Concerning Freda Deskin's campaign for Oklahoma State Superintendent

[al_rants]

On 24 June 2014, Oklahoma held the primary elections for the upcoming general election on 4 November. Amongst those elections were the primaries for State Superintendent for Public Education.

The good news is that the current superintendent, Janet Barresi, lost her party's primary to Joy Hofmeister.

However, in the Democratic primary, there was no clear winner. The top two candidates, John Cox and Freda Deskin, will have a runoff election on 26 August.

This is of great importance to me specifically, because during the 2006-2007 school year, I worked at ASTEC Charter School in Oklahoma City. This is the school that was founded by Freda Deskin, who currently serves as the school's CEO. It was in this way that I had personal first-hand experience with her administration and leadership.

Because of this experience, I know with absolute certainty that Freda Deskin is not qualified to serve as the state superintendent.

Below is a list of seven events or circumstances that I personally witnessed in my time at ASTEC Charter school.

1. She routinely mismanaged school funds: Students who enrolled at the school were required to pay an 'activity fee,' which was nominally intended to pay for field trips and other activities that the teachers were meant to do with the students. However, any time that the teachers requested funds for field trips or other activities, their requests were denied. To my knowledge, any educational activities that took place at the school were funded by fund raising activities that the teachers themselves implemented in order to raise money that was supposed to be available from the administration.
2. She routinely mismanaged school funds (part 2): The school was built in a disused department store in a failed shopping mall, so there was no playground in the traditional sense. Instead, a portion of the parking lot had been enclosed within a wooden privacy fence. This meant that students were spending their recess on blacktop, risking injuries from falling when running or playing otherwise rowdy games in the playground area. To minimize this risk, the school purchased a large quantity of rubber mulch to use as a ground cover. This mulch is made of recycled tires, shredded into chunks no longer than an inch on any side.
   
   Although this rubber mulch was effective in softening the ground and did an adequate job of protecting the students from serious injury resulting from falling or tripping, the chunks of rubber would routinely get caught in the students' clothing and be tracked into the building. The administration frequently reminded the students and faculty of the expense involved in purchasing this 'playground cover,' and thus expected them to recover every single piece of rubber that was found inside the building and returning it to the playground.
   
   I submit that it would have been a much more effective use of resources to spend the additional money to acquire a more permanent playground cover, rather than waste time with having teachers examine the floor of their classrooms and the hallways in search of small chunks of rubber.
3. She routinely mismanaged school resources: The school had two seperate ways to make photocopies: a standard copy machine, and a risograph. The risograph is more efficient at larger quantities, where the price-per-page is less than that of the standard copy machine. But in smaller quantities, the price-per-page is lower on the standard copy machine. The school's policy was that teachers were allowed to make no more than 20 pages of copies on the standard copy machine; a teacher who exceeded his or her limit had their copier privileges revoked for a calendar month. Note that teachers had to remember how many copies they had made; there was no way to see how many copies had been made in any given month.
   
   There was no limit on how many copies could be made on the risograph, but there was a minimum of 25 copies per print job on any task done on the risograph. Any job submitted for copying on the risograph had to be approved by the principal, and then given to the secretary 24 hours in advance of when the copies were needed.
   
   Although this system saved on overall printing costs, it placed a ridiculous burden on the teachers. In my case, having no level 1 textbooks and insufficient level 2 textbooks, I had to rely on students' notebooks and worksheets for classroom instruction. In the only level 2 class I taught, which consisted of about 15 students, I would often need to make several worksheets throughout the course of a single month, which far exceeded the monthly allotment of standard copies. But in order to use the risograph, I would often have to request twice as many copies as I actually needed in order to be have the worksheets I needed to do my job in the first place, resulting in pages of wasted paper.
4. She frequently blocked teachers' attempts to motivate students: During the 2006-2007 school year, the principal of the high school attempted to institute a system of rewards to counterbalance the existing system of punishments. The idea was that, instead of only punishing those students who misbehaved, teachers should also reward those students who display exemplary behaviour. He called this system 'E-status.' The 'E' stood for 'Exemplary.' Any students who had no discipline problems had E-status. The teachers were intended to provide rewards at random to those students who had their E-status. For example, on any given day, a teacher may choose to bring in popcorn to give to those students who had E-status. Many possible rewards were discussed: small ice cream cups, candy, potato chips, pencils, erasers, and other small trinkets.
   
   Of course, by far the most effective rewards were foods: popcorn, candy bars, and so forth. Not only were the students more inclined to work for edible rewards, but they were inexpensive and easy for the teachers to acquire. Unfortunately, Deskin refused to make any exceptions to the school policy of prohibiting any food, beverage, or gum inside the school. No matter how the principal argued on behalf of the classroom management advantages of allowing certain trustworthy students to have food as a reward on occasion, Deskin was more concerned with her inflexible policies than with any advantage that may result from enabling an effective reward system.
5. She was consistently more concerned with her own image (and the school's image) than with student needs: There was a faculty meeting in which Deskin spoke of other charter schools. In particular, she praised the policy of a particular school which suspended any students who had a grade below C. She claimed that this was an effective policy because the school's average grade was very high, much higher than other schools' averages. She was seriously considering instituting a similar policy at ASTEC.
   
   Obviously, this policy makes a school look great, but what about those students who are struggling to understand the material? Those students who most need the help are kicked out in order to maintain the school's numbers.
6. She was consistently more concerned with her own image than with student needs (part 2): At the 2007 graduation dinner, Deskin made a speech that should have been to honor the graduating students. Despite the fact that the graduating class that year was very small (something like 30 students), and she could have made personal comments about each student individually, she used the entirety of her speech to talk about how hard she had worked to get the school started, and to keep the school running, and the sacrifices she had made. Rather than congratulating the students who were making a great accomplishment, she spent the whole time patting herself on the back for her own achievements.
7. She routinely mismanaged her staff: I recall a specific occasion in which I needed to ask the principal a difficult question regarding the future of my career. I went into his office and sat down across the desk from him. I asked my question, and he gave me a carefully measured answer that was not terribly informative. Afterwards, I thanked him and rose to leave. He followed me out into the hallway and motioned for me to join him in the storage room, where he gave me the answer that he wanted to give me but felt that he was unable to say in his office. I got the strong impression that the principal believed that his office was bugged. Perhaps this is a bit of paranoid over-reaction on his part, but having worked at that school for a year, it was a reaction I could understand. Even if taking me into the storage room to answer my question honestly is an over-reaction, it speaks to the poor relationship that Deskin had managed to develop with her staff.

These are the specific incidents that I recall from my time working at ASTEC Charter School. Aside from a general atmosphere of oppression and narcissistic vanity, these characteristics indicate very strongly, in my mind at least, that Freda Deskin is uniquely unsuited to hold the office of State Superintendent.

These are just the circumstances that I personally can verify from my time working at ASTEC. Others have made accusations against Deskin that she has been dishonest, as well as hiring felons. Among those making these accusations are former candidates Ivan Holmes and Jack Herron. Not least of the accusations is the fact that Deskin has stated in the course of her campaign that she is in favour of collective bargaining, despite the fact that she has written an article (page 1 and page 2) that is demonstrably opposed to collective bargaining.

If you are able to vote in the runoff election on 26 August, I strongly encourage you to vote against Freda Deskin.