Emails from Jennifer Moody

Jennifer Moody, a reporter for a newspaper serving our neighboring cities of Albany and Lebanon, is writing a piece on some kindergarten issues they are having in Linn County, and wanted to reference the discussions we are having here in Corvallis.

Yesterday morning, we received this email from her:

Hi, Bjarnason family, this is Jennifer Moody from the Democrat-Herald. ... . I'm finally working on my own kindergarten story. Can you update me on your situation since this e-mail, and help me summarize the issues you and other Corvallis families face?

Many thanks,
Jennifer

I responded with the following:

Wonderful!!

It looks like the only thing you are missing is that we are going to have
the school board hearing this coming Monday, June 11th at 9am at the
District Offices. The district is required to hold a hearing within 20
days of receiving the complaint. Denise and I waived this requirement
because we couldn't find a good date (for our family as well as the school
board) to have it within the 20 days.

I've been good about keeping the blog updated
( http://corvalliskindergarten.blogspot.com/). Almost all of the
communications (emails and letters) can be found there if you want to see
exactly what's been said.

Not included in the blog is a series of emails between myself and Julie
Catala in which I inquired regarding the format of the meeting. In that
email, she indicated that this was being considered a personal complaint
against Superintendent Tarzian. This is dissapointing [sic] in two regards:

1. Because it's classified as a personal complaint, the hearing is closed
to the public (Julie indicated that there would limited access to the
press as well. How limited? I don't know.) I would prefer the hearing
be open to the public.

2. Superintendent Tarzian is the only person we have met with that we felt
has taken us seriously and not just tried to push us on to someone else.
We were treated very professionally, and have only good things to report
about our meeting with her. We are disappointed that this will be
considered a complaint against her, when our real complaint is against the
standing District 509J policy.

Other than that, we're preparing for the hearing on Monday, and anxious to
hear what the board has to say.

We appreciate your work.

Ronald Bjarnason

To which she responded (still yesterday):

Can I reach one or both of you by phone today or in the next day or two? The blog is wonderful for reference, but I'd love to just have a quick recap, or short summary, of your situation in your own words for the moving-forward part. Thanks so much!
Jennifer Moody
Democrat-Herald

I just called her on her cell phone. We talked for a while, and it looks like the article is going to be running this Sunday.