Opinion: Darn You Jeffrey Hubbard Part II

I was going to write about teacher evaluations this week, but then darn old Jeffrey Hubbard started Tweeting and it made it to the front page of the Daily Pilot. It would be easy to make fun of him, and at the outset last night I thought about doing just that, but I'm not. I'm going to try to get into the crazy head of Dr. Hubbard.

My problem has not always been with Hubbard. My problem has always been with the trustees who hired him and then kept renewing his contract; giving him three more years every year! I would love to hear any explanation for that particular decision that would make sense. It is and will remain a mystery.

I never liked the guy and was not a fan of his apparently irresistible charm (at least to the trustees minus Foley), but last night after reading about his Tweets, and pronouncing them to be bizarre to friends, I started to really think about it. I put myself in his probably overlarge shoes, and tried to imagine what it might be like to be self-convinced of my innocence and unable to convince anyone else. How it would feel to sit in a courtroom day after day and have the prosecution tell what I would consider lies? How frustrating it might be to be unable to locate the papers that would prove my innocence. How embarrassing the emails. How humiliating the constant public criticism. 

I'm going to admit something. I heard the news when Bruce and I were in Northern California for Christmas, and probably like everyone else, could not believe that he had been arrested and was going to be arraigned. I admit I was unreasonably happy.

Remember I said that I never liked him, and thought that he was a lousy superintendent, but I thought the charges were odd. The whole thing had happened six years ago, and it was a relatively small amount of money for such a big deal. I think he's right when he says, " Spending $3 million on an alleged $23,500 crime is PURELY POLITICAL ...." I agree $3 million is a lot of money for any trial, and this one didn't quite fit in the $3 mil category for me. I always secretly thought there was something else to it.

The emails were disturbing and I've complained about them in many columns, but more as an indictment of the trustees than Hubbard, and that they were done on district mail is just plain dumb! Even so, I never thought that he actually had a physical relationship with Christiansen. I thought that he may have wanted to, and these emails were just Hubbard trying to be flirtatious and adorable and relatively sickening, but these emails were not those of someone having a steaming hot coupling.

Going to jail, even for just four days is horrible. Frankly I think he got the jail time because his arrogance really irritated the judge. I know his arrogance really irritated almost everyone who wasn't a trustee, but to sentence a school superintendent to jail for 60 days, even knowing that he would be released in a short time is seriously "overreaching". And thinking the entire time that you are innocent...

Last night I wondered what I would do if I really rationally or irrationally believed in my innocence, and not having a vehicle to explain or proclaim it to the world? I might in my complete frustration go to Twitter or Facebook as well.

So Jeffrey Hubbard .... darn you for the unbelievable teasing I'm going to get about this column. Darn you for being dumb. Darn you for believing that you actually had evidence to prove your innocence and couldn't. Darn you for still being the arrogant guy that I disliked from the beginning. And darn you for making me step into those shoes at least for last night. Darn you for making me wonder...