Latest News and Comment from Education

Monday, October 5, 2015

Common Core Dissent *NOT* Appreciated by Connecticut Police Officer » Missouri Education Watchdog

Common Core Dissent *NOT* Appreciated by Connecticut Police Officer » Missouri Education Watchdog:

Common Core Dissent *NOT* Appreciated by Connecticut Police Officer





A dossier of sorts was compiled by a police officer on an Connecticut citizen organizing an anti-Common Core informational session.  Maybe the police officer didn’t like that the dissenter is a Republican or is a ‘birther’.  Is dissent by a citizen with such credentials considered patriotic or a threat to the State?
One day in late August, local political activist Arthur “Cort” Wrotnowski placed flyers on car windshields in the Island Beach ferry parking lot, hoping to drum up a crowd that would listen to his take on the perils of the Common Core, the controversial federal and state educational reform initiative.
His flyers were not compelling enough to get people to give up the outdoors on one of the last beautiful Friday nights of the summer; only two people attended the early evening event at Town Hall on August 28. But the one-page notice did catch the eye of Greenwich Police Captain Mark Kordick, head of the Detective Division and an almost three-decade veteran of the force. He immediately drafted an email to School Superintendent William McKersie, informing the schools chief of the anti-Common Core meeting. That set off a chain of events that resulted Thursday in First Selectmen and Police Commissioner Peter Tesei starting an investigation into Captain Kordick’s behavior.
At issue in the investigation are questions about the proper role of police in civil society, and whether Captain Kordick’s actions went beyond acceptable police behavior.
In an email sent over his signature as Captain of Detectives, Kordick told McKersie about Wrotnowski’s plan to hold a public forum in Town Hall “in the event your office wanted to send an official (or off the record) representative to attend the public event.” He attached a scan of the flyer and identified Wrotnowski as “among other things, (he is) apparently both an anti-Common Core activist and participant in the anti-President Obama “birther” movement.
McKersie replied that he and his staff knew of Wrotnowski’s opposition, but would not be sending a representative to the event, off the record or otherwise.
The head of detectives sent a second email to McKersie, after the anti-Common Core confab, with this 
Common Core Dissent *NOT* Appreciated by Connecticut Police Officer » Missouri Education Watchdog: