Go to HSEF.com Blog.

The badly treated bus drivers are rebelling against the Board and administration. Hurrah. Tomorrow at Tiger Bay, we have all the Schol-Board candidates.

We know what the incumbents Faliero and Olson have done: they have acted Potted Plants and signed off on a make-work job for Jim Hamilton because he refused to retire. He is the new Bus Enforcer Czar for $132,000 plus perquisites-- and plus the ability to pedal contracts. The worst-paid bus driver gets less than $10,000 a year: third-world wages. Elia gets a quarter of a million and can't punctuate.

Several of us are leafleting at Tiger Bay tomorrow. The bus drivers' blog is included in our packet. I am for the bus drivers and againt the greed, incompetent administration and complicit Potted-Plant board.

Pols Behaving Badly in the Tampa Bay Area

Logan Cobb, the 17-year-old running for School Board district 2, is a student at Plant. He is, hence, Candy Olson's constituent, even though he is running against her as well as Bart Birdsall.

I submit that Ms. Olson's tone in her clipped reply to her student/constituent/opponent below reveals neither generosity nor grace toward a student from a Board member.

Since Logan has little chance to win, political logic says that the least Board Member Olson could do is be gracious to him and ask the Board give him official time off to the Tiger Bay debate because he is young and just entering politics with hardened veterans such as Olson, 12 years an incumbent and hanging on with grim determination to remain a potted planted on the Board, doing nothing but rubberstamping the administration directives and drawing her $38,000 pay, equal to that of a veteran teacher with a master's degree.

When I approached Dr. Lamb and La Olson after a Tiger Bay meeting to tell them that their raising their salaries to that of veteran teachers before the district's teachers got a raise offended me, Dr. Lamb shouted at me while Ms. Olson stood by and looked on with evident approval of her colleague's political deportment that he didn't want to hear from me.

I know these two specimens are against the free speech part of the First Amendment, hence never answer citizens' emails, but this public performance after Tiger Bay showed that they don't give a doggone about the second half of the First Amendment either, the part that says we citizens have the right to approach public officials for redress of grievances. Evidently, les Lamb and Olson don't consider themselves public servants; they consider themselves enfolded into the purple and will have no congress with us hoi polloi voters once we have been dumb enough to vote them into office.

I have never understood why the Board members get as much as a veteran teacher with a master's degree since all they do is attend a couple of Board meetings a month and whilst there do little but palaver about how wonderful they are: the Board compliments the administration; the administration praises the Board. That's it. The members could have asked Elia why she had presided over a real-estate scam, but that would have meant its members were doing something for the voters. That's not an agenda item. I swear when I went to a meeting I heard the strains of "It's a Small World, After All" wafting aloft. Or maybe it was those chipmunks singing "High-ho The Wicked Witch Is Dead." I expected munchkins to skip through bestrewing daisies. It was Old Home Week gone Disney.

The terse response to Cobb reflects Olson's obsession with remaining the incumbent after twelve years of plopping at Board meetings as a potted plant rubberstamping the administration's orders and gazing into the camera with a "I'm ready for my close-up" pose.

La Olson is not able even to bring herself to the minimum of Board-member disinterestedness by clearing the way with the administration for this student-candidate-constituent to have a fair chance to expose his ideas on the same Tiger-Bay platform as does she. Keep in mind that Olson's fifty-seven, over three times the 17-year-old candidate's age. I don't see much maturity in Olson's behavior. She acts like one of my grandchildren not wanting to share the toys.

La Olson's behavior is not admirable in this case but was much less admirable several years ago when she faced an election and told Bart Birdsall--media specialist who counsels gay students in the schools, some of whom tell him they feel suicidal from the savaging they get there--that she, Olson, could do nothing for gay students savaged in the schools until another election cycle ended." Olson said, in effect, that her continued incumbency ranked more important than the suffering of gay children. The woman's all heart.

Little wonder that the psyche of such a specimen can snap back a dismissal to a 17-year-old kid's request who's running against her for District 2 and has no chance of winning. Olson would smart mouth Mother Theresa if Mother wanted to run for District 2.

Logan, alas, does not have a care for literacy since he makes spelling errors in this email of supplication, suggesting that he is too self-involved and caught up in political la gloire to use the spell checker. I believe that each of the emails I have received from the young man has had at least one spelling error.

Illiteracy in top administrators is one of the Board's problems: the Board pays a superintendent who can't punctuate--one who has meager credentials that all the finalists in the $35,000 "nation-wide" search topped--a quarter of a million dollars a year; it pays Elia's ghost writer, Steve Hegarty, $91,000 a year even though Hegarty shares Ms. Elia's punctuation problem, a case of the blind's leading the blind. These two illiterati total $341,000 tax money annually and neither can confidently place a comma if it were to save their lives. The Board pays Dr. Hamilton while also inventing for him a faux job as School Bus Overlord aka as Jitney Maximum Enforcer $132,000 with apparently unlimited consulting privileges, the first contract already in the pipeline for $235,000 for--get this--a firm to tell Hamilton how to get the buses to run on time. Imagine the Board's rubberstamping a $235,000 contract to ensure Romper Room administration chores get done. This is not abstruse stuff, folks. It involves such things as putting numbers on all the buses. I wonder how Dr. Hamilton ever passed Philosophy 101, in which he had to master the concept of Plato's Theory of Ideal Forms. Maybe he didn't take that course. In fact, I would swear that he didn't.

Hamilton, one infers, sits in his ROSSAC office twiddling his thumbs, contemplating quitting time so that he can slip out to Margaritaville. This specimen siphons his big salary from unwitting taxpayers while unable to distinguish between the homophones "your" and "you're." I'm not making this up. I have proof in black and white.

Such people as Le Hamilton and La Elia are not interested in education. Their slovenly basic writing errors reveal that fact. If the schools were pencil factories, that circumstance would make no difference to them--just so their big salaries spit out on pay day and they get to dispense tax money and bloated-salary jobs to buddies.

Academic weaklings flock to administration jobs because that's where the money is. They set their own ever-growing salaries as first budget priority; the Board rubberstamps these obscene pay checks and pays teachers pittances, some of whom work two jobs to survive. This year’s soi-disant teacher "raise" touted by the CTA, in bed with the administration, was merely catch up for the previous years when teachers got nothing, but the administration made out just swell. The Board also allows these same rapacious administrators to hand out contracts, the scrutiny for which activity the Board should be accountable. This chore is one they skipped when Elia presided over the real-estate scam in the building department.

The Board doesn't have the taxpayers' best use of their money in mind and turns over the power of the purse these greedy administrators.

The people in the ROSAC bunker are obsessed with money and power, not education. The bloated salaries and the chance to award contracts are, in my judgment, the reason that the inner cabal that has run the schools for years fights so hard and so insidiously to keep the superintendent's job in its circle of insider operators. And the Board either from ignorance or lassitude colludes with it.

The Board lowered the superintendetn Ph.D. requirement to Elia's master's degree to let Elia slip through to superintendent . Board members counted her meager experience in the building department during which she either ignored or participated in the real-estate scam as better than that of other candidates with degrees from superior institutions and with wide backgrounds in education and even scholarly publishing. And best of all: the candidates rejected for the comma-impaired Elia were literate. They could punctuate and did not require the services of a ghost writer to construct a paragraph.

The question is, What do the administrators get in addition to the sense of power from awarding contracts? Ms. Elia claims she did not know about the real-estate scam in the building department that unfolded on her watch and that the St. Petersburg Times exposed since she wasn't interested. This lack of attention on Elia's part cost taxpayers thousands of dollars.

I submit that taxpayers should demand an explanation for such doubtful claim of ignorance and suspect complicity. Hillsborough County would not be the first school system in the country to foster contract skullduggery. Yet the Potted Plant Board sat silent after the Times expose of the building department under Elia's reign. It did not demand an explanation from her. It did not investigate. It did not lodge a rebuke against the superintendent. It sloughed its responsibility off on the state authorities. Why do the Board candidates run for office if not to deal with such matters?

Taxpayers pray that these contract-awarding opportunities don't invite graft. But every day national newspapers document government graft all over the country. One wonders what bank-account forensics on the records of those who award contracts for Hillsborough County schools with tax money would yield.

People who turn education into a racket are not interested in academic excellence or literacy; they are interested in money and power.

*****************************************************************************************************************************************

Logan Cobb writes:

Greetings,

As I'm sure you are aware, the Tiger Bay Club is hosting a candidate forum on September 1st. Unfortunately, I have school.

Since the Tiger Bay Club is an important and politically active organization, I feel that my participation is crucial if we are to have a campaign which openly and actively discusses the issues. I am writing to recieve a "school business" abscence for the first. I have not, nor will I, ask my principal for this consideration. I feel it would potentially place him in a position where he would face a conflict of interest, a position I am trying to avoid putting any H.B. Plant teachers or administrators into.

As a current School Board member, you have the authority to grant this. I appreciate the thought you will give this and await your response.

Sincerely,

Logan Cobb

Candidate
School Board, Disrtict 2

Candy Olson's response:

Your principal has the authority to deal with a request like this. I don't.

All correspondences including email sent to School Board members or School District staff are considered public records, per Florida Statute 119.

__________________________________________________________________________________________________

This blog records the hostile email I get. I relish responding to these opponents of free speech. I don't want any handicaps from louts just because I am a girl, a geezer. and a Granny.

__________________________________________________________________________________________________

From: Mark Anderson [mailto:Mark.Anderson@sdhc.k12.fl.us]

Sent: Monday, August 28, 2006 10:23 AM
To: tdecesar@tampabay.rr.com
Subject: Re: SPAM: FW: A letter to the editor

Please take my name off of this list, seriously, I'm not sending you silly nonsense! Thanks.

_____________________________________________

Sirrah Mark:

Learn to use the block sender, sugar britches. Or master the arcane maneuver of the delete button. This is America. Catch up. We scribbling patriots can send our good news into the marketplace of ideas with hey nonny nonny.

You need a period after "list" or after "seriously," depending on your meaning. This construction is similar to the hit punctuation book Eats, Roots, and Leaves or Eats Roots and Leaves. You have blundered into the dreaded comma splice in a Hillsborough County school email, haven't you? Such represents a grammar felony that costs you five points on any essay you write in the class of a teacher worth his / her salt.

I would like to know what your definition of "silly" is. Its etymology traces back to the Old High German "Alig," which means "happy." I was alive, flourishing, and teaching grammar and punctuation to Old High German scholars manqué during the Old High German period. Do I infer correctly that you eschew happy talk? Be more exact. Do you read only the sermons of Cotton Mather and no happy talk at all?

See me in my office after class to discuss how you became what appears to be an in-house probationer toady in an administration that fosters a superintendent who can't punctuate for a quarter-of-a-million a year leached from unsuspecting taxpayers, not to mention a newly anointed head of the put-some-damn-numbers-on-the-buses-for-god's-sake Bus Brigade.

This illiterate meso-endomorph gets $132,000 a year and counting--I speak of Dr. James the Enforcer Hamilton--to slither into an ersatz perch of the featherbedding flavor despite his not knowing the difference between "your" and "you're." These are your heroes, one infers. I wish you all the luck in the world in your collaboration with these specimens' contaminating the world of learning. Get ready to do some serious bootlicking.

I will forward this to Comma-Inept Superintendent Elia so that she will appoint you without advertising to the next one-hundred-thousand-plus-featherbedding administrator job that pops into her head, the which she will send to the Potted-Plant Board for rubberstamping. The administration doesn't yet have an Official Office of Lickspittles. You will probably be anointed for that proud office, especially since you share Ms. Elia's punctuation politics.

If you want a Battle of the Books, you've come to the right lemonade stand. I represent Swift's ancients; you get stuck with the moderns. And since I am sure you have read Swift's masterpiece as a man of letters in the Hillsborough County school system run by a comma-ignorant superintendent, you relish a Tampa Bay reprise.

If you don't know what I'm talking about, go back to your comic epics and be quiet in the presence of your elders and betters and leave off sending snide emails to a member of the suckers who pay your salary.

lee drury de cesare

Mounted on blog for the delectation of the masses:
http://www.leedrurydecesarescasting-roomcouch.blogspot.com
_________________________________________________________________________________________________
Uh-oh, delusions of grandeur raise their unlovely head. Any candidate who would act in the manner below during a campaign would seize the crown and scepter in office and demand his own nuclear deterrent and a year's supply of lollipops. ldd/casting-roomcouch ldd__________________________________________________________________________________________________
Gentlepeople:

Pray allow me to confirm that I do not have anything to do with Master Logan’s campaign. I am careful about whom I lend the honor of my name to; it confers a compliment that I give to few.

I do not grant that I associated myself with young Logan’s campaign by contributing to him $50 dollars when Bart Birdsall told me his mother would not give him any money for his signs because she said he should save it for college. His mother is doubtless right. But sorry for him, I sent this candidate, sight unseen, whom I had considered at the time an enterprising lad on a post-pubescent political lark, money for his street signs. He thanked me profusely by email.

One expects perfidy in adults but is taken aback to discover self-important and unfounded pretense in one as young as Le Logan.

In the District 2 race, I favor Bart Birdsall because he has had the sustained courage to pressure the homophobes on the School Board for years to deal with the issue of harassment of gay children in the schools. Birdsall, a library specialist, has had gay students confide that they entertained thoughts of suicide because of the treatment inflicted on them by bullies. The School Board turned Potted-Plant its eyes away from this pitiful situation despite Birdsall's persistent pleas-- and those of a mother with a gay son at Hillsborough High-- to the Board to do something about the cruelty.

Ms. Olson was particularly offensive in her disregard for the welfare of gay children in the school system. She sent Birdsall a message by a third party that she could do nothing about gay children until "another election cycle” elapsed. In other words, let the gay students suffer until she was in the comfy-poo position of being reelected. What wicked political lust Olson betrayed when she revealed her willingness to sacrifice children to her plans for incumbency.

I complained to Ms. Olson myself about a teacher's having a Bible on his desk and lecturing a gay student about his going to hell because he was gay. Ms. Olson's email breezy response: "The last time I checked, teachers have free speech" earned my crisp riposte to her about the separation of church and state. I got another school official to set the Bible-spouting teacher straight about his not having the right to harangue a gay student whilst thumping his desk Bible about the student's descent to hell for his sexual orientation.

I can report that Olson has never again challenged me on this issue. She is one of those people who run if you confront them for their smart-ass remarks.

Master Logan called me a few nights ago to demand that I repudiate my email he refers to below. I refused. I made no claim to any connection with his campaign. I said he could give me an entry for my blog, and I would post it or would provide him with email-file names if he wanted himself to distribute a rebuttal to his imaginary perception that I claimed connection to his campaign.

I challenged young Logan to say what words in my email said I was connected to his campaign. He couldn't cite anything. But in desperation he finally blurted, "Lee, you called me by my first name, so people will think you are connected to my campaign."

To this piece of impudence, I responded that he was 17 and I was 74; hence, his calling me "Lee" was a piece of bad manners that suggested he was raised in a barn. My calling a boy by his first name is what 74-year-old seniors have societal sanction to do. Then I hung up.

I cautioned Logan about his spelling in the first email he sent me a while ago. His repeated assertion of the loftiness of his ethics does not obviate his duty to literacy if he wants to lead us of the electorate on the School Board. Alas, I see that Logan did not take this advice and misspells again in his email below.

If you can’t trust a fellow to spell correctly, how can you trust him to govern well? I have fought the School Board about the issue of illiteracy amongst the highly paid administrators and Board for some time. I could not support a boy who sends out clumsy, misleading emails who can't spell. We have enough abuse of language at ROSAC's administrative redoubt as it is now. The public doesn't need a student teenager's additional contribution to this abuse of language on the Board.

I also petition Logan to send me back my fifty bucks. I was wrong to send it without having met him or experienced his bloated amour propre and spelling deficiencies.

Alas, alack, and weladay. The jeunesse doree of South Tampa is more spoiled than that of which the 6th-century Athenians complained.

__________________________________________________________________________________________________
Candidate for School Board's father Bart Birdsall sends him this email: Bart,

Looks like the School Board is in trouble and they need new leadership after reading the article you sent.

Shad say’s he will bite MaryEllen Elia !! Good luck!! (Shad is Bart's Dad's little dog.)

Dad
*************************************************************************************

I doubt I would vote for a 17-year-old; seventeen years is not enough time to learn the wisdom needed for the best service in public office. Of course, one can argue that many--perhaps most-- "adults" who run for public office lack wisdom too; but they are more likely to have it than a person who has lived a mere 17 years.

But that reservation does not mean we should discourage teenagers from running for public office. Their doing so may be a head start in becoming mature enough to be a good public servant all the sooner.

I have never met Logan. But I wish him well in his first attempt at winning public office.

_____________________________________________________________________

Ms. Elia:
Logan Cobb, District 2, is the 17-year-old student from Plant High running for the School Board against Birdsall and Olson.

Tiger Bay will have Board candidates appear on September 1, a school day.
Logan has appealed to Tiger Bay to change to a non-school day because, as I understand him, he does not want to compromise his principal at Plant by asking him to grant Logan a day off to appear at Tiger Bay.

One supposes there’s some retaliation fear that Logan has for his principal because the principal makes possible Logan’s participating in a debate in which he opposes a sitting Board member, Ms. Olson. One infers Logan fears Ms. Olson might pressure you to put the screws to the principal for providing leeway for one of her opponents.

I suggest that not only Logan should have the time off but that you should also tell the principal to attend Tiger Bay. In addition, you should give Logan’s favorite teacher and best friend permission to go as well. You must also be there yourself to tell his parents how proud the administration and School Board are of Logan.

Football players and cheerleaders get time off frequently, and they give no promise to society to participate in its improvement through public service. Logan does. It takes an unusual boy with unusual vision at his age to do such a thing as run for school board when he is just seventeen and a student still. It is also an unusual young man who has commendable ethical solicitude for not jeopardizing his principal’s status. We need to encourage such extraordinary young people.

Figure out a way to allow Logan to be at Tiger Bay for the School Board debate. One day you may be able to say when Logan becomes Senator or even to President, “I arranged for that fellow to be able to attend his Tiger Bay debate when he was seventeen, a student at Plant, and a candidate for District 2 of the School Board. I was then supervisor of the schools."

lee drury de cesare
15316 Gulf Boulevard 802
Madeira Beach, Fl 33708
727-398-4142
tdecesar@tampabay.rr.com
leedrurydecesarescasting-roomcouch.com
8/29/06
*********************************************************************************************************************************
August 29th Thank you for returning my contribution, Candidate District 2 Logan Cobb. This experience teaches me never to give a political contribution to a candidate I have not met, no matter how much a friend recommends him. One is never too old to learn. King Lear did. I can too. T**************************************************************************************
You're welcome, Logan.

When you add a few more years and get into politics big-time, I shall be watching your triumphs with interest and will say, "That fellow ran for the school board in Hillsborough County when he was a high school student of 17. I always knew he would go far."

Meanwhile, use the spell checker. An English teacher can't help noticing mistakes even in a young man's writing who may be president one day.
lee drury de cesare


From: Logan Cobb [mailto:cobbforschoolboard@yahoo.com]
Sent: Thursday, August 24, 2006 9:50 PM
To: Lee De Cesare
Subject: Thank You

Lee,

Thank you for all the support you've been giving me during this race. I appreciate the donation.

I am especially thankful for the help you're giving me with this abscence issue. I just wanted to let you know, it means a lot to me.

Logan Cobb
Candidate
School Board, District 2

*****************************************************************************************************************************************
Logan Cobb writes:
Greetings,

As I'm sure you are aware, the Tiger Bay Club is hosting a candidate forum on September 1st. Unfortunately, I have school.

Since the Tiger Bay Club is an important and politically active organization, I feel that my participation is crucial if we are to have a campaign which openly and actively discusses the issues. I am writing to recieve a "school business" abscence for the first. I have not, nor will I, ask my principal for this consideration. I feel it would potentially place him in a position where he would face a conflict of interest, a position I am trying to avoid putting any H.B. Plant teachers or administrators into.

As a current School Board member, you have the authority to grant this. I appreciate the thought you will give this and await your response.

Sincerely,

Logan Cobb
Candidate
School Board, Disrtict 2

Candy Olson's response:

Your principal has the authority to deal with a request like this. I don't.


All correspondences including email sent to School Board members or School District staff are considered public records, per Florida Statute 119.
__________________________________________________________________________________________________

This blog records the hostile email I get. I relish responding to these opponents of free speech. I don't want any handicaps from louts just because I am a girl, a geezer. and a Granny.






_________________________________________________________________________________________________
Uh-oh, delusions of grandeur raise their unlovely head. Any candidate who would act in the manner below during a campaign would seize the crown and scepter in office and demand his own nuclear deterrent and a year's supply of lollipops. ldd/casting-roomcouch ldd__________________________________________________________________________________________________
Gentlepeople:

Pray allow me to confirm that I do not have anything to do with Master Logan’s campaign. I am careful about whom I lend the honor of my name to; it confers a compliment that I give to few.

I do not grant that I associated myself with young Logan’s campaign by contributing to him $50 dollars when Bart Birdsall told me his mother would not give him any money for his signs because she said he should save it for college. His mother is doubtless right. But sorry for him, I sent this candidate, sight unseen, whom I had considered at the time an enterprising lad on a post-pubescent political lark, money for his street signs. He thanked me profusely by email.

One expects perfidy in adults is taken aback to discover self-important and unfounded pretense in one so young as Le Logan.

In the District 2 race, I favor Bart Birdsall because he has had the sustained courage to pressure the homophobes on the School Board for years to deal with the issue of harassment of gay children in the schools. Birdsall, a library specialist, has had gay students confide that they entertained thoughts of suicide because of the treatment inflicted on them by bullies. The School Board turned Potted-Plant its eyes away from this pitiful situation despite Birdsall's persistent pleas-- and those of a mother with a gay son at Hillsborough High-- to the Board to do something about the cruelty.

Ms. Olson was particularly offensive in her disregard for the welfare of gay children in the school system. She sent Birdsall a message by a third party that she could do nothing about gay children until "another election cycle” elapsed. In other words, let the gay students suffer until she was in the comfy-poo position of being reelected. What wicked political lust Olson betrayed when she revealed her willingness to sacrifice children to her plans for incumbency.

I complained to Ms. Olson myself about a teacher's having a Bible on his desk and lecturing a gay student about his going to hell because he was gay. Ms. Olson's email breezy response: "The last time I checked, teachers have free speech" earned my crisp riposte to her about the separation of church and state. I got another school official to set the Bible-spouting teacher straight about his not having the right to harangue a gay student whilst thumping his desk Bible about the student's descent to hell for his sexual orientation.

I can report that Olson has never again challenged me on this issue. She is one of those people who run if you confront them for their smart-ass remarks.

Master Logan called me a few nights ago to demand that I repudiate my email he refers to below. I refused. I made no claim to any connection with his campaign. I said he could give me an entry for my blog, and I would post it or would provide him with email-file names if he wanted himself to distribute a rebuttal to his imaginary perception that I claimed connection to his campaign.

I challenged young Logan to say what words in my email said I was connected to his campaign. He couldn't cite anything. But in desperation he finally blurted, "Lee, you called me by my first name, so people will think you are connected to my campaign."

To this piece of impudence, I responded that he was 17 and I was 74; hence, his calling me "Lee" was a piece of bad manners that suggested he was raised in a barn. My calling a boy by his first name is what 74-year-old seniors have societal sanction to do. Then I hung up.

I cautioned Logan about his spelling in the first email he sent me a while ago. His repeated assertion of the loftiness of his ethics does not obviate his duty to literacy if he wants to lead us of the electorate on the School Board. Alas, I see that Logan did not take this advice and misspells again in his email below.

If you can’t trust a fellow to spell correctly, how can you trust him to govern well? I have fought the School Board about the issue of illiteracy amongst the highly paid administrators and Board for some time. I could not support a boy who sends out clumsy, misleading emails who can't spell. We have enough abuse of language at ROSAC's administrative redoubt as it is now. The public doesn't need a student teenager's additional contribution to this abuse of language on the Board.

I also petition Logan to send me back my fifty bucks. I was wrong to send it without having met him or experienced his bloated amour propre and spelling deficiencies.

Alas, alack, and weladay. The jeunesse doree of South Tampa is more spoiled than that of which the 6th-century Athenians complained.

__________________________________________________________________________________________________

Candidate for School Board's father Bart Birdsall sends him this email: Bart,

Looks like the School Board is in trouble and they need new leadership after reading the article you sent.

Shad say’s he will bite MaryEllen Elia !! Good luck!! (Shad is Bart's Dad's little dog.)

Dad
*************************************************************************************

I doubt I would vote for a 17-year-old; seventeen years is not enough time to learn the wisdom needed for the best service in public office. Of course, one can argue that many--perhaps most-- "adults" who run for public office lack wisdom too; but they are more likely to have it than a person who has lived a mere 17 years.

But that reservation does not mean we should discourage teenagers from running for public office. Their doing so may be a head start in becoming mature enough to be a good public servant all the sooner.

I have never met Logan. But I wish him well in his first attempt at winning public office.

_____________________________________________________________________

Ms. Elia:

Logan Cobb, District 2, is the 17-year-old student from Plant High running for the School Board against Birdsall and Olson.

Tiger Bay will have Board candidates appear on September 1, a school day.

Logan has appealed to Tiger Bay to change to a non-school day because, as I understand him, he does not want to compromise his principal at Plant by asking him to grant Logan a day off to appear at Tiger Bay.

One supposes there’s some retaliation fear that Logan has for his principal because the principal makes possible Logan’s participating in a debate in which he opposes a sitting Board member, Ms. Olson. One infers Logan fears Ms. Olson might pressure you to put the screws to the principal for providing leeway for one of her opponents.

I suggest that not only Logan should have the time off but that you should also tell the principal to attend Tiger Bay. In addition, you should give Logan’s favorite teacher and best friend permission to go as well. You must also be there yourself to tell his parents how proud the administration and School Board are of Logan.

Football players and cheerleaders get time off frequently, and they give no promise to society to participate in its improvement through public service. Logan does. It takes an unusual boy with unusual vision at his age to do such a thing as run for school board when he is just seventeen and a student still. It is also an unusual young man who has commendable ethical solicitude for not jeopardizing his principal’s status. We need to encourage such extraordinary young people.

Figure out a way to allow Logan to be at Tiger Bay for the School Board debate. One day you may be able to say when Logan becomes Senator or even to President, “I arranged for that fellow to be able to attend his Tiger Bay debate when he was seventeen, a student at Plant, and a candidate for District 2 of the School Board. I was then supervisor of the schools.’

lee drury de cesare

15316 Gulf Boulevard 802

Madeira Beach, Fl 33708

727-398-4142

tdecesar@tampabay.rr.com

leedrurydecesarescasting-roomcouch.com

8/29/06

Thank you for returning my contribution, Candidate District 2 Logan Cobb. This experience teaches me never to give a political contribution to a candidate I have never met, no matter how much a friend recommends him. One is never too old to learn. King Lear did. I can too.
**************************************************************************************

You're welcome, Logan.

When you add a few more years and get into politics big-time, I shall be watching your triumphs with interest and will say, "That fellow ran for the school board in Hillsborough County when he was a high school student of 17. I always knew he would go far."

Meanwhile, use the spell checker. An English teacher can't help noticing mistakes even in a young man's writing who may be president one day.

lee drury de cesare

---

From: Logan Cobb [mailto:cobbforschoolboard@yahoo.com]
Sent: Thursday, August 24, 2006 9:50 PM
To: Lee De Cesare
Subject: Thank You

Lee,
Thank you for all the support you've been giving me during this race. I appreciate the donation.

I am especially thankful for the help you're giving me with this abscence issue. I just wanted to let you know, it means a lot to me.

Logan Cobb
Candidate
School Board, District 2

---

Today's Tribune: Hillsborough Trying To Fix 'Inefficient' School Bus System

By MARILYN BROWN

Ms. Brown: Your article today on the bus problem gives some insight into to the bungling inefficiency of the County's administration of school system and confirms my diagnosis of a potted-plant board.

So the Board and administration needs a $235,000 gaggle of consultants to solve the metaphysics of the bus problems?

I'll take that dough. The solution is 1. pay the drivers a decent wage;2. treat them like human beings and pay them overtime; 3. buy some new buses; 4.hire some mechanics; 5. put the route numbers on the buses; and 6.suspend naughty kids. What's hard about that?

This bus quandary is pretext for the Board and Ms. Elia to manufacture for Jim Hamilton another featherbedding job because he refused to retire. He's the wrong fellow. His forte is romance, not buses. The Board and Ms. Elia should show Dr. Hamilton the door whether he wants to go or not, buy a couple of buses with his wasted $132,000 salary, and tell the consultants to return to their lair.

Then the Board and Ms. Elia can get back to the arithmetic of counting classrooms. Ms. Elia overbuilt classrooms when she was the buildings person; shuffled boundaries in Westchase and uprooted a thousand scared and crying kids when she became superintendent to cover up her over-building mess. Now she and the Board discover they don't need as many classrooms as they said because the enrollment won't be as high as they predicted.

Is the situation in the school leadership and board always to be the Katzenjammer Kids meet Dipsy Doodle at the taxpayers' expense? Ms. Elia makes a quarter of a million a year and can't punctuate. Now we see she can't count either.

lee drury de cesare

leedrurydecesarescasting-roomcouch.blogspot.com
lee drury de cesare
15316 Gulf Boulevard 802
Madeira Beach, FL 33708
http://www.leedrurydecesarescasting-roomcouch.blogspot.com
http://www.grammargrinch.blogspot.com
727-398-4142

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From: Logan Cobb [mailto:cobbforschoolboard@yahoo.com]
Sent: Monday, August 28, 2006 10:08 PM
To: teryle.traver@sdhc.k12.fl.us; dana.smith@sdhc.k12.fl.us; marina.spears@sdhc.k12.fl.us; dlh@lesc.com; 'Tiger Bay Club of Tampa'; washingtonpost.com; Wolfe, Alvin; Warren Rachels; susan.valdes@sdhc.k12.fl.us; terry hamiltn Wollin; Sadieh1@aol.com; rich; Patrick; montolino; Margie Jean; marcus.reinhart@sdhc.k12.fl.us; Ma; KPerezhsb2004@aol.com; Jack.Lamb@sdhc.k12.fl.us; Jennifer.Faliero@sdhc.k12.fl.us; gwen.luney@sdhc.k12.fl.us; Edward Stein; Edith A Tobul; Doretha.Edgecomb@sdhc.k12.fl.us; art Maynor; Angie; Andrea Brunais (abrunais@yahoo.com); maryellen.elia@sdhc.k12.fl.us

Subject: Lee Drury DeCesare

Over the past weekend, an e-mail was sent out by a politically active woman named Lee Drury DeCesare. Her e-mail concerned the Tiger Bay Candidate Forum this Friday. Mrs. DeCesare is not associted in any way with my campaign for the School Board of Hillsborough County, District 2; the thoughts expressed in her e-mail were hers and hers alone.

Logan Cobb
Candidate
School Board, District 2
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From: l thacker [mailto:lauramthacker@yahoo.com]
Sent: Tuesday, August 29, 2006 11:18 AM
To: tdecesar@tampabay.rr.com
Subject: RE: Lee Drury DeCesare


Wow. Too bad, I was proud of him for having the guts to race, but politics or something goes to one's head mighty fast, eh?
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LOOK OUT FOR THE BUSES!

So Board quidnuncs and administration elves are getting pricey $235,000 consultants when they should pay drivers better; put the route numbers on the buses, buy some new buses, suspend naughty kids, and hire some mechanics?

And they create out of thin air without advertising it a SOCK-IT-TO-THE-TAXPAYERS faux featherbedding job for Enforcer-of-Zeig-Heil deportment Jim Hamilton to torture the poor, underpaid,overworked, underappreciated bus drivers?

And Pooh-bahs of ROSSAC are giving Le Jimborino free rein with tax dollars to hire mule trains of pricey consultants to get the buses running on time? Such management departs the surly bounds of earth and touches the face of Bozo the Clown.