It is disgraceful that South Hadley School Committee has voted unanimously to extend the tenure of school superintendent Gus Sayer for two years.

But I'm not really surprised.

This school committee is the ultimate 'see no evil' bunch, who are rewarding the school super for allowing a 15-year-old girl to be bullied so badly on his watch.

It fits in with everything else in South Hadley where the victim, Irish girl Phoebe Prince, is now being vilified by rumor and innuendo and her only defender, Darby O'Brien has had his life threatened.

This is not the kind of town you want to bring your kids up in or showcase true American values.

“I’m pleased,” Sayer said last Thursday when he heard he had kept his job .

“I’m glad that they still have confidence in me.”

That's what I call a "great job Brownie" type of endorsement, as when President Bush congratulated his FEMA chief Michael Brown during the Katrina disaster for doing a great job.

So "super job Sayers", for allowing bullying to run rampant in South Hadley High.

And great job School Committee Chairwoman JoAnn L. Jordan for managing an unanimous vote for Sayer and for the following ridiculous endorsement of the year by a member of the school board.

“While Dr. Sayer demonstrates the utmost in personal integrity, he has struggled this year under the intense scrutiny of recent months in the area of public communication.

Despite this, Dr. Sayer has maintained a professional and respectful tone to everyone, including his harshest critics, which speaks to the strengths of his character.”

Parents Luke T. Gelinas and Darby O’Brien who have called for Sayer, former School Committee Chairman Edward J. Boisselle and South Hadley High School principal Daniel T. Smith to resign are voices in the wilderness at this point. It is as if Phoebe Prince's death never happened.

But it did and South Hadley is now officially the ostrich capital of the world.

By re-appointing Sayer the school board has shown just how out of touch they are with reality.

Next year it might be one of their their kids who gets bullied.

Will they love Sayer then too?