Shame on You

I have sent the letter I sent to Blumendall to all members of the Hillsborough County bar. Let's see if exposure can shame Tom into carrying out the law. lee

To complete this idea, I sent it to the Pinellas Bar too. I live in Pinellas after all. As a matter of fact, I think Representative Bill Young lives close by. lee

Governor Crist Checks In

The Council of Trent Convenes to Decide if Governor Crist is gay, bisexual, or polymorphous perverse.


Gentlepeople: I got Governor Crist's attention when he ran for governor.

When he came to Tampa Tiger Bay during the campaign, I got my two daughters, Andrea and Margie, to attend Governor Crist's appearance at Tiger Bay so that they could see how a person, their mother, could question authority. After I die, they will do the same is this mother's prayer.

They won't do it while I am alive because children make a particular effort not to let parents know how much they influence them when the parent is still alive. The rascals are mean spirited in this behavior, but that does not prevent us parents' loving the little shits.

This mother hopes her children will question authority when I am no longer alive to do so. Somebody has do, or democracy goes down the tube.

I got the following message from Governor Crist on flossy governor rag-content uptown paper typed as an original, not as a post from hundreds of printer run-offs.

I get this special treatment because I asked him at a Tiger Bay luncheon when he was running for governor at which he appeared if he were gay.

I thought it a fair question not because I don't think gays should be full citizens and governors but because the Republican Party, of which Mr. Crist is member, tried to demonize gays in that particular election to get the bigot vote.

Mr. Crist, whose mother was at the event I later learned, denied that he was gay. A mother will stand by her child no matter what.

Today I would ask a more sophisticated question after I read a long SPT article that catalogued a woman's accusation of Crist's fathering her child and then hightailing it. My question would be today: "Are you bisexual? and do you take responsibility for any children you beget?"

Be ever aware that the evasions of political jerks rely greatly on the perversion of language. Watch out they how skew the meaning of "a" and "the."

I eventually got kicked out of Tiger Bay for asking this question. The Tiger Bay board, on which former judge Don Castor sat along with his second wife Mickey, acquired after Betty ran around on him in Tallahassee, is a local Lady MacBeth.

I think Congressperson Cathy Castor is a much better human being than either of her parents. She said she would not vote for a House health-care bill that did not contain a public option.

I have the satisfaction of recalling a delicious incident when Crist came to Indian Rocks Beach to push his governor candidacy. I attended his IRB event, and he actually ran when he saw me moving toward him.

I know why. Reporters from all over Florida had called me for interviews about my question on his being gay. This incident means that Crist sees me as a person who can do him harm in the media. That is why he has a staff member write me on rag-content flossy paper.

That's power. Rag-content paper suggests power. Power is what we need to get if we are going to make things better for teachers in the Hillsborough County School System run by thugs. lee


THE CAPITOL TALLAHASSEE, FLORIDA 32399-000 I
www.f1gov.cOI11 850-488-4441
850-487 -0801 fax

Lee Drury De Cesare Number 802

15316 Gulf Boulevard
Madeira Beach, Florida 33708

Thank you for Contacting my office and sharing your concerns about the protection of children in Florida Schools and your request for contact information for the Secretary of the Florida Department of Children and Families. I appreciate the opportunity to respond.

The safety of Florida's public school students is of the utmost importance. The Department of Education is committed to working closely with local school districts to ensure that Florida public schools and classrooms are safe and healthy environments for our children. Students are not only protected by their teachers, school staff, principals, and resource officers, but also by district personnel, state officials and law enforcement officers. If you suspect that a child has been harmed or is threatened with harm by a licensed teacher, contact the Florida Department of Children & Families (DCF) toll-free at 1-800-96-ABUSE. Further information about reporting abuse may be found on the DCF Web site at www.dcf.state.fl.us/abuse. You may also contact your local school district because each district has its own process for handling allegations of teacher misconduct.

To assist you with your concerns, I forwarded a copy of your correspondence to the Florida Department of Education, Office of Professional Practices. As you requested, I also shared your correspondence with Secretary George Sheldon of the Florida Department of Children and Families. if you wish to contact these offices directly, please use the information provided below.

Our government is structured on the principle that local communities can best assess the needs of their residents. Voters elect their county officials to manage local government business. I understand you shared your concerns with your locally elected school board officials. That was the appropriate thing to do.

Under Florida law, violations of the conflict of interest laws fall within the jurisdiction of the Florida Commission on Ethics. If you wish to file a complaint with the commission, you can obtain a complaint form on the commission's Web site at www.ethics.state.fl.us. For further assistance, you may wish to contact the commission by calling (850) 488-7864, or by writing to Post Office Drawer 15709, Tallahassee, Florida 32317-5709.

Mail Sent from the Front Lines of the ROSSAC Redoubt

Outside Florence: Going to Visit David

Susan Blumendall

Chief Branch Discipline Council

4200 George Bean Parkway

Suite 2580

Tampa, FL 33607

11/4/2009

Dear Ms. Blumendall:

I entered "Disciplining Lawyers" in a search engine and got you. Please reroute the message to the right person if you do not represent the local legal-regulation community that oversees lawyer behavior.

Attorney Tom Gonzalez makes $275,000 a year as the Hillsborough County School Board attorney. In another public rip-off, he is overpaid for his slender skills. However, the Hillsborough board members all stand in awe of the fellow because he is a lawyer: the genus that can sue you, strip you of all your belongings, and turn you into a street bum.

Mr. Gonzalez got the job as hand-off, I infer, from Crosby Few, previous school-board attorney, holder of the sinecure for more than 30 years. I believe this no-bid, no equal-opportunity hiring explains why Mr. Gonzalez claims that the administration and board jobs racket for relatives and chums does not violate Title VII ; nor do the no-bid buddy contracts the board and administration favor. As I recall, Le Gonzalez selectively parses the state and federal statutes to back up this interpretation.

Mr. Gonzalez's professional ethics are such that he once hinted that he could sue me for extortion if I carried out my suggestion of asking the federal government for compliance reviews of the school district's federal grants if the board and administration didn't stop their louche hiring practices. Mr. Gonzales conveniently ignored the SLAPP law that protects citizens who criticize their government. He counted on my not knowing about it.

My assessment of Mr. Gonzalez's horse-back rulings from the podium is that these demonstrate his settled policy of pronouncing legal assessments that he believes coincide with the board and administration's wishes no matter whether those rulings coincide with the law.

That tendency is what I lay before the discipline committee.

Mr. Gonzalez has been on the job long enough to have involved himself in the infamous Sam Erwin case. Mr. Erwin was a school administrator for thirty years who asked the board and Superintendent Dr. Lennard to do something about the crime and graft that he discovered in the schools.

In response, what Dr. Lennard and his administrative thugs did was try to convince people that Mr. Erwin was crazy. Reminiscent of Nazi Germany's citizens' abandoning the Jews when transported by cattle car to Buchenwald and Auschwitz, not one person came to Mr. Erwin's aid, so terrified were and still are school people at all levels of losing their jobs by administration fiat if they emit a syllable of dissent from the party line of the board and administration.

Logic says that savaging a school employee for asking that the administration and board stop graft and theft with the administrative and board gang's seeking to invalidate the whistleblower by calling him crazy makes sense only if board and administration were recipients of the graft Erwin had discovered.

When administration and board efforts to prove Mr. Erwin crazy failed, the board and administration crafted a battle plan to fire and deprive Mr. Erwin of his pension. They sent him on wild goose chases for fugitive evidence gathering to keep him spinning his wheels. The poor guy finally gave up on the people with whom he had worked 30 years and got Attorney Pricilla Ryan to represent him in a whistleblower case. Ms. Ryan won the case against Tom Gonzalez's and his firm's representation of the Board.

The jury didn't believe a word of the rehearsed lies administration and board witnesses produced. Those lies work only in the closed system of the board and administration's mythos of their unquestionable power and its resultant glory.

Mr. Gonzalez had pitched in to do his part in savaging Mr. Erwin during the frame-up period. He and board chair Carol Bricklemeyer summoned Mr. Erwin to the Gonzalez office on pretext of helping him.. Instead, the two debriefed him and then loosed him back into the administration-and-board gladiatorial arena to twist slowly in the wind under constant assault. Mr. Erwin's health and his wife's health deteriorated.

Mr. Gonzalez as his part in the cover-up when the story finally got out to the public that demanded explanation hired a firm to investigate the Erwin charges. But when the investigators reported that they found nothing but plots against Mr. Erwin, Mr. Gonzalez closed down the investigation.

I became an adept in the Erwin Whistleblower case by reading the boxes of court records that reside in the Public Information office--available as public information to anybody with the stamina to dig through them.

I as well set myself to observe the board's and administration's performance after the Professional Standards office framed gay friend Bart Birdsall with a cooked-up charge because he wrote to the county library head Joe Stines, also gay, from Bart's home computer to protest the library's dismantling a gay book display mounted by a USF graduate student as a class project. Impetus for this barbarous edict was Commissioner--now senator, alas--Ronda Storms's homophobic ordinance.

Negative publicity horrifies Ms. Elia, who lusts for positive publicity and praise She and her toady Linda Kipley, head of Professional Standards, doubtless cooked up the ersatz Professional Standards case against Teacher Birdsall to shut him up lest his identification with the school system suggest that Ms. Elia tolerated gays.

This suggestion could trigger retaliation by political bigots in the county's outlying fens and the bogs. They might lock-and-load to march on the school board at hints of gay coddling to deliver some ungrammatical invective, threats, and birdshots at the board. This lovely fracas would that would besmirch the schools' public-relations putsch by appearing in the newspapers.

Gonzalez's firm's losing the Erwin case and its $165,000 settlement did not prevent Dr. Leonard's recruiting Mr. Gonzales as Board attorney. My observation of the Gonzalez performance on the board dais says that Le Lennard intuited that Gonzalez would play legal shill for the Board's and administration's skullduggery, discovering legal rationales that sidestepped the laws.

That Mr. Gonzalez is lazy, slipshod, big-baby childish, boorish, and ranks no higher than midpoint in the Stanford Binet does not shake the Board's and administration's faith in him. The important thing is that he does their will with eking out opinions that reinforce their biases.

Gonzalez was too lazy to read recent Sheriff's opinions on the culpability of two school employees in child-abuse charges. One was Steve Kemp, a teacher thrown into a Special-ed profoundly retarded classroom without skills and absent orientation by two administrators ambitious for promotion, I infer. Mr. Smiley and Ms. Morris claimed that Kemp violated restraint protocol. This set-up charge gave the Professional Standards gulag pretext to put Kemp on a year-plus suspension even after the Sheriff threw out the child-abuse charge on the day Special-ed Supervisor Ron Smiley filed it.

A contemporaneous administrator who suffers from foot fetishism long acted out by ordering pubescent boys at King High into his office, ordering them to shut the door, ordering them to take off their shoes and socks; ordering them to present their bare feet to him to fondle got only a slap on the wrist and not even a referral to psychiatric evaluation.

A while back, Mr. Gonzalez's incompetence found expression in his failure to advise the board to get sufficient insurance to cover the collapse of a wall in one of the newly built schools. Thus, taxpayers had to pay for the construction of the replacement wall. No board member was savvy or courageous enough to ask Mr. Gonzalez why he didn't give good insurance advice.

Any time a citizen questions the legality and ethics of the Board's hiring without advertising or handing out contracts without competition, Mr. Gonzalez comes to life to give full-throated endorsements of both procedures in volume that would make Demosthenes look like a piker lecturing to the sea with pebbles in his mouth.

The reason for these booming endorsements is, of course, that Mr. Gonzalez got his job as a beneficiary of a no-bid contract handed to him with no advertising of the job.

Gonzalez was too slipshod to read the two Sheriff's Department reports used by the Times reporter that revealed that both Kemp and the administrative Toe Cracker had identical evaluations in their cases. Gonzalez claimed that only Kemp's case had a heads-up for further analysis.

Being called inaccurate offended the reporter, who had a spirited discussion with the PR deficient Mr. Gonzalez; the riled reporter wrote a second story confirming his first. Only then did Gonzalez get around to reading both cases. Instead of saying, "I made a mistake," he sent a redaction of linguistic somersaults to the Professional Standards office that made his erroneous assessment of the cases coincide with the Sheriff's reports. I wonder if he got do-overs in his bar exam.

Mr. Gonzalez pitched a big-baby tantrum on the night of the board meeting that was coincident with the discussion of the two cases. Board member Griffin had pulled him into the lobby to discuss some disputed issue. This is Ms. Griffin's typical suppression of open government. She should have brought out the issue in public view so voters could know what the quarrel was about. Both Griffin and Gonzalez looked and sounded wroth during their discussion.

When Gonzalez turned on his heel to return to the Board room, he took his wrath out on two citizens in his path. He denied to one that he, Gonzalez, was wrong about the two child-abuse cases; he aimed at the other a spittle spray of contempt, calling her an "old lady." That would be I. I am an old lady, but I don't want to be targeted for counselor spittle spray by a lawyer who can't control his temper on the job.

And one must perforce add this unlovely feature of Mr. Gonzalez's professional behavior: he has been known to munch chips and swill pop during board meetings whilst seated in his attorney's official chair. Perhaps such boorish behavior does not find mention in the bar's decorum standards, but it's not couth. My Southern mother would have said that the Board counselor acted like he was raised in a barn and must not have come from "a good family."

Mr. Gonzalez, in fact, is at pains to advertise that his family emerged from Castilian forebears, not from any of those mongrel Ybor Hispanic breeds. He makes certain as well that one knows he was born and had lived in since birth Anglo South Tampa.

As I recall his recital of forebears' origin, he claims them to have been an ancient family in Castile even before the Visigoths occupied Spain. The family had--I believe I have this right--employed as butler in those remote times a varlet named Sancho Panza. I am almost positive as well that Mr. Gonzalez says that the South Tampa area in which he resides is horse country that reminds him of the rolling steppes of Andalusia.

In sum, what Mr. Gonzalez lacks in legal competence he makes up for in venerable aristocracy, something Tampa needs more of, to be sure. And Lord knows the board needs as much as it can pay for.

Mr. Gonzales delivered one of his sly, duplicitous opinions at the November 3rd board meeting when Board Member Candy Olson asked him to comment on a citizen's objection to the schools' partial carrying out of the HB 669 bullying law. The complaint had to do with the Hillsborough schools' bullying procedure that named only students as victims in the law despite school employees' being mentioned as part of the victim population at least eight times in HB 669.

Knowing his board members' sentiments, Le Gonzalez said that the law had nothing to do with adults' being bullied, that it applied only to students. I got the impression that he and La Candy had rehearsed this slick pas de deux before settling into their board seats.

I append HB 669 below with my color annotations. I believe the reason Ms. Olson, other board members, and the administration do not carry out the bullying law as it is written is that it would give teachers a weapon in fighting the board and administration's bullying of them. It would hamper the Professional Standards office's keeping lists of teachers under surveillance for their voicing even a mild criticism of board and administration mismanagement so as to set them up for a cooked-up Professional Standards charge.

This sadistic ritual's aim is to terrify teachers about losing their jobs. It holds them up to ridicule school wide as Mr. Erwin was, with everybody's treating them as toxic. Bart Birdsall says that after Professional Standards filed the cooked-up charge against him that even his faculty friends would not speak to him.

The goal of this obscene treatment is to cow the teacher into supine silence. HB 669's being carried out in the schools as it is written to include adults would give teachers recourse with which to fight the false charges Professional Standards manufactured by the administration and supported by the board. A fully carried-out law would diminish the Board's and administration's ability to intimidate teachers who speak out against Board and administration policies injurious to education.

A teacher's having a blog ranks a special sin against the power and glory of the board and administration and its PR campaign from the Community Affairs Laundromat office.

Special-ed Teacher Steve Kemp's blog pinpoints why he spent over a year on suspension in a board-and-administrative effort to terrify him into deserting his blog. Tom Gonzalez marched lock step in this coercion of teacher Kemp as did Mr. Valdez, Personnel Director. Ditto for home-ec credentialed Linda Kipley, head of Professional Standards, whose husband just snagged the job of accountant with only a high school education and no experience, beating out at least four candidates with both required accounting degrees and experience.

The Professional Standards Office punishes only teachers, never administrators. It lies in wait for teachers to make a piddling mistake as did Steve Kemp to pounce with a Professional Standards charge. Professional standards also files charges based on lies about a targeted teacher's community activities protected by the First Amendment. Bart Birdsall's case illustrates this fact. The giveaway statistic is that the Professional Standards office does not have records of ever punishing administrators, only teachers.

I ask that you review the attached HB 669 bullying law and determine whether Officer of the Court Tom Gonzalez distorted its intent in opining in an open Board meeting that it does not apply to adults working for the schools, only students. I ask that if you deem that he did not act in an ethical fashion in this matter that you apply what remedies exist for aberrant attorneys to his case.

If making this call is not your office's function, please send it to whoever's job it is in the legal oversight community to make such judgments, or give me the party's name and address so that I may send it myself.

Thank you.

Respectfully,

lee drury de cesare

15316 Gulf Boulevard 802

Madeira Beach, FL 33708

leedrurydecesarescasting-roomcouch.blogspot.com

c: All School Board Members and

Andalusian Gonzalez>

FLORIDA HB 669 - School Safety "Jeffrey Johnston Stand Up for All Students Act" A++ A bill to be entitled An act relating to school safety; creating s. 1006.147, F.S.; providing a short title; prohibiting bullying and harassment of any student or employee of a public K-12 educational institution; providing definitions; requiring each school district to adopt a policy prohibiting such bullying and harassment; providing minimum requirements for the contents of the policy; requiring the Department of Education to develop a model policy; providing immunity; providing restrictions with respect to defense of an action and application of the section; requiring department approval of a school district's policy and school district compliance with reporting procedures as prerequisites to receipt of safe schools funds; requiring a report on implementation; providing for construction; providing for severability; providing an effective date. Be It Enacted by the Legislature of the State of Florida: Section 1. Section 1006.147, Florida Statutes, is created to read: 1006.147 Bullying and harassment prohibited. (1) This section may be cited as the "Jeffrey Johnston Stand Up for All Students Act." (2) Bullying or harassment of any student or school employee of a public K-12 educational institution is prohibited: (a) During any education program or activity conducted by a public K-12 educational institution; (b) During any school-related or school-sponsored program or activity or on a school bus of a public K-12 educational institution; or (c) Through the use of data or computer software that is accessed through a computer, computer system, or computer network of a public K-12 educational institution. (3) For purposes of this section: (a) "Bullying" means systematically and chronically inflicting physical hurt or psychological distress on one or more students and may involve: 1. Teasing; 2. Social exclusion; 3. Threat; 4. Intimidation; 5. Stalking; 6. Physical violence; 7. Theft; 8. Sexual or racial harassment; 9. Public humiliation; or 10. Destruction of property. (b) "Harassment" means any threatening, insulting, or dehumanizing gesture, use of data or computer software, or written, verbal, or physical conduct directed against a student or school employee that: 1. Places a student or school employee in reasonable fear of harm to his or her person or damage to his or her property; 2. Has the effect of substantially interfering with a student's educational performance, opportunities, or benefits; or 3. Has the effect of substantially disrupting the orderly operation of a school. (c) Definitions in s. 815.03 and the definition in s. 784.048(1) (d) relating to stalking are applicable to this section. (d) The definitions of "bullying" and "harassment" include: 1. Retaliation against a student or school employee by another student or school employee for asserting or alleging an act of bullying or harassment. Reporting an act of bullying or harassment that is not made in good faith is considered retaliation. 2. Perpetuation of conduct listed in paragraph (a) or paragraph (b) by an individual or group with intent to demean, dehumanize, embarrass, or cause physical harm to a student or school employee, by: a. Incitement or coercion; b. Accessing or knowingly causing or providing access to data or computer software through a computer, computer system, or computer network within the scope of the district school system; or c. Acting in a manner that has an effect substantially similar to the effect of bullying or harassment. (4) By December 1, 2008, each school district shall adopt a policy prohibiting bullying and harassment of any student or employee of a public K-12 educational institution. Each school district's policy shall be in substantial conformity with the Department of Education's model policy mandated in subsection (5). The school district bullying and harassment policy shall afford all students the same protection regardless of their status under law. The school district may establish separate discrimination policies that include categories of students. The school district shall involve students, parents, teachers, administrators, school staff, school volunteers, community representatives, and local law enforcement agencies in the process of adopting the policy. The school district policy must be implemented in a manner that is ongoing throughout the school year and integrated with a school's curriculum, a school's discipline policies, and other violence prevention efforts. The school district policy must contain, at a minimum, the following components: (a) A statement prohibiting bullying and harassment. (b) A definition of bullying and a definition of harassment that include the definitions listed in this section. (c) A description of the type of behavior expected from each student and school employee of a public K-12 educational institution. (d) The consequences for a student or employee of a public K-12 educational institution who commits an act of bullying or harassment. (e) The consequences for a student or employee of a public K-12 educational institution who is found to have wrongfully and intentionally accused another of an act of bullying or harassment. (f) A procedure for reporting an act of bullying or harassment, including provisions that permit a person to anonymously report such an act. However, this paragraph does not permit formal disciplinary action to be based solely on an anonymous report. (g) A procedure for the prompt investigation of a report of bullying or harassment and the persons responsible for the investigation. The investigation of a reported act of bullying or harassment is deemed to be a school-related activity and begins with a report of such an act. Incidents that require a prompt investigation when reported to appropriate school authorities shall include alleged incidents of bullying or harassment allegedly committed against a child while the child is en route to school or waiting for transportation to school at a designated school bus stop. (h) A process to investigate whether a reported act of bullying or harassment is within the scope of the district school system and, if not, a process for referral of such an act to the appropriate jurisdiction. (i) A procedure for providing immediate notification to the parents of a victim of bullying or harassment and the parents of the perpetrator of an act of bullying or harassment, as well as notification to all local agencies where criminal charges may be pursued against the perpetrator. (j) A procedure to refer victims and perpetrators of bullying or harassment for counseling. (k) A procedure for including incidents of bullying or harassment in the school's report of safety and discipline data required under s. 1006.09(6). The report must include each incident of bullying and harassment and the resulting consequences, including discipline and referrals. The report must include in a separate section each reported incident of bullying or harassment that does not meet the criteria of a prohibited act under this section with recommendations regarding such incidents. The Department of Education shall aggregate information contained in the reports. (l) A procedure for providing instruction to students, parents, teachers, school administrators, counseling staff, and school volunteers on identifying, preventing, and responding to bullying or harassment. (m) A procedure for regularly reporting to a victim's parents the actions taken to protect the victim. (n) A procedure for publicizing the policy which must include its publication in the code of student conduct required under s. 1006.07(2) and in all employee handbooks. (5) To assist school districts in developing policies prohibiting bullying and harassment, the Department of Education shall develop a model policy that shall be provided to school districts no later than October 1, 2008. (6) A school employee, school volunteer, student, or parent who promptly reports in good faith an act of bullying or harassment to the appropriate school official designated in the school district's policy and who makes this report in compliance with the procedures set forth in the policy is immune from a cause of action for damages arising out of the reporting itself or any failure to remedy the reported incident. (7)(a) The physical location or time of access of a computer-related incident cannot be raised as a defense in any disciplinary action or prosecution initiated under this section. (b) This section does not apply to any person who uses data or computer software that is accessed through a computer, computer system, or computer network when acting within the scope of his or her lawful employment or investigating a violation of this section in accordance with school district policy. (8) Distribution of safe schools funds to a school district provided in the 2009-2010 General Appropriations Act is contingent upon and payable to the school district upon the Department of Education approval of the school district's bullying and harassment policy. The department's approval of each school district's bullying and harassment policy shall be granted upon certification by the department that the school district's policy has been submitted to the department and is in substantial conformity with the department's model bullying and harassment policy as mandated in subsection (5). Distribution of safe schools funds provided to a school district in fiscal year 2010-2011 and thereafter shall be contingent upon and payable to the school district upon the school district compliance with all reporting procedures contained in this section. (9) On or before January 1 of each year, the Commissioner of Education shall report to the Governor, the President of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives on the implementation of this section. The report shall include pertinent data collected pursuant to paragraph (4) (k). (10) Nothing in this section shall be construed to abridge the rights of students or school employees that are protected by the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States. Section 2. If any provision of this act or the application thereof to any person or circumstance is held invalid, the invalidity shall not affect other provisions or applications of the act which can be given effect without the invalid provision or application, and to this end the provisions of this act are declared severable. Section 3. This act shall take effect upon becoming a law. The "Jeffrey Johnston Stand Up for All Students Act" is a memorial to Jeffrey Johnston, son of Debbie and Robert Johnston. Jeffrey's story can now be found, with other "bullycide" stories, in the book, "Bullycide in America: Moms speak out about the bullying/suicide connection". The book can be ordered at www.bullycide.org.

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I Have Other Queries Out There; Let's See What the Power of the Pen Can Do for Us

-----Original Message-----
From: Governor Charlie Crist [mailto:Charlie.Crist@eog.myflorida.com]
Sent: Thursday, November 05, 2009 7:52 AM

To: lee de cesare

Subject: RE: help with county schools' refusal to carry out the bullyng law as it is written

Dear Friend:

Thank you for contacting Governor Crist about what you believe to be a violation of the Bullying Law by local school officials. I appreciate the opportunity to respond on his behalf.

To assist you, I forwarded your correspondence to the Office of Safe Schools in the Department of Education for review. The Office of Safe School is the appropriate state agency to address your complaint. If you wish to contact the Department of Education directly, you can use the information outlined below. In addition, you can call the Office of

Safe Schools at (850) 245-0416.

Florida Department of Education

Turlington Building, Room 1514

325 West Gaines Street

Tallahassee, Florida 32399-0400

(850) 245-0505

Thank you for writing and do not hesitate to write again on matters of concern or interest to you.

Sincerely,

Rex T. Newman

Office of Citizen Services

I have called the Safe Schools people and left a message with the bullying person there who is off on a conference. All in good time. lee

-----Original Message-----
From: tdecesar@tampabay.rr.com [mailto:tdecesar@tampabay.rr.com]
Sent: Wednesday, November 04, 2009 7:52 PM
To: rick.kriseman@myfloridahouse.gov
Cc: tdecesar@tampabay.rr.com
Subject: From 'Write Your Representative' Website

lee decesare

15316 gulf blvd. 802

madeira beach,fl 3370-8

(727)398-4142

11/04/09 7:51 PM

To the Honorable Rick Kriseman;

Dear Representative Krisman:

I need you to find out for me what the legislative intent was of the bullying bill 669 was. I read it as covering both students and employees of the school system. The attorney for Hillsborought Countyo school board says that it covers only the students, not the employees.

I appreciate your help.

lee drury de cesare

15316 Gulf Boulevard 802

Madeira Beach, FL 33708>

-----Original Message-----

From: lee de cesare [mailto:tdecesar@taMPAbay.rr.com]

Sent: Thursday, October 29, 2009 3:02 PM

To: Governor Charlie Crist

Subject: help with county schools' refusal to carry out the bullyng law

as it is written

Governor Crist:

Hillsborough County schools are not administering the bullying law as it is written: it covers both students and any people who draw a salary from the school system.

I filed a bullying charge against school people who bullied a teacher by putting him on involuntary leave from the classroom after the Sheriff's office had thrown out the administration's charge against him the day

the administration filed it.

This maneuver by the Professional Standards office is the standard way that the administration intimidates teachers into silence so that teachers will not complain about the mismanagement of the schools by the

board and administration. The board and administration takes away teachers' free-speech rights by threatening job loss to the teachers who speak out. The board and administration is especially eager to intimidate teachers who have blogs so that they shut them down for fear of losing their jobs.

The Public Affairs head, Steve Hegarty, wrote me my complaint against adults was "Inappropriate." This means that the Hillsborough County administration is only partially carrying out the bullying law; the board and administration refuse to carry out the law's provision to include adults who work for pay for the school system. The administration and board, in effect, are

disobeying the law.

Tell me what you will do to see that school systems like Hillsborough carry out the law as the legislature wrote it, not in the partial way it now carries out the law.

Lee Drury De Cesare

15316 Gulf Boulevard 802

Madeira Beach, FL 33708

tdecesar@tampabay.rr.com

leedrurydecesarescasting-roomcouch.blogspot.com

c: Secretary of Education Smith

It's My Blog, and I'll Use It as the Mood Strikes Me

Lee Drury De Cesare: Grandmother, mother, cook, rebel, needlepointer, reader, opera lover, possesser of great legs, Possesser of Many Pairs of Shoes, and writer of diatribes against the royal dumbcluck crooks that run the school system and punish teachers to shut them up. I would appreciate John's adding a covering for the vulgar darkened pudendum in the name of modesty. lee

John D has continued to write me. If he applied this zeal to something like linguistics, he would become an expert and teach at Harvard. He wrote a good piece today in a tone of more-in-sorrow-than-in-anger, quite restrained for John (I think it is Vox who sets him off--she knows how to hit all his buttons) that I thought well done. He has chosen as his main opponent Vox; I am just the referee. They are out there somewhere right now on the moors of invective doing battle with tree-stump name-calling clubs and rusty verbal knives.

I have been reading the history of seventeenth-century religious upheavel. This was Cromwell's time when he and the Roundheads took over the army (Cromwell was a military genius) and dominated the Parliament, tried and beheaded Charles I, and made way for dissenting religions. John rather reminds me of Cromwell. They are both tenacious and self-righteous.

Historians have written more books about Cromwell than about any single English king, so elusive is his history and his character and so scant the solid historical data. He was not particulary smart, by the way. He was God-driven, invoking the deity if he sneezed. His big positive for me is that he wanted religious freedom for everyone.

The dissenting religions arose from the common people, many of whom were so poor that they took up residence in the forests. They begged the nobles not to enclose the common lands so that they, the poor, could farm that land and stave off starvation.

Of course, the nobles ignored them and kept on enclosing common lands to keep the peasants out, indifferent to their dying of starvation. One sect of protesting religious peasants called themselves "the diggers" because their leader went into a closed piece of land and began digging. Others joined him. Hence a sect was born.

There were the Levelers, Anabaptists, the Ranters, the Familists, and a whole bunch of other sects with names usually drawn from their critics. Their common theme was that the land came from God and should be shared, not hoarded by the king and the royals; and that people were equal because they all came from the democratic creation of God. Rush Limbaugh and the Republicans would call them all Communists.

These religious changelings often lumped God with the oppressors and gave Him bad press. The leaders of these groups were intrepid guys who put out pamphlets that condemned the king, the royals, and the Church of England clergy for perpetuating the situation that caused so much pain and poverty to the poor.

The dissenters were tried and executed if they got caught. Many survived the noose by recanting at their trial and then, set free, going right back to doing what they had done before. These were resourceful rascals with keen intellects, dramatic and verbal talents, and vast resources for duplicity. They worked the melange all together into a religious cosmology that suited thier psyches. I greatly admire them and marvel at their courage, intelligence, and talents.

The acuity and toughness of these thinkers and their common-folk followers are astonishing. They defanged sin, saying it was just a maneuver by the power people to keep the common people down. They called into question the Bible's authenticity by labeling it a fable (Milton does that too in Paradise Lost--he lived and wrote at this time); they decided that if God really carried out the predestination plan that he was a no-good-nik S.O.B. They came to all the startling conclusions that you hear today in radical circles which say that religion is a racket.

One is startled that this kind of antipathy to organzed religion had such power and impact at that early time.

What came from this period was an extension of the Reformation that Luther had started the century before on the continent.

After Cromwell died, the royalists wormed their way back into power. Charles I's brother Charles II ascended the throne. But never again did monarchs have the divine-right-of-kings power that it had before Cromwell and the poor religious rebels against the king, nobility, and organized religion--those with their colorful names and the intrepid pursuit of the truths that they saw lyng behind the Bible, God, and His tenets promulgated by the state church to prop up the invidious social system that made a few fabulously rich and the majority poor and hungry.

From this stock and Luther's efforts in the sixteenth century came the people who migrated to our country seeking religious freedom. lee

From: John__D [mailto:noreply-comment@blogger.com]
Sent: Thursday, November 05, 2009 6:32 AM
To: tdecesar@tampabay.rr.com
Subject: [Lee Drury De Cesare's Casting-Room Couch] New comment on Lock and Load: Time to Mosey on Down to the OK Sch....

John__D has left a new comment on your post "Lock and Load: Time to Mosey on Down to the OK Sch...":

Lee, you had better advise Vox to lay the [insert truncated profanity here] off. If she isn't going to address me directly but in third person, I am still going to respond to her.

It's not my anonymous comment. This is ironic. My original question was about anonymity. I hope that someone from the school board alleges that your "anonymous" poster about homeless people was actually you.

>He has no first amendment rights here.<>I am not the subject here, nor is John. The subject is the corruption of the school board and improving the world in general for all of us.< href="http://www.blogger.com/comment-moderate-confirm.g?blogID=28089922&postID=7286070157728312716&publish=true">Publish this comment.

Reject this comment.

Moderate comments for this blog.

Checking in with the FBI

Director, Bureau of Federal Bureau of Investigation 601 4th Street NW Washington, DC 20535

11/4/2009

Dear Mr. Mueller:

I write to ask for an update on my charge of corruption of the Hillsborough County School Board and administration (sent below on 9/24/09).

My Congressman Bill Young sent his copy of the charge to the Tampa office. But I have heard nothing from it.

Since this first letter to you, the school board's attorney Tom Gonzalez has ruled that Florida schools' bullying law does not extend to adults as the language of the law says it does repeatedly: e.g. "' (4) By December 1, 2008, each school district shall adopt a policy prohibiting bullying and harassment of any student or employee of a public K-12 educational institution.

The reason that the board and administration wanted this skewed attorney opinion on record was to insure that the pervasive bullying of teachers by the administration continued. The board and administration want to keep the teachers muzzled so that their complaints about shoddy leadership does not impact the board's and administration's power over the state tax money that pours into the board's and administration's coffers,.

One reader on my blog describes teacher bashing by the board and administration:

Posted by Anonymous to Lee Drury De Cesare's Casting-Room Couch at 5:15 PM

There is no one to turn to when you want to report unethical behavior of school board members or administrators. They can bully all they want and get away with it. They can, and they do. This has been going on for years. The governor or Education Commissioner will tell you to go up the chain of command in the district. When you do that you get the runaround. A bunch of criminals is what they are. The longest standing school board members Carol Kurdell and Candy Olson know how corrupt things are, and they do nothing. Pulling a homeless person off the street and putting him on the board would be more effective than having those two on there.

Publish this comment.

The board and administration want the attorney to distort the law to fit their need to keep teachers quiet and abased.

Please give me an update of the status of my charge to the FBI for a corruption investigation of the Hillsborough County school.

Respectfully, Lee Drury De Cesare
15316 Gulf Boulevard 802
Madeira Beach, FL 33708 tdecesar@tampabay.rr.com leedrurydecesarescasting-roomcouch.blogspot.com

Previous Letter:

Robert S. Mueller III Director, Bureau of Federal Bureau of Investigation 601 4th Street NW Washington, DC 20535 9/24/2009 Dear Mr. Mueller: I read about the Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, FBI investigation of corruption in the schools. Wilkes-Barre's hiring corruption replicates that in Hillsborough County, Florida, where my four children went to school and where one of my grandchildren still attends. Corruption at the top has been going on a long time, so long that the school administration and board believe they are entitled to continue it and never be punished for doing so. The administration. and board participated in a cover-up of crime in the early Nineties which involved administrator Mr. Ervin's discovering crime in administration ranks. When Mr. Erwin asked the superintendent and board to do something about the crime, the superintendent with the board's collusion instead tried to convince people that Mr. Erwin was crazy. Superintendent Lennard and other administrator collaborators made Erwin's life miserable. Nobody supported him. Not one soul in the schools came to his aid or offered sympathy, so fearful had the board and administration made school employees, especially teachers, of retaliation for the slightest challenge to the board-administration authority. Mr. Erwin was quite alone. The solitary struggle affected his physical as will as mental health. In the thwarted ethics of the political class, it was quite natural for Governor Crist recently to appoint Dr. Lennard to the Supervisor of Elections position made vacant by the brief tenancy then death of the woman who had replaced Buddy Johnson. Busanksy was an honest politician trying to deal with the pile of money Buddy Johnson's tenure made disappear. When the "he's crazy" gambit didn't work to fell Mr. Erwin, Dr. Lennard and his administrative ghouls tried to discover other ways to fire Mr. Erwin and deprive him of his pension. These gambits included sending him on wild goose chases to produce more data to authenticate his charges and whatever other wicked schemes popped into their evil heads. The school lawyer, one Mr. Gonzalez, not an ornament to the bar, chipped in his talents. When Mr. Erwin approached board chair for help, thinking her ethical, she led him to the lawyer's den. Mr. Gonzalez chipped in his talents to undoing the poor man. One way was to hire a firm to investigate the Erwin complaint and then shut it down when it began to discover that all the plots revealed the administration's attempt to trap Mr. Erwin to get rid of him. Mr. Erwin finally gave up on the people with whom he had worked thirty years in an honorable career attested to by most people who knew him. He mostly served as a principal, I believe, before Dr. Lennard lured him into taking an administrative job. When finally convinced that he would get no cooperation from Dr. Lennard and his coterie, Mr. Erwin filed a Whistleblower law suit, won it, and escaped with his pension to Georgia to distance himself from the horrors he had endured. Only a total innocent would conclude after reading through the boxes of Erwin case literature that the administration at the highest levels and probably some board members as well were receiving graft and didn't want Mr. Erwin's discovery to interfere. Three of those Erwin-era members still sit on the board: Lamb, Olson, and Kurdell. The DNA of that crime spree and getting away with it, leaving the taxpayers holding the bag for paying for administrative crime still runs deep in subsequent administrations and board. The Erwin-era members got away with the graft and an attempt to crucify the man who discovered it and asked that it be investigated. Not one person received punishment, not even Dr. Lennard, so obviously head crook. The incestuous satiation was that the board responsible for meting out punishment was itself complicit in the crime. Taxpayers footed the bill for the board-and-administration crime by paying Tom Gonzalez for defending the people of whom he was one who savaged Mr. Erwin and by compensating Mr. Irwin in a settlement of $165,000. When the lawyers--Mr. Gonzalez's firm--for the losing school side complained to the judge about the size of the settlement, he said that it would have been bigger had Mr. Erwin a competent lawyer. When I retired from teaching college English, I decided to read a different kind of literature than that which I had read in my field. I turned from Keats, Chaucer, and Aristophanes to current books about the FBI, a subject that intrigued me when I saw the many FBI books published and reviewed in the New York Times. I read J. Edgar Hoover, the Man and the Secrets, Curt Gentry; The Brother. the Untold Story of the Rosenberg Case, Sam Roberts; "I Heard You Paint Houses" Frank "The Irishman" Sheeran and the Closing of the Hoffa Case; and Public Enemies: America's Greatest Crime Wave and the Birth of the FBI, Bryan Burrough. The Gentry massively researched Hoover biography made me marvel at the job Mr. Hoover did in building the agency despite his weaknesses and wrong ideas; The Brother, by the NY Times guy convinced me that the Rosenburg's were guilty; that Judge Kaufman erred in sentencing Ethel Rosenberg to death along with Julius; and that the FBI's gesture of assigning an agent to the Greenglass family when David got out of jail after ten years to help members disguise their identity and deal with other problems of anonymity defined admirable agency chivalry; the "I Heard..." book educated me on how Mr. Hoover prevented an investigation of the Kennedy Assassination in Dallas to protect the FBI's reputation and hence thwarted the Warren Commission's giving a valid account of the Mafia's role in that deed. The Pubic Enemies book I read before going to the Depp movie. From it I learned that FBI agents murdered Dillinger on the Chicago street in front of a movie house, disillusioning me with the information that the country's premier law enforcement agency bypassed justice as defined by our Constitution. I told my husband that I liked the Depp movie more than the book. But despite the feet of clay attached to the glory of the FBI agency, it is still the one that most of us consider the top choice for getting to the bottom of things and doing something about them if they are criminal. So I write you to ask for the FBI's help in dealing with the long-time corruption in the Hillsborough County school system: the hiring corruption and the toxic treatment of teachers by the board and administration are premier. I ask also that another field office than the one in Tampa get the assignment: Miami or Jacksonville. Mr. Hoover would have cleaned house in the Tampa office were he to emerge from the grave and tell you to move out of his chair so that he could be the head guy and scourge of presidents again. The FBI Tampa field office has a reputation for colluding with local politicians and the power set and not having, as people expect, a pristine commitment to justice. See below the newspaper column enclosed and a representative comment from my blog readers. If you say that transferring to request for this request to Miami or Jacksonville is not in line with FBI policy, then I ask you to let the Tampa office know that you will be monitoring the case if they accept it. Your Web comment on how corruption undermines democracy is stirring. I hope that the FBI realizes that corruption that affects the schools and its children is much the most vicious kind of corruption. Corruption's poisoning the school system harms our future citizens and diminishes the purity of their educations, a fact that injures not just the children's futures but that of the country's. I look forward to your response. Lee Drury De Cesare 15316 Gulf Boulevard 802 Madeira Beach, FL 33708 tdecesar@tampabay.rr.com 727-398-4142 Cards & Log-ins Dear Sir: I want to report corruption in the schools but have heard that the local Tampa bureau is allied with the school district by marriage and friendships. People are suspicious that the agents are not objective. So I include the complaint and let you judge whether to send it to the Tampa office or another in Florida for investigation. In either case, I shall feel free to consult you if I don't thing the agents are being ethical and objective about the investigation. Please inform me what office you are sending this complaint to and what its head agent is named. Thank you. (Ms.) Lee Drury De Cesare 15316 Gulf Boulevard 802 Madeira Beach, FL 33708

I Met a New Buddy at the School Board

Picture of a Rocket Poised for Take-off That My NASA Engineer Son Sent Me and his Dad

From: lee de cesare [mailto:tdecesar@taMPAbay.rr.com]
Sent: Wednesday, November 04, 2009 12:35 AM
To: 'jrobin19@tampabay.rr.com'
Cc: 'Patrickmanteiga@lagacetanewspaper.com'
Subject: hoorah for john!

John, I just watched a re-run of your performance at the school board on the Educational Channel.

You were terrific. I wish that I had thought of the term "corruption" to throw at the board. Had I had your big, booming baritone and spirited delivery all my years in civil rights, I could have been somebody.

I suggest you use your officer position at the NAACP to get the organization to file for contract compliance review with the federal contract suppliers in the area in which you complained about to the board.

Your Congressman can tell you exactly where to send it. Then you can enlist him to check on its progress. Federal departments are more active in answering a Congressman's inquiry than a citizen's. Congress votes lawmakers' budgets.

All contract recipients of federal contracts are supposed to observe equal-opportunity laws. I would think that in construction projects, they would have to observe equal opportunity in bids as well as in employment, especially for minorities.

The School Board has a policy of no-bid contracts so that board members and administrators can give contracts to buddies without bidding them out. Tom Gonzalez, of course, claims this is legal because he got his job without its being advertised.

Your situation sounds like a no-bid contract if I understood you correctly that the firm's CEO and her husband are white and lack credentials.

People without credentials are exactly the kind of people the board and administration like to give contracts to. Then the taxpayers have to pay for these incompetents' botched jobs.

Ask to see all the contracts submitted for the project you didn't get that went to the whites. Ask for these data as public information. The schools have to show these data to you. Send the request to Linda Cobbe of the Public Affairs office. Knowledge is power.

Appealing to the feds can have positive results. Forty-five years ago (I have been at this work a long time), I opened the police and sheriff's departments to women police officers in the city and women deputies in the county by reporting the job sexism of both to the EEOC and the Justice Department.

My charging party for the police was a young black single mother who couldn't make enough money to support her children as a nurse's aide. Her name was Thelma. I have forgotten her last name. The EEOC said the Police Department had to hire her. My husband and I went to Thelma's graduation at the Police Academy, the first woman who got a police officer job ever.

The Justice Department told the sheriff that he had to give up his federal grants or hire women. The first woman deputy slammed her patrol car into a phone pole, and the sheriff had a heck of a time getting rid of her because she was under the Justice Department's protection.

Sheriff Beard hates me so badly that he won't stay in the same room with me. He and I both graduated from Hillsborough High. I saw him about a year ago there at some alumni event. He was in the foyer shaking hands as if he were still running for office. He didn't shake my hand. He pretended not to see me.

You have your battles; I have mine. Right now I have to get going on finding out what was the legislative intent of the legislators who wrote the bullying law. Lawyer Tom Gonzalez says the law applies only to children, not adults, although the law cites adults too. You were right when you said the board shouldn't trust Gonzalez's opinions. He always finds what he thinks the board wants him to find in the law.

The board and the administration don't want the bullying law to apply to adults so that teachers can't file charges against the board members and administrators who bully them.

These crooks keep you busy.

Sylvia Carly's husband used to be NAACP head. She and I both worked at HCC when he had that position. Sylvia was an administrator; I was a teacher. Ask Sylvia for a character reference for me.

lee drury de cesare

Lock and Load: Time to Mosey on Down to the OK School Board Corral

I am revving up to go to the school board summit. I signed up on line. I will deal with its trashing of the bullying law to cut teachers and others bullied by the board and administration. I will, of course, protest.

I plan to read into the record the paragraph of my reader I recorded in "This Says It All." He or she will be on the record.

Candy and Kurdell will want to kill this person; that will be a comfort to the kid here, sharing that sentiment they usually aim my way exclusively.

You cannot do equal-treatment work if you are unwilling to be hated by those who have a toehold in some illegitimate power scam as the board and administration do in Hillsborough County.

These lower-quartile characters are desperate to hold on to their perquisites so the community will think they are important people.

I received bitter email from John D. and deleted it. The fellow is sicko. His words will no longer appear in Casting-room-couch's pages. Goodbye to all that. His next Internet Provider will probably be Chattahoochee. lee