This and That

Alafia blog: http://www2.tbo.com/content/2008/dec/08/coaching-alafia-principal-could-cost-district-thou/

This post above on the Alfia site repeats the Tribune article outlining what it will cost to rehabilitate the Alfia principal so that she can treat the parents and students as if they were human beings. The principal's mentor gets $340 a day; both the offending principal and her vice principal will go to Eckerd for a people's skills course at $4,500 a pop.

And let me get this straight: does the administration appoint principals with personality disorders who are without the ability to interact with other people? Isn't determining such behavioral facility a part of the interview? Who hired these flawed principals (there are more listed in the Tribune article)? Whoever did needs a review of his or her perception abilities and maybe needs personality reassessment as well.

What shocks me is the obsessive solicitude Ms. Elia accords these erring administrators and how much tax money goes into what looks like to me to be amateur psychological therapy.

When did yo ever hear of a teacher who sneezed at the wrong time's being given this solicitous and expensive remediation of personality therapy?

The answer is never. Teachers get dragooned into Professional Standards Abu Ghraib for teeny lapses either real or cooked up by the administration to fire one who dares to speak out against the ROSSAC crew or, worse, wites a blog about it.

What has the CTA done about this outrage? Answer: nothing. CTA shakes down teachers for $500 a year and never thinks about protecting them from the routine administration harassment (often augmented by their principals either of their own volition or with the instructions of ROSSAC) including firing for trivial contretemps while the Alafia principal, who has got a large contingent of parents in an uproar, gets the solicitude of Elia's attention and a pile of taxpayer money to correct her personality to the point that she is able to deal with parents and students as human being. lee

ROSSAC has hired a former principal to mentor the peronality-challenged pricipal who has, I am obliged to remark, has one of the worst overbites I have ever seen. The principal gets to go to Eckerd as does her vice principal at $4500 a pop.

Next we will hear that administration has sent the pair to Hawaii for rest and relaxation.

This Alafai administrative peccadillo is just one more example that the school system runs for the benefit of the administrative class and to hell with the field hand teachers and students. Lee

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Heavens, this post on the Alafia blogspot below is pregnant with meaning. If only I knew who Ellyn and the Smiths are, I could understand this message in a bottle better.

This person filing this post is obviously an April supporter. My read on April is that she lacks the courage and poise to bring the fights to the podium circle and smoke the enemies of the voters, teachers, and students out so that their positions will be plain for people to judge. You can’t displace the five collaborators unless you make people know what they are doing to trash the schools.

Exposing board traitors of education will encourage other people to run for the office of board member.

April and Susan didn’t bother to answer my email asking them to let students and teachers have a permanent place on the board agenda so that they could get their views in. I don’t know whether this means April and Susan don’t want to share the spotlight or whether they think the board discussions are none of the teachers’ and students’ business.

The thing for people serious about changing the board to one that serves the people, not the ROSSAC thugs, is to organize to beat Falliero in the next election. I will contribute my deposition Falliero-Hart data showing she carried on an affair with Marc Hart that she initiated, broke up his family, and savaged his two little children by causing them pain when Hart to divorced his wife. I will also write all the major organizations in Brendan that Falliero says she belongs to alert them to Falliero’s not being fit for the board. Falliero dumped Hart after she had broken up his marriage and let the administration fire the poor chump to protect her “reputation,” which is to say to protect an Elia vote on the board.

Who in the world is on the board who is not an insider besides April and Susan? It has to be Candy or Edgecombe. They both seem solid Elia supporters to me, not to mention solid ninnies.

Susan should speak up on the podium and bring issues into the open so the public could wise up. She has this great, booming voice that would be effective up there from the podium. It’s no good to fight the administration behind the scenes. You have to bring the fights to the public square. This effort is like teaching school. You keep pounding a lesson until the students or public learn it.

It wouldn’t hurt if April and Susan went to the effort of learning Roberts Rules. Roberts Rules isn’t hard. It’s just tedious. Anybody who has Roberts Rules down cold can dominate a meeting. If Griffin and Valdes knew that when Lamb rushes to call the question, it is a debatable motion and gets a second and debate before the vote is taken if a member is sharp enough to challenge an immediate call from Lamb with Point of Order. Acting on this knowledge would help them keep collaborator Lamb from rushing anything that threatens ROSSAC off the floor with an immediate vote. And although Carol Kurdell, new chair, is an administration toady, as chair, she needs to call for a second after Lamb's move to call the question.

One should say, “Point of order” when Lamb rushes a discussion to a close before everybody can comment. Point of order ranks high in precedence for Roberts Rules. It beats out most other motions. And if board members need to establish this fact, they can call on Godfather Mouthpiece Gonzalez for confirmation. He is supposed to know Roberts Rules. He doesn’t know commas, but that’s another story. The chair should intervene and ask for a second to Lamb's motion to ratify that it is a question that needs a second and should get debate.

If April had a lick of sense about propaganda as a weapon, she would hold a press conference in the lobby of the school board, and Susan with her if Susan has the cajones (am I spelling that right?), and speak up about the issues. Griffin shouldn’t hem and haw and dither at this press conference like she is apt to do. She should just spit it out.

Anybody who wants to see how the premier genius of propaganda pulled of the magic that made Hitler the father of the German race when he was only an Austrian paper hanger should read Goebbel's diaries.

The administration would go crazy if Griffin and Valdes had the nerve to insist on full discussion on the dais. Lamb would vault the podium as he tried to do when I rebuked him once about his defection from the ways of the righteous about something illegal or unethical he did (I now forget what), and Elia would put the Public Affairs office into overdrive, sending out spin cotton candy to throw the press off.

The press is not hard to throw off: Its current board representatives from the Times and Tribune have the curiosity of amoebas. Now that the print press is dwindling (the Tribune is a ghost town; the Miami Herald is for sale; the LA Times and Chicago Tribune just went into bankruptcy), they are cautious to the point of coma about what they write. They write the most innocuous copy possible in the mistaken belief that this will prolong their death throes before the Web and blogs overwhelm the print press. Their gutless bosses probably require them to write piffle.

If the press leadership had a lick of sense, it would emphasize such local agons as now play out in the schools' board and administration.

Readers love to read about fights, and ROSSAC is the site of a continuous one. The press also ignored the multi-year Erwin crucifixion until the very end. The press stood around and pretended it didn’t know what was going on as did the board members. Only when Erwin got a lawyer, took the ROSSAC thugs to court, and won the case and a settlement did the press roust itself to report these data.

I am coming tonight under difficult circumstances with my spouse of 51 years. He hates missing a ball game, but he is too selfish to lend me his old Mercedes, older than mine even. My old own old Mercedes is at the mechanic’s under a death watch. A gasket or something has blown, several things are leaking, etc., etc. I hate to think of the bill. Nothing on a Mercedes is cheap. I will never get another dress until my death shroud.

I attend this afternoon chiefly to watch the Alafia people in action bit also to get in a few licks of my own. I may petition the Alafia squad for its autographs to start a fan club for its members; I will plead for Alafia protest stars' emails to keep in touch.

Changing the world—even a little piece of it like the Hillsborough County School Board—takes guts, fire, and dedication. Revolution is not for the faint of heart or those who can’t dig in for the long haul.

This wisdom I know from my 45 years in the Women’s Movement. You have to dig in and stay in.

I only wish I had an Alafia t-shirt. The Alafia Minions of the Light should sell them in the lobby of the ROSSAC fortress.

Go, Alafia!

Lee

Sent: Tuesday, December 09, 2008 6:39 AM
To: lee de cesare
Subject: Did you read this on the Alafia blogspot?

December 3, 2008 3:17 PM

Anonymous said...

One poster asked THE question: What is Ellyn's connection to the school board? It's simple. Jack Lamb. Jack and Ellyn's husband Ashley are both members of the Krewe of Sant'Yago. Jack is a former Sant'Yago Rey (King) and I believe though am not sure that Ashley has also served the Sant'Yago court possibly as Rey also.

Jack is known to socialize with the Smiths and has even been seen acting as a server at one of the Smiths dinner parties.

Jack is on the one of the 5 Administration insiders (Don't let Faliero fool you, so is she. Her sudden bout of conscience is related to her recognizing that her re-election is anything but a fore-gone conclusion. She'll lie and stab you in the back and some of us insiders are of the opinion that she appears schizo.). Jack really pulls the strings behind the scenes at the school board. I see it on a daily basis. Why else do you think he would be so contemptuous toward April and Susan? In his mind, they are working against HIM when they try to go against the grain. Watch the video of Faliero trying to throw April out of the board meeting on Oct 24. Jack was coaching her through it... I was there and saw it first hand.

So now you should understand the source of Ellyns protection. What really is annoying to me is that people are paying so little attention to the politics of the school board, even to the point of belittling them when things are not placid and colegial. The result: we the people re-elected Kurdell who is the biggest supporters of the status quo that sits at the school board dais. If you really want change you have to change the makeup of the schoolboard first.

The fight that April is brining is a necessary one. The powerful do not cede their influence without a fight. As such the public needs to understand that some eggs will HAVE to be broken in order to make this omelette. It may get nasty, embarrasing, and distracting but if we don't go through this process nothing will ever change.

This community needs to sit up and pay very close attention to this elected body that gets a BIG chunk of our property taxes, then if we REALLY want change get involved and change the make up of the board so that April has some help. The truth is very evident you just have to get engaged and pay close attention to understand it.

Signed, An Insider

Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "The Answer to the Puzzle":

Lee you need to clear the cob webs. Out of one side of your mouth you berate Elia for leading by force. From the other side you berate April for taking a behind the scenes approach (i.e. Not leading by force).

You can't have it both ways. Well actually I guess you can, but it reveals your hypocrisy and demeans you.

I think your problem with April is that she is independent and more importantly she is not your puppet. Stop being a petulant old fart and back her up would you. Set your bruised ego aside for the greater good.

Watch for some interesting developments with Ellyn Smith at Alafia this week. As I understand it, April and Jeniffer coordinated some resolution behind the scenes (Without having to act like raving lunatics as you would have them do). If this is true, it would paint April in a very different light than you try to cast her. It would reveal her as a shrewd and powerful leader who is not leading by force.

I could say something nice about Jeniffer too I suppose, but I won't because I don't like her.

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Posted by Anonymous to Lee Drury De Cesare's Casting-Room Couch at 4:44 PM