Former Hillsborough official falls from new job
Once upon a time before MaryEllen Elia took over the Hillsborough school district, Donnie Evans (above) was the district's top-ranking black official. He oversaw several key programs and was often present in the news.
He applied for the superintendent's job here in Tampa, but couldn't muster enough School Board votes to make the finalist pool. Soon after Elia took over, he was shuffled out of the role he held under Earl Lennard and, eventually, Evans left to lead the Providence, R.I., school district.
Well, 2-1/2 years later, Evans finds himself on the outside once again. He resigned his post last week, just one day before his School Board was scheduled to consider renewing his contract. The local teachers union had voted its lack of confidence in Evans a week earlier. And he had come under a storm of political controversy for, among other things, offering a contract to Charlene Staley, a former Hillsborough school official also shuffled out under Elia. Less than a year later, Evans married Staley.
Evans had other problems, as well. Want more? Read the Providence Journal's first-day story here and its second-day story here. To see his resignation letter, click here.
He learned about crony hiring at the Hillsborough County School Board and took the practice with him to his new job.
The difference is he didn't take the complicit school board in Hillsborough County that winks at the superintendent's hiring cronies or in the most recent case the spouse of Linda Kipley, the Torquemada of the Professional Standards cell block.
The May 20th board meeting had a parade of companies who had promoted diversity in hiring. There was no black on the school-board podium except Ms. Ethridge. I counted eight blacks total in the room. Two were school-board guards. The school board is not big for diversity. It gives out awards in a hypocritical ceremony; it does not practice diversity itself.
1 comment:
Actually very sad. I suppose ethics are simply not taught at USF or UNC anymore, as well as grammar and other basic English language skills. However, the cronyism and plagerism sections are apparently very poplualted with future HCSD administrators.
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