Dr. Hamilton:
I have puzzled about the parenthetical insertion that I see online of Dr. Otero’s name squeezed in above your name in noticeable handwritten form.
In the semiotics of pissing away taxpayer money by the Keystone Kops who run the school system, what does that situation mean? I infer it means that two men do the same job—a half job each. But you get two salaries. I infer neither has taken a pay cut because of your half-job status, a situation that rips off the taxpayers as usual.
So taxpayers shell out over a quarter of a million a year instead of half that amount for the job you and Dr. Otero do as a team.
But my guess is that you are not a harmonious team and that the taxpayers get cheated doubly in this two-for-the-price-of-two scheme to do one job.
I happened to have been a psychiatric nurse in one phase of my working career and developed the habit of watching body language of people for clues to their personalities and motives. If a patient plotted throwing the water pitcher at my head, I wanted to know the plan beforehand. Add to that professional skill my woman’s intuition, and I am pretty much psychic. I don’t read Ouija boards with facility, but I know a hawk from a handsaw in the parlor psychology racket.
I note tension between you and Dr. Otero as you pantomime your thoughts, enthroned on the Board Room circular dais, sitting cheek by jowl in a species of Noh drama. That Board Room venue reminds me of Shakespeare’s theater in the round. Your and Otero’s pas de deux of Noh is there for attentive students of human behavior to read.
I detect Dr. Otero’s resenting you but not able yet to confront you. He rocks side to side in swivel-chair agitation at this stalled situation. I note you pantomime gestures to maintain your ebbing dominance—making comments to Le Otero and requiring his automatic assent and laughter: this replicates the dynamic in the professional-standards-averse lame humor of illiterate emails you sent around the school system.
Those bespoke your Olympian contempt for school employees, all of whom your years of power make you consider your servants. Those were the emails for which I filed a Professional Standards charge against your disrespectful indulgence as conduct unprofessionally illiterate and vulgar. I wanted to test the double standard for professional conduct in the system: one for big people, one for little people.
I have not heard a word from the sadistic—my evaluation of her-- Ms. Kipley, the one who seems to love to chastise little people in the most degrading way. Her personality surprises. One never expects a home ec teacher to be a closet sadist. I have confirmed to my satisfaction that the Professional Standards enterprise exists to intimidate and to torture little people, not big people. I look to a future Board with more professional and gutsy members to remedy that situation.
Meanwhile, back in the Board Room, I see a pantomime of your Gotterdammerung. In the last act of The Ring Cycle, one can stop the ears, not listening to the words but seeing the villain Hagan’s demise unfolding in his loss of power to Brunhilde and the Forces of Life and Light. I see that pantomime unwind in the Board Room when I concentrate on the circular stage up front.
Mr. Otero scampers from your side hither and yon, taking messages as a punctilious Polonius to Ms. Elia, now the titular head of the school system. You sit in morose dignity as a wounded and waning Pooh-bah Gotterdammerung refugee of the old gods, pursing your lips or rearranging your features into new contours of dissatisfaction.
You rise in offended dignity, hitch up your court bloomers over your expanding girth (a fatal physical sign of the end for a guy), and stalk from the room like the Ghost of Old Hamlet from the parapets of Ellsinore into the thin air of extinction.
I would feel rather sorry for you, Mr. Hagen Hamilton, were it not for your having been in your career and being in your last days on the stage of parochial power, a force that has despoiled the school system of talented people to slip mediocre candidates into jobs that control the budget and the direction of the schools. I infer your motive was that you could control them. They have bombed. Mediocre people do. And you have bombed with them. We are only as good as the play we construct unfolds on the boards if we pull the strings behind the scenes.
I read your files. Although there is not much left for forensic examination since the administration’s mode dictates scrubbing the files as clean of data as possible so as to cover its incompetent tracks in the running the schools, an alert examiner can detect clues in the penumbra of the pages.
What still puzzles me about your psyche is that you have never possessed the boldness to seize power yourself. You are a Rasputin or Lady Chiang Kai Chek:
you, in fact, play the feminine role and manipulate from behind the scenes. The reason for that circumstance resides in your childhood. I would have to talk to you long enough about your past to discover the root of this psychological puzzle. I bet the inability to seize power instead of promoting someone you think you can manipulate behind the curtain haunts you at the end of your life.
Since one can never get valid information from the school system in defiance of the public-records law, especially since Le Heggarty—the play’s Rosencrantz and/or Guildenstern—one must deal in rumors.
So I do.
One rumor I hear is that a major reason Ms. Elia failed to manage the buildings department well is that you micromanaged over her shoulder so that she couldn’t do the job even had she wanted to. The answer to that rumor, of course, is that La Elia should have told you to bug off. You strike me as a fragile, insecure man. Elia could have done that if she had the strength a real boss must possess. But my inference suggests that you convinced her that you would not insinuate her in the top job despite her meager credentials unless she ceded the real-boss power to you. Her weakness made her accept your bullying.
I hear also that Ms. Elia would now like to get rid of you but hasn’t the moxie to do so up front. She subverts you, however, in that tellingly clumsy, eye-catching parenthetical insertion of Otero’s name above yours on the Web. If she wanted to make that situation unostentatious, the least she could have done was tell the web master to repair the insertion in regular text.
Then if you were above and Otero below, that would provide a message that you were still in charge. Sooner or later, however, even this Potted Plant board will begin to ask questions about your Siamese-twin situation. The somnolent press may query. Members of both are inactive, but they are not yet comatose.
The puzzle consists of why the subterranean power amoeba promoted Dr. Otero to co-job. Was the process a nudge for you out the door? I think people want you to leave, especially Ms. Elia if she has a lick of sense. That the old order changeth and giveth way to the new was ever thus. I have read the entrails of a goat out here on the beach and have made that master inference. You act as reminder of La Elia’s illegitimate path to the top job. People do not feel gratitude for favors you do them—especially when you yourself have a power agenda; they resent you.
Another rumor—doubtless from Otero’s enemies---is that Elia has begged you to stay in the job because she doesn’t trust Otero. Now that’s a delicious but improbable intrigue: see the above.
I regretted to hear that your current wife—who knew that you married for yet a third time--and not to Ms. Mileto? But that choreograph fits such cases as most people know who read psychiatric literature and Good Housekeeping’s “Can This Marriage Be Saved.” Goodness knows I do. I am an intellectual and never miss an issue of Good Housekeeping and The National Inquirer.
I asked for the address--as public information from the public-information office-- of Mrs. Hamilton and got your current wife’s address. I thought it was the second wife, the one who has most people’s sympathy because she was a good principal and construed to be the wronged party. She had my sympathy certainly. I wrote a sympathetic letter—not sympathetic to you but sympathetic to her.
Besides, and this made me laugh, I think the person who provided me the address of your third instead of your second wife was pulling my leg. I wish you would have your current wife--#3 if I have it right---to send that letter on to the second wife. I hear your children by your first wife went with the second wife when she left you after the divorce. I don’t know if I have the details of this complicated family- serial-monogamy saga correct, but I repeat for you what I hear.
These marital upheavals make my head spin since I have been married to the same old guy for over fifty years.
I know, I know. You are saying right now, “What a lucky son of a gun that guy is to be married to a woman who is so restrained and so humble. She’s a regular patient Griselda--an old-fashioned girl if ever I saw one. Some men have all the luck.” I know that is what you are saying, sir, and gallant it is for you to do so. Did I say you are all bad?
I send the kindest regards and thanks for the entertainment you have provided. Most prominent is that I have dug out my old Freudian skills and used them for a psychological portrait of Power and Its Use and Abuse in the Hinterlands of Education Amongst C-Student Practitioners of the Dark Art of Ripping Off the Taxpayers for Fun and Profit.
lee drury de cesare
15316 Gulf Boulevard 802
Madeira Beach, FL 33708
727-398-4142
tdecesar@tampabay.rr.com
http://www.leedrurydecesarscasting-roomcouch.blogspot.com/
http://www.grammargrinch.blogspot.com/
PS: Now that I have become a glamorous Martyr of the First Amendment thanks to Ms. Elia’s threat to Patrick to sue him for my phrase “casting-room couch,” not only do I have time to reread Freud’s major works, but I also have time to do a new blog on the status of literacy in the k12 world of the outback of American education.
I am sure you will feel honored to know that your piece of illiteracy on Magarittaville and Scotty, etc., posted on the school email system, will provide an entry for this Blog for the Ages on k12 illiteracy, which concentrates itself, I would be willing to predict with certainty, in the administrative ranks, most of which denizens have graduated from outback institutions of learning with risible degrees in subjects that stimulate contemptuous laughter in faculty lounges. These refuges of learning have as a rule bought and paid for their terminal thesis.
The which reminds me: I asked you what you wrote your thesis on at Tiger Bay when you attended because Dr. Earl the Pearl Lennard chickened out since he was scared of the questions—mostly mine, I infer.
You said you didn’t remember what your thesis was about. I say today as I said then: you would remember if you wrote it. Writing a thesis legitimately means considerable time in research and considerable time in the writing. People don’t forget the experience if they endure it.
Do you want to rethink that response, sir? I would be happy to hear what your thesis was about if you have meantime recalled it. I would happy to evaluate it for grammar, punctuation, organization, and intelligence free of charge for my own amusement and erudition.
<amanteiga@lagacetanewspaper.com>; Barbara <dbronovich@aol.com>; Beth McClain <beth3611@tampabay.rr.com>; edgecomb <doretha.edgecomb@sdhc.k12.fl.us>; faliero <jenifer.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>; Tiger Bay Club of Tampa <tigerbay@tampabay.rr.com>; valdes <susan.valdes@sdhc.k12.fl.us>; Warren Rachels <WRACHELS@tampabay.rr.com>; Barbara.rooks@sdhc.k12.fl.us <Barbara.rooks@sdhc.k12.fl.us>; Glenda.broen@sdhc.k12.fl.us <Glenda.broen@sdhc.k12.fl.us>; Lynn.dougherty-underwood@sdhc.k12.fl.us <Lynn.dougherty-underwood@sdhc.k12.fl.us>; Phyllis.alexandroff@sdhc.k12.fl.us <Phyllis.alexandroff@sdhc.k12.fl.us>; Liz.hunnicutt@sdhc.k12.fl.us <Liz.hunnicutt@sdhc.k12.fl.us>; Andi.ringer@sdhc.k12.fl.us <Andi.ringer@sdhc.k12.fl.us>; Nancy.marsh@sdhc.k12.fl.us <Nancy.marsh@sdhc.k12.fl.us>; Pam.smith@sdhc.k12.fl.us <Pam.smith@sdhc.k12.fl.us>; Marilyn.blackmer@sdhc.k12.fl.us <Marilyn.blackmer@sdhc.k12.fl.us>; John.hildebrand@sdhc.k12.fl.us <John.hildebrand@sdhc.k12.fl.us>; Virginai.skipper@sdhc.k12.fl.us <Virginai.skipper@sdhc.k12.fl.us>; shanshera.quinn@sdhc.k12.fl.us <shanshera.quinn@sdhc.k12.fl.us>
Le Heggarty:
See your email backup for answer to this question, sirrah.
The information I get from this email is that Ms. Edgecomb will tell staff to do something to satisfy the request of a citizen. I knew I could count on a woman who'd been an old-fashioned principal for years who knows how to wield authority. I hope to see other Board members take up that benign habit, especially for the ones that are coming in on a new Board.
I continue to solicit the names of the administrators whom you cite as contacts in your application for the job you got without the credential of supervisory experience. Did these encourage you to apply without the credential with the understanding you would get the job over better-qualified finalists Those names are public information, I ask for them again.
Before we move on, Mr. Heggarty, give your version of how your grammar analysis disappeared from my Grammargrinch blog. I need a good laugh.
lee drury de cesare
----- Original Message -----
From: Stephen Hegarty
To: lee
Cc: Joan Gentry ; Doretha Edgecomb
Sent: Wednesday, May 31, 2006 6:41 PM
Subject: Re: Hegarty
"lee" <tdecesar@tampabay.rr.com> on Tuesday, May 30, 2006 at 8:28 PM -0500 wrote:Cite the passage from the Sunshine Law that says you can charge people for access to the public recordsPlease see Chapter 119 of the Florida Statutes. In this case, please see 119.07. As a general rule, the law provides for a charge of 15 cents per one-sided page. There are provisions for other fees when the records are extensive.
Your request is quite extensive.I have estimated that the superintendent has 10,440 e-mails.I have estimated that I have 7,950 e-mails.If you would like for me to collect and peruse those e-mails so they can be made available to you, please let me know. As I mentioned earlier, I would have to redact any exempt information (the rest of the record would be made available) and this would involve a good deal of time and some expense.Let me know if you have any other questions.
Stephen HegartyOffice of CommunicationsSchool District of Hillsborough County901 East Kennedy BoulevardTampa, Fl. 33602-3507office: 813-272-4060fax: 813-272-4510
Mr. Heggarty:
I have not had a good experience as a citizen with your services as provider of public information.
Getting information from you has been a struggle. I think the ordinary citizen would just give up after your first roadblock. And then there is the matter of the way you deal with the truth, illustrated in your telling Dr. Lamb in my presence that you had sent me emails you did not.
But most despicable is the matter of your probable entry into my Grammargrinch blog to delete my comment on you and your problem with punctuation and grammar.
I believe there was an additional reason for you to delete your Grammargrinch entry: in it, I marked the grammar-punctuation errors in a file which you sent me in the first days of your job--before you discerned which side your bread was buttered on and before you eagerly joined the administration misinformation program. You had slipped and given me the truth in that email of your early days on the job that Linda Kipley had no competitors for her job and that the job had no advertising.
That behavior violates Title VII's guidelines for equal- employment opportunity. The assurance that the School Board practices equal-employment opportunity blazons everywhere on the school's Web site. It's propaganda, not fact. You knew that slip-up in providing the truth about Kipley's unorthodox entry into head of Professional Standards would not sit well with Elia et al. So you swiped it off Grammargrinch, I believe.
Someone had to have obliterated that single post--all the others were intact. Logic says it was you who did that deed.
The above's describing my unsatisfactory experience with your slipshod, vacillating, untruthful performance in providing public information, I have decided that I will not ask for the disks of yours and Ms. Elia's emails.
Given your conduct, I have no assurance that you would not arrange to selectively edit the tapes. I think that this editing would include obscuring your not sending me the emails you claimed to have sent; and that it would include erasing any emails from and to Stines and Bean of the county from and to Ms. Elia regarding the Bart Birdsall punishment for non-school activity involving his emails to Stines from his home. I believe that it would also delete any exchange of emails between Ms. Elia and Linda Kipley on this subject.
In fact, someone in technology may have already deleted those records on Ms. Elia's or Ms. Kipley's instructions.
The problem with dealing with unethical, untruthful public employees who get their jobs unfairly and who use spin and cover-up as chosen tools to protect their power positions with high salaries extracted from the taxpayers as well as power to give and take away jobs--which terrifies school employees and keeps them mute-- is that the public information a citizen gets is highly suspect.
This record of behavior in withholding and distorting public information does not give this citizen trust in your honesty, sir. Hence, I withdraw my request for public information in the form of the two email disks that you have been vacillating on and manufacturing difficulties about producing.
And I will urge Ms. Edgecomb to query you about the post involving you that disappeared from my Grammargrinch blog. She spent forty years listening to students whose dogs at their homework. She has developed sensitive antennae for storytelling and truth.
I will ponder how I might enlist the governor's help or the attorney general's.
At least I can let those two senior state officials know that something is rotten in the state of affairs of the Hillsborough County administration and School Board.
lee drury de cesare
15316 Gulf Boulevard 802
Madeira Beach, FL 33708
727-398-4142
tdecesar@tampabay.rr.com
http://leedecesarescasting-roomcouch.blogspot.com/
http://grammargrinch.blogspot.com
Rat Fink Steve Heggarty Tattles on me to Patrick Manteiga.
Liar! Liar! Pants on Fire!
Patrick,
Attached you will find a letter sent to Lee Drury De Cesare from earlier this month. I send it to you because she keeps sending messages to Joan Gentry in my office, claiming that I am not answering her requests. Not only am I answering her questions, but I am also pulling files that she requests, and then, she fails to show up to view them. Perhaps you could call this to her attention. In the meantime, I will pull the files she has requested.Thanks,Steve HStephen HegartyOffice of CommunicationsSchool District of Hillsborough County901 East Kennedy BoulevardTampa, Fl. 33602-3507office: 813-272-4060fax: 813-272-4510cell: 813-924-6503
ALANNA SWOR <foxxy941@aol.com>; Andrea Brunais <abrunais@aol.com>; Barbara <dbronovich@aol.com>; Beth McClain <beth3611@tampabay.rr.com>; Edith A Tobul <edt@ncweb.com>; faliero <jeniffer.faliero@sdhc.k12.fl.us>; Jack Lamb <Jack.Lamb@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>; Tiger Bay Club of Tampa <tigerbay@tampabay.rr.com>; Warren Rachels <WRACHELS@tampabay.rr.com>; Joan Gentry <Joan.Gentry@sdhc.k12.fl.us>; dortha.edgecomb@sdhc.k12.fl.us <dortha.edgecomb@sdhc.k12.fl.us>; jenifer.faliero@sdhc.k12.fl.us <jenifer.faliero@sdhc.k12.fl.us>
http://leedrurydecesarescasting-roomcouch.blogspot.com/
Mr. Heggarty: Do you allege that students write to you and Ms. Elia and that these records can't be available to the public despite the warning that the Board gives that all emails are subject to the open-records law? This is the first time you have mentioned students. You must be getting desperate.
That web warning says nothing of anyone's exemption. If students are old enough to email, they are old enough to read. If they are exempt, that information should be in the email notification. The Board also cites ubiquitously Title VII's equal opportunity requirement, yet I was able to finally extract from you the proof that Linda Kipley and Connie Alito were hired without obeying any equal-opportunity restrictions. Lord knows how many others got school jobs without a shred of equal opportunity observed.
Just because you cite something doesn't mean you observe it. The rules get elastic when you want to evade them. You are now part of the evasion team to cover up the abuse of the Board and administration. That's quite a comedown for a former member of the knights of the press.
I believe you are manufacturing difficulties to screen the emails requested. You and Ms. Elia don't want to obey the public-records laws. You want to gut the public records laws by putting codicils on them that don't exist. You want to make it too expensive for the public to see public records.
I want to see the section of the public records laws that says you have to screen them for students' names. I want to know why that caveat does not appear in the Board's warning and why the caveat does not also warn that public records can too expensive for the public to see if the administration and Board embroider the law with faux requirements to keep them out of the public eye.
A former reporter should be ashamed of yourself for acting as administration shill to prevent citizens' seeing the public records allowed by law.
Of all the Board members, Ms. Edgecomb is the one I would pick to go over the hill with. So asked her to board you for these disks. I infer what's happened is that Ms. Edgecomb responded to my request to her to prod you for these email records of you and Ms. Elia that I have asked you for numerous times. I infer that you know there are data on them that will show Ms. Elia cooperated in siccing Ms. Kipley on school media specialist Bart Birdsall to punish him for the non-school activity of writing emails of rebuke from his home to Stines at the County library. I infer as well that your record will show you did not send me the emails you swore you had sent me in the presence of Dr. Lamb.
Cite the passage from the Sunshine Law that says you can charge people for access to the public records in a cover-up of embarrassing information. Show the passage to Ms. Edgecomb. Tell her how much your cover-up attempt will cost a citizen and explain to me how a citizen can trust someone like you with so little regard for the truth not to do a Rosemary Woods on these disks to wipe out embarrassing information?
lee drury de cesare
----- Original Message -----
From: Stephen Hegarty
To: tdecesar@tampabay.rr.com
Cc: Joan Gentry
Sent: Tuesday, May 30, 2006 6:00 PM
Subject: Hegarty
Regarding your public records request, the citations you requested are as follows:Chapter 1002.22 in Florida Statutes. (http://www.leg.state.fl.us/)FERPA, the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act. (http://www.ed.gov/policy/gen/guid/fpco/ferpa/index.html)Both deal with parent rights to access their students' records, and student rights to privacy.As I mentioned before, the records you requested can be made available to you. However student names will be redacted. There might be other information that will have to be redacted, but I'm not sure what it is. I would have to peruse the e-mails to see.Preparation of those records will required a great deal of time and there is an associated cost.Stephen HegartyOffice of CommunicationsSchool District of Hillsborough County901 East Kennedy BoulevardTampa, Fl. 33602-3507office: 813-272-4060fax: 813-272-4510
Does an agency have to explain why it denies access to public records? A. A custodian of a public record who contends that the record or part of a record is exempt from inspection must state the basis for that exemption, including the statutory citation. Additionally, when asked, the custodian must state in writing the reasons for concluding the record is exempt.
Mr. Heggarty: the above is what the Attorney General says about denying public records. I asked you for the name of the administrators whom you cited in your job application with whom you said you stayed in contact when you no longer covered the School Board for the SPTimes. You denied my request with a curt "no."
The Attorney General's formula above means to me that you must provide me those names or state the basis for the exemption of them from the statute. Your job application was an important public document because, in my judgment, a more qualified finalist than you did not get the job. That reference to your inside administration intimates is thus important in determining how you got the job over better qualified candidates that had the supervisory experience cited in the ad that you lacked.
The school system is notorious for its favoritism and lack of professionalism in hiring. These data go to that concern. A citizen is entitled to them.
I believe this my fourth request for the identity of your advocates inside the administration that I infer secured you the job over better-qualified candidates. Please give me the names.
lee drury de cesare http://leedrurydecesarescasting-roomcouch.blogspot.com
Attorney General's Web page: Does an agency have to explain why it denies access to public records? A. A custodian of a public record who contends that the record or part of a record is exempt from inspection must state the basis for that exemption, including the statutory citation. Additionally, when asked, the custodian must state in writing the reasons for concluding the record is exempt.
Mr. Heggarty: the above is what the Attorney General says about denying public records. I asked you for the name of the administrators whom you cited in your job application with whom you said you stayed in contact when you no longer covered the School Board for the SPTimes. You denied my request with a curt "no."
The Attorney General's formula above means to me that you must provide me those names or state the basis for the exemption of them from the statute. Your job application was an important public document because, in my judgment, a more qualified finalist than you did not get the job. That reference to your inside administration intimates is thus important in determining how you got the job over better qualified candidates that had the supervisory experience cited in the ad that you lacked.
The school system is notorious for its favoritism and lack of professionalism in hiring. These data go to that concern. A citizen is entitled to them.
I believe this my fourth request for the identity of your advocates inside the administration that I infer secured you the job over better-qualified candidates. Please give me the names.
lee drury de cesare http://leedrurydecesarescasting-roomcouch.blogspot.com/
From: lee
To: maryellen.elia@sdhc.k12.fl.us
Cc: Wolfe, Alvin ; valdes ; terry ; schoolrecipient9 ; schoolrecipient8 ; schoolrecipient7 ; school recipient7 ; schoolrecipient6 ; schoolrecipient5 ; schoolrecipient4 ; school recipient3 ; schoolrecipient2 ; schoolrecipient1 ; Sadieh1@aol.com ; Patrick ; Lyons ; Clements ; montolino ; Margie Jean ; Jim Mills ; Gene ; faliero ; Edith A Tobul ; edgecomb ; Bob ; Beth McClain ; Ben ; Barbara ; Angie ; ALANNA SWOR ; Andrea Brunais ; steve.hegarty@sdhc.k12.fl.us ; joan gentry ; tash@sptimes.com ; jhill@sptimes.com ; tisch@sptimes.com ; huntley
Sent: Thursday, April 20, 2006 3:34 PM
Essay Grading Time for Superintendent Elia
From: lee
To: maryellen.elia@sdhc.k12.fl.us
Cc: Wolfe, Alvin ; valdes ; terry ; schoolrecipient9 ; schoolrecipient8 ; schoolrecipient7 ; school recipient7 ; schoolrecipient6 ; schoolrecipient5 ; schoolrecipient4 ; school recipient3 ; schoolrecipient2 ; schoolrecipient1 ; Sadieh1@aol.com ; Patrick ; Lyons ; Clements ; montolino ; Margie Jean ; Jim Mills ; Gene ; faliero ; Edith A Tobul ; edgecomb ; Bob ; Beth McClain ; Ben ; Barbara ; Angie ; ALANNA SWOR ; Andrea Brunais ; steve.hegarty@sdhc.k12.fl.us ; joan gentry ; tash@sptimes.com ; jhill@sptimes.com ; tisch@sptimes.com ; huntley
Sent: Thursday, April 20, 2006 3:34 PM
----- Original Message -----
From: lee
To: maryellen.elia@sdhc.k12.fl.us
Cc: Wolfe, Alvin ; valdes ; terry ; schoolrecipient9 ; schoolrecipient8 ; schoolrecipient7 ; school recipient7 ; schoolrecipient6 ; schoolrecipient5 ; schoolrecipient4 ; school recipient3 ; schoolrecipient2 ; schoolrecipient1 ; Sadieh1@aol.com ; Patrick ; Lyons ; Clements ; montolino ; Margie Jean ; Jim Mills ; Gene ; faliero ; Edith A Tobul ; edgecomb ; Bob ; Beth McClain ; Ben ; Barbara ; Angie ; ALANNA SWOR ; Andrea Brunais ; steve.hegarty@sdhc.k12.fl.us ; joan gentry ; tash@sptimes.com ; jhill@sptimes.com ; tisch@sptimes.com ; huntley
Sent: Thursday, April 20, 2006 3:34 PM
Online Superintendent Biography
Ms. Elia, I mark errors below in your online biography. There were errors in you op-ed submissions to the SP Times and the Tampa Tribune. You should dock your ghost writer Heggarty's pay for these and make him review his grammar primer. One of you must learn grammar and punctuation for public communication.
Such errors as you make online and in newspapers embarrass the Hillsborough County School system and make the students cynical when you tell them with a straight face to become literate--to do as you say, not as you do.
MaryEllen Elia received her B.A. degree from Daeman College and her M.Ed. degree from the University of Buffalo. In 1983, she added masters of Professional Studies in Reading from State University of New York at Buffalo, and received certification in Educational Leadership in 1989.
“Masters” should be possessive “master’s” for elliptical “master’s degree.” No comma after “Buffalo”: it splits the compound verb “added” and “received.”
MaryEllen worked as a social studies teacher in the state of New York from September 1970 through June 1986. In August 1986, she was employed by the School District of Hillsborough County in Tampa, Florida as a reading resource specialist at Plant High School. She served as the county's secondary reading supervisor from 1989 through 1991. With the advent of magnet schools in 1991, MaryEllen became the county's first magnet school supervisor. From January 1997 through September 2002, she served as Director of Non-Traditional Programs which included magnet schools as well the ESOL program, alternative schools and dropout prevention programs.
Put a comma after “Florida”: conventional-material rule.
Put a comma after “Programs”; a nonrestrictive adjective clause follows it.
Standard English retains the last comma in items in a series: "alternative schools." One hopes that Hillsborough County schools teach Standard English and that staff uses it.
On September 4, 2002, MaryEllen was appointed to the General Director of Secondary Education, and on June 3, 2003, she was appointed the Hillsborough County School District's Chief Facilities Officer where she was responsible for all new construction for over 200 schools/educational facilities and district maintenance and custodial operations. On May 19, 2005, MaryEllen was appointed Superintendent of Schools. Her tenure began July 1, 2005. MaryEllen is married to Albert Elia and has two children, a son Albert and a daughter Tara.
A comma goes after “officer” for the nonrestrictive adjective clause following.
Commas should enclose “Albert” and “Tara” since they are sole son and daughter according to the biography.
With compound adjectives before a noun, hyphens rank standard:
magnet hyphen school supervisor
reading hyphen resource specialist These hyphens mark two words before a noun acting as a single adjective.
Style: 18 percent of the verbs are passive (green marks these). English teachers plead with students to avoid flabby passive verbs. They vitiate rhetorical force.
You suffer from the Number One style error: wordiness: “With the advent of magnet schools in 199...”: pompous wordiness. Substitute “In 1991, MaryEllen Elia bacame..."
Third-person pomp: e.g, “MaryEllen earned a Nobel Laureate in 1981 for wondrous deeds in the reading lab.” I submit we commoners should surrender royal third person to the English queen and refer to ourselves in unpretentious first person.
Your punctuation is not as bad as that of your predecessor, Dr. Earl the Pearl Lennard—few’s punctuation could be. But your performance shows why I work for basic-English tests for administrators like those teachers must pass before marginally literate administrators begin drawing their bloated salaries while teachers get pittances.
You have the additional problem of having one of those ditzy first names with which parents in the South afflict daughters. Others from my Georgia cousins are “Lula Belle,” “Darcy Jane,” “Sallie Sussanna, “and—worst—“Daisy Jewel.” Only South Carolina can produce more ridiculous names for girls. MaryEllen is a contender.
Names have epistemological consequences. I doubt that we shall ever see a Lula Belle, Darcy Jane, Sallie Sussanna, or Daisy Jewel sit on the Supreme Court. I wager there will be no MaryEllens either. Were I you, I would avoid summoning up that unfortunate first name in professional submissions. It invokes a whole Dempsey Dumpster of malignant lore about the frivolity and lack of gravitas of females. The male equivalents are Troy Lamar, Billy Bob, and Bubba Junior. These evoke obtuse bumpkins and bad gene pools. I'd retreat to "Mary" or "Ellen" were I you.
One infers that you pay as little attention to literate writing as you do to wasting taxpayers’ money by oblivious oversight when you headed the building department. For the $250,000 a quiescent Board lavishes on you, I believe that taxpayers deserve better performance not only in your husbanding of tax money from building-department crooks but also in your demonstration of literacy in public missives that represent both you and the School Board.
Some of its members may object to looking like illiterate chumps in print.
Advice: Don’t allow young Hegarty to sin against literacy in your name. Doing so comprises a case of the blind’s leading the blind. You are better off to employ Ms. Cobbe, who works in obscurity in the public-relations office. She is a good if not a perfect punctuater. She or one of the other competent finalists whose applications I examined should have gotten the job.
One wonders how the candidate with the least suitable resume and absent the years of administrative experience cited landed the job that involves writing. I smell a buddy hiring here: the kind for which the administration is famous.
Heggarty noted in his resume that he had kept in touch with several administrative contacts when he was on sabbaticals from the Hillsborough County school beat. I asked for their identities as public information. He said no. Something tells me that Mr. Heggarty's toadying instincts made you one of these contacts. Heggarty's lassitude as a reporter able to evade skullduggery going on under his nose probably also recommended him to you for the job.
Back to inhouse illiteracy: Dr. Hamilton, against whom I lodged two unanswered professional-standards complaints for his misuse of the school email system for personal preening, is a prima facie case for administration illiteracy. We taxpayers, thanks to a supine Board, pay him $132,000 to write illiterate emails whilst prancing around as if he were Cato the Elder, god’s gift to the administrative hierarchy not to mention promotion facilitator to a female kindergarten teacher half his age who wanted to skip up all the rungs of the ladder from Romper Room to Tallahassee lobbyist to land in a top $120,000 job job, lacking all credentials except that Dr. Hamilton, in-house aging Lothario, shines his light upon her whilst the superintendent abetted by the Board looks the other way.
Administrator-literacy tests are obligatory in Massachusetts, the Number One school system in the nation. You could secure one and test-drive it on Dr. Hamilton, who doesn't know the difference between "you're" and "your." That performance would provide you a basis for evicting him with sharing a job with Dr. Otero now so that the taxpayers for over two salaries for one job, with one of the guys' not knowing the difference between "you're" and "your."
Lee Drury De Cesare
ALANNA SWOR <foxxy941@aol.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>; edgecomb <doretha.edgecomb@sdhc.k12.fl.us>; 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>; rich <richbradburytampa@gmail.com>; Sadieh1@aol.com <Sadieh1@aol.com>; bob boggs <bob.boggs@sdhc.k12.fl.us>; schoolrecipient1 <yates.wilford@sdhc.k12.fl.us>; schoolrecipient2 <york.carol@sdhc.k12.fl.us>; school recipient3 <zipler.James@sdhc.k12.fl.us>; schoolrecipient4 <zulli.sharon@sdhc.k12.fl.us>; schoolrecipient5 <zenk.debbi@sdhc.k12.fl.us>; schoolrecipient6 <bob.boggs@sdhk.fl.us>; school recipient7 <brightman.barbara@sdhc.k12.fl.us>; schoolrecipient7 <brown.barbara@sdhc.k12.fl.us>; schoolrecipient8 <brinson.jean@sdhc.k12.fl.us>; schoolrecipient9 <broughton.jason@sdhc.k12.fl.us>; terryhamiltonwollin@gmail.com <terryhamiltonwollin@gmail.com>; Tiger Bay Club of Tampa <tigerbay@tampabay.rr.com>; valdes <susan.valdes@sdhc.k12.fl.us>; Warren Rachels <WRACHELS@tampabay.rr.com>; Wolfe, Alvin <wolfe@cas.usf.edu>; lia.crawford@sdhc.k12.fl.us <lia.crawford@sdhc.k12.fl.us>; joan.bauman@sdhc.k12.fl.us <joan.bauman@sdhc.k12.fl.us>; don.johnson@sdhc.k12.fl.us <don.johnson@sdhc.k12.fl.us>; mike.phillips@sdhc.k12.fl.us <mike.phillips@sdhc.k12.fl.us>; lisa.bellock@sdhc.k12.fl.us <lisa.bellock@sdhc.k12.fl.us>; larry.nanns@sdhc.k12.fl.us <larry.nanns@sdhc.k12.fl.us>; Donnie.evans@sdhc.k12.fl.us <Donnie.evans@sdhc.k12.fl.us>; marlene.bergendale@sdhc.k12.fl.us <marlene.bergendale@sdhc.k12.fl.us>; Cheryl.green@sdhc.k12.fl.us <Cheryl.green@sdhc.k12.fl.us>; raplph.ruso@sdhc.k12.fl.us <raplph.ruso@sdhc.k12.fl.us>; ljwinchester@cfl.rr.com <ljwinchester@cfl.rr.com>; kwolf@pasco.k12.fl.us <kwolf@pasco.k12.fl.us>; bgallagher@browardschools.com <bgallagher@browardschools.com>; Dinnenin04@aol.com <Dinnenin04@aol.com>; boardoffice@palmbeach.k12.fl.us <boardoffice@palmbeach.k12.fl.us>; kershawj@brevard.k12.fl.us <kershawj@brevard.k12.fl.us>; kneessya@brevard.k12.fl.us <kneessya@brevard.k12.fl.us>; lewism@mail.leon.k12.fl.us <lewism@mail.leon.k12.fl.us>; davis_m13@firn.edu <davis_m13@firn.edu>; joearnold@aol.com <joearnold@aol.com>; judy.stang@indian-river.k12.fl.us <judy.stang@indian-river.k12.fl.us>; dede_schaffner@scps.k12.fl.us <dede_schaffner@scps.k12.fl.us>; RobertC@lee.k12.fl.us <RobertC@lee.k12.fl.us>; jconte@mail.volusia.k12.fl.us <jconte@mail.volusia.k12.fl.us>; galluccij@pinellas.k12.fl.us <galluccij@pinellas.k12.fl.us>; stonede@osceola.k12.fl.us <stonede@osceola.k12.fl.us>; deutschmanp@citrus.k12.fl.us <deutschmanp@citrus.k12.fl.us>; Laura_Benson@sarasota.k12.fl.us <Laura_Benson@sarasota.k12.fl.us>; diane_bauer@scps.k12.fl.us <diane_bauer@scps.k12.fl.us>; JaneK4@lee.k12.fl.us <JaneK4@lee.k12.fl.us>; carter_r@firn.edu <carter_r@firn.edu>; lori.cunningham@polk-fl.net <lori.cunningham@polk-fl.net>; walshconklin@msn.com <walshconklin@msn.com>; grant@wfeca.net <grant@wfeca.net>; nichols_400@bellsouth.net <nichols_400@bellsouth.net>; solange.pollick@sdhc.k12.fl.us <solange.pollick@sdhc.k12.fl.us>; linda.rice@sdhc.k12.fl.us <linda.rice@sdhc.k12.fl.us>
Dr. Davis: I have asked Ms. Elia, Mr. Hegarty, and Ms. Edgecomb for the following:
That's the kind of performance I want from your department. I am sure that for anyone with a doctorate in computing, the task will be a piece of cake.
The school's Web site hammers repeatedly that all emails constitute public information. Replicating the County's computer expertise by satisfying my request will confirm that the School Board takes that statement that all emails are public information seriously and not spin for the Sunshine Law's requirement that public records be made available to the public.
I have found that the school tax-paid denizens don't answer citizen emails. My mother would say such behavior marks those raised in a barn. I trust, sir, that you don't court that label for silence on this request.
Don't fail to enter Dr. Hamilton's God-What-a-Bod Contest posted on my blog: http://leedrurydecesarescasting-roomcouch.blogspot.com/. You may win and get to pose for a centerfold of Playgirl and abandon computers for the silver screen.
lee drury de cesare
15316 Gulf Boulevard 802
Madeira Beach, FL 33708
tdecesar@tampabay.rr.com
727-398-4142
This email went out on May 24th; on May 29th still no response from Dr. Warp-Speed Davis. Maybe he doesn't know how to use email despite heading the technology department. I heard he didn't know a lick about computers but got the job anyway. He must have possessed a credential better than a Ph.D. in computers. He must have been one of the cabal that engineered MaryEllen Elia's job coup despite her being the least qualified of the finalists. Her trump qualification was that she was the in-house candidate to keep the inside power network humming.
Dr. Davis or Mr. Davis:
Did your get your training in computers or what?
I would like to know what your terminal degrees are in and where you got them.
Also what experience did you bring to this job as head of computers?
What is your current salary? (We know it's over $100,000 but don't know how much it's over that obscene amount, considering what teachers make. I would not be surprised to learn that Le Davis has a perquisite an office assistant to pick up his cleaning.
Were you in the Hillsborough County school system before you got your current job? In what capacity?
Was your job advertised?
Where was it advertised and for how long?
Were there a number of finalists from which you were chosen?
I am trying to determine whether the School Board fulfills its promise of equal opportunity and fulfills its Title VII requirements.
lee drury de cesare
Note from Bart Birdsall, Candidate for District II of the School Board, from his father.
Hi Bart,
I think that stinks its people like Elia in power positions of a school system hold back any progress for the future.
I hope you get elected maybe you can help to change their back woods politics.
Take Care
Dad
Bart Birdsall2309 W. Bristol Ave.Tampa, FL 33609(813) 258-8817 (home)(813) 362-7937 (cell)Montolino@aol.com5/29/06
Gloria Steimen says we must do one thing a day for womankind. I did my daily bit by writing the chairman [sic] Mrs. Dennis La Barree of the Patron Program at the Metropolitan Opera.
If you are ever dumb enough to give a donation to an opera company, get ready to be nagged for money for the rest of your life.
I have attended the Metropolitan Opera for years, never missing a Ring Cycle.
If you are an opera fan, you must deal with opera-guild dingdogs like La LaBarre. These women know nothing but fashion and acting uppity. They would be against women's right to vote as unfeminine and unchic if suffrage came up today.
I wrote "Chairman" La Barree that "modern women would be more hospitable to this invitation to donate to the Metropolitan" if she used the non-sexist "Chair" instead of "Chairman."
I bet I scandalized the opera-guild dingdongs, who made the powder room ring with my condemnation for being "unfeminine."
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