Second of three parts
Re “Union President Says It Is Time for Him to Respond to Gourley”
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 the President of the Teachers Union a “liar,” alleging he deliberately distorts collective bargaining developments and other information.
In trying to illuminate the context of School Board member Steve Gourley’s roaring, months-long, very public vendetta against David Mielke, it would be instructive to point out the following:
Mr. Gourley has seemed to take almost fiendish pleasure in embarrassing certain audience critics of the Board if, according to his private research, they are not registered to vote or have not voted for a stretch. He has said, essentially, “Don’t waste my time trying to talk to me if you don’t vote.”
His explosive personality contrasts with the chronic good nature of the Teachers Union President Mr. Mielke.
After months of relative silence, Mr. Mielke told the newspaper on Friday he must stand to defend the honor of his members and of himself.
And so, armed with evidence that he said proved Mr. Gourley’s charge against him was incorrect, Mr. Mielke produced two documents, a list of potential teacher layoff positions, distributed by the School District at the April 12 School Board meeting, and a subsequent update email to his members on April 20 that seemed to relay the Board message with precision:
“So far, the cut list looks like this:
“19.2 teacher positions (with another 6 under consideration for next year…”
With the force and authority of an outsized hammer, Mr. Gourley has repeated an assertion that Mr. Mielke deliberately conflated the data, claiming 25 layoffs are on the hit list instead of dividing them into two separate categories, and therefore he is a “liar.” Over and over — the same lines, the same frosty, dare-you-to-reply finger-pointing.
“My question is,” said Mr. Mielke, “if a Board says ‘we are also going to consider 6 additional cuts to teachers’ and the union says ‘they may also consider 6 additional cuts to teachers,’ how in the world is that a lie? This is something from their own document.
“I don’t really want to keep this going. But you can’t be called a liar repeatedly when you are not lying.
“I was hoping other people would come forward (to criticize Mr. Gourley). Some have.
“I have been expecting other School Board members to maybe intervene. That has not happened.
“When a School Board member says ‘You lied, you lied, you lied,’ at some point as a union leader you can’t allow that to go on.
“On a second level, I am a big boy,” meaning that he surely can absorb criticism. “But I am a human being, too,” Mr. Mielke said.
(To be continued)
