Ms. Olson:




I understand that you and Ms. Elia negotiated her most recent contract that earned the Tribune's editorial criticism for its questionable compensation of Ms. Elia.

Perhaps you would be kind enough to explain to me and others who read my blog leedrurydecesarescasting-roomcouch.blogspot.com your thinking in transferring the lavish "performance" bonus formula in toto that Dr. Lennard extracted from an indulgent board on one of its most irresponsible days.

Casting Room Couch gets anonymous negative comments on the board and administration that teachers and staff know from experience will cost them referral to the Abu Ghraib Professional Standards office, which acts as a retaliation mechanism for Ms. Elia's revenging herself on any school employee who criticizes her performance. You have been on the board for twelve years and have done nothing to curtail this sadistic, unprofessional use of the Professional Standards office, so one infers you approve of it.

Logic dictates that the basis of the "performance" money that Ms. Elia extracts from the taxpayers comes from the teachers', not Ms. Elia's performance, and that thus any "performance" money should go to the teachers, not to Ms. Elia, whose already bloated pay package disgraces the board's sense of fairness and proportion. The unseemly pay bloat of Ms. Elia also shows contempt for the taxpayers who provide unawares the money for this bloated, unwarrented pay you devised with Ms. Elia's assistance for herself.

Not only yours but every one of the other board members' unanimous rubberstamps need their individual explanation for approving this contract without demur when it came before them. Puzzling to me is that even members Griffin and Valdes went along with the contract despite their giving the superintendnt low grades on her yearly evaluation. It's as if they said, "This is a C student, but she gets A-student money anyway because it's only taxpayer money, not ours, so we can afford to be irresponsible."

This lavish contract mocks the constant promise of elected officials at all levels--but especially those who sit on the Hillsborough County school board and inevitably when they go on the stump to be returned to office--to award teachers who do the work in the schools with the students that produce the good results a compensation more condign to their pivotal role in the educational process.

Ms. Elia recently augmented teachers' work load by imposing an extra class on them to solve her budget problems without the board's discussing this imposition on teachers or without the teachers having a chance to comment on the move. Some called Ms. Elia's ukase decisive management; others called it administrative hubris backed up by a supine board that takes scant interest in the teachers' and students' wellbeing. The board even refuses to give teachers and students a settled place in the board agenda from which they may express their opinions on such matters. This neglecting of the dignity of teachers gives them no forum to share their views with the board. That there is no place for them on the board agenda tells teachers and students that the board does not value their input and does not not want to be bothered by hearing from them.

Fairness dictates that it is teachers who should get any money available for bonuses, not Ms. Elia, who sits in ROSSAC all day away from the district's schools, where the improvement of students' learning levels take place with teachers', not Ms. Elia's, guidance. Only the distorted thinking that passes for logic in ROSSAC and the board room could ratify this irrational thinking that Ms. Elia merits the bonus from teachers' work.

When the teachers, whom Ms. Elia did not consult about the extra class, complained, you called them from your board chair "lazy."
A parallel comment from the teachers for your outpouring of money in Ms. Elia's contract tete-a-tete between you and her might elicit adjectives "unscrupulous" or "profligate" or "contemptuous" of taxpayers, teachers, students, and the rest of the school family, whose contracts don't get the cozy attention a school board member lavished on colluding with the superintendent to bloat the superintendent's pay package to the point that the Tribune's editorial page found it necessary to remark upon even though the editorial editor, Ms. Goudreau, is a friend of Ms. Elia and a usually reliable flatterer of the superintendent.

You must have notes about the session you spent crafting Ms. Elia's bloated contract with her. As a piece of public information, I would like to have a copy of those notes. I also suggest that at the next board meeting you explain to the public your rationale for (a) participating in devising the contract's content and (b) why the public should not be appalled at your performance.

lee drury de cesare