Part three
Re “Mielke Offers Evidence in the One-Way Gourley Dispute”
Background: Summoning a maximal amount of venom, School Board member Steve Gourley has developed an unprecedented habit at meetings of openly, forcefully, proudly, angrily — and repeatedly — calling David Mielke, the President of the Teachers Union, a “liar,” alleging he deliberately distorts collective bargaining developments and other information.
The President of the Teachers Union is trying to figure out how to defuse a shrill feud that was started months ago and is being prolonged, at each School Board meeting, by Board member Steve Gourley.
“I don’t really want to keep this going,” David Mielke said. “But you can’t be repeatedly called a liar when you are not lying.”
He said he has shown he can weather withering criticism, “but I am a human being, too. I live here. I work here. Been here since ’79. My stepson coaches girls volleyball. He came to me and said, ‘What’s all this about you being a liar?’ My daughter is going to graduate June 17, God-willing. I don’t think the criticism of me hurts her.
“But I will say this. My students attend Board meetings. At Culver High, government students have to attend a meeting, and they always put it off until the end of the year.
“Many, many students were at last Tuesday night’s Board meeting. The next day in class, they asked me, ‘What in the world is going on? Is this the norm for discourse?’
“I said ‘no. I have been here 30-sonething years. This never has been the norm.’
“‘We always have disagreed. But never in such a personal way.’
“Yeah, these meetings lately have been a real education for them. They are saying ‘Wow, we’re taught in school how to speak to one another. And yet at Board meetings we see something like this.’”
Mr. Mielke recalled that Mr. Gourley renewed his central charges about distortion at last week’s meeting. He said ‘It was 19 cuts and you went to 25 cuts. It’s not 25. It was a lie then, it’s a lie now, it’s a lie in the future.’
“Well, it’s not a lie,” Mr. Mielke said. “It’s on your own document,” he added, waving a list of proposed cuts and potential proposed cuts issued six weeks ago by the School District.
“I didn’t create this,” he said with a chuckle.
Pressed for an answer, Mr. Mielke admitted the multiplied charges of “liar” have hurt him.
“More than that, this disappoints me. My dad was a minister. He was active in the civil rights movement. Growing up, we had the real model of social activism.
“One thing he said to us was, ‘Look, you should be very tough on the issues but gentle with the people.’
“I have not always done that, but most of the time I have tried to follow what he taught us.”
(To be continued)
