By Rosalie Tirella

We will see if this bullshit continues at tonight’s Worcester City Council meeting: the not-so-latent attempt to pull the rug out from under the sturdy feet of Dr. Melinda Boone, Worcester’s new school superintendent.

We know that City Counilor Frederick Rushton was a big fan of “connected” school superintendent candidate Steve Mills (now working in some Boston suburb), and that he wanted his boy to get the superintendent job big time. Infact, last year Rushton was the city council member who was most vocal in his opposition to Boone. And he pushed for Mills, who thought he was a shoe in because he worked on Tim Murray’s first political campaign and all that crap.

But, hey, Rushton was powerless and then Worcester Mayor konnie Lukes wasn’t. As then-chair of the Worcester School Committee (as is for all of Wormtown’s mayors), Konnie created a professional search committee comprised of community intelligent non-biased community folks who would look at all super candidates. The search committee recommended the best candidate – Dr. Melinda Boone, a female, Black educator from Norfolk, Virginia. Our school committee OK’d the recommendation and – voila! Worcester actually looked smart, cool and progressive. …

Until, we had to listen to the blowhard guys on our city council last week. Rushton got up and spewed (said): Why in hell haven’t we seen something from Dr. Boone regarding class size in Elm Street Community Schoool?

What the fuck, Ric??

Rushton continued to “inform” his council colleagues when he said: Last week I was at a soccer event at Elm Park School, and a teacher who works there said that class size at Elm Park was high – 23, 25 kids. And EVERYBODY – JUST EVERYBODY – knows Elm Park School is not the kind of school (read: innercity) to have 25 kids in a class! More like 19! Why isn’t Dr. Boone on top of this situation?!!!

Yeah, Ric, Dr. Boone is supposed to know that. Plus: instead of the teacher bitching to you, she could have bitched to Dr. Boone.

It is exactly this kind of petty insiderism bull shit that Rushton – and Mayor Joe O’Brien because he was talking tough about Dr. Boone, too – will pull to sink Dr. Boone’s ship.

So, Mayor O’Brien decided to put Dr. Boone in the hot seat and have her address the city council re: the state of the Worcester Public Schools.

Like being a new resident and only holding the job for less than a year will make any difference. … And forget that I never heard these “men” call our former school superintendent – James Carradonnio – to the mat. We never saw Jimmy on the Worcester City Council hot seat. But hey, these good ol’ boys just wanna make Dr. Boone look inept … so they can fire her.

This sucks.

Because they suck.