Saturday, January 05, 2008


The comments to Casting-room Couch reflect the reality that unfolds in the schools that I have no access to. So I have promoted these comments to front-page positions as valuable insights from the front-line troops.

What strikes me about these revelations such as the one below is how sadly different is the reality of betrayal, duplicity, and cruelty that the comments picture from what most citizens believe is the benign atmosphere of schools.

People outside the twisted reality in schools that the comments reveal have a hard time believing that such behavior exists. Most people romanticize schools and all their participants. This situation makes the despoiling of the schools by the power-and money-hungry administration supported by a corrupt board possible because nobody believes such malignant atmosphere exists.

One wonders how the behavior described in these comments came to be; one puzzles about who or what was the origin of the malignant atmosphere now afoot in the schools. That's the sad mystery for me.

lee



Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "Be a watchdog of the Hillsborough County School Sy...":

The point should be made that screaming loudly and kicking will not overcome proper paperwork.

The supervisors and higher levels know that the bottom line is what can be proved in documents. They monitor every incident that rises to a level of notice. The first thing they do is ascertain "what can be proved in court". The battleground is in the paperwork.

Too many honest, trusting employees, and parents, do not understand that this is high stakes for the school system. No matter how wrong the actions may be by the school people, unless there is paper work on record from day one, the lower level and parents will lose. It is common practice in some areas of the district to simply fabricate documents to show a false timeline.

Everyone that finds themself in a bad spot thinks it is just them. This "isolation of information" is by design. How many teachers work in fear of finding out the rumors are true?

Too many employees turn to the system for help and are sold out.

Someday, with new technolgy that amplifies screaming and kicking, people may realize why the long time entrenced power people within the system are where they are.

There are a few people who are trying to bring about honest changes. If they can last long enough.

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Posted by Anonymous to Lee Drury De Cesare's Casting-Room Couch at 7:53 PM



I get a kick out of the comments. Here's one: lee

Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "Be a watchdog of the Hillsborough County School Sy...":

Well, we can't lie down and let them just get rid of us without a care in the world. At least we can scream loudly and get in a last kick when they are firing us for trumped up charges.

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Posted by Anonymous to Lee Drury De Cesare's Casting-Room Couch at 3:36 PM








Mr. Solochek:

I see your recent column in Gradebook on class size targeted only one source: the administration's Ken Otero.

You don't do your job of providing balanced assessments of education questions unless you go outside the official board-superintendent spin on issues' affecting education.

This was the flaw that caused the national press people to go along with Bush's run-up to the war. The press acted stenographers for Bush's warmongering and never bothered to check out and give space to other voices.

There are opposing voices to the school spin if a reporter is not too lazy to seek them out or if his boss--that would be Mr. Barnes, I infer--has not let him know that the official line is all the paper is interested in printing.

If so, this practice makes the press like Fox News as outreach for the White House. This narrow view also will lead to the demise of the printed press in favor of the more aggressive blog industry that reports everything, especially the criticism of the government's policy line.

You should make an effort to reach out to teachers, not the CTA, which is in bed with the administration, but to teachers who inhabit the classrooms. Teachers have opinions that the board and administration squelch because their opinions clash with the official line that the superintendent's public-affairs office feeds the gullible, incurious press.

The administration abetted by the board also has a history of punishing teachers with trumped-up charges to fire them if they say anything that conflicts with the administration spin for the press.

My blog leedrurydecesarescasting-roomcouch.blogspot.com has views contrary to the school system's official line and which also has comments from teachers in the comment section.

This blog has a copy of the charges I filed with the Florida Bar's Ethics Commission (last entry on the page) recently against the school lawyer's firm of Thompson, Sizemore & Gonzalez. It targets lawyer Gonzalez's getting his job with no bid from Dr. Lennard; hence Gonzalez's firm has a vested interest in coming down in favor of the no-bid position of the board. The no-bids waste tax money to hire as administrators with bloated salaries unqualified people such as Cathy Valdez, who recommended this no-bid hire to the board. Such unqualified people as Valdez, with an early-childhood degree in a job that needs a business degree, can't do the job without outside help. This burgeoning pool of incompetents and their backup contractors cost the taxpayers, of course; but Mr. Gonzalez says money is no object in this no-bid lala land.

The no-bid recipients are outside contractors who are usually buddies of the school superintendent. So the no-bid ritual amounts to a kind of patronage that the superintendent gets in addition to her bloated salary, which increases more each year until it is now one of the top salaries in the school superintendent racket that afflicts schools nationwide.

The last no-bid windfall went to a former administrator of Elia 's. He was, I believe, in the same department as she headed as her sole administrative experience before her superintendent job and on which department your paper did an expose of the criminal protocols it engaged in for real-estate transactions for the schools.

When the board accepted Elia's asseveration that she didn't know a thing about the criminal activity in her department under her nose that a reporter walked in off the street and spotted, the board accepted Elia's excuse and said, as the board is wont to say when presented with incompetence or even criminality in the administration, "Ho hum, let's move on. We need to get this contretemps behind us and move on to rubberstamping no-bid contracts for administration buddies and engaging in other mischief that harms the schools and the taxpayers but keeps this administration in power."

La Gaceta discovered the recently retired administrator who got the $148 000 no-bid windfall had no phone with a live person answering it and did not answer voice mail. The taxpayers also apparently funded his first job as an entrepreneur. That fact was also a ho-hum piece of data for the incurious, potted-plant board.

The latest board cover up is the affair of Board chair Jennifer Falliero and former public-affairs chief Marc Hart. Ms. Falliero haunted Mr. Hart's office for what she claimed was a need for "mentoring" until she lighted the fuse of the poor fellow. Even Dr. Lennard told her to stay away from the public-affairs office. The current superintendent and her myrmidons decided the solution was to cook up a drunkenness charge against Hart for which to fire him to cover up the tawdry behavior long tolerated by the administration and board and to save Falliero's reputation.

The press has some kind of fetish against reporting sexual misconduct and bad administration control of it when it involves sex.

Cotton Mather could be no more reticent to mention sex than the mainstream press. I'd like to know from what philosophical newspaper-ethics arcana this strangely repressed practice originated. I have read all of Freud; and he doesn't say a word about this psychosexual pathology of newspaper people. Perhaps I should have moved on to the animadversions of the Reverend Jerry Falwell for the sourc of newspaper angst about mentioning sex.

Five of the board--Edgecomb, Olson, Lamb, Faliero, and Kurdell-- voted to hand over this $148,000 bid to the former administrator with minimal discussion and on the advice of the attorney, who himself enjoys a no-bid contract of fifteen years' duration and, hence, whose advice was interested, not disinterested. Perhaps my memory is faulty on Ms. Falliero's participation in the vote because that may have been the night when syncope overcame her, resulting in an ambulance trip to the hospital. Valdes and Griffin voted against the no-bid handout and as a result Kurdell and Olson attacked them for "disloyalty" to an infallible administration.

Your partial and biased coverage of the schools in the state reminds me of the faculty-lounge historians whom I used to audit in their arguments that premised male historians had covered only the top layer of history and paid no attention to other peripheral but potent influences. The feminist historians argued on the basis of routine history's shutting out women; the minority historians argued the lack of inclusion of blacks; the historians with a social bent argued that the middle and lower classes got no representation in standard history books. Extrapolating this argument argues a parallel to the gullible, incurious reporters who quote Bush or official school spokespersons such as Dr. Otero-- but nobody else; and thus the press contributes itself to the run-up to the Iraq war or to the incumbency of, in this case, school officials--both administration and board-- who are derelict.

I urge you to broaden your base for reporting on the schools. The teachers are pivotal as a source for a balanced view. So are the students in many instances. The board won't give teachers and students a settled slot on the board because the board and administration want to de-emphasize the importance of teachers and students and have the press think only the administration and board are sources for it to consult. The press plays along, alas.

If you bothered to quote teachers on issues, you would present a more balanced, more sophisticated, more useful view for the public that you are supposed to serve. Newspapers are supposed to be the first draft of history; yours is an incomplete, biased draft.

Ask your boss Tash if there are any limits on the sources you consult for your articles. If he says "no," then one must infer that you were like too many of my students: too lazy to do the research needed for a complete view of the topic under discussion.

Tampabaygrammargrich.blogspot.com's recent entry presents the deconstruction of your boss Mr. Tash's rhetorically and grammatically shallow skills. That may dispose him to tell you to ignore me, that I am a crackpot. Everybody in history has garnered the label of crackpot if he or she had an idea that fell outside mainstream-in-a-rut-that-it-abandons-kicking-and-screaming thinking. Look what happened to Galileo.

lee drury de cesare

Comment on leedrurydecesarescasting-roomcouch.blogspot.com

Anonymous said...

Of course Elia wants to lower the standards for FCAT now, b/c she wants more students to pass so that more schools get rated higher, so that she can get a big, fat bonus again. She has no concerns about students. Her only concern is getting more money for herself.

11:37 AM

Delete

Friday, January 04, 2008

To the comment person on the Doug Erwin blog: I messed up the spelling. Try DougErwinOutrage.blogspot.com. lee

The posts on this blog's comment section have become more interesting than my own comments. There is a world of information in the Anonymous data base that needs to be in the public-information kitty so that citizens can assess how their schools suffer from a complicit board and attorney and a corrupt administration.

Here's one below that ties ends together in language as abstruse as Faulkner (whom I'm reading right now). I believe Anonymous cites the the first hint I got of the Faliero affair from a teacher quote on The Wall, as I recall. I also suspect him to be the spouse of the principal who had an affair with Faliero's coach husband right in the midst of the students. That's worse than the Faliero and Hart ROSSAC canoodling.

I have called a Tribune guy who is the "team leader" of the woman Kalfrin who wrote the band-director story. I understood her voice mail correctly, she covers "daycops."

She is absent and said to call her "team leader," Howard Altman. Mr. Altman was in a hurry but said he would call me back; I asked that I instead call him. Mr. Altman, a newspaper guy of 25 years, has promised to educate me on the ethics of the newspaper business.

I did get in one question: What criteria were needed to print a story about sex. Mr. Altman said that such stories usually involved a crime, although he said other news sections might have different standards. I asked how the school-band-leader-too-many-phone-calls-to-a-student incident that the Tribune reported involved a crime.

This is the point at which Le Altman had to run. Don't be paranoid. He seemed like a forthcoming guy. If not, I will determine that when I call him back to resume my education on press ethics. I will address him then as Professor Altman. I am sending Professor Altman this blog URL so that all data are on the table.

Meanwhile, keep those comments coming. I am getting an education in the seamy side of the school board and administration. Some community paragons they are. lee



Anonymous has left a new comment on your post " Gentlepeople: I have received today deposition p...":

A comment on “in favor of fair play”’s post of 6:21 pm:

My, my what a pale pail of purgative pickles we have pickling.

Before my discussion, let’s review the “facts of the case”. “Facts” being the tangible statements made, not a judgment of the contents of the statements.

For those who are follow-the-link challenged, we can start with the initial statement that brought this to light in this arena.

Exhibit A: The original article

Tampa Tribune
Published: November 22, 2007
Texting Puts Teacher In Bindy VALERIE KALFRIN,

TAMPA - The Hillsborough County School District does not know the contents of more than 500 text messages a suspended Plant High School music teacher sent to a student, but found the behavior inappropriate anyway.
The school board on Tuesday suspended John Sinibaldi, 46, without pay pending his dismissal.

During the 2006-07 school year, he sent more than 525 text messages to one student during and after school hours, which the district in a letter said "went beyond the acceptable standards, scope and sequence of your responsibilities as a classroom teacher."

School district spokesman Steve Hegarty said there was no police investigation into the messages, which, according to the letter, were sent to a member of the high school band. Sinibaldi's phone records showed the frequency of the messages but not the content, Hegarty said.

"It doesn't matter at that point what the messages are. The frequency of the messages was a concern," Hegarty said.
Sinibaldi also ran afoul of the school board by allowing a middle school student to participate in the high school's band program, despite being directed not to, the letter states.

Reporter Valerie Kalfrin can be reached at (813) 259-7800 or vkalfrin@tampatrib.com.


Exhibit B: The comment that started it all:

Posted by ( cshultz110 ) on November 22, 2007 at 1:06 p.m. ( Suggest removal )
luvpercussion

You are completely correct! God forbid the truth come out. It is all politics, just ask Jenifer Felairo and Mark Hart (Opps, I forgot that affair was covered up . . . I am sooo sorry!) he, he Amazing how he just "left".

Folks, I have been in this district for 11 years and know for a fact that it IS a good ole' boys system. Lots of corruption and politics.

To give you an idea (and yes, this is first hand knowledge), I was a band director and took a leave of absence last year after my now ex-wife had an affair with a promonent school board members now ex-husband. (Yes, they were both cheating on each other. [Was this the coach, Faliero's husband, who cheated on Faliero with the principal, your wife? If so, did your wife lose her job like Hart lost his? If not, why not?] See previously mentioned) After getting my act back together and returning from my leave, I was shocked to find that no principal would hire me.

Not because of my performance, but because nobody wanted to touch the situation since it delt directly with a school board member and the politics it would involve. That is our school board folks!!! I can't wait for Mr. S to be obsolved of this accusations.

Shame on the parent who is a teacher trying to play the system to get what they want. [What is the name of this parent?] That should be the real headline: "How a teacher uses politics to ruin anothers career and how the school board helps them to do it."

Exhibit C: Deposition that speaks to the specific word “affair”.

Click here: hart3+copy.JPG (image)

Now for comments on “in favor of fair play”’s post.

First, the reader must use the same standard to determine the credibility of “cshultz110” and “in favor of fair play”.

Unless one has further information outside what has been presented, we are left with what is there. Each writer provides some content in attempt to validate their posit.

“Cshultz110” claims to have first hand knowledge by his indirect relationship with the person of interest. “In favor of fair play” uses the person of interest’s political party, support of “others in power”, level of education, religious beliefs, and economic and family status as an apparent measure of stature.

One may find interest in the choice of words in “others in power”. A common theme among the other comments on this blog frequently calls out the issue of power related to the school administration. This choice of words in some odd way may give credence to concerns about how that power works among the group of “others”.

“In favor of fair play” asks that the “attackers” lay off and let the person of interest do her job. This gives rise to remembrance of the time earlier in the year of 2007 when the person of interest was allegedly absent from several school board meetings. An accurate record of the truth of how many board functions were missed may be able to be obtained if one needs it. One of the major duties of “doing one’s job’ of a school board member is voting on items in a school board meeting. Just sayin’.

“In favor of fair play” proposes the threat that the person of interest will quit if the “nasty and petty accusations and innuendos” don’t end. Readers may have heard of vain arrogance, but to use this type of tactic to thwart public critics may be the epitome of same. Straight off the playground of self absorption, perhaps.

“In favor of fair play” states that whoever the person of interest chooses to be with is a private matter. This may be more applicable if the alleged events involved a soccer dad or perhaps someone in the same church. However, since the parties of interest both held jobs within the school system, and even “in favor of fair play” relates incidents that occurred within the hallowed halls of the ROSSAC bastion or wherever the staff is located that was used to “get him to leave her alone”, it does become public concern.

For those who understand the “authority and power” of the public school system, one would have thought that this full authority and power would have exhibited itself immediately after the “cshult110” comment, as is customary when the public school system deals with public critics.

For those who were around to watch the Doug Erwin annihilation, they would recognize the pattern of retaliation to anyone who dares to shed light on the inner workings of our public institution. Unless there is something in progress that has not come to light yet, one could almost assume that the “powers to be” may want this issue to quietly go away. Which brings one to wonder why “in favor of fair play” would use this venue to write a “teeny-bobber” letter. I find it ironic that “in favor of fair play” would use a blog that they discount so much.


I wonder if the “others in power” will ferret out who "in favor of fair play" is.

Or better yet, maybe it is one of them.

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Posted by Anonymous to Lee Drury De Cesare's Casting-Room Couch at 9:1
Be a watchdog of the Hillsborough County School System and its potted-plant board for fair treatment of teachers, students, and staff right down to the grounds keepers and cafeteria workers.

Bark if the administration, the complicit attorney, and somnolent, collusive board do something untoward like sending a staff member or teacher to the Professional Standards Abu Ghraib on a trumped-up charge when they sit silent while a board member conducts an affair with the superintendent's knowledge in the offices at ROSSAC. Then the administration with attorney and board collusion fires him because the situation may become public and taint board-administration-attorney image. But in its customary unfair arrogance, it protects Ms. Jezebel and promotes her to board chair.

Go to the authorities; tell them what's going on. Sing like a canary.

I have reported to the bar association of Hillsborough County on its brother attorney's conduct; a colleague has sent the Florida Bar complaint to the Superintendents Association. We will send it also to the School Board State Association.

Turn over the rocks, and when the bugs run helter skelter, report what's going on to the supervisory state bodies. The Hillsborough County school administration is not autonomous--although its D-student myrmidons want you to think they are; there are state bodies who monitor and dictate their conduct. Just think of these state agencies as a kind of super-Professional Standards check on lawless administrators, board, or attorneys.

We live in a democracy, not in the Gulag Archipelago. Let's act like we deserve to live in a democracy.

lee

Anonymous has left a new comment on your post " Ms. Elia: Board attorney Mr. Gonzalez refus...":

Years ago I was involved with the school system in a legal matter. I requested transcripts of the affair and was told by Gonzalez that I didn't need them since I couldn't do anything with them. So not only does he avoid fulfilling his duties as an officer of the court, he blatantly decides for others what they are entitled to by law.

Mr. Berry, Florida Bar Ethics Commission:

Pray add the above to my complaint against Thompson et al. People—both teachers and staff of the school system-- are afraid to speak out, so they send anonymous comments to my blog about the school system. If they speak out, the administration puts them under surveillance to tag them with something with which to fire them.

Lee Drury De Cesare

15316 Gulf Boulevard 802

Madeira Beach, FL 33708

Thursday, January 03, 2008

I not only will allow the following post from the comment section in defense of Board Member Jennifer's conduct and character ; I will also give it a prominent place on the front page of the the main blog. The poor soul not only is a poor judge of character; he or she can't spell for beans and has not said howdy to the spell checker. lee

This is America.

Everybody gets to speak out. I won't gavel anyone down. But Femme Fatale Jennifer has done and will do that un-American act as school-board chair. Lee



From: in favor of fair play [noreply-comment@blogger.com]

Sent: Thursday, January 03, 2008 9:22 PM

To: tdecesar@tampabay.rr.com

Subject: [Lee Drury De Cesare's Casting-Room Couch] New comment on Gentlepeople: I have received today deposition p....

in favor of fair play has left a new comment on your post " Gentlepeople: I have received today deposition p...":

On Jennifer
Faliero and the person who is attacking her personally, is this just another example of someone who has nothing better to do than feed seedy stories to every media, political and editorial person. God forbid we should trust in the word of someone who is known for attacking politicl officials and apparently has even asked if our Governor is gay!!! And her followers are no doubt the usual bunch of unhappy and disgruntled folk who work for our high schools. Ms Faliero, a staunch Republican, has the support of the party and others in power and that's what counts for me. People with responsibilty and a vested interest in having the right person for the job support Ms Faliero and that appears to be more than good enough for the vast majority. She has been accused of an affair but the deposition will show that there is no proof. The accusor could be using his supposed "relationship" with Ms Faliero to hide that he was asked to resign for drunken and disorderly contact at a school Board function......I understand that he harrassed Ms Faliero and she had to ask her staff to get him to leave her alone. There were about 200 witnesses---should be good enough for anyone!! But more importantly whoever Ms Faliero chooses to be with is a private matter for her alone. If she was having an affair with a married man or was known to be playing fast and loose that would be a different matter. BUT she is not! No doubt her attacker will look to make a scene at public events and do her best to embarrass Ms Faliero---why can't she find something more constructive to do than persist with a vendetta agaianst someone who is doing a great deal for our kids. Ms Faliero is a well educated, God fearing professional who as a single Mother is combining raising 2 teenage children with a career of public service which means she shops at Penny's if she's lucky versus Niemann Marcus. With her resume she could get a much better paid job away from the limelight and the pathetic attempts to undermine but no she has chosen to apply her skills and devote her time, with the associated financial sacrifices, to creating a better learning environmemnt for our children and by God do we need it and people like her right now. So lay off her whoever you are with these nasty and petty accusations and innuendos and let her do her job. If you don't she will surely seek altenative employment which will disadvantage far more people than the small minority seeking media sensation through sleezy accuations.
Ms
Faliero is a good person who wants to get on with her life, raise her children and do a worthwhile job---what America's about isn't it?
Who are you out there that want to change those
laudible goals for the worse?

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Anonymous [Lee Drury De Cesare's Casting-Room Couch] New comment on I not only will allow this post in defense of Boar.... 10:32 PM 8 KB

Posted by in favor of fair play to Lee Drury De Cesare's Casting-Room Couch at 6:21 PM

____________________________________________________
This comment deserves front-blog status too. It made me laugh. Lee

Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "I not only will allow this post in defense of Boar...":

Oh, My God! If someone accused me of having an affair I don't think it would bother me in the slightest, but if someone accused me of shopping at J.C. Penny like this person says Faliero does or accused me of eating at McDonald's or any other fast food, I would drop dead in a faint. I would deny, deny, deny it.

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Posted by Anonymous to Lee Drury De Cesare's Casting-Room Couch at 7:31 PM

_______________________________________________


I will forward this comment as an addendum to my complaint about Gonzalez to the Florida Bar Ethics Commission. lee

Anonymous has left a new comment on your post " Ms. Elia: Board attorney Mr. Gonzalez refus...":

Years ago I was involved with the school system in a legal matter. I requested transcripts of the affair and was told by Gonzalez that I didn't need them since I couldn't do anything with them. So not only does he avoid fulfilling his duties as an officer of the court, he blatantly decides for others what they are entitled to by law.

RS

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Posted by Anonymous


This comment deserves front-blog status. Lee

Anonymous has left a new comment on your post " Ms. Elia: Board attorney Mr. Gonzalez refus...":

Years ago I was involved with the school system in a legal matter. I requested transcripts of the affair and was told by Gonzalez that I didn't need them since I couldn't do anything with them. So not only does he avoid fulfilling his duties as an officer of the court, he blatantly decides for others what they are entitled to by law.

RS

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Posted by Anonymous to Lee Drury De Cesare's Casting-Room Couch at 5:39 PM



Ms. Elia:

Board attorney Mr. Gonzalez refuses to send me public information. That violates the Florida public-information statute.

I have filed an ethics charge against the Thompson, Sizemore & Gonzalez firm with the Florida bar for this defiance of the law. The firm already has the burden of the negative image it earned for prosecuting and losing the Doug Erwin case of punishing a brave whistleblower of school waste: http://www.doug-erwincase.blogspot.com.

I now ponder asking the governor for his help as well in insuring that the Hillsborough County school district and board not be scofflaws of the public-information statute.

The Public Affairs office works overtime to polish your public image so that voters will remain ignorant of the state of affairs behind the school-board Wizard-of-Oz curtain that screens the reality of ROSSAC doings from the voting, taxpaying public.

Hence, we have such puff-pieces as that below that the image machine led by Mr. Hegarty, Public Affairs office, fed to Ms. Stein, of the St. Petersberg Times. She swallowed it whole, alas.

Everyone even minimally alert about administration machinations knows that you hired Mr. Hegarty over better-qualified candidates—he lacked supervisory experience, one of the job’s advertised requirements-- since he had been the school-board’s St. Pete Times education reporter, so you thought he could get you better press to assuage your image fetish.

Mr. Hegarty also fulfilled the school-board penchant for hiring from the inside, credentials bedamned.

Since you have striven in a p.r. gloss to convince people of your friendship with Governor Crist, I believe he may be a logical official to alert to the status of the Hillsborough County school system and your malignant influence on the board that results in negative situations for teachers and students, the heart of any school system.

I urge you to tell your acolytes that compraise the potted-plant board to order the school-board attorney to obey the law and provide me with the information that I have requested.

lee drury de cesare

April 17, 2007

Crist is listening

Gov. Charlie Crist is open to reviewing the FCAT standards in high school, where the state asks students to jump a much higher bar than in the lower grade levels. It's a pet issue for the Hillsborough Superintendent MaryEllen Elia, who brought it up during a nearly half-hour meeting Monday with Crist in Tallahassee.

The district has found that 10th graders just meeting the state's standards rank in the top 20 percent of students nationally. At lower grades, students making the FCAT bar perform far less well compared to their peers nationally. Third-graders, for example, place just above the bottom third.

"I am willing to listen to further talk," Crist said. "If there are always ways that we can make it, you know, better, why wouldn't we?"

Elia cheered his response. "I felt like our work on identifying (the issue) for him paid off," she said. "I pointed out to him that we've had this as a concern for a number of months." Elia doesn't expect anything to happen overnight. After all, as far as explosive issues go in Tallahassee, there's none bigger than changing the FCAT.

- Letitia Stein, Hillsborough County education reporter

Wednesday, January 02, 2008







I am a Wagner opera-goer. Wherever there is a Ring Cycle, I will be there.

But I am a child of the South, and my father was a Grand Ol’ Opry fan.

I recall him on Saturday nights listening to the opry with his ear close to our old upright radio, as big as a refrigerator. He would say to us, “Now younguns, if you don’t be quiet while daddy listens to Roy Acuff sing, I won’t take you to town tomorrow.”

A trip to town meant we filled my father’s three-seater Packard—mama and daddy in the front seat, my two sisters, Margaret and Von, in the middle seat, and our old cook, Aunt Sue Lang, and I in the back seat. Aunt Sue Lang had delivered me because Camden County, Georgia, had only one doctor in the county.

It took so long for my father to locate the sole doctor that he was too late for my delivery. But Aunt Sue Lang was an adept obstetrician and delivered me herself.

As a treat when we were good, daddy took us to town. We would go bumping over Georgia unpaved roads with the dust boiling up behind us to the tiny town of White Oak, Georgia, which consisted of the post office, three fillin’ stations, a five-and-dime, several grocery stores, and a bazillion churches. Some favored foot-washing rituals. My Episcopal family had to drive to Waycross to go to church.

With a background like that, anybody can run off a honky-tonk tune even if she has attended enough Ring Cycles to sink a battleship.

I will forward this to the school board miscreants, over which they will cudgel their brains, satire requiring grey cells in excess of the bare minimum required to run for school board.


School-board Femme Fatale Jennifer

Sung to the tune of “Beautiful, Beautiful Brown Eyes” with ukulele accompaniment if you don’t have handy a banjo. fiddle, and zither ensemble



School-board Jennifer femme fa-ta-le,

Lured ROSSAC feller to dal-ly,

Wouldn’t take no for an answer,

She’ll never get elected again.


School-board Jennifer home-wrecker,

Fibbed to press under pres--sure.

Lied about move out of district,

She’ll never get elected again.

Boss Elia provided Jennifer cover,

Up and fired femme fatale’s lover,

News got out on the grapevine,

She’ll never get elected again.

Other board members who knew the score,

Didn’t kick Jennifer out the door,

Awarded La Jennifer board gavel,

They’ll never get elected again.

Yodel-ay-hoo!

Yodel-ay—hoo!

Yodelay—hee-hee-hee--hoo!

Ye-haw hee-haw-hoo-who-dat?

Back in the saddle again.

Out where a friend is a friend.

Time to hit the trail, Chemosabe.

Gidd-yap, Trigger, etc.



School-board Femme Fatale Jennifer

Sung to the tune of “Beautiful, Beautiful Brown Eyes” with ukulele accompaniment if you don’t have a banjo. fiddle, and zither ensemble

School-board Jennifer femme fa-ta-le,

Lured ROSSAC feller to dal-ly,

Wouldn’t take no for an answer,

She’ll never get elected again.

School-board Jennifer home-wrecker,

Fibbed to press under pres--sure.

Lied about move out of district,

She’ll never get elected again.

Boss Elia provided Jennifer cover,

By firing femme fatale’s lover,

News got out on the grapevine,

She’ll never get elected again.

Other board members knew the score,

Didn’t kick Jennifer out the door,

Voted to Jennifer board gavel,

They’ll never get elected again.

Yodel-ay-hee

Yodel-ay—hee

Yodelay—hee-hee-hee

Ye-haw!

That’s all, doc!


Sunday, December 30, 2007


I am the granny in the center with the pink shirt and mop of white hair.

At this march in Washington for choice, we had over a million people.

One of the anti-choice zealots who thronged the side of the roads to jeer us spat out at me: "Jezebel!"

I had never in my life been called a Jezebel. "Nicest girl in the neighborhood" always afflicted me. No wonder I never got any dates.

What a thrill at the age of 75 with ten grandchildren and married for 51 years to the same old guy to be called a Jezebel. The glamour of the Jezebel label just tickled me pink.

The others in line from the left are Tampa Angie Manteiga, April Manteiga, California Cathy Goodwin, one of the original members of NOW when we founded it in Tampa over forty years ago, and her daughter, the first baby born in the Tampa Women's Movement. She is now a gynecologist in California.

My husband and I attended her wedding last year. I can't give her name because the anti-abortion crazies might take it into their whacko heads to kill her. That's the world that we live in.

That's the way some people are who disagree with you--kill you for your opinions. Members of this tribe also gavel you down at the mike when you are complaining that committing adultery as a school-board member on school time and property is unacceptable and not what the voters had in mind when they unwisely voted the school-board chair into office. I suspect that will be the last time voters make that mistake.

I don't believe we should let crackpots and thugs that we run into overwhelm us. We should not cede civilization to the worst elements.

That's what I think has happened to the school system in Tampa. Thugs infest the administration, and the school board members--weak and pliable--allow these thugs to set the agenda and rape the taxpayer kitty while the administration potted plants just rubberstamp the wrongdoing.

Two new members of the board--Griffin and Valdes--are trying to make changes, but the administration thwarts them at every turn. Lamb, Ethridge, Kurdell, Olson, and Falliero oppose them and rubberstamp the administration's outrages such as the no-bid scams and the buddy-sycophant hires to jobs of over a hundred thousand dollars a year while beginning teachers get $34,000 and harassed by the Professional Standard thuggery of Linda Kipley, trained in home-ec, if they so much as utter a peep. Two board members--Kurdell and Olson-- jumped onto Griffin and labeled her "disloyal" for asking that a no-bid come off the consent agenda for discussion. They said her request for a discussion of an item offended against the the infalliable staff that wanted to hire a former administrator for a no-bid sweetheart deal who had nobody answering a business phone. Kurdell, Olson, Ethridge, Faliero, Lamb all voted to hire the no-phone former administrator while only Valdes and Griffin voted against it. The lawyer Gonzalez had delivered a pro-no-bid oration that gave legal cover to the galoots who voted for this outrage. And why wouldn't Gonzalez vote for the no-bid payolla? He has a fifteen-year-old no-bid contract himself. I figure that over those fifteen years his company has billed the taxpayers close to ten million dollars when you factor in the windfall he got for prosecuting Mr. Erwin for whistleblowing waste in the building department.

The answer to this coercion is for everybody not only to peep but to scream. Don't let these turkeys take away your Constitutional free-speech rights. Fight them. Make believe you are Paul Revere. I'm posing now as Wonder Woman. I look great in those Wonder Woman duds.

When I approach the altar at the board meetings, I embrace with exhilaration my little effort to keep the Constitution alive and well in the Hillsborough County political badlands. I am a teacher. I figure teaching the board ethics is like teaching college freshman dangling modifiers. You repeat the lesson until they learn it.

I got the message below today from an anonymous commenter. I am going to send it to the Florida Bar as addendum to the charge that I have filed against the Gonzalez firm. Nobody could have said it better than this anonymous commenter. I think he/she is right about the psycho-social pathology that affects the administration, school board, and its 15-year-no-bid lawyer.

We can't just lament the situation. We must fight it and not surrender the schools to these thugs. History will judge us ill if we don't resist.

The next board meeting is January 15, 2008. Come and go to the podium to speak up against this vile use that the administration, board, and attorney make of our tax-supported school system. We live in a democracy in which citizens can protest if they have the will to do so.

These puffed-up pooh-bahs of the administration and board are not as fierce as they want you to think they are. They are paper tigers. They get away with skullduggery because nobody challenges them.

Trust me. Would I lie? lee

From:"lee de cesare" View Contact Details  View Contact Details Add Mobile Alert
To:lee_decesare@yahoo.com
CC:"'montolino'"
Subject: FW: [Lee Drury De Cesare's Casting-Room Couch] New comment on John T. Berry The Florida Bar 650 Apalachee Pa....
Date: Sun, 30 Dec 2007 13:28:25 -0500

From: Anonymous [mailto:noreply-comment@blogger.com]
Sent: Sunday, December 30, 2007 1:09 PM
To: tdecesar@tampabay.rr.com
Subject: [Lee Drury De Cesare's Casting-Room Couch] New comment on John T. Berry The Florida Bar 650 Apalachee Pa....

Anonymous has left a new comment on your post " John T. Berry The Florida Bar 650 Apalachee Pa...":

People like Gonzalez and Faliero and probably many others will go to their graves believing they are good people while they rip off taxpayers and get rich doing it. They rationalize everything that they do and tell themselves they had no choice or shrug it off as not that big of a deal. I have noticed that no one I have ever met has the ego to really see what they do as wrong. I am glad you are shining a light on this behavior, but I am sure Gonzalez will never think he did anything wrong.

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Posted by Anonymous to Lee Drury De Cesare's Casting-Room Couch at 10:08 AM