Jackass of the Week

Suzan Hebson, Assistant Superintendent of Highland Park, Ill., School District 113

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Ms. Hebson is the school bureaucrat that squashed plans for the Highland Park High School girls basketball team by declaring her own boycott of Arizona. The team was scheduled to compete in a tournament in AZ next December, but its trip has been cancelled in the wake of the recently-passed immigration enforcement bill in the Grand Canyon state. Nothing like letting personal political views interfere with sports, and using a bunch of teenage girls as pawns in your vendetta. Way to outrage parents and residents of the district with such a petty decision, one made without consultation of the effected parties involved. And nice hypocrisy too, as this school is still open to trips to China, a country whose human rights record and attitude toward the worth of females in general is hardly one to embody. That's political correctness for the education industrial complex: Communist China is one to emulate & respect, while the great state of Arizona deserves consternation and long-distance boycotts. Up is down, right is left, night is day..

Not that wizard-of-smart Hebson (Anyone care to lay bets on which political party she is registered with currently?) has never been a stranger to injecting herself into political controversy. According to FoxNews.com,

The school official who nixed a girls' high school basketball team's planned trip to Arizona once supported a controversial program that required ninth-graders to attend a “freshman advisory” class at which gay upperclassmen shared stories of their high school experiences. Parents who were unhappy with the class were even more outraged to learn that students who attended were asked to sign a statement promising not to tell others -- including their parents -- about what was said in class...

In 2007, when she was assistant superintendent for human resources in the district, Hebson made national news for supporting an initiative at Deerfield High School that required freshman students to participate in orientation panel discussions, one of which was led by members of the school’s Straight and Gay Alliance Network. During the seminars, upperclassmen spoke to the ninth graders about a variety of topics affecting homosexual teens, including their own personal experiences -- and all students were required to sign confidentiality agreements swearing never to disclose what they heard.

Parents were not allowed to attend the panel discussions, leading some to call it an attempt to indoctrinate students into a homosexual lifestyle.

...The following year, Hebson was made principal of Deerfield High School, where she became embroiled in another controversy — this time related to the inclusion of the play “Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes” in students’ required reading material.

Parents were alarmed by the book’s explicit content, which includes highly offensive racial slurs, vivid depictions of gay sex and a sexually explicit scene involving Mother Teresa.

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Those who can't do, teach. And apparently many that can't teach become school administrators. Hopefully the community around Highland Park High will rally and raise enough funds, via bake sales, car washes, and other such activities, to send the ladies to Arizona to compete. Until then, they can thank not-so-super-intendent Hebson for injecting politics (those with views on the Arizona immigration bill which are in the clear minority, according to every poll this side of American Idol) into the area of high school girls sports. Letters of protest from concerned citizens to Suzan Hebson should thus begin with the salutation "Dear Jackass of the Week..."

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- AZDB