Feb. 20--Children receive a lot of mixed messages these days.
We tell them not to lie, and then they read about politicians, athletes and celebrities lying. We tell them to be humble and gracious and follow the rules, and then they see coaches bending rules right and left and blaming losses on unfair treatment by umpires or referees.
We should do all we can to teach kids that good behavior is rewarded and bad behavior is punished. So what to do about Laurie Kimbrel, who has been hired to be the next superintendent of Township High School District 113 in the north suburbs?
It came out this week, thanks to reporting by my colleague Greg Trotter, that Kimbrel's husband had assumed a fake online name and posted malicious comments about a parent in the California school district his wife currently heads.
This is from one of Trotter's stories: "The comments, written about a parent in the school district north of San Francisco where Kimbrel is superintendent, included suggestions that the parent was involved in embezzlement and is a member of the KKK, according to a letter written to the school board by the parent's lawyer. The lawyer called the remarks 'malicious and defamatory.'"
Kimbrel's husband, Tim Olrick, admitted he posted the comments and told the Tribune they were "in response to what he felt were personal attacks against his wife." His motivation is irrelevant. His actions amounted to cyberbullying, and that's unacceptable.
In a 2013 report, the National Center for Education Statistics found that in the 2010-2011 school year, nearly 2.2. million students ages 12 to 18 reported being cyberbullied. That's about 9 percent of all students in that age range, and it was up from 6.2 percent the previous year.
Cyberbullying, which can have a horrific impact on young minds and egos, must be addressed relentlessly and made taboo in schools. So the question I have is: How can Kimbrel, with a husband admittedly guilty of cyberbullying, ever regain the moral high ground on this issue?
I don't have a child in that school district, but the people who do are asking similar questions. There's already a petition on the website Change.org calling for Kimbrel's contract to be canceled, saying in part: "How can we, as parents, students, and community members, be assured that she was not involved in this atrocious scandal, and that she will take it upon herself to promote anti-bullying programs, if she can't even control one person?"
I spoke with Kimbrel and, to her credit, she didn't back down from the seriousness of the situation or try to deflect concerns by simply laying blame on her husband.
"I condemn the use of personal attacks whether it's in person, online or in writing," she said. "In the strongest possible terms, that's not the behavior that I engage in or expect from the people around me or the people who are in my family. My understanding is that there were two comments that were personal attacks and that's incredibly inappropriate."
She continued: "What I would say about the behavior of my husband, we've been married for 25 years, I've known him for 31 years and this is one incident in 31 years. It's an isolated incident. That doesn't make it better. However, it is not in character and it was in response to the belief that someone he loved was being cyberbullied. But the way we handle that is not to respond that way."
(It's worth noting that Kimbrel is also answering questions about her work as an independent contractor for the search firm that recruited her for the District 113 job. Kimbrel has said she was trained to help the firm with California searches but was never paid or involved in a search and severed ties with the company when interest from District 113 came up.)
My first thought when I read what Kimbrel's husband had done was: This is disqualifying. It doesn't matter that the superintendent-to-be isn't directly responsible, bringing her on would send a mixed message to kids in the district about cyberbullying.
However, I admire how forthright Kimbrel is being about the situation. She's not trying to downplay the sheer stupidity of it all.
I spoke with Marjie Sandlow, president of the District 113 board, today and she said: "We're doing some fact-finding of our own. One of the questions we have is whether she knew that her husband had cyberbullied at any time in the hiring process. She had told us that she didn't know, but we're doing independent fact-finding to find out if that's true, because that would make a difference."
Sandlow stressed how important the issue of bullying is to the district.
"I guess what I want to say is that while we continually work on bullying in our schools, it's embedded in the school at every level of our programs," she said. "The timing was crazy, we had a nationally renowned speaker, Barbara Coloroso, who did several talks in the district this week regarding bullying."
And now they're dealing with the dumb actions of their new superintendent's husband.
Many parents in the district are going to want to see Kimbrel gone, and I wouldn't say they're wrong for feeling that way. But I think the one thing Kimbrel and her husband can do to make this right -- really the only thing, if she and the district move forward together -- is to fully own what happened. To take on cyberbullying headfirst and commit to teaching every child in the district about how harmful it can be, and how easily anyone -- even an adult -- can be tempted to harass someone.
That means Kimbrel's husband takes center-stage in speaking to kids, explaining what he did, why on Earth he did it and how it damaged another person as well as his own family. And Kimbrel looks for ways to get inside the heads of these young people and teach them to respect each other in person and online.
This is a colossal and embarrassing screw-up, and a fine example of adults making it harder for kids to know right from wrong. But Kimbrel's husband and Kimbrel herself -- assuming the parents and the district will have them -- have an opportunity to teach.
I certainly hope that's what they decide to do.
rhuppke@tribpub.com
