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Originally Posted by Xavier

Have you ever seen a person's personality change drastically when all of a sudden they've been given power or authority that they never possessed before? It could be a title change, a uniform change, and/or a leadership change. I'm sure you've all seen this before.

Thirty years ago I was in charge of a break-even, not-for-profit adult education program. The focus of the courses was for individual and community betterment. The program was up-fronted the funding by various public education entities. The understanding was that it was self-supporting and that all funds would be returned at the end of the term. After time, the enrollments grew, the offerings became more diversified and soon we were serving over 9,000 students and the budget grew into the millions. Asking public educational organizations for that much money up-front became very difficult. We were continuously looking to involve businesses and to apply for grant funding from whatever sources were available. If we were diligent and played our cards close to our vest, funding would continue the next term. Putting addition financial burdens on our programs could have had disastrous ramifications.

Enter a real go-getter who was looking to make a name for himself. Someone like the individual I described in my first paragraph. ADA demands went from zero to scores all within one term. Let me take a little aside. I am a lifelong educator and truly believe in inclusiveness. We had no warnings, no discussion, no requests before our program was blindsided. There was no satisfying this person. No accommodations were good enough. None of the actual participants were demanding what-so-ever. They were often embarrassed and wanted to work with us. We later found out that they were sometimes chastised for being cooperative.

To shorten the story and to avoid getting painfully bogged down in details, I brought together a group of leaders in the community to help us figure out what could be done. A problem solving group. I made sure to invite the individual who was the catalyst to our problem. He was much more cooperative in a group setting. We saved our programs, served all members of the community, and taught an important lesson in cooperation.

Xavier

What a nice post. Thanks.