Gentlepeople:

I have received today deposition proof that Jennifer Faliero did indeed have an affair with former schools' public-affairs head Marc Hart.

This was the subject on which School Board Chair Faliero gaveled me down at the podium while the tax-paid lawyer allowed her to shut up a citizen.

Ms. Elia also knew about the affair and sat silent while Faliera gaveled me down. The school administration with the board's and the lawyer's assistance hides such conduct of administrators and board members behind spin lies and half truth and does not let the public see how they misspend tax dollars to continue their own shoddy reign of power in which they issue no-bid contracts to buddies and former administrators, bloat their pay so that it exceeds many times that of the real heroes of the school system, teachers, and hire ill-educated, ill-prepared sycophants and pals such as Cathy Valdez to head a department with only an early-childhood degree and no business knowledge of the field she is in charge of to the schools' detriment.

Citizens should confront board members with their refusal to even ask relevant questions on the podium about administration behavior. They have a right to ask the board members why they let everything slide by on the hidden consent agenda. They have a right to ask Candy Olson and Carol Kurdell to explain their manic allegiance to the misbehavior of the administration that manifests itself in their calling Griffin "disloyal to the staff" because she asked that a consent-agenda item on a no-bid contract given to a former administrator with no person's answering his phone. Griffin and Valdes should make the administration power hoarders come from behind the Wizard-of-Oz curtain of secrecy of the consent agenda and get a public discussion of the administration and board's corruption of the running of the public schools.

It should not have been I or any citizen who had to attempt to get the truth out of Board Chair Falliero about her on-the-job affair. It should have Board Members Edgecomb, Olson, Kurdell, Lamb, Griffin, and Valdes.

These board members do not honor their promise to citizens to guard the interests of the taxpayers, students, and teachers when they allow a board member to have an affair on the job that results in her partner in the affair's getting squeezed out and with her remaining and becoming chair of the board who gavels down a citizen who asks for information on this affair.

And this citizen would have also asked, had Chair Falliero not gaveled her down, about the companion adultery of Chair Falliero's former coach husband and a middle-school principal without the principal's suffering dismissal along with Hart.

These disparate standards do not reflect a board that is vigilant and even mildly courageous enough to stand against the administration thuggery and take care of the public's interest in well-run schools without a bunch of rapscallions at the top that bloat their salaries with the board's rubberstamp and approve their sharp no-bid deals with buddies and former administrators with the board's collusion. Even Griffin and Valdes signed off on Elia's contract after they had given her bad marks on her evaluation, and Griffin and Valdes are supposed to be the best on the board. Some best. The public and school family have no representatives on the podium with grit enough to stand down the adminstration, the lawyer, and the other board members. It is simply the public bedamned and high ho, Silver, for the renegades that run the schools in the administration and on the board.

Lamb, Kurdel, and Edgecomb appear on the ballots for the upcoming election. Voters should hold their feet to the fire on the sorry jobs they have done to preserve and improve the schools for the benefit of the community's children.

Instead of being a check on the administration's lust for money and power, board members have colluded with it and forgotten the public's right to their allegiance and the right of the children and the teachers to be a part of the running of the schools. It has even abrogated the public's right to know under the public-records law the business record of the board and no-bid-contract lawyer by refusing to demand that he send the information the citizen has requested.

Not one member of the board has had the guts to say on the podium, "Madam Chair, I move that this board accord the teachers and students of the schools a special and reserved place in the board's agenda so that every meeting sees them able to come and feel welcome to talk about their concerns to the board and through the board to the public."

The board cooperates with the administration's business plan, which is to run the schools like a plantation with the board's and administration's sitting on the veranda at the Big House sipping mint juleps while the plantation grunts, teachers and students (the reason the government sends the administration tax money) tote that barge and lift that bale so that the swell folks of board and administration can continue their larking on the public dime.