Part 86: Strategery

My defense is planned.

The meeting with parents will happen on August 17 at 7:00 PM in my classroom.

Just one day away.

Elysha and I meet with our principal, our union president, and our CEA attorney to discuss how the meeting should be conducted.

What should be said.

What strategy should be deployed.

My principal and the union president will lead the meeting. Sara, my attorney, will be present but won’t speak unless necessary.

My principal suggests that we tie my fate to Elysha:

Matt can’t be the monster described in the letters and packet, because Elysha wouldn’t have married him if that were true.

He’s essentially leveraging Elysha's outstanding reputation to save me. How could the kindest, sweetest, most beloved woman ever agree to spend her life with a man who people have compared to a mass murderer?

Impossible.

It sounds okay to me. Not exactly a ringing endorsement, but not too bad, either.

Our union president disagrees.

It’s not nearly good enough, she says. It’s a fine point of argument, but the defense must be more robust and direct.

She wants to approach my defense on two fronts:

1. Matt is an outstanding teacher — a former West Hartford Teacher of the Year — who is endorsed and supported by parents, former students, colleagues, and administrators in our town. His reputation has been impeccable. He is one of Wolcott School’s most beloved teachers. Everything written in the letters is a fabrication.

2. The letters and packet are a clear attempt to mischaracterize me through deliberate misrepresentation of my writing and baseless claims motivated by envy and malice. She plans to use some of the most egregious examples from the packet to illustrate this deliberate elimination of context to change the meaning of my work. She’s already highlighted examples.

I like her ideas a lot.

We debate the whats and hows for quite a while before finally coming to a resolution.

In the end, it’s decided that the union president will take the lead. Our principal will speak on my behalf, too, and Sara will talk only if legal questions are raised.

Elysha and I will wait at home and hope.

It also looks like most of the parents assigned to my classroom in September plan to attend the meeting. We’ve been informed by the superintendent’s office that five of the 23 families have already called the superintendent and made a decision.

They will not be attending the meeting.

The superintendent hasn’t told us what those parents have decided, but it's assumed they have opted out, so we can't afford to lose many more if I hope to have a class of students next year.

When the strategy meeting ends, Elysha and I return home.

The phone is ringing as we enter the apartment. It’s a Board of Education member—one of two who have publicly expressed their support for me.

He suggests I conduct a press conference on the front lawn of Wolcott School. Make everything public. Defend myself vigorously for all to see.

He’s also willing to stand beside me.

It‘s not unlike Tony Caruso’s suggestion.

I tell him that if the parent meeting in two days does not go well, I may take him up on his offer.

“That might be too late for you,” he says. “If the meeting goes poorly, a press conference might be too little, too late.”

I agree, but we’re less than 48 hours from that meeting, and I’m hoping for a miracle.

“Miracles are hard to come by,” he tells me.

I agree. But I’m also a relentless, sometimes oppressive optimist. I’ve been through hell before and come out on the other end every time.

It hasn’t been easy, and I still have scars from my battles, but I’ve survived every time.

I’m hoping to pull it off again.

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