Thursday, August 16, 2007


From: lee decesare
To: angiemanteiga@lagacetanewspaper.com; april.griffin@sdhc.k12.fl.us; bmaxwell@sptimes.com; bruce.bolton@sdhc.k12.fl.us; burnsfortheboard@gmail.com; candy.olson@sdhc.k12.fl.us; carol.kurdell@sdhc.k12.fl.us; doretha.edgecomb@sdhc.k12.fl.us
Sent: Thursday, August 16, 2007 9:35:40 AM
Subject: school administration use of consultants

After reviewing the murky prose of the pricy consultant's transportation study, I wonder why the administration needed it. I have ideas about the answer to this question.

Information about keeping abreast of school-transportation needs and changes in that field fills the Internet. Why didn't the the school-district transportation people use those resources to keep abreast of their industry to make the needed changes over time themselves to avert the pile-up of problems that required hiring an expensive consultant?

This transportation brouhaha presents the typical morphology of this administration's mismanagement. The administration hires from the inside plethora of incompetents, usually for loyalty to the superintendent and history of going along to get along, not for their education, experience, and proven skills. The Board does not insist that its pledge of equal opportunity in hiring forces the advertising of these jobs to produce superior candidates from outside the inside pool of mediocrity and incompetence.

The inside administration talent is too poor to produce good candidates for any of the extant administrative posts with bloated salaries and lax oversight from the superintendent. So things rock along as they did in transportation area until problems overwhelm the system because these untrained, not-smart people don't know how to manage because they don't have the education, experience, or skills to do it.

Why in the world wasn't there an MBA in the top transportation administrative position instead of a former bus driver? A trained mind at the top would have prevented the need to manage by consultant as is now the case. If I read right, this blowzy, murky, unneeded TIP consultant study price was half a million dollars. That's criminal waste of taxpayer money. With incompetents in top positions, the school system's pattern must be to manage by consultants. That procedure policy.

My lord, it would be cheaper to turn the administration of the schools over to these consultants altogether whom the administration must now summon now to fix the mess-ups of the poorly equipped insider people who now hold down these administratrion posts at bloated salaries.

These top administrative jobs pay considerably more than private industry would pay for such deficient talent. If advertised, the jobs would attract top-notch candidates from outside the inside loop of mediocrity, favoritism, buddy hiring, and sycophancy to the superintendent. Advertising on the open market would draw in top-talent candidates with excellent education, experience, and management skills to manage instead of hiring consultants to tell these unequipped people how to do their jobs.

Why in the world doesn't the board exert some leadership in this area and insist on a new hiring system that pays for talent instead of bumbling insider mediocrity?

I don't know how Ms. Ethridge can keep a straight face when she goes into one of her threnodies about the excellence of the staff. She makes herself part of the problem with these encomiums to failed performance by calling them excellent, exemplary, wonderful, and tra-la-la.

What the school system needs is a board of members who themselves have the intelligence, education, and courage to change the hiring system for the good of the community that pays for it.

lee drury de cesare

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