My children and grandchildren gave me a party for my 70th birthday at the home of my youngest daughter, Margie. She lives still in Beach Park close to our family's old home at 407 South Lois. Our children went to Grady, Coleman, and Plant. Dr. Sheldon was superintendent then. I fought him to get ROTC opened for girls and to provide bus transportation for the cheerleaders, who had to make their way to games sometimes through dicey neighborhoods on their own while the football players got bused: a case of parochial sexism, of course.Dr. Sheldon thought a woman must be insane to question his Olympian wisdom. So he regarded me as a nutcase.
Cile Essrig, on the board for a billion years , earned a "pinko-red" slur from one of the Chamber of Commerce dandies who came up to NYC to lure my husband's company to establish a branch in Tampa. The source of this dandy slur was that Cile had revealed a liberal tendency or two in her board seat.
Cile would call you up and claim she wanted your advice. Then you discovered that this was just a political ploy. Cile had no intention of following advice.
She was loyal to women's rights, however, and attended all the Barefoot and Pregnant Awards ceremonies that we in Tampa NOW staged to cite sexists for behaving badly.
Cile adored Dr. Sheldon and would hear no criticism of him.
I've Got Mail!
From: Anonymous [mailto:noreply-comment@blogger.com]
Sent: Thursday, January 17, 2008 11:15 PM
To: tdecesar@tampabay.rr.com
Subject: [Lee Drury De Cesare's Casting-Room Couch] New comment on onster.gostats.com';_goa=401613;_got=1;_goi=1;_goz....
Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "onster.gostats.com';_goa=401613;_got=1;_goi=1;_goz...":
Why do we have a school board if all they want to do is say, "Yes, ma'am" to Superintendent Elia? Why bother having a board? Let's just let the Superintendent and the district do whatever they want. It's the same thing. The board has forgotten its duty to the public, because each board member probably wants favors for family members. It makes me sick.
Good observation. I think a board if it as gutless as this one is extraneous.
Ms. Edgecomb's daughter is in the administrative pipeline, I understand. That, I infer, explains why Board Member Edgecomb makes fulsome comments that make not a whit of sense. She's just running on empty. Edgecomb is afraid if she does something for taxpayers, teachers, and students, that will impede her daughter's progress on the administration stairway to heaven. My guess is her daughter has a degree in some aspect of early childhood: just the ticket to an administrative job managing some business aspect of the schools for which she has not a whit of credentials.
A guy got up to speak who had run against Ms. Edgecomb for the school board. So she's not invulnerable to challenge.
That cheers one up. If he runs again, I will send him some money if he is not a fascist--although a fascist might be an improvement over Ms. Chatty Cathy Edgecomb.
Chatty Cathy the name of one of the dolls my girls used to cry for. It talked when you pulled a string.
For some reason, the girls would undress the dolls the minute they got them. So when they grew up and left home, I went into the storage room of the garage on Lois one day and saw about 30 naked dolls lying in mute testimony to the end of my girls' childhood. I don't know why girls strip dolls the first thing after they get them, but they do. I burst out in tears, picking up one dirty naked doll, then another, trying to recall when we gave the doll, to which of our three girls, and on what Christmas.
When Ms. Edgecomb ran for the board, I was a La Gaceta columnist. Patrick Manteiga, my publisher, and his wife, Angie, invited Susan Valdes on her first run for the board to a Tiger Bay luncheon; my husband and I invited Ms. Edgecomb. Charlie Crist was the speaker. Because his Republican party's platform was homophobic, I asked him at question time if he were gay. Ms. Edgecomb almost fell off her chair and could be seen edging away from me in horror.
She has never sent my husband and me a thank-you note for the luncheon. I suppose that is to signal that she altogether disassociates herself from me because I take the First Amendment seriously. I think omitting sending a thank-you note for a lunch violates the board's rigamarole on civil conduct. It certainly violates my Southern mother's ideas on decorum. If a person didn't write a thank-you note for treating him or her to lunch, my mother would say that the person "was raised in a barn."
From: Anonymous [mailto:noreply-comment@blogger.com]
Sent: Thursday, January 17, 2008 11:01 PM
To: tdecesar@tampabay.rr.com
Subject: [Lee Drury De Cesare's Casting-Room Couch] New comment on onster.gostats.com';_goa=401613;_got=1;_goi=1;_goz....
Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "onster.gostats.com';_goa=401613;_got=1;_goi=1;_goz...":
This is the best commentary about "hiring from within" that I have seen recently.
The mindset that goes along with promotion-without-background must also be what drives them to name schools after themselves and have a continuous parade of self-congratulatory pomp and circumstance.
Bringing in a professional from the outside would show them all up and upset their "close family" ties that hinder.
I think you are right about their being afraid of brains and talent. The denizens of ROSSAC have nailed down a little corner of the taxpayer money-and-power pie, and they are milking it for all it's worth.
This greed to hold onto their state money kitty and power explains their resistance to giving teachers and students a permanent place on the board agenda. They want people to forget that students and teachers are whom the board is supposed to serve, that the the board and administration are mere support for teachers and students. The administration and board want to give the impression that they are the school system and that teachers and students are mere props.
This hostility to teachers and students explains Elia's thrusting down teachers' throats the extra class without consulting them and now initiating the grade-inflation scheme without consulting teachers to make her performance look better. That she did not consult teachers on this grade scam confirms that she inferred correctly that teachers would probably resist the dummying down of grades.
The administration and board are in fact jealous of teachers and fear them because the board and administration know in their bones that teachers have legitimacy and that the board and administration don't. However much they try to diminish and disrespect teachers, they know that teachers are the real heart and soul of the school experience for students. Every one of us can name at least one teacher whose influence on us was profound. I can name half a dozen, beginning in grammar school Adams was right: teachers do affect eternity. Board members and administration featherbedders don't.
Not one board member has asked the attorney to obey the law and provide me with public documents. Not one has asked that teachers and students get a formal slot on the board agenda. I am not surprised at the rest of the board, but that Griffin and Valdes do not use their board position to bring about these things does surprise me. That the small things Griffin and Valdes have done so far as nods in teachers' direction look important only because the rest of the board is so hostile to teachers and students.
If we are ever going to have a board that works for the public, students, and teachers instead of being servants of the superintendent, there must be on the board members with enough courage and enough concern about students, teachers, and the public to risk the ire of Candy Olson's, Carol Kurdell's, et al's, and administration's disapproval for designationg teachers and students a place on the public agenda and insisting that the attorney obey the public records laws.
Board members with guts will also pull administrative appointments off the consent calender such as the boutique job Elia created for Dr. Hamilton while he dithered about retiring and then doing away with the job the minute he retired. This Hamilton-specific job cost tax payers $80,000 for the nine months that he dawdled after Elia created the niche job for the old huffer and puffer. Not one board member objected to this arrogant appropriation of public money to propitiate thd old humbug Hamilton, who, I understand, liked to brag that he was a b----rd to work for. I believe he had performance problems and needed IV Viagra as pschosexual prop. You'd have to say that Hamilton was just plain pitiful.
We don't have any gutsy board members yet. The future may produce one or more. I believe Burns will upset Hamilton. Then who will there be to write the mayor on board stationery using board clerical help to give his condo a break on its water bill? That's the kind of perquisite people of Lamb's mentality run for public office to get. To hell with the public, students, and teachers: it's the condo- water-bill reduction that gets priority.
I hope Burns does not disappoint us. If he leads, I hope Griffin and Valdes will follow him. Neither seems to have the right stuff to lead themselves. Leaders have to do what needs doing and not tremble in their boots about somebody's disapproval. Napoleon and Alexander the Great didn't care what people thought of them. Why can't we have at least one school board member who has that fine disregard for cowards' dispproval? lee
1 comment:
I did not understand Candy Olson's comments after you called her on the carpet. Her only defense seemed to be, "You don't understand how school board meetings work." It made no sense at all. Basically, she does not want the public to be a part of the school board meeting, and when someone has the audacity to be a part of it, she chastises that person as being ignorant of school board meetings and protocol. This is another way of saying, "Shut up and let me sit here and allow Elia to get away with whatever she wants to! Quit bothering me to do anything about anything!"
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