'When I was in high school, I was a motherf***ing beast'

Like they say, all of life is high school. And it looks like one substitute teacher in Baton Rouge, La., is still doing pretty well in the "motherf***ing beast" department.

I wish I were shocked by this. I am not. I was educated in the public schools of East Baton Rouge Parish.

No, I didn't have any teachers -- substitute or otherwise -- this profane. Then again, it was the '60s and '70s, not the "bitch and ho" new millennium. But I did have a couple of teachers this malevolent.

Naturally, the main concern of Glasgow Middle School's principal is that the parent of the kid who shot the cell-phone video went to the media and not to her. Something tells me that concern was more on "airing dirty laundry" grounds than on "wasting no time in the dispatching of a 'motherf***ing beast'" grounds.

WAFB television reports on this slice of what passes for life in an utterly destroyed school system:

The video shows a full-time substitute teacher in front of an 8th grade class at Glasgow Middle School shouting obscenities. The rant and tirade goes on for about five minutes.

In one part of the cell phone video, the teacher says "I ain't gonna argue with your ass. I'm gonna pop your ass in the mouth, I'm gonna drop your ass."

She was also recorded saying "This is my last time cussing or fussing with this class, because on Wednesday I'm writing your motherf****** asses up."

"Disbelief – I just couldn't believe it. I was like in shock," said Terri McLendon, mother of the student who recorded the video. "My son had been punished behind this lady and he had just gotten his phone back Sunday, and this was recorded on Monday. So I just couldn't believe it," McLendon added.

It appears she was upset about her students not willing to be taught. "You don't wanna learn? Get the f***- That's how I feel," said the teacher in the video as she pointed to the door.

"I don't talk to my child like that, she has no good right. She has to handle those kids accordingly. Like you know, send them to the principal's office. None of them deserved to be cursed out like that," McLendon said.

The teacher was also recorded saying "If you're sitting here looking at me in rare form, and you should know, when I was in college and when I was in High school, I was a mother f***** beast."

"For the parents benefit, we don't want the parents to believe that this is something we would condone nor is it something that any school would ever condone," said Glasgow Middle School Principal Dianne Talbot.

When asked if substitute teachers are prepared for what they may encounter in a classroom, Talbot responded that every teacher in the parish system, substitute or not, must undergo an orientation process.

THAT MUST be some orientation process. And I really want to see someone's ass get popped in the mouth. Unless she's speaking to a classroom full of donkey owners, I really hope she doesn't teach biology or health.

If she is talking to a classroom of donkey owners . . . somebody call the humane society.

By the way, ask me sometime to tell you why I hate math now when, once upon a time, I liked it.

LSU, early 1950s

What a treasure!

This treasure happens to be home movies taken by an LSU student in the early 1950s, shots of a campus, of a Tiger Town just north of campus and of a way of life that simultaneously is quite familiar and somewhat alien.

The Goal Post restaurant? Long gone. I figure it was across Highland Road from where The Chimes bar and restaurant is now.

And . . . oh, my Lord! The mascot! That's Mike I -- the university's first live Bengal tiger mascot.

A treasure. Just a treasure for old Tigers like me.
 

UPDATE: I was reminded by an old friend of the 8-millimeter movies shot by his parents just a few years later -- around 1956 or '57ish -- when they arrived in Baton Rouge for his dad to take an assistant professor post at the Ol' War Skule.

It's heartening to realize that even the darkest days of segregation and Southern self-foot-shooting could not stifle the time-honored LSU tradition of smart-assery, directed in this instance at the Louisiana Legislature.

Trees "for white dogs only." Heh.

The coach is dead

I was a 20-year-old student journalist at LSU, covering the latest outrage against the long-suffering student body of that august institution.

The athletic department had announced it would begin searching, at the gates of Tiger Stadium, football fans' purses and backpacks for Demon Rum.

And Demon Bourbon.

And Demon Vodka.

And Demon Beer.

The goal was to sober up the student body -- and everybody else -- a little bit in hopes of improving Tiger fans' demeanor at games.

MY JOB was to interview the athletic director, LSU coaching legend Paul Dietzel, about the new policy and come up with a front-page story for The Daily Reveille. As a newspaper reporter, my aim was to get a good story.

As a student, my opinion was that this smacked of an egregious violation of the Fourth Amendment.

As someone who was most appreciative when somebody passed the flask down the aisle so we could put a little zip in our ballgame Coca-Colas, I already was feeling a little dry. Remember, this is Louisiana we're talking about -- not Utah. God Almighty, not Utah.

On the one hand, I was going to have the lead story in the paper. On the other, I was going to meet the Tiger coaching legend, the man who had delivered the school (at that time) its only national championship of the modern era with the undefeated 1958 football team -- the man behind the iconic Go team, White team and the mighty Chinese Bandits defense specialists -- who also happened to be, in this instance, The Enemy.

The Man.

The second coming of Carrie Nation.

SO I GO in there for the interview, I shake the legendary Enemy's hand, sit down on the other side of the desk and we start to talk. It was the best kind of interview . . . a real conversation. Coach Dietzel treated this wet-behind-the-ears reporter with the utmost respect, to the point where it was like solving all the problems of the world with your favorite uncle.

He explained the policy, the reasoning behind it, and then he started asking me questions -- questions about what students were thinking 20-odd years after he had engraved his name onto Tiger fans' souls, forever and ever, amen.

Dietzel was gracious, down to earth and funny. He was a true gentleman. Humble, even. And he allowed that his favorite student-section cheer was the one reserved for hated Alabama -- "Around the bowl and down the hole! Roll, Tide, roll!"

That one really cracked him up.

If I've ever had a more enjoyable interview with someone, I can't remember when, or with whom, it was. I don't know that Coach changed my mind about the Tiger Stadium War on Fun . . . er, Booze, but he did win my respect, and he taught me something about honorable people and honest differences of opinion.

THOUSANDS upon thousands of words will be written in Tigerland -- and across the sports universe -- about Paul Dietzel on the sad occasion of his death today. The vast majority will be about his tenure as coach, and later, AD, and his magical team that conquered all of college football 55 years ago. Some will be reserved for how he became an accomplished watercolor artist later in life. A few might touch on his World War II days as a B-29 crewman in the Pacific theater.

But Coach's greatest accomplishments -- gentleman, husband of 69 years, father, good man -- get short shrift. Those are the ones I'm thinking about right now. Those accomplishments and the graciousness and good humor he showed this young-punk reporter back in 1981.

Godspeed and God bless, Coach. You will be missed tremendously.

The keys to the kingdom

 

Salvation can look like a Gideons' Bible.

It can look like a legal document, with a governor's signature and an embossed seal, commuting a condemned man's sentence.

Salvation can look like a beautiful woman with a pure heart, here to save you from your sorry self.

Salvation can look like a life preserver floating next to you in a choppy sea; it can look like an outstretched hand just before you slide off a precipice; it can look like the cover of your favorite record album.

Salvation, for me, looks like a brochure from the spring of 1976, one advertising this strange, unbelievably cool thing the East Baton Rouge Parish school system was calling a "magnet school." Inner-city Baton Rouge High -- venerable and grand and buffeted by the forces that had turned a small town divided by race and "the tracks" into a middle-sized city atomized into warring neighborhood enclaves -- was being remade into a school focused on academics and the performing arts, and not just anybody could get in.

THE SCHOOL'S new principal, Lee Faucette, was making the rounds of high schools and junior highs to make his best pitch to those schools' best students. And . . . sweet Jesus! Not just anybody could get in!

If you've ever been to junior high and hated it -- especially if you've been to junior high and absolutely hated school because you were somewhat good at it. . . . Well, if you have . . . and did . . . because you were . . . you know.

You know what a salvation Baton Rouge High was for kids like me -- for kids like us -- precisely because it was made for learning and not crowd control. Because there, you didn't have to be ashamed of learning. Because everyone there was there because there is where they wanted to be.

WHERE I didn't want to be come the fall of 1976 was at Belaire High, a soulless monolith that looked more like a maximum-security facility than an educational one. And to me, those magnet school brochures Mr. Faucette passed out looked like a Gideons' Bible, a commutation, a beautiful woman, a life preserver, an outstretched hand and a Bruce Springsteen album rolled into one glorious package.

I found this when my wife and I were in Baton Rouge cleaning out my elderly mom's house -- the home of my youth.  I saved it, and then she saved it, and then 37 years later, there it was stuck in a box jammed on a shelf. Sometimes, the only thing between you and a flood of blessed memories is cardboard, one-eighth-inch thick.

When we had to head back to Omaha, we filled our Toyota RAV and my mom's compact Kia with the stuff that mattered. My most excellent collection of 1960s G.I. Joes and Hot Wheels sits in the house that's no longer anyone's home, waiting for the estate sale.

The 1976 piece of card-stock salvation came home with me.

The quadrangle of broken dreams

Since I had given up hope, I felt a whole lot better.

And since I had been feeling a whole lot better, I hadn't been writing much about the perils of the Pelican State lately. For one thing, I'm a Nebraskan originally from Louisiana, not a Louisianian who has to put up with that s***  anymore. For another thing, if people in Louisiana were willing to listen to a little common sense, they wouldn't be in the perpetual mess that is their lot in life, apparently.

Finally, it's not like I'm planning on moving back.

But I was asked to write a guest post about Louisiana's woes being a matter of culture and not politics -- always remember . . . culture precedes politics -- for LSU journalism professor Robert Mann's excellent blog, so I opened up a vein, and there you go.

IT WAS the least I could do for someone at my alma mater, filled as it is with faculty and staff busting their asses to give Louisianians more education than they're willing to pay for, as well as a better flagship university than the state deserves. Like Rhett Butler, apparently, they've "always had a weakness for lost causes once they're really lost." 

And the experts say, as J.R. Ball outlines in the Greater Baton Rouge Business Report, that LSU's national cause really is lost, thanks to an indifferent public and an execrable pile of politicians befouling the capitol that Huey built:

Connect the reality dots discussed during the meeting and it's clear LSU's situation will get worse before it begins—hopefully—to get better. LSU is not a top 100 school in the U.S. News & World Report list, nor is it in the top 100 on the more respected National Science Foundation rankings. The current trajectory is research grants are declining dramatically as top faculty, tired of an institution held together by duct tape and rubber bands, are leaving for universities in states where higher education is actually taken seriously.

All of which makes reaching the goal of LSU2015—transforming the state's flagship institution into a nationally recognized research university able to attract and retain the world's best academic and research talent—about as likely as finding Bo Rein's plane in the Atlantic Ocean.

Jim Firnberg, a member of the committee and a former consultant for the NSF, says LSU should focus on six research areas where it has a legitimate chance to compete nationally—environmental science and coastal research, biomedical sciences, energy, arts and humanities, computation and digital media, and natural and renewable resources. Yet, he warns, the tomorrow of LSU becoming a top 50 research university will never come. At best, LSU could become a top 75 institution.

Putting that in sports terms—which seems to be the only thing associated with education that people in this state understand—LSU will never be a BCS-caliber academic school; the best it can hope for is mid-major status.

Just one day after this somber reminder of LSU's place in the world of higher education, a bid to end almost 20 years of tuition control by the Legislature died when the same elected officials who, over the past six years, have cut some $650 million in higher education funding, did not see the need to give university boards the right to increase tuition rates that, by national standards, are pathetically low. In other words, the actions of Gov. Bobby Jindal and legislators are loudly telling university leaders they need to find a way to operate with minimal state subsidies, but legislators aren't about to let them do it with much-needed tuition hikes.

We now have a new definition for “moronic.”

Even with the most optimistic Jindal-backed accounting method, higher education has been whacked some $300 million over the past six years, much of that absorbed by LSU. Yet we hear nothing from those wielding the ax about the resulting job losses, or the fact that higher education is supposed to be the key to our economic success in a world powered by knowledge, research and creativity. When officials at LSU and other state universities complain, those who complain too loudly are eased out of their jobs and those that remain are told to shut up and figure it out.

AND INDIGNANT Louisianians say I hate the Not-So-Great State. Whatever lets you sleep at night, man. Whatever lets you sleep at night.

The golden age of local television

Here's your media geekery du jour. Why don't we call it something pithy yet classy?

Something like "The Golden Age of Local," courtesy of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln College of Journalism and Mass Communication.

God, I love this stuff.

Loveitloveitloveitloveitloveit.

Honest to God. As if you couldn't tell.

In other words, sometimes just one blog post on this level of coolness just isn't enough. I mean . . .  GADGETS!

Cool old gadgets!

Artifact on artifacts

The journalism building at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln is something of a shrine to one-time tools of the trade, both print and broadcasting.

A museum, actually. One spread throughout the college, amid the classrooms and conference rooms and broadcast-production studios and computer labs. Turn one corner and there's a vintage RCA TK-30 black-and-white camera from the early days of television.

Like this one, dating from between 1946 and 1950.

Turn another corner, there's a wire recorder and a turntable that cuts transcription discs. And then there's that vintage television transmitter (?!) against a wall of the basement lecture hall.

But what had me reaching for the Geritol was how bloody many "museum pieces" I actually have used at some point. Before they were exhibit fodder.

NOT ONLY that, I own and still use a not-insignificant number of things in the Nebraska journalism-college exhibit.

That TEAC reel-to-reel tape recorder below is newer than the one I salvaged from an estate sale and still use -- which is much like what passed for "state of the art" when I was learning the craft of radio in high school.

I AM NOT sure what that says about me. Probably nothing good.

Good night, and have a pleasant tomorrow.

To infinity . . . and beyond!

At halftime of Saturday's Nebraska football game, you got the marching band and stuff, sure . . . but you also got to watch some teenagers commit science.

With a little help from a homegrown astronaut.

And they launched some experiment-carrying weather balloons to infinity . . . and beyond! Or just shy of 100,000 feet, whichever came first.

SUNDAY, the Omaha World-Herald got the scoop:

It takes a lot of work to gain the privilege of standing on the field at Memorial Stadium on game day in front of 85,000 fans.

It takes dedication, hours of practice, weeks of preparation.

But the cheers Saturday weren't just for touchdowns, and a football wasn't the only flying object.

A group of students and teachers led one of the biggest science experiments Husker Nation has ever seen.

During halftime, the group released three high-altitude balloons, also known as weather balloons.

The balloons, 8 feet in diameter and typically filled with helium, floated to heights of up to 20 miles into “near space” to collect data. Astronaut Clayton Anderson of Ashland, Neb., assisted with the launch.

One balloon carried specimens of E. coli, red and white blood cells, oranges, motor oil and experimental planting seeds.

A second carried special devices to collect environmental data so students could measure such things as air pressure and cosmic rays. The third carried an identification banner of the different groups.

The data were expected to fall to Earth a couple hours after liftoff.

Michael Sibbernsen, science and technology coordinator at the Strategic Air & Space Museum, said near space is an area in the atmosphere where conditions are very cold and relatively similar to those of outer space.

Many of the experiments measured how near space and high altitudes affect the specimens. Thanks to a NASA grant, such research is now accessible to students and teachers in Nebraska.

WATCH the video (above) from the university. Cool stuff from the very edge of space.

The perils of philanthropy

Breaking news: The Baton Rouge campus of Louisiana State University will take another severe budgetary hit next fiscal year, this time reportedly to the tune of $7.2 million.

Gov. Bobby Jindal's 2013-14 spending blueprint will mark the fifth straight year of severe cuts to LSU, but he is expected to announce next spring that the cut in state support for the flagship university will have virtually no impact.

"Things will operate on the Baton Rouge campus just as they did last year," Jindal will say. "Academic programs at LSU won't lose a single penny despite our ongoing program of creating efficiencies in higher education."

The governor expects no problem in getting the cuts through the Legislature.

"I expect they'll make the cuts if they know what's good for them," he will intone . . . somberly. "As a matter of fact, I think we might even find a few million more in efficiencies if the Tigers have a really big year in football."

Now I am no soothsayer, but I know this will happen. "How?" you might ask.

WELL, I'm happy to answer your question. The foreknowledge came to me while I was reading a press release from the LSU Athletic Department:

A policy believed to be unique in major college sports that would ensure that the academic mission of LSU would share in the financial success of the LSU athletics program will be considered Friday, Sept. 7, by the LSU Board of Supervisors.

The LSU Athletics Fund Transfer Policy would formalize an annual transfer of $7.2 million from the Athletic Department to other components of LSU for use in supporting LSU’s academic, research, public service and other missions. In addition, it would establish a revenue sharing component that could provide additional funds to the university’s mission and ensure that all facets of LSU share in the success of the athletics program.

“I am not aware of another university that has formalized a financial agreement such as this one,” said William Jenkins, interim president and chancellor at LSU. “The university has long been a beneficiary of the success of our financially self-sustaining athletics program, but this policy will solidify the connection between athletic success and advancement of the university’s academic mission.”

Over the years, various informal practices have been adopted for the transfer of funds from the Athletic Department to other components of LSU. As LSU has faced increasing budget pressures over recent years, fund transfers from Athletics to other components of LSU have increased. Most recently, the Athletic Department transferred an additional $4 million and assumed financial responsibility for the Academic Center for Student-Athletes at the cost of approximately $1.5 million to help offset a shortage in the university budget, staving off budget cuts and potential faculty and staff layoffs.

“It is important for an athletics program to play a role in the overall success of the university, and this policy breaks new ground in establishing the role of LSU Athletics in the mission of LSU,” said Joe Alleva, vice chancellor and director of athletics. “LSU Athletics has long-been a financially self-sustaining program and has transferred significant funds to the core mission of the university each year. This policy will take that support to an entirely new level.”

LISTEN, it's Louisiana. It's not rocket science.

T e s ate of lab r to ay

Labor Day -- that 24-hour period every year when we say kind words over the bloated corpse of organized labor in America -- is over.

Now it's back to reality for the Nebras A S Ate Education Ass Ciation and other similarly discombobulated labor unions. As they say, "reality bites." In fact, it even may have consumed education's rear end.

You know what else they say: "First they came for the teachers, but I wasn't a teacher. . . ." Well, I say we're all teachers now!

Ye who labor in America, stay strong! The ass you save may be your own.

Bobby Jindal's Louisiana

Them that's got shall get
Them that's not shall lose
So the Bible said,
and it still is news
Mama may have,
Papa may have
But God bless the child
that's got his own
That's got his own . . .

The University of Louisiana System Board of Supervisors heard Tuesday that state budget cuts caused a wide range of dismal conditions in the state’s higher education system, from low morale and program cutbacks to tuition hikes and faculty layoffs.

Board members for the system that oversees nine public universities received testimony that state budget cuts may be the cause of an increase in employee thefts on campuses, particularly the institutions that haven’t been able to keep a full-time internal auditor on staff.

Board members learned about the increased thefts moments before adopting a $762 million operating budget, which leaves the system’s nine universities with about $38 million less than last year.

“There is a lot of cash on campus and we’re starting to see where the cash is not getting into the bank,” said Robbie Robinson, UL System vice president for business and finance.

Yes, the strong gets more
While the weak ones fade
Empty pockets don't ever make the grade
Mama may have, Papa may have
But God bless the child that's got his own
That's got his own . . .

Without going into specifics, Robinson mentioned an ongoing investigation on one UL System campus, where administrators believe an employee diverted about $40,000 into a credit card account.

Robinson said something that auditors call the “fraud triangle” comes into play when times are tough.

The fraud triangle is a term coined by sociologist Donald Cressey. The points of the triangle are made up of the three most common factors that occur in cases of fraud. They are incentive, or financial stress; rationalization, where the person believes the money won’t be missed; and opportunity, where a person may see a weakness within the organization.

Money, you've got lots of friends
Crowding round the door
When you're gone, spending ends
They don't come no more
Rich relations give
Crust of bread and such
You can help yourself
But don't take too much
Mama may have, Papa may have
But God bless the child that's got his own
That's got his own . . .

UL System President Randy Moffett said some employees have spouses who have lost jobs, making them more prone to stress.

“Their financial situation has changed,” Moffett said. “Most of them haven’t had an increase in pay for four years.”

Moffett, however, said the system’s campuses have “done a great job” reporting when money isn’t accounted for.

On the budget, the UL board sat through a presentation that showed largely the same trend Louisiana’s other three college systems have been going through.

The reduction in state dollars is a continuation of a familiar trend in Louisiana’s higher education system that has seen state funding cut by $426 million since 2008.

Cuts to the UL System have totaled $207 million during the same period.

Mama may have, Papa may have
But God bless the child that's got his own
That's got his own
He just worry 'bout nothin'
Cause he's got his own

Song: "God Bless the Child" -- Billie Holiday and Arthur Herzog, Jr., 1939
News story: "UL budget cuts cited as thefts rise" -- The Advocate, 8/22/2012

When alumni get mad, miracles happen

This . . .

. . . is the last I saw of my alma mater, Baton Rouge Magnet High School. I took these photos in October 2007.

Baton Rouge High is my hometown's best high school -- one of the nation's best, actually -- filled with talented, high-achieving students. Literally, filled with what hope a poor, dysfunctional state can count on for the future.

The facilities they inhabited pretty much showed them what a city and a state thought of them -- and about its future.

THEN enough alumni saw enough of what had become of the grand old school at 2825 Government St. And they got mad. And the engineers told the East Baton Rouge Parish School Board that the piddly repairs that had been scheduled for the campus were wholly insufficient -- indeed, impossible, given how far gone the facilities were.

So, in response, the school board considered tearing down the whole campus -- including the main building, a Gothic masterpiece built in 1926. And Bulldog alumni got really mad.

What grew out of that was a miracle. Just look at this grand tour of the school taken Friday by Channel 2 in Baton Rouge, WBRZ.


FIVE YEARS AGO, I was heartbroken at what I saw of my old school. No more.

Today, my heart soars. Investing in your children -- and in the places most important in their lives -- is never, ever a mistake.

These are the things futures are made of.

Leadership = Never having to say you're sorry

Your new superintendent-to-be quits her old job early because the emails she sent on official accounts read more like Lady Chatterley's Lover, only with dildos attached to chairs.

Nancy Sebring advises you about the reason for her early departure -- and that she's desperately trying to keep the whole thing out of the newspaper. She says she doesn't want Omaha Public Schools board members to be blindsided.

You, the board president, along with the board's lawyer, tell no one. And when it all hits the fan, you lie through your teeth about what you knew. You claim ignorance.

And when your lies are found out, your supporters start to cry racism. And sexism, for you are a black woman. If you've gone this far, what's a little shamelessness?

It must be interesting to be you, Freddie Gray.

ULTIMATELY, your fellow board members vote 8-4 to keep you as president, because the OPS board is more a close-knit conspiracy than a governing body. According to the Omaha World-Herald:

Before the vote, Gray made a statement highlighting her goals and accomplishments and urging her fellow board members to “continue on this journey with unity and purpose regardless of tonight's outcome.”

Gray said she wished to be judged on her entire work, not just the Sebring situation.

“There are privacy and withholding of information rationales that can be debated,” she said. “But it comes down to my fellow board members looking at my president's tenure totally and coming to the conclusion that we are, or are not, moving in the right direction.”

She said she believed that she still could be an effective board spokesman and leader. With a crowd of nearly 250 people packing the board room, Gray's supporters on the board praised her leadership and said she shouldn't be removed for a well-intentioned mistake.

“She made a mistake,” [board member Shirley] Tyree said. “She's going to have to live with that mistake.”

Tyree said she didn't want to disrupt the board as a second superintendent search gets under way and kids head back to school on Aug. 20.

[Member Justin] Wayne said the board “can't preach about accountability if we don't hold ourselves accountable.”

He said he wanted Gray to acknowledge that she made a mistake. If she did, he said, he would be willing to support the board publicly censuring Gray but allowing her to stay on as president.

“I heard a lot of people today talking about mistake. I've never heard Mrs. Gray use that word,” Wayne said.

Kersten Borer made the motion to remove Gray, calling her a “bold and passionate leader” but saying that removal was necessary “in order to move forward, improve communication and regain trust from the community.”

Wayne seconded the motion, but the votes weren't there.

[Member Nancy] Huston said Gray was at the center of “a scandal she did not create.”

“She has been a good president,” Huston said. “She is leading us.”

LEADING YOU is no virtue if it happens to be over a cliff.

Support for public education is a tenuous thing these days. When an inner-city school district starts to look as if its governed by arrogant, unaccountable incompetents and overall moral cyphers, it is only a matter of time before middle-class parents with the money to have options abandon it to the poor and to the incorrigible, who have neither.

Really, if you can't deal with l'affaire Sebring, can't get rid of a renegade board president and your moral compass can't point straight, running a successful school system really is a bridge too far. "Urban nightmare," on the other hand, isn't.

And "pathetic" is your everyday reality.

sex, lies and emailgate

Pity Freddie Gray.

The president of the Omaha school board decided to hone her mad JoePa skillz just when everybody -- and by "everybody," I mean the entire world outside State College, Pa. -- decided the late Penn State coach was criminally pathetic.

Consider this: You've just picked a new superintendent for Omaha Public Schools. Suddenly, your new hire abruptly resigns her job in Des Moines, Iowa -- weeks ahead of schedule. She contacts your board attorney. Something about emails. That they would expose an affair. Fairly explicit. A district email account. Public-records request from the Des Moines Register. Embarrassing.

Mein Gott! Mon dieu! What, oh what . . . what should you do?

Well, if you're Freddie Gray and OPS board counsel Elizabeth Eynon-Kokrda, you don't bother to find out what exactly is in those "fairly explicit" emails. You take Nancy Sebring's word for it that the content is "somewhere along the lines of what most seventeen year olds are reading in Cosmo." You don't even check out what most 17-year-olds are actually reading in Cosmopolitan today.

Also, you assume that a woman who's cheating on her husband with a man who's cheating on his wife is being straighter with you than with them. After all, Eynon-Kokrda tells Sebring, “my thought is you have a pretty sympathetic situation.”

Most importantly, you and the lawyer take what Sebring, the naughty superintendent, has told you and make it into "just our little secret."

Even though Sebring has reached out to you and counsel because “I don't want anyone on the OPS board to be surprised by this situation in Des Moines,” you don't inform a single board member because. . . .

Because. . . .

BECAUSE you feel obliged not to after the fun superintendent expressly said she didn't want anyone on the Omaha school board to be surprised by the brewing scandal.

“We had an individual who ... we thought was being very open and honest with us about something that was a very personal issue, a very painful issue for the individual,” Gray told The World-Herald. “We believed that we had a contracted employee who was reaching out and was telling us the truth.”

In a May 24 email to Sebring, Eynon-Kokrda wrote that she did not share Sebring's emails with board members: “I do not forward your emails because I want them arguably protected and/or not known to exist, per se, but I do advise Freddie of our contacts so she is current.”

In that same email, the lawyer wrote that Gray was the only OPS board member who knew of the Des Moines Register's public records request, through which that newspaper eventually obtained the personal emails.

WHO IS working for whom here?

It's rather interesting, in the same sense that his evening at Ford's Theater gave Abraham Lincoln a headache, that Eynon-Kokrda and Gray seem to lose track of where their primary loyalties lie. They protect OPS' wayward new hire to an extent she didn't even ask for, refusing to give the full school board even the slightest heads-up about her naughty-email problem in Des Moines.

They take Sebring's word for everything. In short, they try to keep her viability as OPS' new superintendent totally intact by aiding and abetting an ultimately failed cover up.

When she resigned abruptly from Des Moines in early May, Sebring said publicly that it was because she needed extra time to take care of personal matters, such as moving to Omaha and preparing for her daughter's summer wedding.

The newly released emails show that after resigning from Des Moines, Sebring kept in regular contact with Eynon-Kokrda, who relayed information about those contacts to Gray as all three anxiously waited to see what the Des Moines Register would do with the volatile emails the newspaper had requested from the Des Moines district through a public records request.

The emails Sebring made public last week were sent between May 18 and June 1, the day The World-Herald and the Des Moines Register broke their stories online.

The emails show that Eynon-Kokrda and Gray remained committed to making Sebring the next OPS superintendent if she could survive the uproar of the emails going public or if the emails never went public.

The three of them planned how they would respond publicly should news organizations discover that the emails were the actual cause of her resignation from the Des Moines job and publish stories about them.

(snip)

In a May 24 email to Eynon-Kokrda, Sebring wrote that four of the Des Moines emails were “highly personal and contain fairly explicit content (somewhere along the lines of what most seventeen year olds are reading in Cosmo),” referring to the women's magazine Cosmopolitan.

In the same email, Sebring offered to resign from the OPS job, telling Eynon-Kokrda: “I would rather bow out gracefully before starting my job in OPS, than be caught up in a scandal after I begin the job.”

She asked Eynon-Kokrda whether OPS would fire an employee who had done what she did.

Eynon-Kokrda wrote back that she would not recommend that Sebring submit an immediate offer of resignation, saying that “seems extreme” and “my thought is you have a pretty sympathetic situation.”

Eynon-Kokrda wrote that she knew of no OPS employee ever terminated solely for personal use of email, saying that OPS informs employees that emails are not confidential and that individuals must “use good judgment” but that sending personal emails has never by itself demonstrated sufficient poor judgment as to result in termination.

“The closest I've ever seen is where a principal involved with a subordinate at his school had about 50 texts and emails per day during school hours, over months and months (thousands of emails and texts on school phone) some of which proved he had inappropriately approved sick leave so she could join him on business trips,” Eynon-Kokrda wrote.

She wrote that if the situation “starts to really go south,” she would recommend meeting with the OPS board “to explain and provide them with the opportunity to circle the wagons.”

(snip)

“Freddie will be in about the same place,” Eynon-Kokrda wrote. “If asked for comment, she will say it isn't appropriate for her to discuss your personal life.”

If pressed, Eynon-Kokrda wrote, Gray would say that while people shouldn't use work email for personal purposes that interfere with job performance, “she is unaware of any allegation that you have anything but a stellar job performance record, and your personal emails and private life don't change that.”

UNTIL THEY did change that. The Register and the World-Herald not only ran their stories about why Nancy Sebring quit Des Moines so quickly, but they ran the worst of the emails, too.

At that point, Gray ended up running away from Sebring like her feet were on fire and her ass was catching. A thoroughly surprised (thanks to Freddie Gray) OPS board ended up accepting Sebring's resignation from a job she'd yet to begin.

The emails were exactly what one would expect from a Cosmo "sex issue," which I presume is just like a regular issue of Cosmo (as read by "most seventeen year olds") only a little more so. Thus, "circling the wagons" wasn't a viable option, as we already had learned low "in love" Nancy Sebring was with her boyfriend's d***.

And the emails got better than that.

UNFORTUNATELY for Gray, the board president's ability to lie convincingly to the press just doesn't get better at all.

On June 1, Gray told the World-Herald "she had heard only 'rumors and innuendo' about why Sebring resigned. During that interview, she said she had not discussed with Des Moines district officials the circumstances of Sebring's resignation and did not know what was contained in the emails.

"I haven't seen them," she said then, "so I have no clue what they are, what they're not."

In a later interview, a World-Herald reporter asked Gray whether Sebring had been in contact with her or Eynon-Kokrda about the personal emails prior to them going public.

“No, why would she be?" Gray had said.

UH . . . lots of reasons?

Unfortunately, some people never learn that when you tell a big one, at least be plausible:

Gray and Eynon-Kokrda told The World-Herald this week that they would have acted differently had they known the actual contents of the emails.

“She never characterized these as graphic, pornographic or in any way sexually embarrassing,” Eynon-Kokrda said. “She portrayed them as not salacious, as chatty, and as emails that would reveal that she had an affair.”

When Sebring wrote to Eynon-Kokrda May 24 describing the explicit emails as something a 17-year-old girl might read in Cosmo, that still didn't cause alarm, Gray and Eynon-Kokrda said this week, because they didn't perceive Cosmo as a raunchy magazine.

TWO PROBLEMS with this one render it a no-percentage assertion -- it requires Omahans to believe either that Gray and Eynon-Kokrda think they're really stupid, or that Gray and Eynon-Kokrda themselves are really stupid. Personally, I go for a third option: Yes, they think we're stupid . . . because they're idiots.

Make that complete idiots.

Here's Gray, back in June:

“For the board, this is about policy violation. It's not about the content,” she told The World-Herald after Sebring resigned. “These are things we tell our staff all the time not to do. It's a big violation to use company equipment and emails.”

BUT NOW Gray defends her secrecy and her inaction regarding Sebring's emails by saying she was misled about how bad they were. That she didn't think Cosmo was "raunchy," so it couldn't be that big a deal.

But if "it's not about the content," as she said last month, who cares? Sebring admitted to doing, in Gray's words, "things we tell our staff all the time not to do." Which, she told the reporter back then, was "a big violation."

And certainly no rationale to help a sister out, which is exactly what she and OPS' legal counsel set out to do. In secret.

The other OPS board members ought to be furious right now. Beyond furious, actually. But the biggest problem the school system faces today is that I'll bet most aren't that upset at all.

After all, if they "circle the wagons," Freddie Gray might be able to survive unscathed as president despite having been caught in more than one big lie. Despite having kept her board, and the board's constituents, completely in the dark about the time bomb ticking away nearby. Despite having proven that her loyalties lie not with her board, or the voters who elected her, but instead with a fatally flawed would-be superintendent whose personal and professional sins finally caught up to her.

If the board circles the wagons well enough, maybe there won't be the unpleasantness of Freddie Gray getting what she so richly deserves -- immediate removal as president, accompanied by the board's demand that she resign her seat.

NO, that would be ugly. Firing the board attorney would be, too.

In that light, I'm sure Gray is banking on her colleagues being "incredibly supportive," just like Eynon-Kokrda was for Sebring, because this whole World-Herald exposé thing is "ridiculous."

After all, "hindsight is 20/20." Yeah, that's the ticket.

Dear God. There was more out there.

I told you so.

Here.

Now here are some details of a brand-new, court-released stash of a former Iowa school superintendent's naughty (and quite public, as it turns out) emails can be found here. A sampling from the Des Moines Register:

The 115 emails, sent from March 13 to May 8, were released Friday afternoon to The Des Moines Register and other media that had requested them under the state’s open records law.

The discovery of the personal exchanges, 43 of which dealt with sex, came to light after open records requests seeking information about Sebring’s sudden exit from the Des Moines district. Some emails were released May 29; Sebring sought an injunction blocking the release of the additional emails.

Sending personal emails or sexually explicit materials on school equipment violates Des Moines district policies.

District Judge Robert Hanson’s ruling on Friday said that Sebring’s argument that “purely personal communications” aren’t matters of public interest “indicates a fundamental misunderstanding of what the public interest is.”

Hanson also refused a request by Sebring’s former lover, who is married and is in the military, to shield his name from being disclosed. The man had sought protection under a portion of Iowa law that Hanson said was intended to protect whistle-blowing communications from outsiders with state government.

“First, common sense dictates that communications that should not have been occurring in the first place — personal communications using the school district’s computer equipment and email system, in violation of written school district policy — would not be protected from disclosure,” the judge ruled.

(snip)

Sebring had been in line to become the leader of the Omaha school district, Nebraska’s largest district. However, she resigned from that job on June 2 after the emails surfaced.

Of the 115 emails released Friday, 26 were sexually explicit, while another 17 included references to sex acts or sexually explicit photos.

Although Sebring, who is married, has said the affair didn’t interfere with her district duties, the emails indicate the conversations spanned the clock on some workdays. One message, sent at 4 p.m. on a Tuesday, was nearly 700 words. The emails also indicate that the two met at least twice during working hours.

The man, in one email exchange, cautioned Sebring to be careful about not revealing their relationship.

“You are a public figure … and I’m in the military. I will ensure you that our close friendship remains a quiet … close friendship,” he wrote on April 24. “This means that every test, email, picture… anything will be gone the minute I am done reading it.”

He also told Sebring that he would be “cautious” not to reveal their relationship, adding “…and I expect the same from you.”

OOPS. Her bad.

The debt Omaha owes the Register for exposing this stuff -- and what a reckless flake its almost-superintendent turned out to be -- is, to say the least, enormous.