\n\n

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I lost count long ago the number of public government hearings I have covered as a reporter. Over the span of many years in the trenches, I thought I had heard everything there was to say in a public meeting of elected officials and senior public administrators. Then came what I heard Monday night in … Continue reading I thought I had heard it all … then came this<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6251],"tags":[9048,9049],"class_list":["post-39899","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-education-news","tag-farmersville-isd","tag-farmersville-superintendent-search"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39899","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=39899"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39899\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":39903,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39899\/revisions\/39903"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=39899"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=39899"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=39899"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}