You are welcome to post at the end of this blog either anonymously or signed. If you identify yourself and work in the school system, get ready for Ms. Elia and her Palace Guard to make your life miserable. On the other hand, if you like to fight the thuggery of injustice, sign your name and grab your pitchfork.
If you complain to the Board loudly enough and often enough, Elia et al will not dare cripple you. But you must be ready to squawk, squawk, squawk against the semi-literate Powers of Darkness that occupy the administrative hierarchy of the school system. Write us about your experience, and we will publicize it on the Casting-Room Couch blog. Exposure is always the best way to fight these characters.Simply refuse to let them shut you up.
Enter the Hamilton God-What-a-
Bod Contest at the end of this post.
Win fame, fortune, and an administrator's
bloated salary (Hamilton bleeds $132,000 from taxpayers and rising) in addition to a reserved parking-lot space close to the building. Then you can balloon up to W.C. Fields's girth from feeding at the public trough as God-What-a-Bod Hamilton has done.
Dear Mr. Birdsall:
Your comment reflect some of the criticisms that Commissioner Blair has voiced for the past year. There are two ways to respond to financial crisis: increase revenue or review spending and find economies. There is no question that teachers deserve better salaries and studentsdeserve a better curriculum. Adequate classrooms are needed.
The School Board has ignored those priorites and hired a media spinster atapprox. $125,000 and spends far too much on other administration. More money is now available from the State - and increase of $149million for in-class issues and $110 million for capital needs.
So what does Candy Olsen say? We may not be able to spend even $13 million of the $149 m for teacher salaries. (Casting-Room Couch comment: Keep in mind that Candy's penury for the teachers does not extend to herself. She voted herself an increase of salary to $40,000 during the recent budget crunch: more than a veteran teacher with a master's degree earns. Fortunately, Candy has two opponents to end her too-long incumbency in November. One is Bart Birdsall, whose commentary appears in The Casting-Room Couch. Vote for Bart or the kid who's running. Either would be a vast improvement over Potted Plant Candy Olson. If you know people in Tampa, tell them to vote anti-teacher Candy out.)
As for the impact fees, a modest increase would have been acceptable;new concurrency rules require developers to assist in schoolconstruction. Growth will pay for itself. These requirements and increased impact fees will likely price homes too high for teachers and workers with families.
Remember, 50% of new home buyers are local residents trying to upgrade their homes. Put $4,000 over 30 years and you have increased the amounts they pay to $30,000, plus the increasef or concurrency.
That figure could be double. These are hidden taxes. These are big money. Are they equitable considering a new housepays higher property taxes to begin with?
The issue is larger than additional classrooms.
Thanks for your comments. We appreciate hearing from you whether you agree on all issues or not. Please know Commissioner Blair cares and is trying to do what is right.
Cordially,
Steve Hall , Aide to Commissioner Brian Blair
<Montolino@aol.com> 5/21/2006 3:47 PM >>>
Commissioner Blair and Ronda,
I read in the Times that you have no faith in the spending habits of the school district.
I think I actually agree with you on something for achange. The real estate scandal was shocking and angered many people b/c of the waste of taxpayer dollars to buy land.
The school board spent about $35,000 to do a "nationwide" search fora new Superintendent and then chose the in-house candidate. That waste of $30K to seek a new Superintendent wasted taxpayer dollars too.
When Dr. Earl Lennard got the job many years ago, a doctorate was required for the Superintendent position. Suddenly, when looking for a new candidate, no doctorate was necessary. My friend Lee thinks the ad was tailored to suit thein-house candidate.
This is horrible, if true. We need the BEST candidate for the job of leading the district.
Elia was in charge of Facilities before becoming Superintendent, yet the real estate scam went on under her nose. Also, some Westchase parents contacted me and told me how new wings were added to under capacity schools, and they feel she is redrawing boundaries to fill those schools and cover up the fact that unnecessary new wings were built.
I don't know if this istrue, but it is horrible if so. We need lots of scrutiny of taxpayer dollars in HillsboroughCounty all over the place.
I do agree with impact fees being raised for education, but likeyou I also worry about the way the district has spent money in the past.
Bart Bart Birdsall
2309 W. Bristol Ave.Tampa, FL 33609
(813) 258-8817 (home)(813) 362-7937 (cell)
Montolino@aol.com
Lee De Cesare's CRC comment on the above: I reviewed the finalists' files for the School Superintendent. Most had doctorates from distinguished institutions. Most had a rich experience record. All were superior to La Elia.
The superintendent cannot write in coherent style and cannot use basic punctuation correctly, yet she heads one of the largest school systems in the country and makes a quarter a million dollars a year in salary plus bonuses and perquisites. She bargained herself a cushy retirement package.
Ms. Elia discovered she can't write after she Mayberry Machiavellied her way into the job with the complicity of a potted-plant School Board that doesn't care what the public thinks and shows its contempt for voters by not answering emails.
Ms. Elia required a ghost writer. The guy who ghost-writes for La Elia, Steve Heggarty, head of public-affairs chores, doesn't know grammar and punctuation but gets over $90,000 a year for a job of communicating in writing. Le Heggerty did not have the credentials stated in the ad. The other finalists have the credentials stated in the ad, and several can write well. I know good writing when I see it. I taught college English for twenty-eight years and have spent a lifetime reading the classics.
Steve Hegarty, Ms. Elia's ghost writer, says in his application that he "kept in touch with several people" when he was not covering the school system for the St. Petersburg Times. I have asked three times for who those people whom he stayed in contact with were.
This is public information. Steve doesn't answer my request. I have copied the School Board on these requests to Hegarty. I wager his contacts are administrators and key to Heggarty's getting the job over better-qualified, literate applicants. In the school system, it's whom you know, not what you know that counts. This patronage power is one reason the school administration Mafia hangs on to control with such unlovely tenacity.
The School Board, although it is supposed to look out for the students, teachers, and the public, falls in with the administration and does its bidding. The Board members just raised their own salaries during a budget crunch to $40,000--more than a veteran teacher with a master's degree makes. Yet they do not do the reading of school documents and the asking of questions of an incompetent administration that should comprise their duty to a public trust. This chore falls to outsiders--most recently to the reporters that the St. Petersburg Times assigned to investigate the real-estate rip-offs in the department over which Elia presided without seeing what was going or being unwilling to stop it if she did.
Yet this performance did not prevent her beating out superior candidates for the superintendent job.
The current Hillsborough County School Board is a bevy of potted plants: content to act ceremonial cyphers who sit on a podium and preen as important. Voters should turn them out and elect Board members who care about students, teachers, and community. These incumbents don't.
lee drury de cesare
From: withheld by Casting-Room CouchSent: Friday, May 19, 2006, 10:02 a.m.
To: amanteiga@lagacetanewspaper.com;La Gaceta@tampabay.rr.com; Carlton@sptimes.com
Dear Mr. Manteiga,
Since I have been a lifelong resident of Tampa, I have always enjoyed and looked forward to each publication of your newspaper. It has helped me practice my Spanish and also helped me to learn a great deal of Italian while I got the newsy news. I looked forward to reading the column Ms. De Cesare wrote wrote as her wit and pointers are inimitable (and very on target as you know). I was always so proud you carried her column and would not have missed a paper, going out of my way to purchase it each week! To me, it displayed that your paper had integrity!
Not only was it an extremely bad example to all students in Hillsborough County Schools and the residents of Hillsborough County for Mrs. Elia to threaten lawsuits against your fine paper, it was rude and also displayed that she had something to hide.
Now when her students go through life and someone says something they don’t appreciate (Free Speech covered under the First Amendment as you know) more of them will offer to sue others. Isn’t this just wonderful?
Sadly enough, you caved in to pressure. I do understand your position but feel Mrs. Elia was quite improper in threatening an institution of your caliber and especially in threatening individual rights of a columnist. You should have stood strong for your paper and your reporter rather than caving in to pressure.
In my life I have learned that on one minds what they consider a “smear” as long as their reputation stands tall against it. But the Hillsborough County Schools have a terrible, wretched history in crooked land deals and especially in hiring practices and it seems Mrs. Elia reacted like a bit dog. Perhaps more research is needed in this question of how her top-level administrators qualified for their jobs. Ms. De Cesare is not the first Hillsborough County resident to question this. Some people involved with the school system have very questionable credentials and this has been proven over and over again as far up as federal court.
I’m not thinking this a proud moment for La Gaceta and I’m thinking I myself will suffer repercussions for even writing my thoughts. So be it. What’s right is right and Mrs. Elia was and is incorrect and you allowed her to influence the direction of the truth. The truth will still be told but now your paper will not have the proud part in it that it [did when] it carried Ms. De Cesare’s column.
This is a grave loss for La Gaceta, for Tampa, and for the truth as another Tampa voice is silenced by threats and old connections.
PS: Tim o' the Night is an honorable snitch. He has no police record, will take a polygraph test on any subject, brushes twice a day, flosses, and pins a clean hankie to his shirt every morning as we all learned to do in the first grade.
<doretha.edgecomb@sdhc.k12.fl.us>; maryellen.elia@sdhc.k12.fl.us.com <maryellen.elia@sdhc.k12.fl.us.com>Andrea Brunais <abrunais@aol.com>; Angie <amanteiga@lagacetanewspaper.com>; Barbara <dbronovich@aol.com>; Beth McClain <beth3611@tampabay.rr.com>; Doug & Cathy SCW <dcurless2@cox.net>; Edith A Tobul <edt@ncweb.com>; faliero <jeniffer.faliero@sdhc.k12.fl.us>; Jack Lamb <Jack.Lamb@sdhc.k12.fl.us>; joan gentry <joan.gentry@sdhc.k12.fl.us>; Margie Jean <mdjean@msn.com>; montolino 
<montolino@aol.com>; Patrick <patrickmanteiga@lagacetanewspaper.com>; Sadieh1@aol.com <Sadieh1@aol.com>; terryhamiltonwollin@gmail.com <terryhamiltonwollin@gmail.com>; troxler@sptimes.com <troxler@sptimes.com>; tash@sptimes.com <tash@sptimes.com>; jhill@sptimes.com <jhill@sptimes.com>; carlton@sptimes.com <carlton@sptimes.com>
Ms. Elia:
I understand you conveyed to Patrick Manteiga that if he allowed me to continue to expose the wrongdoing in the administration--especially the corrupt hiring practices best illustrated in the hiring without advertising the $120,000 jobs of Linda Kipley and Connie Mileto--that you would cut off his ad revenue from the schools and sue him for the phrase "casting-room couch" in one of my columns.
I wish Patrick possessed the moxie to tell you to bug off, that you were blowing sneaky, smarmy smoke. Anybody with any guts would have come right out and said, "OK, shut De Cesare up, or I jerk your school ads and close you down."
Courageous people don't speak in oblique threats. They cough up their ultimatums in plain English.
The Potted-Plant Board won't utter a peep of protest to your craven assault on free speech because it is a gaggle of ethical ciphers. Board members take an oath of office that includes defending the Constitution. But when somebody dares use the First Amendment to point out the Board's irresponsible behavior in lack of administration oversight, it's ready to dump the First Amendment to preserve its incumbency. If this Board wasn't supine, it would have done something long ago about the way you Administration War Lords do business.
You may sue, Ms. Elia, if you are dumb enough to attack the beloved Bay Area institution La Gaceta and enrage the Hispanic population and even some fair-minded Anglos. I wager the Hispanics will hold a fund-raising fiesta up and down 7th Avenue to pay La Gaceta's legal fees for a first-class First Amendment lawyer such as Gregg Thomas to clean your un-American clock.
You'll get no sympathy from me, ma'am. Anybody who attempts to shut down the First Amendment is a bad American and a bad sport in my book.
I infer you merely bluster. Bluster works for you in terrifying school employees whose jobs you threaten if they don't roll over, but it shouldn't work as blackmail to shut down the free-speech rights of a newspaper.
You should have had better sense and more patriotism than to try to squelch free speech. This is a America. Your threat constitutes an extortion threat by a govenrment factotem hinting at retaliation against a newspaper if it doesn't give up its First Amendment rights. The ACLU would love to pursue that case. I'll sit in the front row every day when I am not being deposed by the local outback legal gun-slingers who carry bee-bee legal gun ammo.
I refuse to let a petty tyrant such as you intimidate me. You didn't get your job because you were best qualified; you got it because the fix was in that you and your allies had worked years to put in place to cheat the taxpayers of the best candidate to be superintendent.
I will publish your chicaneries that I detect on this blog. You are going to sue me for telling the truth? Bring it on, ma'am. Bring it on if you dare. I have always wanted to be a martyr for the First Amendment. How much more glamorous a role can I get to enter into my eternal resume? My children will put on my Brooksville tombstone: "Dear Old Mom--Great Cook and Martyr for the First Amendment."
On another matter: The Sunshine law says emails constitute public records. You blazon this on your web pages.
I request a disk of all your emails and one of all of Mr. Hegarty's emails from the day you became superintendent and the day he became head of the public-affairs office to the present.
The County showed how easy and cheap this citizen service can be by publishing a disk for $2 of the voluminous messages about the Ronda gay-ordinance brouhaha.
You told me and Bart Birdsall at Tiger Bay that you were too unsophisticated in technology to read the "to" and "from" lines on the emails that Birdsall sent Joe Stines from his home complaining about Stines' cooperating with the free-speech shutdown for gays by the county library. You never did reveal to us how or why those emails from Birdsall's home came into your possession via Stine and/or Ms. Bean or why you sent home-generated emails to Abu Gharib Linda Kipley as basis for a professional-standards breach by Birdsall. Your doing so breached the professional standards you invoke to terrify a school employee. One infers that professional standards are not your strong point.
I suspect that you engaged in routine administrative persiflage when you told me and Birdsall that whopper. Public officials are so accustomed to lying to voters that they do so reflexively. But your turning the Birdsall emails over to Ms. Kipley and ordering the tech department to strain through the mainframes for a whiff of Birdsall's name to eke out a misbehavior atom with which to crucify him proved you know the power of technology. NSA may soon recruit you to work on assembling data bases to tap us citizens' phones.
Before you depart for NSA employment adventure, pray provide me with the two disks requested. This chore should be a piece of cake for a future NSA operative: three keyboad clicks will do it.
I have enlisted Ms. Edgecomb's help in securing these disks. She's your boss and is toughest member of the School Board. She can expedite this citizen request if she chooses to do so. I can see the formidable lady in a Marine Colonel's camiflage uniform on road patrol in Iraq, standing behind the windshield and barking, "Ok, road-side bombs, blow up if you dare!" This request will test La Edgecomb's devotion to the public trust.
I hope not to have to resort to General Charlie Crist. Demanding disks for a citizen in a Sunshine publicity stunt is just the kind of escapade he may deem condign to cure his current poll slump.
lee drury de cesare
15316 Gulf Boulevard 802
Madeira Beach, FL 33708
727-398-4142
Tuesday, May 23, 2006 9:03 AM
Ms. Edgecomb: This is the second request for your help in getting the two email disks for me before: those of the emails of Mr. Hegarty and Ms. Elia since their time of employment.
When may I expect those? What are their cost?
May I have the courtesy of a response from you for this public-records information? Such help to voters is what I understand a School Board member's job to include.
Thank you.
lee drury de cesare
15316 Gulf Boulevard 802
Madeira Beach, FL 33708
tdecesar@tampabay.rr.com
727-398-4142
Casting-Room Couch analysis:
The County produced and sold to the public all of Ronda Storm's ton of email on her anti-gay-free-speech activities and homophobic ordinance for a charge of $2.00 for the disk. I know because I bought one.
Steve Hegarty cites big fees for anything the "staff" has to produce (these disks would require a couple of computer-keyboard clicks) to discourage the public from asking for public-information data.
The School administration and Board don't want to keep the public in the dark about what's going on behind the ROSSAC Wizard-of-Oz door, so they don't answer requests until you leaflet them with repeat emails or they threaten to charge vaguely huge fees for "staff" time to cough up the public information.
What in the hell is the staff supposed to do with its time if not to serve the public need for information--think of new ways to hide data from the public or more outrageous flattery to butter up Elia and her merry crew of incompetents?
If public information had been more forthcoming, maybe an alert member of the public would have caught the recent real-estate scam before it cost taxpayers a ton of money, a tardy referral to the attorney general, and a belated Board and administration promise to revise the bidding process that La Elia had presided over in the building racket.
From the August 23 School Board Meeting:
Bart Birdsall:
I sent to Candy Olson and NO RESPONSE.....she ignored my plight and back in August yelled at me at the gym.
(Lee De Cesare: The Board routinely ignores citizen emails; Kurdell, Olson, and Bricklemeyer have a set-up to spit back emails from citizens as spam annoyances. They don't want to hear from citizens except at election time.)
Chair Olson asked Professional Standards General Manager Linda Kipley to explain the district’s policy on improper use of equipment and the procedure for addressing employees who violate the policy.
Mrs. Kipley advised the board that School Board Policy 8.33 addresses this topic and explained that upon notification of a possible violation, the employee is contacted by Mrs. Kipley and asked to come to her office to discuss the matter.
Consequences for violating the policy range from placement in the employee’s personnel file a letter summarizing the meeting to termination of employment. Superintendent Elia advised the board that she has asked Chief Information and Technology Officer Jack Davis to send an email to all employees reminding them of the terms of the policy.
Board Member Olson:
Your phone call a few weeks ago and this past Aug. 23rd item from the school board digest makes me want to clarify something. I did not use school district computers to write the 3 emails in question. I used my home computer. Now I did use the school district email system (New Ideas) to write the emails on my home computer during my summer vacation, so maybe that is considered equipment. I was off for the summer, and I posted 3 postings to the media specialist folder/bulletin board/message board from my home computer (I downloaded New Ideas onto my home computer per instructions from Greco's tech specialist in order to do work at home from time to time).
Later when I tried to do some inventory work and wanted to access the Lawson Portal through New Ideas from home, I found out my email system was suddenly locked up.
At the time when I posted the 3 emails in question to the bulletin board for media specialists, I believed I was a school librarian making postings to other librarians on a library forum about a library censorship issue, something the American Library Association encourages librarians to do (notify other librarians about censorship). When I received a letter from Professional Standards out of the blue, I had absolutely no idea why I was being called in.
Before the meeting with Linda Kipley I was told by Chuck Kiker that the issue was the 3 emails I posted about the gay book display issue. I was actually relieved, b/c I had no idea what the meeting could be about, and I thought I had a perfectly reasonable defense to have thought those postings would be within my line of work. I printed out the Library Bill of Rights for the American Library Association as well as the Freedom of Workplace Speech (also by the ALA). I was told I was not being punished, rather just receiving a warning. I thought that was okay at the time, and I went in prepared to say I will not post such things again, even though I believed them to be within the frame of a librarian's job.
At the meeting with Linda Kipley I was told my postings were "political use" of the school district email and I could not use it that way. I thought that was okay but gave the Library Bill of Rights to Linda Kipley. I thought that would be the end of it.
At that point Linda Kipley brought out a newspaper article in which I appeared and was identified as a gay school librarian and told me MaryEllen Elia had given the article to her, but she already checked with the school board lawyer and I have my First Amendment Rights. She paused and let the information sink in. I was very surprised, since I knew I had First Amendment Rights. She told me, "We are not here to discuss this." I kept silent but thought, "Then, why is she bringing it up?"
Then, she pulled out the Joe Stines emails and said that MaryEllen Elia had also given her those emails. I said, "But I sent those from my home AOL email account....." and she immediately said, "Yes, yes.....we're not here to talk about those, which you had every right to send.....I just wanted to let you know that the Superintendent gave them to me." Again I remained silent and wondered, "Then, why is she bringing them up and telling me that Elia gave them to her?" I found this very ominous. To me it felt like a veiled threat.
She also told me that I could not email the school media specialists from my school email or even from my home AOL account. Before she said the last part, she hesitated and had what I believe to have been a look on her face like, "Do I dare go this far?" At this point in the meeting I felt I was being threatened in a very subtle "between the lines" way. There was no explicit threat, but the way the information was presented was very baffling and very ominous, in my opinion. I decided to remain silent and not say a word.
If she had not brought up the news article or Joe Stines emails I would have left her office without any problems. The tone she used when bringing up the article and Joe Stines emails was pointed, in my opinion. I truly believe I was supposed to infer something from these things without her actually coming out and saying them.
Then, she told me that the "content" of the emails was not the problem. It was that I used the school district email system for political purposes. She stressed it was not the content.
Also, she said that the ONLY reason she found my emails was that they "clogged" the district email system. She said they had to go in and unclog the system and that's when they found my emails. I remember thinking, "Why is she giving me a reason, when I haven't asked for one?" This is why I remember it so vividly. With hindsight I believe she gave me this reason so that I did not feel my emails had been singled out. I have heard from a lawyer that employers have a right to monitor employee email use, but they are not supposed to single anyone out.
I went home from the meeting quite angry. I felt I was given a hidden message to shut up and pipe down. I felt she implied I could not exercise my First Amendment rights even though she claimed that my Joe Stines emails and newspaper articles were protected by those very rights.
My partner, who used to be a computer programmer, told me there is no way that email postings to a bulletin board/forum would "clog" the system. Later, Earl Whitlock confirmed this and said postings to a folder actually relieves pressure.
Since my email account with the district had been locked up, I believe Kipley found my email postings to the media specialist board in my email account and not on the actual bulletin/message board where I posted them. When you post onto a folder/bulletin board/message board, a copy of your posting remains in your own mailbox unless you delete it. The emails in question had a "To: Media Specialists" address in the "To" area.
Therefore, she thought I sent it out to every single media specialist and mass mailed them. I did not. The media specialist folder has that same "To" address when you post to the forum. The only difference is the icon to the left of it. If she had looked carefully, she would have seen that it was a posting to the folder and not a mass mailing as she believed initially.
That is why she thought the lie that my emails clogged the system would make sense. She did shoddy investigating.
When I asked her about this, she did not respond until the certified letter in which she claims she said my emails "could have slowed" the system down. This is NOT what she said in the meeting. In the same letter she said that the real reason is that she received many complaints about my emails. This was brand new information to me. Why would she give a wrong reason in her meeting with me, if she knew the real reason? Also, in the original meeting, she claimed there was no problem with the "content" of my emails.
If there was no problem with the content, there wouldn't have been complaints about the emails. I don't believe there were complaints, because she can not produce the names of people who complained. I believe she simply changed her story, when she realized I caught her in a lie. If I knew who complained I might be willing to revise how I feel about this, but as it stands, I believe she conducted a very unprofessional investigation.
I believe that when the lawyer told her there was nothing she could do to me for the newspaper article and Joe Stines emails, she locked up my email account and went hunting for some technicality to "get" me on. I believe she did this to scare me and make me pipe down about gay issues concerning the library display or any future ones. This is what I believe.
I have spoken with a lawyer who thinks that it was incredibly wise of Kipley not to punish me. If she had punished me even with a letter in my file, he told me I would have a lawsuit, and the newspapers would have a field day with a librarian being punished for posting library censorship issues to a librarian message board. He also said that even if the school district did not have to abide by the Library Bill of Rights by the ALA it would look horrible if the school district was essentially banning these rights of libraries and librarians in their schools.
As I left Kipley said the meeting went satisfactorily, and I would receive a letter that it ended satisfactorily and nothing would be placed in my file. I have never received such a letter. I actually feel I deserve an apology, and I think many hurt feelings among all parties concerned could have been eased with a simple letter of apology.
I wanted to explain all these things to you, so that you understand fully what went on and what I believe happened.
I believe my meeting with Kipley shows her to conduct shoddy investigations, makes her seem unprofessional, and shows that she has an inability to grasp the bigger picture (ALA and how the gay pride issue was blowing up around us last summer and how the school district should not be connected with any type of similar curtailing of rights).
I feel my suggestion to have an outside committee review her cases makes a lot of sense to keep her from abusing her power and to help the school district avoid lawsuits and scandal. I urge you to pursue this matter.
Bart
Bart Birdsall
2309 W. Bristol Ave.Tampa, FL 33609
(813) 258-8817 (home)(813) 362-7937 (cell)
Montolino@aol.com
Passed out at the School Board meeting to attendees on how Professional Standards Kipley Treats Teacher Unprofessionally: Board Does Not Intervene or Even Investigate; Neither Does CTA, Which Charges Teachers $500 Dues To Stand Up for Them but Doesn't
Note: When I passed these out at the Board Meeting, it was the night the 90 young parents came to plead to an indifferent Board because the parents asserted La Elia had scheduled sham community hearings on the school redistrictings and had not listened to the community. When some were taking the flyer, they asked, "Are you a teacher? We love our teachers."
I said I was a teacher, although I taught college for twenty-eight years, not grammar school. Everybody loves teachers. I do. I still remember my primary-grade teachers with love and respect: Ms. McPherson, Ms. Roberts, Ms. Byers, Ms. Roberts again, who had a retarded daughter, Susie, who sat in the back of the class at her own desk and from whom we learned compassion for people different than we; Ms. Lewis, and Ms. Lawrence . My dear teachers represent the kind of teachers who get tortured in Kipley's Professional Standards hell hole. The Board doesn't care, and I believe La Kipley acts as the administration ghouls' Lucco Brazzi while they pretend not to know what's going on.
Not only does Hillsborough County not pay teachers well so that they stand near the bottom nationally, but the punctuation-bereft superintendent, backed by the Board, tortures them for minor infractions by turning them over to Lucco Brazzi Kipley.
Administrators don't get punished. I have filed two Professional Standards complaints against Dr.-Doesn't-Know-His-Ass-From-His-Elbow-in-Grammar-and-Punctuation Hamilton with no response.
Professional Standards Kipley aims to intimidate and torture the little people, but not the administrative brigands in the ROSSAC offices.
lee drury de cesare
----- Original Message -----
From: Montolino@aol.com
To: carolyn.bricklemyer@sdhc.k12.fl.us ; jack.lamb@sdhc.k12.fl.us ; doretha.edgecomb@sdhc.k12.fl.us ; jennifer.faliero@sdhc.k12.fl.us ; Carol.kurdell@sdhc.k12.fl.us ; candy.olson@sdhc.k12.fl.us ; susan.valdes@sdhc.k12.fl.us ; MaryEllen.Elia@sdhc.k12.fl.usCc: Jean.Clements@floridaea.org ; Yvonne.Lyons@floridaea.org ; andy.ford@floridaea.org
Sent: Saturday, April 15, 2006 5:55 PM
Subject: Yet more allegations...
Dear Board Members:
I met with someone who says she might come forward and speak to you and the press about Linda Kipley's investigation of her several years ago. People are coming out of the woodwork because they see that I am speaking out.
It takes just one person to stand up and complain about the unethical behavior, and the people who were too scared begin talk and to come forth. What I tell you in this email are both what an eyewitness claims and my beliefs: The woman I met with told me a shocking story of how she was held down at the Velasco Center for two months with no written information about what the charges were and when she would get a fair hearing.
Apparently, Ms. Kipley was very curt with the woman and would tell her she would meet with her that very afternoon and then leave 20 minutes later for the day. This woman claims Linda Kipley left work around noon or just after noon quite often during her two month stay down at the Velasco Center. She said once Linda Kipley left early for some kind of baby shower, because she had balloons and presents.
If she did not sign out or notify anyone, this is misuse of taxpayer dollars. We pay Linda Kipley's salary of $120,000 a year plus benefits to make sure that integrity and ethics exist in the school district. Since the allegations are piling up, I believe the Board should appoint someone who should watch Linda Kipley's comings and goings at the Velasco Center.
This person also says that Linda Kipley kept her from her school while Kipley "investigated" the matter. Ms. Kipley told her that she needed to interview certain people and that once she did that, the matter should be resolved. Ms. Kipley apparently interviewed the people she named and found no wrongdoing on the teacher's part, and because the teacher did not act remorseful enough in Kipley's subjective view, Kipley decided to hold the woman for a longer period down at the Velasco Center.
The director of Professional Standards claimed she was not satisfied and needed to seek out more people to interview, even though she had finished interviewing everyone she originally named and they exonerated the teacher. My anonymous informant said that this issue involved a student and that the parent of the student had no problem with her. Linda Kipley held a teacher down at the Velasco Center for two months filing and sorting pens just to indulge in her abuse of power, according to this teacher.
This teacher cried remembering the whole story. It made me cry too because I know how she feels. When you are the victim of a witch hunt or unethical treatment, it does something to your soul. That is the wisdom I learned from the Stines-Elia-Kipley persecution of me for no wrongdoing.
I made postings as a librarian to other librarians on a library message board, something the American Library Association encourages librarians to do. I would have thought the School District of Hillsborough County would support the ALA and its Library Bill of Rights.
I also feel I was singled out. Ms. Kipley attempted to keep me from thinking that I was being singled out by lying to me and telling me that my school district email postings were only found because they clogged the email system. This was a lie, because postings to message boards/folders do not clog the system.
In my opinion, she simply wanted to use her government power to scare me into silence. The person in question says that Linda Kipley told her at the time that she was not allowed to speak to anyone at her school or even her family and friends about her case.
This is bizaare.It is an outrage against free speech and the First Amendment. Ms. Kipley's bizarre behavior leaps the bounds of reason and into the twilight zone of the pathological. Criminals tell people never to talk about what they do to you.
The head of professional standards should not forbid people from speaking about their case if they want to speak about it. That is taking away human rights and dignity--not to mention Constitutional protection, which the schools teach our children in history and civics classes. Maybe Ms. Kipley's home economics degree did not cover civil liberties. But the Board must protect these liberties and protect school employees from Ms. Kipley's stripping them of these rights.
As a citizen of Hillsborough County I request that you investigate Linda Kipley and put someone in charge of watching her comings and goings so that taxpayers get their money's worth and so that the school district sponsors real professional standards, not those administered with calculated sadism as now is the case in my own experience and apparently in that of others as well.
Do In infer correctly that you are so indifferent to union members' treatment by the sadistic Kipley of the Professional Standards Abu Gharib division that you have not demanded a policy manual to put in a teacher's hands when he or she is accused of some wrongdoing?
Have you let the victims go through the experience blind and helpless, not knowing what to expect and what their rights and recourse are to unfair treatment? For shame, ladies. You deserve flogging, not that bloated salary you extract from teachers' $500 dues coming from their meager salaries.
Is it true that you discouraged Pat Barton from filing a grievance against Linda Kipley for Kipley's sadistic treatment of her? Did you leave Barton languishing in the sorting-pens concentration camp after Kipley had found out she was not guilty but wanted to assuage her sadistic proclivities by showing Barton who was boss so kept her there without Barton's knowing why or when Kipley would release her?
You bleed $500 from ill-paid teachers a year to pay your bloated salaries. I have heard your salaries are six figures. This is the second time I have asked you both for your salaries. Teachers have a right to know this information so that they can judge whether you meager help is worth it.
If you remain in bed with the administration, I don't see how you can give teachers much protection for their $500, so they should look for a union that does protect them for their money. They should ask for the advice of National NEA.
I was union president at HCC. Our union protected teachers; it didn't cooperate with the administration in savaging them.
What are your salaries? Why do you hide them? Why don't you advise teachers to file grievances and help punished teachers file grievances when they inquire about them for being mistreated by La Kipley? Why do you discourage them from protesting mistreatment?
lee drury de cesare
15316 Gulf Boulevard 802
Madeira Beach, FL 33708
From: Bart Birdsall
I thank you for having Tom Gonzalez investigate Linda Kipley's procedures. However, I believe her files will not tell the whole story. I worry about a faux investigation in which "no wrong doing" is found b/c the files do not tell the whole story. I have asked Tom Gonzalez to talk to Shawnree Miller (a guidance counselor) concerning what I consider to be a savage treatment of a teacher in the district by Kipley, if Ms. Miller's story is true.
Ms. Miller was held down in the Velasco Center for approximately 2 months without receiving any written info about why and how long she would be held, and she went into Kipley's office almost daily crying. She asked Kipley, if she should get a lawyer, and Kipley seemed to dissaude her. Her apparent crime: she took two students to visit a university on a weekend with their parents' permission. She spent her own money, did not use school district time and made sure the parents knew where they were and made sure they called home both nights or one night (however long they were gone). She did this so the two high school students would see this university. She did it for the kids.
One parent happened to mention the trip to an AP and that started the ball rolling for Linda Kipley to hold Ms. Miller down at the Velasco Center for two months. The parent had another parent contact Ms. Miller to tell her she never meant to mention the trip to get her in trouble. She did not believe for a minute that Ms. Miller was involved in anything inappropriate with her child. I have no idea if Ms. Kipley interviewed this parent. She should have. Ms. Kipley told Ms. Miller she just needed to interview certain people, and then it would all be over, if they claimed there was no wrongdoing. When she finished interviewing them, and they supposedly said there was no wrongdoing on Miller's part, Miller was told to write a letter which should include an apology to Linda Kipley.
Ms. Miller was held at the Velasco Center until the end of the year, and she wanted to see her students graduate.
If I were Ms. Miller I would have interpreted that to mean, "You shouldn't tell even your friends!" I did not know that the General Manager of Professional Standards was in the business of advising teachers how they should or should not feel. I don't feel that is her place to comment on any feelings a teacher should or should not have.
Unfortunately, several other teachers have not been willing to let me give their names. That is the level of fear among the teachers. They are genuinely scared that the district will retaliate. I am still working to reassure them. Ms. Miller tells her story today and sounds genuinely upset and distraught by her treatment. I can tell it has changed her, just as the investigation into my emails changed me forever. She said her first meeting with Kipley involved Kipley being very sweet and reassuring her, "It will be all right..." but future meetings involved Kipley treating her like she wasn't worth the dirt on the floor.
I feel Shawnree Miller is a courageous person. Brains are easy to find in Hillsborough County. Courage is not. She exhibits courage, which is rare. So many teachers are scared to death to come forward with their stories. Tom Gonzalez told me he would write a letter to her saying that there will be no repercussions or retaliation against Shawnree Miller. I hope he follows through, b/c speaking out deserves rewarding, not admonishing. Children watch us adults all the time. They admire courage.
It is sad how a sincere apology to me by Ms. Kipley and yourself could have avoided a lot of nastiness. I doubt if you two will ever know what it feels like to have your own employers target you for what I perceived to be a witch hunt. It destroys a part of your soul. I will never be the same. I want you to think of your son and think long and hard whether you would want your son to be investigated on a technicality after he did something courageous for his community.
Instead I continue to speak out for the safety of all teachers. It is the only reason I keep speaking about this. I don't want one single teacher to go through what I went through or what Shawnree Miller went through or what Pat Barton is going through currently. This has got to stop! Each of those people have parents or loved ones who care about what happens to them! They should not be treated like dogs.
I would like to propose something. Tell your children about your part in the investigation into my emails. Tell them the complete version without any candy coating and without lies. Tell them that you told me that you were not "tech savvy" enough to figure out that emails with "From: Montolino@aol.com" were non-school district emails as you told me at Tiger Bay back in August. Tell them all this and watch their reaction.
I will bet you anything they will avert their eyes in shame and say something like, "Oh, mother....." Try it. I bet you that will happen! I bet you that you will never do this, because you know that will be their reaction. No child wants to know that his/her mother has taken part in unethical behavior. It taints the view we have of our mothers as Goddesses. Therefore, I ask you to consider this: No one should ever do anything in life that causes his/her child to avert his/her eyes in shame. If you start to do something and you stop and think, "Will my children be ashamed of me?" and the answer is, "Yes!" then don't do it. That's an easy rule to live by.
I have spent my life and risked my entire career for others. I vowed to make the world a better place for gays. Once I was investigated, I vowed to make the district a safer place for all teachers. That is what motivates my being. I do everything I do for other people. Nothing is done for myself. I do it to make the world safer, better and more just.
I could show you many emails and relate many phone conversations or face to face meetings where gay students and teachers and even straight teachers thanked me and looked at me with gratitude. I ran into a teacher at the Westshore Mall and she stopped to chat and told me she heard about the email investigation in the gay newspaper WaterMark. Her partner who was with her said, "Oh, this is the guy you were telling me about!" Her partner lingered as the teacher I knew walked away. The partner stared deep into my eyes and said with deep gratitude, "Thank you for what you do! It means a lot to us!"
I was stunned by the sincerity and deep feelings I seemed to evoke in this stranger I just met. I can't describe the feeling. It should have made me happy, but it made me so incredibly sad to know that a little nothing like myself could be viewed as heroic simply by being who I am. It underscored the fear that GLBT teachers feel in this county.
Yet I do none of this for any of that gratitude. I do it because I must, I should, and I will. I am driven to make this world a better place than when I entered it. It is the one thing that drives my entire being. It is what enables me to go to Ronda Storms' Kick Off Campaign party with two high school students from her district and get kicked off her property. Money does not drive me. Climbing the ladder of success does not drive me. The one and only thing that drives me is making the world a better place which includes making the district a safer place for both students and for teachers.
With all this said I request the following information:
1) How many times per school year does the committee that oversees Kipley's cases and handling of cases that you described meet?
2) How many times did the committee meet this school year?
3) Are there minutes taken? If so, please provide them. I am not asking for people's names (who are investigated), just evidence that this committee meets. Names and specifics of cases can be crossed out or redacted in some way. If there are no minutes, why not?
I believe as human beings we all make mistakes. You could clean up your mistakes by revamping the Office of Professional Standards and making it run more professionally. I believe it is something you should want to do. I would like to have faith in you that you will do this. Your children would definitely hold their mother in high esteem if you did revamp Professional Standards to make the district more ethical and safer for all employees. You would be able to say, "I made some mistakes, but I am working to do this and this and this...." and their eyes would shine with admiration.
I ask you for the above information, and I ask you to never take part in shady investigations or abuse of power or to let others under your reign abuse their power.
Bart
Bart Birdsall
Casting-Room Couch Note: Ms. Elia has never responded to the information requests in Birdsall's email; nor has CTA layabouts who were on the cc list made a move to get the data for a CTA member.
To: Linda Kipley
From: Lee Drury De Cesare
Subject: Second formal complaint for illiteracy and vulgar posturing on the school email by Dr. Jim The Bod Hamilton
I repeat a complaint that I filed with your office six months ago against Dr. James Hamilton for use of the school emails for personal reasons. Mr. Heggarty claims I never made such complaint. Mr. Heggarty lies like a rug. I cite Dr. Hamilton's emails that follow as basis for my complaint then and now:
To: All Principals and Site Managers 
Cap’in, Cap’in, and can you hear me?
The slurred-pronunciation of "Captain" should be "Cap'n," not "Cap'in."
I can hear you Mr. Scott, but I can’t see you, touch you and feel you!
Dr. Hamilton shows ignorant of quotation-marks protocol for quoted material.
A comma follows the first "you" for direct address; a comma follows second "you" for items in a series.
Cap’in, Cap’in, I think it’s the dilithium crystals! I just can’t get ‘er to give me more power!
"Cap'n," not "Cap'in"
Well Scotty, where am I?
Comma after "Well" for mild interjection
Cap’in I think that you’re molecules are spread across the universe, ‘cause the transporter is jammed!
"Cap'in" should be "Cap'n." "Your" should replace "you're," which is contraction for "you are." Mr. Star-Trek-Scott-Hamilton hasn't mastered homophones. Mixing up "your" and "you're" is not acceptable in a windbag to whom taxpayers fork over $132,000 annually in a system so corrupt that the bloated pay for this egomaniacal illiterate would hire more than four teachers who can spell and punctuate. The comma after "universe" cuts off a restrictive trailing adverbial dependent clause.
Well Scotty, I’ve got an important message to get to all of the principals and site managers, so put down that bottle, and stoke those engines and get me back in one piece so I can get it out by the end of the day!!!!!!!!
Comma follows "well": mild interjection. No comma after "bottle": don't separate a compound verb with a comma. Only very young children, comic books, and grown-ups stuck in arrested development use plethora of exclamation points as does Dr. Hamilton.
Compare the complaint against and punishment of Birdsall for posting on the department bulletin board material that is appropriate for a bulletin board with the previous vulgar, illiterate email sent round the email system by Dr. James Hamilton to show what he believes himself to be super-sophisticate on the cutting edge of Saturday Night Live when he, instead, ranks a wild-and-crazy flatulent fop trying to look cool but coming off as a jerk.
I have filed two complaints against this specimen with La Kipley of the Baby Shower Caper, but the Abu Gharib torture aficionado has answered neither although she assured the Board that she had the obligation to do so in all complaints. This is the double standard on display: one for the little people; another for the big people, especially those with hypertrophied and ill-placed regard for their importance such as Le Hamilton.
lee drury de cesare, Chief Expostulator of The Casting-Room Couch Blog
From: James Hamilton
To: The Entire School System on School Computers Supposed to Be Used for Serious School Business, not Vulgar Displays of Illiterate Vanity by the Second in Command with a Salary of $132,000 to Play on Taxpayer Time
Subject: Back in Margaritaville
To: AutoOpeners
Well fans I am happy to report that the Ca'pin has survived the failure of the Dilithium crystals. While atomized across the vast reaches of space between Margaritaville and the Starship Enterprise I encountered two Klingon birds of prey lying in wait in cloaking devices. I even had a photon torpedo fly through my parts while I was waiting for Mr. Scott to reassemble my parts.
Commas should enclose "fans" for direct address. "Ca'pin" should be "Cap'n" for elision of letters. A comma goes after "Enterprise": introductory adverbial clause. "Even" is a misplaced modifier: it goes before "a photon."
They are now reassembled and I have landed in Margaritaville again. While on my way over to Louie's Backyard, I thought it would be helpful if we took a brief moment to return to Lawson Land and remember that we have more of our hard working people getting paid tomorrow, and some will need help understanding their check.
Comma goes after "reassembled": compound sentence. "It" lacks antecedent. Dr. Hamilton should hyphenate "hard working": two words before a noun acting as a single adjective. "People" should be "people's": possessive before the gerund.
And don't tell them it's them SO and SOs downtown because my phasers are not on stun, Mr. Spock. 
"Them" should be "those." "Them" is a solecism of such gaucherie that it places the author in the pits of illiteracy. "SO and SOs" Should be "so-and-sos": the word is a hyphenated compound that does not get capitals.
To: Linda Kipley
From: lee drury de cesare
Subject: Monkey Business
Madam:
This is the second formal complaint I have referred to your office against Dr. Hamilton. I do not trust your own professional conduct since your participation with Ms. Elia to terrify Bart Birdsell at the behest of Joe Stines, of the Hillsborough County Library system.
The purpose of the search of Mr. Birdsall's email files was to trap him in some fugitive error that violated the Professional Standards policy of the school system to give the superintendent an excuse for firing him. This reign of terror's involving the fear of firing keeps the school employees silent when they see wrongdoing for fear of reporting it will boomerang and result in their being fired. You found nothing punishable in your fishing expedition in Mr. Birdsall's files. The school lawyer told you that Birdsall had a free-speech right send emails from his home to Mr. Stines.
You changed your stories about why you hauled Birdsall in and failed to send the letter of apology that you promised him. Instead, you sent him an ominous registered letter with vague allusions to his undefined wrongdoing and vague hints about his putative punishment for undefined wrongdoing.
So your own professional conduct is under scrutiny by me in your conduct of my formal complaint against Dr. Hamilton. I shall call immediate attention to anything I consider an infraction on your part and file a formal charge against you. I look forward to our interview to discuss this charge against Dr. Hamilton in detail in your office.
Dr. Hamilton's illiterate, vulgar emails cited above disgrace the professional standards of education. His tone of offensive familiarity toward people whom he addresses goes athwart all protocols of professional conduct in an educator. Mr. Hamilton's tone says that he reigns imperial boss of the school domain and that his underlings must sit and listen in helpless acceptance to his ignoble use of school employees as captive audience because crossing him would jeopardize their jobs although his low behavior does not jeopardize his majestic level of employment.
Apparently, Dr. Hamilton has gotten away with such boorish behavior on the job with impunity so long in his role as Rasputin to Dr. Lennard and Ms. Elia and his rumored sponsorship of a cushy no-competition $120,000 job for Ms. Connie Mileto that he assumes his arrogant behavior's universal indulgence as a form of entitlement. The reference to Margaritaville suggests his approval of drunkenness: unsuitable recommendation, certainly, for the leader of the young students in his charge.
Le Hamilton also does one-half of a job; Dr. Otero does the other half. So taxpayers fork over two bloated salaries for one job. Such is Ms. Elia's idea of fiscal responsibility. The Board thinks this double salary for one job is fine too. Taxpayers have no oversight from the potted-plant Board on such waste of tax dollars.
I want to ask that the coarse professional standards of Dr. Hamilton's low level of grammar and punctuation assure his eviction from his job in education. Such performance from a fellow making at least $120,000--lately bumped up to $132,000-- with bloated perquisites coming from taxpayers who trust his leadership to ensure that students in the system exit their secondary education able to use correct grammar and punctuation is not acceptable. Nor is it acceptable to use vulgar allusions to Margaritaville in professional on-the-job-system-wide-email statements as model communication for young people in their quest to get a job in a world not receptive to the soused illiteracy that Dr. Hamilton's emails demonstrate.
Dr. Hamilton's personal use of the school email to inflate his ego and to showcase his contempt for his recipients and derision of the inconvenience of people deprived of timely receipt of their paychecks because of the administration's incompetence recommend that Dr. Hamilton get fired posthaste.
Please tell me when to appear in your office to discuss this formal complaint. I am dying to getting into the meat of the problem.
To thwart yet another claim that you never got this email, I shall distribute it widely to the school cleaning staff, the grounds keepers, the warehouse minions, the lunchroom laborers, the guys who pick up the garbage, in sum, the folks on whose muscle the schools run while blowhards like Dr. Hamilton preen and posture and act Lord of the Universe at the taxpayers' expense.
lee drury de cesare
15316 Gulf Boulevard 802
Madeira Beach, FL 33708
tdecesar@tampabay.rr.com
727-398-4142
Casting-Room-Couch-James-the-Bod-Hamilton’s-Farewell-to-School-District-Number-One-Lothario-Look-alike Contest 
The Casting-Room Couch with sorrow announces that Dr. James Hamilton has vowed to renounce his crown as reigning Most Desirable Body in the School System.
Dr. James—“Jimareeno” to his admirers—has long enjoyed the reputation of The Hunk Who Looks Whammo in Speedos. JimJim has used Speedos as template allure couture to reel into his net many an admiring young thing at transsexual pool parties, most of which Le Jimmy has given himself for prime preening pool-side space to display his macho secondary-sexual-characteristics to x-chromosome admirers, especially those with kindergarten credentials--Dr. Jimbo has a rumored Lolita fetish--and not much else except ambitions to be administrative hotshots with Dr. Speedo’s lubricious help.
But in his declining years, Boffo Bod JimBoy has tired of copying George 
Bush’s Mission-accomplished sock-stuffed anatomical booster, coming to consider such augmentation undignified for even a waning lover boy.
Le Hamiletto has, in the wisdom of time, come to feel that his reputation for Speedo splendor amongst teeny-boppers does not display requisite dignity that he aspires to at this King-Lear time of his life.
And Le Jim doesn’t want to croak from an overdoes of Viagra or, worse, depart this planet in a Cialis state of perpetual tumescence to make him the laughing stock of the mortuary crew not to mention the backbench wags in ROSSAC and even the outlying schools that hear of the system’s doings only by carrier pigeon the third Tuesday of every month so as to save education dollars to bloat ROSSAC administrators’ already hypertrophied paychecks.
Hence, Dr. Jim, the Bod, allows The Village Pump to hold a contest of boffo-bod excellence to replace him in the school system as the walking advertisement for testosterone splendor.
He pines to abandon pumping iron secretly in the bowels of his abode. He exercises in the wee hours of the morning so as to maintain the fiction that his Bod comes to him as celestial gift from the hosanna hierarchy up yonder, not from sweating workouts at the wee hours in an undisclosed location.
Not only is Dr. Jimbo tired of pumping iron in hideaway location, but he is even more tired of holding in his belly when any matriculant belle looks his way, of late mistaking Le Jim for her grandfather. He wants to just let it—the belly, that is—all hang out.
Jimmerinoninno wants to let anything lapse that makes possible his abandoning his Super Bod training that has kept him at the top of the What-a-bod specimens in the school system for more years than he cares to admit. He is, let Casting Couch make clear, weary of Sucking In.
Thus, the field now stands open to upstart juvenile rivals lusting for Bod éclat. Jim says that rookies are coming on from the hinterlands in swarms and that he will not only gracefully step aside for these youth but will sign the Dr. Jimbo’s Mod Bod Replacement citation that the winner earns.
The Rules for Bodacious Jimbo Bod Aspirants
Submit two pictures—full figure, back and front. The front picture must not hint at any Mission-accomplished perineal sock-stuffing. The back picture must not feature t-back exposure of nates—this is a family-values contest-- although a tasteful whisper of lower gluteals may peep beyond skimpily cut Speedos couture.
Dental x-rays, college transcripts, Boy Scout medals, and circumcision certificate are part of submission package--also teeth left under pillows for the Tooth Fairy.
The notarized signatures of at least post-pubescent six bimbos who swear that they have called Jimbo “hot-body Jimmetto” during moments of high drama.
Mother’s signature of permission if she is alive; if not, then the signature of the eldest and homeliest aunt will do.
A notarized statement from the contestant’s father that he will never call his offspring a narcissistic wussy if he wins the contest.
A Halmark card with hearts and flowers addressed to “My Ideal and Role Model, Dr. Bodacious Bod for the Ages Jimarino Hamilton-a-go-go, with fawning admiration from ---------------------(name of contestant). Three affixed kiss-marks to make Le Jimbo feel warm and cozy must follow contestant’s signature (in lipstick to show you are not insecure about your sexuality).
Place all contest materials in a plastic baggie and deposit in the pumpkin on the northeast corner of the ROSSC parking lot. Le Jim Jim the Bod will pick these up at the witching hour in his BodMobile and deliver them to Contest Committee behind Bern's Steak House near the trash bins.
May the best bod win! This missive has the official approval of the Village Pump Layabout Wags and other Silly Putty Fanciers.
Note: Follow the Money: Administration Self-directed Largesse; Dickensian Penury for Teachers and Children
Administrators with salaries exceeding $100,000 a year, whose literacy needs testing in a current English basic-skills test:
Earl Lennard; Michael Grego; Gwen Luney; Ken Otero; Donnie Evans; Mike Bookman;
Dan Valdez; Jack Davis; Jim Hamilton; Mary Ellen Elia; Connie Milito; Michelle Crouse; Sylvia Albritton; Joyce Haines; Nelson Luis; Ken Adum; Barbara Franques; Anthony Satchel; Sherrie Sikes; Cathy Valdes; Janice Velez
Teachers with salaries exceeding $100,000 a year who must pass a basic-skills test in their subject area:O.
Entering salary: $31,000.Teachers get $99 state money for supplies. They spend $500-$1000 of their own meager funds to buy supplies for the 48 % of lunch-subsidized county children—190,000. Volunteer organization A Gift for Teaching supplements teachers with needed supplies for poor children.
The School Board ignores this crisis; but it raises the superintendent’s, administrators', and its own salaries on a regular basis.
During the recent budget cut-backs, the Board raised its salaries to almost $40,000 for a part-time dilettante job. This salary is for sitting like potted plants while the following goes on:
1. the administration lets dishonest real-estate scams go on in Ms. Elia's former bailiwick;
2. the Board allows Elia to launch a computer witch hunt on Bart Birdsall for sending emails from his home because her County buddies Stines and Bean wanted to put a scare into him;
3. the administraton allows Linda Kipley, to insert herself as director in Professional Standards after she bombed as principal of Hillsborough High with no advertising of the job, a violation of Title VII and the administration's blazoned equal-opportunity promise;
4.the Board looked the other way as Kipley tortured teachers in her power until Birdsall's outcry forced the Board to get the school lawyer to investigate Kipley's Abu-Gharib methods in what promises to be a cover-up protocol;
the Board and administration avoid answering emails from voters, with Olson's, Kurdell's, and Bricklemeyer's spitting citizen emails back with a spam scam.
12 comments:
http://viviandreani.blogspot.com
bye bye!
Lady, what is your problem. Is this all your pathetic life is worth? Is your life just constant criticizim of people who work hard to educate children? Is Birdsall you offspring or what? On your deathbed, will you look back and say "I wish I had insulted those people just one more time?" Who declared you perfect? Shut the fuck up.
Geez! Talk about somebody not getting the point! And such nice language as well.
"...constant criticizim of people who work hard to educate children"
I believe she was directing her criticism at the administration, my airhead friend. You need to go take a couple of AR practice quizzes and work on your comprehension. And your spelling.
M
good to see you back at it so quickly. Have fun!
Fantastic! Finally, someone who is absolutely immune to what the school district elite can cook up, firing poison barbs right where they belong: at the top. And with such imaginative insults! The humor is in the truth of it, spoken so directly where few of us with jobs at stake would dare.
I do hope you keep it up. There are many of us who might risk telling you a story or two.
ee
Keep up the good work.
I would appreciate someone publicizing that Elia is also guilty of stalking people who speak badly of her.
If I'm not mistaken this is a crime according to Florida statutes.
If she doesn't stalk you personally she is involved with a large family of thugs who help her with this activity. Photos and documentation upon request.
Ms. Decesare performs an invaluable public service. I had to remove my children from Hillsborough county schools because they sent in thugs to harm them and the teachers would ignore them and not teach them anything. This is a top-down deal. It started with Earl and continues on it's mad and merry course, only MUCH WORSE with all the players who have long waited to be in place. This was long in the planning. The mob has infiltrated education and it is a marketing tool now which has nothing to do with educating children. The SDHC is guilty of taking part in the dumbing down of America and all of Jeb Bush's A grades won't make a lie the truth.
Keep up the good work, Lee. I barely know you and your spirit makes my heart soar !!!
THANK YOU !!!!
I fall into the catagory of having only ahigh school education, so my commas may not all be right. However, aside from that, I do recognize right from wrong. What I see is a wasteful, overpayed administration, and board. Our schoolboard believes in the good old boy pricipal, and very little about educating our children. The promoted Ms. Elia over people with much better qualifications, only because they are gready, and do not wishto give up any of their powers, had they went ouside the system, a more qualified superintendant would not have allowed all the missgivings of our system. As for Mr. Hamilton, the only reason two people are making the same salary for doing the same job, is because Mr. Hamilton announced he was retiring in Dec. of 2005. Mr. Hamilton should do the first honorable thing in his life and announce his retirment. I have quit reading La Gaceta because mr Montiega has no "guts" and bows to pressure, I'm sure his father cant be very proud of him. Sorry for my literature shortcomings, tired of paying more and getting less. retired firefighter.
My heart goes out to the firefighter. I wish I had had him in my English classes. He would have come out a verbally polished man. My poor parents' stress on the value of education is what made me a college professor.
But even without the advantage of advanced education, this sturdy firefighter has guts and class, and those are hard to come by.
I am sure he wants his grandchildren to go to good schools and get the good education that he missed. To achieve that goal, citizens must evict the present corrupt, incompetent administration and Board.
With a strong Board at the helm, the area will have a powerful, honest school system that does not shovel out wheelbarrows of tax money to illiterate, third-tier incompetents and hire ill-prepared buddies and paramours in its twisted hiring racket.
lee drury de cesare, former teacher, former faculty union president
I'm impressed with your site, very nice graphics!
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