To: candy.olson@sdhc.k12.fl.us; jennifer.falliero@sdhc.k12.fl.us; doretha.edgecomb@sdhc.k12.fl.us; jack.lamb@sdhc.k12.fl.us; Susan Valdes; april.griffin@sdhc.k12.fl.us; dorothy.kurdell@sdhc.k12.fl.us.com
Subject: monkey biz
I decided not to go to the board meeting today because as the British say I was feeling a little fragile.
Had I gone, I would have addressed the peripatetic board members who travel on tax money after they promised on the stump to "save every penny of tax money" with their fingers crossed behind them.
What does spending all that tax money reveal about the character of our board members? It means they are selfish, narcissistic, duplicitous, greedy, and shallow. That they go to such venues as Las Vegas and Alaska on tax money means they have contempt for their duty as board members to act in an honorable manner. It means the county needs an entirely new board. This one has struck out.
Handling their own travel money without any administration participation shows us what their priorities are. Those are me, me, me. If they can't handle their own travel money and not act like greedy children and gouge the taxpayers, then they certainly can't handle the schools' business. No wonder they yawn when Ms. Elia stacks the consent agenda with buddy hires. They are not interested in school business. They are wondering if they can manage a trip to the Riviera paid by the taxpayer chumps.
The state might as well turn the school boards over to somebody else for all the good the board members do the schools. There might as well not be a school board. The governor can appoint a local thug to rip off the taxpayers as superintendent as well as the board can. We all recall that this board lowered the credentials for Ms. Elia and charged the taxpayers $35,000 to cover up their scam with a show “national search for the very best candidate.” Ms. Elia got the job as the inside candidate least likely to interfere with their incumbency.
Ms. Elia has just replaced the last PH.D. slot after Dr. Gregor left with a master's person. One infers she wants to lower the administrators' credentials to her level. One wonders if Ms. Kipley’s husband’s degree-deficient husband, who took the job away from candidates with the cited credentials, presages Ms. Elia’s recruiting buddies out-of-work high school dropout relatives for administrative slots with salaries of $130,000.
The administration now has Davis with an early childhood degree and not one credit in technology as the head of technology; Connie Mileto with kindergarten credentials as the political officer in Tallahassee thanks to Dr. Hamilton's ardent sponsorship of her for a job that should have a political-science degree; Linda Kipley with a home-ec degree when she should have a psychology or criminal justice degree for Professional Standards; Cathy Valdes with an early childhood degree to manage major building when she should have a business degree. She and Elia managed to destroy a valuable school building by their maladroit handling of its sale. It is now in ruins, thanks to the stupidity of the two. This conduct makes me think that les Valdes and Elia are not sufficiently educated to value the cultural heritage of the area.
That Ms. Susan Valdes went on $50,000 worth of trips to pick up gimcrack awards that the educational bureaucracy downloads on each other by the Dempsey Dumpster is appalling. Ms. Elia must have gotten a dozen Greatest Superintendent in the Galaxy already this year. There doubtless exist slim pickings for awardees in the ranks. The competitors I have spotted look acromegalic.
That Ms. Valdes gobbled up all that travel money to pick up Cracker Jacks prizes does not say much for her intelligence. And it says her ethics let her think this greedy conduct is ok in a district where thousands of children can't participate in class activities because they don't have the money for the materials.
All the board members' travel expenses are too high. The board should get not one penny more than $2,000 each a year. That is sufficient to pay for that gaudy board hoedown that all the boards in the country hold once a year in California. One is sure that the attendees don't learn a thing at these brawls that expands their knowledge of schools, although they doubtless refine their taste for margaritas delivered with 3 a.m. room service. We have never seen any evidence of new ideas on the Potted Plant board in Tampa after these yearly bacchanals.
If the board members were interested in expanding their knowledge of useful data to benefit the schools, they could go out to Oregon and talk to the state secondary-school people about how they set up the federally funded program in which the entire state's students are learning Arabic. Hillsborough County has a pitiful little program in Chinese at one of the middle schools. The Muslim culture is something all our children and grandchildren are going to have to come to terms with. It would help to know the language.
Or a couple could go up to Gainesville and Tallahassee and talk to the admissions people about what impact Ms. Elia's imposition of grade inflation on the county schools is going to have on Hillsborough's students' chances of admission to the University of Florida or Florida State.
Another enlightened project would be to travel to a school that has incorporated the Spring in its curriculum and ascertain its success or failure. One hears this gaudy program has performed poorly where it has been adopted. Ms. Griffin would be a good candidate for this survey. She was the one who sat silent until Ms. Elia had inked the Spring contract for several million dollars, and then after the teachers found out about the perfidy and squawked, she tardily suggested that the administration hold a work shop. Not smart. Not at all smart. La Griffin should have insisted on a teacher workshop on the Spring before Ms. Elia signed the deal, not after. Griffin’s thinking in this matter is slow-witted and characteristic of the board's lack of talent for ratiocination that does not have to do with booking airline tickets to some spa.
In fact, the board always seems surprised at the programs Ms. Elia initiates, and Ms. Elia shows no evidence that she has informed the board or ever intends to inform the board about what she is doing with great piles of tax money without their knowledge. The board does not protest. It has trips to plan.
So far, the board members have been content to wallow in their travel excesses and lark around the country with a hey nonny nonny.
I want to see the folder in the Public Affairs office that holds the receipts for their travels. When I asked for it the first time, only Valdes and Olson had bothered to file. I will ask the Chambers of Commerce of the various ports of call if the board gad-abouts stayed at the poshest, most expensive hotels on the taxpayers’dime.
I shall send a copy of this message to all members of the spa-hopping board. They need to hear a discouraging word on their traveling excesses.
lee drury de cesare
5 comments:
I agree with you about no need for a school board. The majority simply rubberstamps everything Elia wants as you've said in the past. So why bother to have a school board? They should all simply step down from their positions and let Elia have free reign to do as she pleases with absolutely no oversight. As it stands that is how it is anyway, except that they all pretend that there is oversight.
Lee, just because you can't see what benefit any of Susan's travels have accrued doesn't mean they aren't there. Logic 101 - absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. As a woman who uses her education as a cudgel against the administration, you should hold yourself to a higher standard. As it stands now, your tirades are approaching that state best described by H. L. Mencken:
"He writes the worst English that I have ever encountered. It reminds me of a string of wet sponges; it reminds me of tattered washing on the line; it reminds me of stale bean soup, of college yells, of dogs barking idiotically through endless nights. It is so bad that a sort of grandeur creeps into it. It drags itself out of the dark abysm of pish, and crawls insanely up to the topmost pinnacle of posh. It is rumble and bumble. It is flap and doodle. It is balder and dash."
Only your writing is somehow worse - it retains the leftovers of its former clarity and grace, and it saddens the reader with memories of what must have been.. before.
Why does Elia wear her hair behind her ears? It looks like a mullet. That is such an unprofessional haircut for a superintendent to have.
I sort of agreed with everyone about Valdes being the better choice in the Valdes/Schmidt race, but after reading the article in the Trib about the latest Elia evaluation makes me think Lee is right about Valdes and Griffin. They have totally caved in. It is sad. So we have a 7 member rubber stamp board now apparently, so after that article I am sort of in agreement with Lee, except that Schmidt is not a choice either. It is hopeless. People get on the board wanting to make a difference and somehow through peer pressure they are forced to go along with the majority. There is no hope.
Re-elect NOBODY!
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