Letter of the day: A healthy school district ought to let its educators disagree

I have followed the case of Tim Cadotte, principal of Burroughs Community School, with a great deal of interest and disgust at the Minneapolis school board's handling of this matter. No doubt all members of the board have read Jon Tevlin's column about it in the Feb. 2 Star Tribune. I have read Tevlin's work for a number of years, and when he writes about something, he invariably hits the nail on the head. It looks like he has done it again. It's a sorry state of affairs when our educators are not allowed to speak their minds for fear of losing their jobs, at worst, or undergoing harassment and character assassination, at best. The only upside to this is that they are not thrown in jail for speaking their minds, as they are in Iran and other such totalitarian countries. Since the likely new superintendent, Bernadeia Johnson, worked with former superintendent Carol Johnson, I expect she will take to heart the last sentence in Tevlin's column: recognizing that sometimes the most important voices to listen to are the ones that don't always agree with you. MICHAEL H. WINER, MINNEAPOLIS