Lee Drury De Cesare's Casting-Room Couch

Friday, November 16, 2007

A recent article in the Tampa Tribune by Marilyn Brown left the impression that Ms. Elia’s sole problem as superintendent is lack of tact.

Would that were Ms. Elia’s chief problem in running the district.

It is not. She has more debilitating traits than shoddy decorum.

When she was head of facilities, she overbuilt classrooms in the Westchase area. Then when she got the top job of superintendent, she hastened to cover up that gaffe: she tore up the Westchase community by changing the boundaries so that her classroom overbuilding would disappear.

La Elia didn’t care when distraught parents filled the board room to beg that the wrenching of their community be stopped. She was indifferent to the scenes of children clinging to their mothers’ skirts sobbing in fright at changing their schools. She had employed her usual flimflam on Westchase parents, who said Ms. Elia held community meetings on this disruptive move at irregular times which they could not attend and pretended she had meetings when she didn’t.

The potted-plant board slept on and rubberstamped the ripping off of Westchase families and their children. I believe Susan Valdes and Jennifer Faliera voted against the redistricting, but the rest rubberstamped the community disruption with a hey nonny nonny.

What traits did this incident reveal about the superintendent? Arrogance, cruelty to children, indifference to their parents’ opinions, duplicity, and sneakiness are on view.

Another situation reveals more of Ms. Elia’s character reflected in her management style. I witnessed this incident close up because it involved good friend Bart Birdsall, a media specialist in the schools and previously a teacher. I helped Bart protest the injustice to him.

Bart is gay and wrote emails from his home computer protesting the Storms disenfranchisement of gays by the county library system headed by another gay fellow, Joe Stines. Stines in Roy-Cohen manner presided over the removal from the library of the display on gay life by a South Florida student.

Stines didn’t answer Birdsall’s emails protesting the removal of the display. He instead turned them over to Elia. Or he put them in the hands of Elia’s buddy Pat Bean. We know that Pat Bean is Elia’s buddy because she allowed Elia to use her name as a reference for the superintendent job. Bean’s doing so was unprofessional, and I wrote to tell her so.

Whether the emails came directly from Stines or via Bean one does not know. But when Elia got them, she turned them over to the Professional Standards Abu Ghraib division headed by Ms. Linda Kipley with what one infers were instructions to go on a fishing expedition amongst Bart’s school emails to find some gnat that proved he had misused the school emails so that Elia could fire him and put the fear of God in all other school employees.

Elia is as rabid about controlling the publicity her administration gets as she is about bulling her way in every other administrative task she handles. She didn’t want gay publicity attached to her kingdom of the schools, so she lusted to grind Bart under her feet to squelch him and serve as warning to other school employees who might have the urge to express their opinions.

Kipley tied up the time of the computer people to search for something to pin on Birdsall so Ms. Elia could fire him. I think this was the time that a computer glitch kept teachers from receiving their paychecks on time. Squelching Bart would have a double use: getting rid of a gay who took his free-speech rights seriously and presenting a warning to the rest of the school plantation field hands that Ms. Elia would fire them at the least provocation. This role of instilling fear in the school family and making it afraid to protest the most flagrant abuses of the administration is the real purpose of the Professional Standards cell block. Ms. Kipley would have been right at home at Abu Ghraib. If called on to do so, she would have, I believe, draped that Arab victim in that obscene black sheet and hood that we all witnessed and shuddered at for what it said about American justice.

The school board knows this dirty secret about Professional Standards but looks the other way and allows its obscene punishment of teachers often on trumped-up charges to go on unchallenged. Candy South-Tampa Olson even screamed at Bart that he could lose his job at the gym they both attend to give one some idea of La Candy’s lockstep with her girlfriend Ms. Elia.

Bart’s savaging coincided with the first days of Ms. Elia’s reign. He and I went to Tiger Bay when Elia spoke shortly after her hiring.

At Tiger Bay, Bart sat with me and my husband while all the union people sat with the school board-administration claque. The union ignored Bart, who was under fire from Elia and Kipley at this time. Instead, its sycophants followed the school board royal enfilade as it exited at the end of the meeting, metaphorically holding up the train of the school brass's royal ROSSAC robes.

After the meeting, Bart and I had approached Elia. Bart asked Elia whether she turned over to Kipley emails generated from his home to look for some way to punish him. Elia said she gave them to Kipley because she didn’t know what else to do with them; she claimed that she was too unsophisticated about emails to know that the “from” line of the emails showed that they came from Bart’s home computer. This was a bald-faced lie, of course.

So Elia lied to our faces about her lack of knowledge of the transmission path of emails stated on their face. That she had functioned in the schools for so many years without mastering this elementary piece of technology strains credulity.

Elia’s lying to to us shows what contempt Elia has for anyone’s intelligence who questions her squalid methods—ones on which she rode into the superintendent’s job with the board’s complicity.

The board is co-defendants in Elia’s terrorizing of the school family as her mode of management. The board had spent $30,000 on Lennard’s cooked hiring and $35,000 for Elia’s with no qualms about lying to the taxpayers and having them foot the bill for a show of equal opportunity with “nation-wide” ads when it had already picked the inside candidates Lennard and Elia before the ads went out; the board figured in-house poltroons were the best insurance for its members’ continued incumbency. Lamb, Olson, and Kurdell have been ensconced on the board since Lennard's hiring.

Finding no means of punishing Bart or firing him, Elia and Kipley had to give up on this grinding under their heels a school employee who refused to let Kipley and Elia bully him by not fighting back.

Consigliore Tom Gonzalez assured Bart that Ms. Kipley would write him a letter of apology. She never has.

Elia also failed to inform Bart that he had a right to file an appeal in a specified period of time. So when it finally occurred to him to try filing an appeal to get some justice, Ms. Elia could write him in gleeful triumph that his appeal was too late. Her not informing him at Tiger Bay that he could appeal meant his appeal time had run out the clock just as Elia planned.

For an accurate picture of Ms. Elia’s disabling flaws as superintendent, Ms. Brown’s article should have added Elia’s more numerous defects than mere lack of tact. They are lying, sadism, and abuse of power to preen before a buddy shortly after Elia got the job of superintendent.

In addition to her relatively innocuous lack of tact, Ms. Elia has an additional litany of more lethal qualities and character flaws that should have rendered her ineligible for the superintendent’s job had the board been concerned about the welfare of the students, teachers, and whole school family instead of concerned to get an inside candidate who would augment their chances of remaining incumbent.

These Elia qualities are arrogance, cruelty to children, indifference to their parents’ opinions, duplicity, sneakiness, outright lying, and obscene sadistic desire to show a buddy how Ms. Elia could kick around a little school employee for the county library’s Joe Stine since he lacked guts to answer Bart’s emails.

Ms. Brown’s portrait below (copied for academic purposes) of Ms. Elia as suffering from mere lack of tact presents a truncated picture indeed of the superintendent’s personality flaws that insure that her job as superintended has been and will continue to be a disaster. These lethal traits should end her tenure as superintendent for the good of the whole school family.

The ball is in the board’s court. Three are up for re-election: Edgecomb, Lamb, and Kurdell. They should pledge voters on the stump to fire Elia, or opponents should replace them.

By MARILYN BROWN The Tampa Tribune

Published: Nov 13, 2007

TAMPA - The grit and independence that drew Hillsborough County School Board members to hire Superintendent MaryEllen Elia two years ago is wearing thin.

Teachers started protesting in February when she determined they would teach more class periods this year.

School nurses have rebelled, warning that Elia's depletion of their ranks is a danger to student health and safety.

Parents are sick of late buses and unanswered phone calls.

Considered a dynamo among education leaders statewide, Elia, 59, has excelled in her focus on student achievement, using data to target individual student needs and landing tens of millions in grants.

It's how she goes about it that rankles those at home.

"MaryEllen doesn't take time to listen," board member Candy Olson said. "Sometimes she's so busy explaining why you're wrong she's not getting the piece I have to say."

District nurses who met with Elia in August to plead for help after she cut their ranks said they, too, felt that Elia doesn't listen.

"She expected us to just listen to what she said and go out and be pacified," registered nurse Karen Tansky said.

More recently, Elia has angered supporters with a decision to hire a $54,000 consultant to provide a wellness program after three committees packed with parents and community members had worked years on such plans. They were not asked what they thought before Elia recommended the consultant.

"Parents are led to believe their voice is important," said Sharold Allen, who serves on the School Health Advisory Committee. "They don't feel they have the importance that is portrayed. A lot of parents feel it's a lot of lip service."

In a recent interview, Elia said she agrees that district communication needs improvement, but disagrees that she doesn't listen or that employees don't share their real concerns.

"I certainly have heard from the teachers," she said. "I'm out in schools a lot. They're telling me they know we are focused on student achievement. They tell me they appreciate that we are able to give raises of approximately 18 percent over two years.

"People tell me good, and people tell me bad," Elia said.

Her Appointment Surprised Many

Elia's appointment as superintendent in 2005 stunned even some of her biggest supporters.

A nationwide search had included two superintendents from other states plus a favored inside candidate to lead what is now the nation's eighth-largest school district with 192,000 students, more than 25,000 employees and an annual budget of $3.2 billion.

Known as a driven, determined administrator, Elia had quietly worked her way up in the Hillsborough school system more than 19 years, starting as a reading resource teacher at Plant High School. She held various supervisory positions before becoming chief facilities officer in 2003.

When Elia became Hillsborough's first female superintendent, some celebrated the gender shift. Others were put off with her credentials - two master's degrees but not the traditional doctorate.

But it was her direct management style and diverse experience that won her the job, board members said at the time. She didn't shy away from controversy and was able to make tough decisions, they said.

Elia was a sharp contrast to her predecessor, Earl Lennard.

"They are as different as night and day," said Yvonne Lyons, executive director for the Hillsborough Classroom Teachers Association. Lennard built consensus before acting, sometimes drawing criticism for moving too slowly.

That can't be said of Elia. "Sometimes her methods aren't appreciated by everybody," Lyons said. "Some hard decisions have to be made. So far, she's been willing to make those decisions and take the fallout."

Jim Aulisio, a chemistry teacher at Freedom High School who publicly protested Elia's decision to add a class period to the high school teachers' day, likens Elia to a bull. "She just rams it her way," he said. "She could have come to us."

At the same time, Aulisio acknowledges Elia's strengths.

"She takes a lot of heat, and she never flinches. I've got to give the woman credit. She just got 20 percent more work out of high school teachers. That would be an educational brilliant maneuver if there were no negatives."

'I'd Hate To See Us Go Back'

As she races through her third year as superintendent, Elia's take-charge style has drawn public criticism along with the employee backlash.

Communication has to improve, board members say.

"If she doesn't listen enough, somebody will make a motion to fire her," Olson said.

School board chairman Jack Lamb said public perception matters when the national average for superintendent tenure is less than three years.

"It scares me," Lamb said. "We've made such progress. I'd hate to see us go back."

Board member Doretha Edgecomb said this week that communication continues to be an issue. "She works hard at it. People just don't feel they have enough information," she said.

Board member Carol Kurdell and Lamb said Elia has discussed controversial decisions with them in one-on-one sessions before they became public. But other board members said they don't get all of the information they need.

Faliero said she has returned to gathering her own information on issues, as she did when first elected in 2002.

"Gone are the days - 'Please just trust us on this one,'" she said.

Lyons, the teachers' union official, said Elia needs to slow down a bit and reach out more to people before making decisions. "Get more input from the stakeholders," he said. "Get people involved who are doing the job."

When asked why she didn't do that while deciding how to handle several controversial issues this year, Elia responded, "We had a lot of input into the issues," naming principals and administrators.

Elia acknowledges that her style sometimes rubs people the wrong way.

"I don't take it personally when someone is upset," she said.

Supporters say her decisiveness is a bonus.

Bill Montford, chief executive officer of the Florida Association of District School Superintendents, said Elia is "one of the brightest superintendents we have."

What others characterize as problems or concerns, Elia prefers to call challenges.

"This district is a model district in many, many areas," Elia said. "We have a lot of successes - we have challenges every day. You have to keep moving in the direction of being successful for our kids,"

Reporter Marilyn Brown can be reached at (813) 259-8069 or mbrown@tampatrib.com.

Wednesday, November 14, 2007