Not the Bee — literally

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Not the Bee, quoting excerpts from the WSJ article

By some measures, the stakes could not be lower. A red envelope that went missing — or was stolen — from the [Amagansett elementary] school's mailroom [in December of 2023] was said to contain a $25 Amazon gift card, a Christmas-season expression of gratitude from a parent to one of the school's occupational therapists.

Yet the missing card has prompted a police report, accusations of foul play and bullying and a disciplinary trial that has generated some 1,400 pages in testimony from more than a dozen witnesses. Passages read like an Agatha Christie mystery, except there is no antique revolver or pearl-handled dagger.

Not the Bee: “That response alone would be absurd enough, rolling out the court system for a gift card in the amount of a couple of new iPhone chargers off Amazon.

“But the sheer price tag of the endeavor is even more jaw-dropping:”

Meanwhile, based on his published rates, the fees for the arbitrator overseeing the hearing have already exceeded $24,800 — or nearly a thousand-times the value of the missing card — and are sure to rise further.

I get the issue: you don’t want a crook serving as school principal, although, is she is one, she’d be perfectly fit to be a politician, but where are these arbitration costs coming from? I don’t remember what I was paid as an NYSE arbitrator — it might have been just a box lunch, there might have been a small stipend — but this arbitrator must have a relative on the school board.