Merry Christmas to All

Thank you and to all who make the fight against the board and administration's mistreatment of teachers, I wish a merry Christmas. I think we will make a few inroads in the new year. The thing is to just keep chipping away. lee

From: Anonymous [mailto:noreply-comment@blogger.com]
Sent: Tuesday, December 23, 2008 8:16 PM
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Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "It's a Pile-on by the Minions of the Darkness in ...":

Lee-

Thanks for all you do for teachers, parents, students and the district. Have a MERRY CHRISTMAS and let's hold out hope for a "NEW" Year!

Same to you and amen for the second wish.

Pollyanna

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Posted by Anonymous to Lee Drury De Cesare's Casting-Room Couch at 5:15 PM

From: Thomas Vaughan [mailto:noreply-comment@blogger.com]
Sent: Wednesday, December 24, 2008 9:09 AM
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Subject: [Lee Drury De Cesare's Casting-Room Couch] New comment on Merry Christmas to All.

Thomas Vaughan has left a new comment on your post "Merry Christmas to All":

merry Christmas to you Lee. My best to your husband too.

Thomas Vaughan

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Posted by Thomas Vaughan to Lee Drury De Cesare's Casting-Room Couch at 6:09 AM

Back to you, Thomas, as well as your family. We have a sprightly year before us, fighting the harassment of you and other teachers and many other issues. But we are up to the challenge. lee

Ms. Cobbe: Do you have public information that addresses this citizen’s question below? Thank you.

From: Anonymous [mailto:noreply-comment@blogger.com]
Sent: Wednesday, December 24, 2008 11:09 AM
To: tdecesar@tampabay.rr.com
Subject: [Lee Drury De Cesare's Casting-Room Couch] New comment on Merry Christmas to All.

Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "Merry Christmas to All":

Merry Christmas, Lee and Hubby. Same to you and to your family.

When you come back, I would love to hear your thoughts on Mrs. Elia's charitable donation of her bonus proceeds.

I have written on Ms. Elia’s “bonus” charity before.She timed it to the Christmas season to tug at the heart strings of those uniformed about the administration's and board's rascalities. I said then and repeat that the bonus is the money stolen from the teachers by Elia with the board's ok for teachers' raising student scores.

Ms. Elia had nothing to do with that miracle that takes place only in the classroom. It is a transfer of knowledge that teachers only preside over. In fact, Elia makes teachers’ lives as miserable as possible. She inflicted on them an extra class without warning, and the board sat by and let this outrage occur. She made some teachers use grade inflation that disadvantaged the students and derogated the teachers’ professionalism. The board approved. She bought a 30 million-dollar gimcrack Spring doodad to replace English and math books without consulting teachers or even apparently the board, yet is is teachers who have to implement it. The board was mum.

I hear that more and more teachers are not using this expensive geegaw that I believe3 enriches some marginally literate operator in the business world with whom most likely a board member or Ms. Elia are buddies. Such thugs are trying to commercialize education for the enrichment of the stupid in the business world.

I said and repeat that Ms. Elia’s desperation for good publicity drove her to let go of the $42,000 that she stole from teachers with the board’s complicity. I believe pressure from the blog community helped create that pressure.

Finally, let me again point out that neither Ms. Elia nor the board will designate a place on the board agenda for teachers and students to speak. If these two pivotal populations of the schools come to a meeting, these teachers and students, the heart of the school system, must sign in for the “citizens” speech slot.

I emailed both Ms. Griffin and Ms. Valdes to work for this student-teacher slot on the agenda. Neither answered me even though I had supported both in their first election tries and had donated both considerable money.

Dumb me. I had no idea how getting elected to a school board would turn these two’s heads. They seemed normal to me before they were elected. In fact, Ms. Valdes has distinguished her career by spending $50,000 of tax money on board travel when thousands of poor children in the district can't afford to participate in class projects for lack of the supplies they need. A normal citizen must label such tax-paid junketing as insane abuse of the tax monies that the public pays and thinks they go to the schools and the students. This gesture has made me put Ms. Valdes in the lower quartile of the Stanford Binet.

I just received a message calling me a “lying bitch.” We must be doing something right. lee

I'm also curious to know if Mrs. Elia is compensated for any of her keynote addresses, speaking engagements, or panel discussions that she takes part in throughout the year. I think that might make for interesting discussion.

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Posted by Anonymous to Lee Drury De Cesare's Casting-Room Couch at 8:09 AM