Why Robert’s Rules of Order Isn’t Fixing Things
The Arkansas School Band and Orchestra Association (ASBOA) is corrupt, and harms the children and teachers who participate in its inter-scholastic contests. Everything I’m going to say next depends on this premise, so if you would like to see some evidence before you continue, please read this first.
In case you don’t want to take my word for it, I’m also including some statements that other Arkansas teachers (and two parents) have shared with me. I’m protecting their anonymity because they have either signed “non-disparagement” clauses as part of their employment, or they are scared that their children will be punished if they speak up. Still, if law enforcement ever takes an interest, I bet the teachers couldn’t legally be fired for giving truthful evidence under oath.
Now that we’ve established how corrupt the ASBOA is, and that teachers and parents are scared to speak up, let me explain why it isn’t getting any better.
The ASBOA says it is a private, members-only organization, whose rules are created and enforced by its member schools. Each member school sends official representatives — usually teachers — to ASBOA regional meetings in the winter, and ASBOA state meetings in the summer. Although schools could send administrators or school board members to these meetings, that almost never happens.
The people proposing and voting on ASBOA rules are teachers. Teachers do not have administrator-level training in the laws that govern how students and teachers are supposed to be treated while they are on school property (for example, at an ASBOA audition or clinic.) Moreover, teachers have a lot of incentive to create rules that benefit their own students — even if students and teachers from other schools are disenfranchised in the process — because this means their students will have a competitive advantage at future contests.
Last year, when I was terribly hurt by the ASBOA’s failure to follow its own constitution in multiple ways, I filed formal grievances. Then, because I was being falsely accused of interfering with the success of another teacher’s students, and didn’t have faith that my school administrators would support me, I quit my teaching job the next day.
Because I was no longer an “official representative” of a member school, the ASBOA stopped communicating with me. They offered to discuss my grievances with the Fine Arts Director of my school, but he also resigned in the middle of the school year — before he could follow up with the ASBOA. (Arkansas Arts Academy struggles with a very high rate of employee turnover. This is not a mystery to me.) Arkansas Arts Academy is planning not to send students to ASBOA events in the future, so they no longer have an interest in fixing things.
Still, I trusted that my colleagues from other schools would pick up the torch. They had three good opportunities: at the north orchestra regional meeting in November 2017, at the all-state clinic in February 2018, and at the ASBOA summer meeting in August 2018. They could have done so much good, but as far as I know, all they did was shorten student audition times and exclude all “orphan” string students from participation.
There are no new provisions for feeding participating students, checking whether teacher-judges are actually being paid for weekend work, distributing complete scoring rules to all participating teachers ahead of time, or examining what happens to the thousands of dollars in student entry fees. All-Region Orchestra auditions are scheduled for October 27, 2018 — and they are likely to be just as bad as they were last year.
What the heck, you guys?
Fort Smith had six full-time orchestra teachers (Steven Hughes, Mike Burkepile, Curtis Hansen, Greta Lane, Chris Pinkston, and Anthony Verge) all of whom received a stipend for 20 additional days beyond the basic school calendar. Two of these six teachers, Steven Hughes and Curtis Hansen, are “Department Chairpersons,” which comes with an even higher pay scale.
Last year, Mike Burkepile was the region chairperson for the north orchestra region of the ASBOA. Curtis Hansen was the host director for All-Region string auditions, at Anthony Verge’s home school. Greta Lane was the person who handled the registration paperwork. Chris Pinkston was my room’s senior judge, who argued against allowing students to sign their paperwork in the hallway so that I might have adequate time for lactation breaks. Steven Hughes was the teacher who emailed six other teachers and two ASBOA employees (on the day after I filed a formal grievance about not receiving written scoring rules ahead of time) recommending against distributing the scoring rules to all member directors.
These Fort Smith orchestra teachers decided, prior to the meetings where votes would be held, that it would be going against their best interest to change anything about the audition process, besides just shortening each child’s audition time. Thanks to the Arkansas Freedom of Information Act, I can quote their emails verbatim:
“Just fyi — splitting the regions would make it extremely difficult for fort smith to sustain auditions. With only 6 teachers plus a couple if fayetteville joined us, we would not have enough teachers to have enough rooms.”
“It is not worth our private teachers’ time to give up an entire saturday for the small amount asboa allows us to pay them (as unaffiliated judges.) And most potential hired judges will help us one year but then decline the next when they realize what it entails.”
“Having our own fort smith region would require us to host both auditions and clinic every year, which would likely add 30+ hours of planning each year.”
“If we only allowed each school to register as many students as can be accepted into the orchestra, it would only reduce participants [by 37.] Preventing students from auditioning also naturally creates PR issues with specific parents and legality issues through ASBOA. Dealing with those issues and your principals when issues arise would take more time than just letting everyone audition.”
All right, that explains why the Fort Smith teachers would vote to leave things the way they are. What about the other teachers? After all, 21 teachers sponsored students that day.
Bentonville Schools had six full-time orchestra teachers (Jesse Collett, Dan Mays, Benji Wilson, Krista Mays, Anne Pequeño, and Diane Halliburton) and one part-time orchestra teacher (Jenny Castillo.) As a cost-saving measure, Bentonville didn’t pay “additional days” stipends to all its orchestra teachers. Instead, Bentonville paid stipends to three of its teachers, and combined all of its participating schools under these three teachers — even though this violates the terms of the ASBOA constitution, which requires every school to have its own official representative.
This explains Bentonville’s unwillingness to criticize the ASBOA’s practices and procedures. Bentonville has been saving a lot of money on teacher stipends by not having the ASBOA insist on its written rules!
Fort Smith and Bentonville are the two districts that send the most students to All-Region Orchestra auditions. The third largest group comes from Rogers.
Rogers High School is the home school of Karol Rulli, last year’s state orchestra chairperson for the ASBOA. Unfortunately, Karol Rulli has a history of ethics violations. Ms. Rulli signed up as the official representative of both Rogers High School and Haas Hall Academy-Rogers, last year. This violates the ASBOA rules for inter-scholastic contests and the Code of Ethics for teachers in Arkansas, since Haas Hall Academy was not an ASBOA member school, nor was it a school in Ms. Rulli’s district.
Rather than responding to my written questions about Haas Hall’s eligibility, Karol Rulli emailed other ASBOA member teachers to call me “unprofessional,” and emailed the ASBOA executive secretary suggesting that my grievances not be brought up at the member meeting during All-Region Orchestra Clinic.
Of course, it makes sense that Ms. Rulli and the teachers she supervises would not want to change a system that had allowed her to sneak her ineligible private student from a non-member district onto the roster.
And that’s it, really. Fort Smith, Bentonville, and Rogers had (by my count) 17 ASBOA member teachers among them. There is no way that the teachers from other, smaller districts could outvote this bloc. The only way things could get better is if school administrators and parents get involved. (Pretty please?)
…or maybe the Attorney General will step in. After all, non-profit organizations that violate their own bylaws with regard to the mismanagement of public money can be convicted of defrauding the public. Hopefully, it won’t come to that.
