Mediation Fails To Resolves Differences Between Ritz And State Board Members

I don't think anyone actually believed that bringing in a national mediator from the national association representing school boards would succeed in resolving the differences between State Supt. Glenda Ritz and the board members appointed by Gov. Mike Pence. It's clear that the rubber stamp board members' only goal is to ensure that the new agency established by Pence, Center for Education and Career Innovation, makes education policy and not the state's Department of Education.

Ritz shared with the media an e-mail an attorney hired by Pence's office at the CECI which outlined ways of minimizing Ritz' role over board matters, including a change in law to allow Pence to appoint the board's chairperson. The October 3 e-mail was authored by Claire Fiddian-Green and was found on the Department's e-mail server when Fiddian-Green was still using an e-mail account housed on the Department's server. According to the Journal-Gazette's Niki Kelly, Ritz confronted Pence with the e-mail during a meeting with him last week. A spokesperson for Pence says that Pence rejected the proposal and insists the e-mail was never circulated among state board members.

What's going on here is very simple. The people appointed to the state board are put there to pursue policies that will enrich interests seeking to profiteer from education under the guise of education reform. Fiddian-Green served as Executive Director of the Indiana Charter School Board Association before joining the Pence administration. Prior to that, she worked for the Mind Trust, which is run by David Harris, a political crony of former Mayor Bart Peterson, who is a now a Vice President at Eli Lilly, the same place former Gov. Mitch Daniels worked as a high-level executive. Where did Fiddian-Green work before the Mind Trust? She was a senior analyst in Eli Lilly's Corporate Finance Investment Banking group. It's a small world.

So it came as little surprise when Pence appointed a former Peterson political hack, Gordon Hendry, to the state board as a Democrat member and he's quickly become an outspoken critic of Ritz to give the false appearance the opposition to her is bipartisan, a meme that hack State House reporters like Jim Shella are more than willing to serve up to you. It's like the scene in "The Shooter" where Sen. Charles Meacham tells Bob Lee Swagger that there are no sides. "There's no Republicans or Democrats. There's no Sunnis and Shiites. There's only haves and have-nots." Ritz is a thorn in the side of those who are profiteering off of education in Indiana. She will either have to join forces with the haves or see her role reduced to nothing more than a ceremonial figure head. The goal is to turn education into a big money machine for the haves, not to improve the quality of education in Indiana.