Sometimes It's Truth And Consequences

This is hard to write today (and not just because somebody, no names please, dripped marmalade onto the keyboard so now three of the letters stick) but it may be harder still for some to read. 

I served eight years in the Air Force, sometimes referred to, I hope tongue in cheek, as 'a leisure time activity of the Department of Defense' by members of the other armed services. When we'd put our hands in our jacket pockets in cold weather, they would call that 'Air Force gloves' and when we'd shrug with indifference at comments like that, they'd suggest it was an 'Air Force Salute.'

But as dissimilar as the branches of the service often are, among their shared commonalities is the tradition within hierarchies that leadership will build and sustain organizations that best reflect its values. 

And for me, therein lies the rub. 

Neither my wife nor I attended Norwich Free Academy, but we raised two children who did (Classes of 2000 and 2005, respectively) so we invested nine consecutive years attending parent-teacher conferences, traveling to soccer matches, cheering at band competitions, and enjoying so much of what NFA does so well. 

Which brings me, reluctantly, to the other side of the coin, the ongoing investigation into allegations of inappropriate behavior by a former athletic trainer with two female students and the actions and inactions of those in leadership positions in responding to those allegations.

The report last week from the NFA Board of Trustees' own investigation into all of this, and the conclusion clearing the Head of School of wrongdoing, which made front-page headlines both confounds and vexes me. 

The news account speaks of an 'independent investigation' commissioned by the Trustees which seems to me would be a contradiction of terms well beyond the scale of 'jumbo shrimp.' The actual independent investigation is still ongoing by the Norwich Police Department and the Connecticut Department of Children and Families. 

It's neither my desire nor intent to poison that well but what the NFA Trustees did was little more than a self-licking ice cream cone which devoted time and space to the sequence of events, witnesses' recollections and statements and what was done, and not done, and by whom, but failed, in my view, to address the most essential question of the most important person in NFA.  

Should the Head of School have known? Absolutely. 
Why he didn't or chose not to, are the answers I think are most important. 

The Head of School is responsible for the successes of every student and staff member at NFA every day. As such, it follows as night the day he is also responsible when they fail. And let's be clear, this 'situation' is a failure of still indeterminate scale and scope. 

Trust should be an unbreakable bond but is also very fragile. By their actions, the NFA Board of Trustees has made themselves as much a part of the problem as is their Head of School. I'm not sure the current NFA governance is not too broken to be repaired and must instead be replaced.      

As parents and members of the local communities who entrust their children to Norwich Free Academy, we need to be transparent and forthright, traits that seem alien to how the NFA Trustees conduct business, in holding the Head of School and themselves as a system that perpetuates plausible deniability responsible. 
We owe that to our children and to ourselves.
-bill kenny