Office of the Governor
The Capitol
Tallahassee, FL 32399-0001

February 2, 2008-02-

Governor Crist:

You campaigned on your dedication to education.

You may not be aware of how bad Superintendent MaryEllen Elia’s go-it-alone policies in Hillsborough County are for education. They negatively affect students and teachers, the heart and soul of education.

The board goes along with Ms. Elia no matter how wrongheaded she is. The board seems to have no ambition but to occupy its ceremonial positions and not impact how Ms. Elia unilaterally runs the schools. There may as well be no board at all in Hillsborough County as the one that occupies that position now.

Ms. Elia omits teachers altogether from her unilateral decisions. She loaded an extra class on teachers at the beginning of the school year to solve her budget problems without alerting them or even all board members. She passed on the data to favorites.

I have heard teachers complain about how this burden harms their ability to do their job to pass learning on to students The board sits by supine in this as in all decisions. In the board room, all board heads swing toward Ms. Elia to see what their attitude should be on any question.

Now Ms. Elia has imperially loaded a grading procedure on teachers to dummy down grades without consulting them. I believe she arrogated this privilege after a visit with you, sir, which she inferred bestowed your approval on her grade-devaluation scheme.

Teachers have at last stirred in rebellion on the Elia grade-dummying -down move. See the comments of veteran science teacher Jackie Kalbas below. Kalbas’s objection to devaluing grades formed Tribune columnist Steve Otto’s recent column.

Elia, abetted by the board, denigrates teachers and students. Ms. Elia and her obedient board will not even give these sine qua nons in the education equation a permanent place on the board agenda. Both board and superintendent appear to want not to have to acknowledge that teachers and students are the reasons for schools. Taxpayers don’t fund schools for superintendents and board members to prance around, issue ukases, and wax important.

The superintendent and board want teachers and their students to be quiet and continue to provide the financial base that gives the administration and the board freedom to pursue their schemes of power and prestige in the political and education-bureaucracy’s worlds.

Ms. Elia is the least qualified of candidates who applied for the superintendent job in 2005. I reviewed the applicant file and as a former college professor know qualified from unqualified in education matters. Elia lacked degrees and experience to be the top candidate. Indeed, the lady can’t even punctuate and handle grammar with competence. For an industry devoted to instilling literacy into young people, this compromised ability on the suprintendent’s part is ironic if not obscene.

But Ms. Elia was incestuous inside political appointment as were the superintendents before her in the Hillsborough County’s closed, parochial world of school administrators. The disingenuous board charged taxpayers $35,000 for a sham nationwide search when its members already knew Elia was their choice. The board signaled Elia was its pick by lowering the Ph.D. degree requirement to fit her master’s degree.

Elia was the choice of the long-running inside administrative power cartel that schemes to put into the superintendent chair a person who will continue to bloat their salaries, award no-bid contracts to buddies and former administrators, and ignore the opinions of teachers, whom the administration terrorizes with loss of jobs by referring anyone who objects to administrative excesses to the Professional
Standards office.

I consider the no-bid racket to be one that invites graft. Logic suggests that graft has, in fact, accompanied it for all the years it has been in operation. The board with two exceptions supports the no-bid racket as well as the attorney. Mr. Gonzalez’s support rests, I believe, on his own no-bid award of the board-attorney job fourteen years ago.

A second problem with the Elia hegemony is that she is greedy. Even the Tribune has editorialized against this unlovely trait. She gets a “performance” bonus from a scheme continued from Dr. Lennard’s incumbency. He had negotiated it with an adoring board and the feckless board attorney, Tom Gonzalez. who enjoys a no-bid attorney sinecure that Lennard awarded him.

Board member Candy Olson cooperated with Ms. Elia to fold this Lennard scheme based on teachers’, not superintendent’s work, into her contract. As one can imagine, this is a bitter pill for teachers to swallow. A superintendent that scorns and devalues them gets the fruit of teachers’ work.

Even the two board members who gave Elia bad grades on her annual evaluation voted for this ill-conceived superintendent bonus in the unanimous tax giveaway of voters’ money that her bloated contract represents.

What can you do, sir, to improve the education in Hillsborough County that you assured voters you valued when you ran for governor?

First, be aware of Ms. Elia’s money-grabbing tendencies and the board’s collusion have resulted in a $300,000 salary that tops the pay of superintendents with impeccable credentials and varied, wide experience nationwide. Do something to rein in such bloated superintendent salaries in Florida. In this state the education bureaucracy comprises the academic weaklings who couldn’t make it in the world of valid academic achievement and substituted degrees in an exotic educational subculture of non-academic degrees often from marginal universities such as the diploma mill NOVA.

Second, encourage superintendents—especially ones who like Ms. Elia view teachers and students as the inconvenient money base for their power-- to include teachers and students in the decisions that affect both populations. Suggest to Ms. Elia directly that the board agenda feature a settled slot during which teachers and students get a say in how the board and superintendent run the schools. Suggest that Ms. Elia and the board send around an email welcoming students and teachers to participate in board colloquy and assure them that their comments won’t form basis for referring them to the Abu Ghraib cell block.

Third, be aware that Ms. Elia is of the genus that, if you give its members an inch, they will take a mile. When Ms. Elia comes to see you in Tallahassee, be alert that she on her return to Tampa will order the school public-affairs office to issue a press release that spins the visit as evidence that she has great pull with you and that the governor and she are simpatici on her most wrong-headed notions about education.

Ms. Elia will order the school public-affairs office to spin your relationship with her as latitude to pursue her my-way-or-the-highway mode of leadership that has been so injurious to the teachers and students and learning in Hillsborough County.

Henry Adams said, “A teacher affects eternity.”

He didn’t say that a superintendent, a school board, or even a governor affects eternity.

Guard the rights of the ones who affect eternity. Protect them against a superintendent dismissive of and even, I believe, jealous of teachers’ centrality to education.

Hillsborough county’s misrun school system needs your attention, sir. The students and teachers need your succor.

Lee drury de cesare

15316 Gulf Boulevard 802

Madeira Beach, FL 33708

tdecesar@tampabay.rr.com

leedrurydecesarescasting-February 2, 2008roomcouch.blogspot.com

c: press of SP and Tampa

This meeting with Crist appears to be one that Elia interprets as giving his go-ahead for her imposing grade inflation on the schools without consulting teachers.

April 17, 2007

Crist is listening

Gov. Charlie Crist is open to reviewing the FCAT standards in high school, where the state asks students to jump a much higher bar than in the lower grade levels. It's a pet issue for the Hillsborough Superintendent MaryEllen Elia, who brought it up during a nearly half-hour meeting Monday with Crist in Tallahassee.

The district has found that 10th graders just meeting the state's standards rank in the top 20 percent of students nationally. At lower grades, students making the FCAT bar perform far less well compared to their peers nationally. Third-graders, for example, place just above the bottom third.

"I am willing to listen to further talk," Crist said. "If there are always ways that we can make it, you know, better, why wouldn't we?"

Elia cheered his response. "I felt like our work on identifying (the issue) for him paid off," she said. "I pointed out to him that we've had this as a concern for a number of months." Elia doesn't expect anything to happen overnight. After all, as far as explosive issues go in Tallahassee, there's none bigger than changing the FCAT.

- Letitia Stein, Hillsborough County education reporter

April 17, 2007 in FCAT, High Schools, Hillsborough County | Permalink | Comments (0)

This Tribune Steve Otto Column is the one in which veteran science teacher Jackie Kalbas details teachers’ opposition to Elia’s dummying down grade-inflation ukase without consulting teachers. Board members sat passive as they did when Elia loaded an extra class on teachers out of the blue without letting them know it was coming or giving them a chance to comment.

Failure Steve Otto column Published: Jan 23, 2008 Jackie Kalbas wanted to talk about what's happening in our public schools. Kalbas is a long-time Hillsborough County science teacher and an institution at Wilson Middle School. She is one of our very best and I figure her letter speaks to the issue better than anything I can write: "I was shocked at the front page article about exam curving in The Tampa Tribune. I read it three times in disbelief. I understand that there may be discrepancies in grades in the county, but this is not the way to solve that problem. "First of all, the high school science curve was based on exam scores from last year. Some of the high school science exams were different this year. In science the curve was set before the exam was ever administered. "Second, you don't improve education by lowering your expectations to match what the students achieve. You improve education by setting your expectations high and working with students until they meet those expectations. "Third, whoever said that an exam should match classroom achievement for a nine-week period? Nine-week grades include extra credit, homework, participation, etc. It should be harder to get an A on a midterm examination which tests accumulated knowledge from two nine-week periods. "If the exams are 'too hard' and do not reflect what the students should reasonably be expected to learn, then you fix the exams. If teachers are not doing their jobs, then they should be replaced. "In truth, teachers have been given much more to teach than is humanly possible. Because of [the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test] the curriculum has been expanded (we have to teach more standards). Because of this, we can't spend the required amount of time to teach concepts to mastery. We are left "covering information" rather than teaching. We have tons more paperwork, more communication with parents, more meetings and less planning time. "There aren't even enough substitute teachers, so that many times we have no planning period because we have to cover classes for other teachers. All this means that some good teachers are doing less than their best through no fault of their own. "If students who should not be in honors classes are being placed there regardless of their achievement, then this practice should be stopped. Yes, there are very capable students in this county who are disadvantaged by circumstances beyond their control. They are not achieving at the rate they could be and are therefore not getting into advanced and honors classes. "We are not helping students by keeping them in classes where they do not belong. We're not helping anyone by devaluing the grades of high-achieving students with exam curves deep enough to bury a statistician. "It looks good on paper when we have lots more students in advanced and honors classes. It doesn't look so good, however, when those students are removed or fail because they can't measure up. We need to be honest with ourselves, tell it like it is and work to solve our problems. Up To College Standards? "The newspaper article was quick to quote college sources that say curves are arbitrary and good exams hard to make. I'd like to see what some college professors think about this new 'curve the grade' policy. Do they really want students in their college classes who should not be there? Will colleges keep accepting Hillsborough County students with inflated grades? Will employers hire Hillsborough County graduates who earned C's with less than 50 percent achievement? "If exam grades are having such a negative effect on students' overall grades and having an effect on their college entrance, then maybe exam grades should not be weighted so heavily. … No matter what, you don't curve the grades so that a student who earns 100 percent on an exam receives the same grade as a student who earns 61 percent. This was the case in regular physics in Hillsborough County this year. This is just WRONG. Dumbing It Down "It seems to me that we are 'dumbing down' education and lowering our expectations when we should be doing just the opposite. Every chance I get I argue that public education is not bad and that we are doing the best job possible with what we have to work with. "I see teachers get to school when the doors open and leave long after the sun goes down. Teachers work nights, weekends, even during the holidays, and summer vacation to improve their students' achievement. "I am a defender and advocate of public education. But this curve and the reasons for it are, in my opinion, impossible to defend. This latest decision about exams is the worst and does more to harm education than to help it. It devalues the grades of bona fide high-achieving students, it deceives average and below average students, it is a slap in the face to good teachers, and another black eye to public education. "As a National Board-Certified classroom teacher for over 30 years, I hang my head in shame that my profession has sunk so low. If my children were still in school in Hillsborough County I'd be marching to the school board building demanding that this be changed."

This Tampa Tribune editorial is critical of Elia’s bloated pay. It is significant because the Tribune has favored Elia and has attacked any board member who does not mindlessly support her before because of editorial-page editor Goudreau’s friendship with Elia. I wrote to Media General’s management to complain about these biased, ill-written squibs.

Published: January 18, 2008

It has been widely thought that Hillsborough County School Superintendent MaryEllen Elia's contract gives her a hefty bonus for student achievement. She earned a $37,620 bonus this year alone, but look close and you will see it is only partly grounded in student gains.

Elia earned $13,600 for each school that achieved Annual Yearly Progress under the federal No Child Left Behind law. She got another $10,100 - at $100 a pop - for the 101 Hillsborough Schools that rated an "A" on the FCAT.

That's fair enough.

But she also was given nearly $8,000 for getting more students, particularly black students, to participate in advanced placement classes and to take AP exams - though the number of students who actually did well enough on the test to earn college credit did not improve.

Participation shouldn't be confused with achievement.

The Florida Department of Education also likes to pretend high schools are better than they are because more kids are signing up for advanced courses. One Texas study showed that students who merely participated in AP courses had a better chance of graduation from college than those who did not take AP classes. But the same study showed the best chance of college success was among students who actually passed AP tests.

In Hillsborough, just 45 percent of the more than 15,000 students who take AP courses score well enough on the exam to be given credit. And among minority students, the success rate was even lower.

On other significant measures, Elia received no bonus. There was no bonus for improvements in reading scores for black and Hispanic students in third, eighth and 10th grades. And although she did get a reward for higher math scores among minority students, at less than $1,800 it was just a smidgen of her overall bonus.

The two best measures of education success are nowhere to be found in Elia's contract: the high school graduation rate - not counting GEDs, which the state shamefully allows - and the number of Hillsborough high school graduates who need remediation when they attend a community college or university.

If the school board measured those things, it wouldn't be pretty.

More than 80 percent of those going into Hillsborough Community College need remediation in math, reading and writing because they are not prepared to do college-level work. At the state universities, 55 percent of new students needed remediation.

Elia can't be blamed for negotiating a good deal for herself. She is earning more than $290,518 this year.

It is the school board that is responsible for the largesse. The contract may say Elia is being judged on performance, but parents and the public should not be fooled.

If the Hillsborough School Board truly wanted to reward the superintendent for improving schools, members would change the measures to ones which show Hillsborough students are learning what they need to succeed in life.

Reader Comments

Posted by ( wazzamattaU ) on January 18, 2008 at 8:24 a.m. ( Suggest removal )

Does anyone still believe our schools are under-funded?

Report Abuse

Posted by ( ToeCutter ) on January 18, 2008 at 11:29 a.m. ( Suggest removal )

She needs a tax break.

Report Abuse

Posted by ( Major7th ) on January 18, 2008 at 2:39 p.m. ( Suggest removal )

And yet the budget for our music programs is 90% less than it was 30 years ago. Way to go bean counter, milk the morons that run this school system for all their worth. You obviously don't any teaching experience to make 10 times what our teachers make.

Sisyphus - The Rock that Keeps on Rolling... has left a new comment on your post " Dr. Hi...":

Lee,
I know you have so much to say... and so eloquently.

But..... in today's high high paced world, we must all learn the "haiku" of email. Our ideas will be more read.

Publish this comment.

Reject this comment.

Moderate comments for this blog.

Posted by Sisyphus - The Rock that Keeps on Rolling... to Lee Drury De Cesare's Casting-Room Couch at 3:40 PM

Dear Sisyphus: I am not writing emails, darling; I am writing lucubrations for the ages.

When can we expect some snappy remarks on your site?

love and kisses, lee

Dr. Hildebrand:

Ms. Elia's communication below invites only principals and area directors to call you about this proposal that profoundly affects students and teachers.

Does this exclusivity mean that the administration once again did not consult teachers on a decision that will have deep impact on them and the students they teach?

Could you explain to this citizen why the administration, many of which can't punctuate and handle basic grammar as is the case with Ms. Elia, who makes $300,000 with purloined bonus dollars based on teachers' work, made this decision without soliciting the input of teachers and even students?

The administration does not consider teachers and students worthy of consultation it seems, and the supine board obeys Ms. Elia and refuses to set aside a permanent place in the board agenda for teachers and students to invite them to give their input on such things as Ms. Elia's recent ukase to dummy down grades (see teacher Kalbas's essay below on this problem in Steve Otto's recent Tampa Tribune column below).

One notes that administrators do not have traditional academic degrees, where real scholarship counts; instead, they have degrees in ad-hoc subjects with titles exotic to traditional scholarship or terminal degrees from diploma mills such as NOVA. Ms. Elia kicked out the only administrator in ROSSAC with respectable credentials, Marc Hart, on the trumped-up charge of alcoholism despite his holding a magna- cum-laude degree from Loyola, Ms. Elia dumped Mr. Hart because she feared that Board Member Faliero's adulterous affair with him would surface in the community at large and deprive Ms. Elia of the dependable rubber stamp of Ms. Faliero on the board since citizens might not want an adulterous board member overseeing their children's wellbeing.

Teachers, in contrast to administrators, have math, English, history, physics degrees, etc. The ersatz value and repute of the former education-manqué degrees do not equal the academic heft and validity of the latter in the education world. One would think that this degree-lite administration would be humble about its intellectual ability and thin education credentials to dictate to teachers who possess the real thing on matters that concern teachers' areas of respected, valid academic expertise.

The governor shall know of how this administration and board disregard and dishonor the schools' heart and soul: teachers and students. He shall know how the administration and board lord it over the Hillsborough County schools as if they were a plantation with the field-worker students and teachers' providing the unsung labor that produces education dollars to spend at the discretion--or, more accurately, indiscretion--of an administration ambitious to look good in the state bureaucratic-administration-featherbedding throngs that feed as parasites on the schools but that are not ambitious enough or smart enough or humble enough to do anything substantive to improve education because these bloodsuckers shut out the real educators--teachers-- from decisions that impact the schools.

I intend to alert him to this malignant situation.

lee drury de cesare

Sent: Thursday, January 31, 2008 5:24 PM
To: lee de cesare
Subject:

Friday, January 25, 2008 12:23:50 PM
Message
From: MaryEllen Elia
Subject: Proposed Rule Change: Lower Quartile Improvement Incentives
To: All-Principals
Cc: Lewis Brinson
All-Area-Directors
John Hilderbrand
Attachments: Proposed Rule Change.pdf 379K

Attached is a proposed rule change that will be presented to the State Board of Education in April 2008. This change was recommended to Dr. Eric Smith, Commissioner of Education, at the FCAT External Review Committee meeting on January 18. If the State Board approves the rule change, it would go into effect this year.

I believe this proposed change will help a few schools in our district. The Department of Assessment and Accountability is currently looking at last year's data to see how schools would have performed had this rule been in place.

Additionally, Dr. John Hilderbrand and I, as members of this review committee, continue to present other issues related to the FCAT. We anticipate further recommendations being made to the Commissioner and the State Board.

If you should have any questions in this regard, please feel free to contact Dr. Hilderbrand at 272-4341.

I can't figure out how to convert a pdf file to regular text. As soon as I am able to do so, I will put the proposed changes here. If anybody knows how to convert a PDF message from Microsoft Outlook to Word, instruct me in Romper-Room langauge. I am not good at stuff like converting text. lee

MaryEllen Elia
Superintendent
Hillsborough County Public Schools
Phone: (813) 272-4050
Fax: (813) 272-4038
MaryEllen.Elia@sdhc.k12.fl.us

=

For a while, we posted animal pictures of administrators. This one is Dr. Hamilton. We will miss his gaucheries now that he has finally retired. I know we're childish, but who wants to be mature all the time? I have a firm rule that if I can’t have some fun, I am not going to do it.

We had a great time searching the web for these gems. We exchanged images with great glee, saying, "Look at this one!" and "Here's a winner!" lee

It's instructive to see how Detroit deals with the adultery charges against a public official. The story continues in the Detroit papers. The euphemism of "romantic" text messages invites the question of how "romantic" is adultery?

The diction of newspapers is etiolated when it comes to sex because they are afraid of getting sued one infers. But at least the Detroit papers will write about illicit sex involving public officials. Elected officials could fornicate on Franklin Street, and the Times and Tribune would ignore it to write about a broken redlight on Nebraska.

What puzzles is what the tipping point is that catalyzes the newspapers. I suspect it must be the prudery level of the managing editor or the psychosexual history of the assignment guy. Or maybe the janitor has some issues with sexual improprieties.

http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/01/30/detroit.mayor/index.html

• Story Highlights
• Detroit paper reports romantic text messages between mayor and staff member
• Allegations of an affair arose during whistle-blower trial involving two officers
• Kilpatrick and Beatty, former chief of staff, both denied a romantic relationship
• Mayor's wife said she is hurt, angry, but she loves her husband________________________________

The letter to the board below comes from Bart Birdsall. Bart was my entrance into the pathology of the school board and administration. I had become friends with Bart when trying to help him get the board to acknowledge and do something about the bullying of gay children in the schools. The board and administration are reluctant to inflame and lose the bigot vote. The board, the administration, and the CTA union ill-treated Bart so that I had to reach out and help him if I could. He was badly outnumbered.

Bart had written some critical emails to Joe Stine, head of the county library and gay like Bart, for Stines's supporting Ronda Storm’s homophobic ejecting of gays from the county library.

We'll never know for sure, but here's what I infer happened behind the Wizard-of-Oz curtain of government.

Stines was not forthright or brave enough to write Bart back. Instead, I conclude, he went cry-babying about the emails to his boss, Pat Bean.

Bean is Elia's girlfriend. She allowed her to use her name as a reference for the superintendent job. I wrote Bean that her so doing was unprofessional. But she was too busy raising her salary and perquisites to pay any attention to me. I think she and Elia are in a Who-Can-Bloat-Her-Salary-the-Highest contest.

I infer Bean sent the emails to new superintendent Elia, just dying to flex her muscles in her new power slot and rev up her sadistic use of power. Sure, she told buddy Bean, she would be glad to punish the little worm of a school-media technician and scare the bejesus out of him by making him fear for his job. What's a buddy for if not to perform such acts of sadism for a girlfriend?

The emails came from Bart's home computer; so even the board attorney said that they were not basis for punishment of Bart for using the school email for personal issues. Even so, Elia sent the emails to the Professional Standards Abu Ghraib Cell Block and told Kipley to sic the computer people on Bart's computer records to strain out any gnat that would offer pretext for punishing him for something--anything.

The fishing expedition turned up nothing except Bart had posted a notice of the gay march against the shutting of gays out of the library on the media bulletin board, its purpose ostensibly.

Even without any pretext of a valid charge against Bart, however, Kipley called him into her office for her mind-games routine. I believe she takes great pride in these Goebbels interviews with trembling teachers.

CTA sent a representative with Bart, but that's about as helpful as sending an amoeba from one of the biology labs. The CTA is so far ensconced with the administration in betraying teachers who pay it $500 a year to undercut them that CTA minions all have bed sores.

After the mind-games session calculated to terrify Bart with vague allusions to non-existent wrongdoing, Kipley said she would send him a letter to summarize the situation. Bart told the union representative as they left that he was dissatisfied but wanted only a letter of apology. Bart wanted his dignity restored. The union guy told him just to be quiet and that everything would be fine.

I don't know how many of you read the NYT; but it had an article recently on how Giuliani terrorized people when he was mayor, causing long-term mental anguish for some. Bart's reaction was similar. He believed he had been a good and productive employee and thought this charge was misplaced and cruel. His state of mind was such that he had to go to a therapist.

Meanwhile, Kipley sent Bart a registered letter that did not summarize the real situation but which said, in effect, "Don't do any thing wrong again, or dire things will happen to you."

Candy Olson also saw Bart at the gym during this ordeal and screamed at him that he could lose his job. Candy’s always good for piling on. She allies herself with whoever she thinks is in power and then apes that person’s behavior.

The only thing Bart wanted was a letter of apology from Kipley for the mistaken charge. She didn't answer his requests for one. So I asked the board lawyer to get Kipley to send one. He met Bart for an interview at Eats, a restaurant near Bart's house, not extending to the matter the dignity of an office visit. He told Bart that he, Gonzalez, would have no problem getting the letter of apology from Kipley for Bart. Bart never got that letter although Bart prompted Gonzalez several times.

Gonzalez also did not construct the pamphlet telling teachers their rights when they went into Professional Standards gauntlet. He promised me to do that at least three times. Gonzalez lied. I doubt that he had any intention of keeping this promise to a member of the public who pays his salary. He has been in his no-bid job for fourteen years and has become synchronistic with his board and administration bosses in their contempt for public accountability.

Several teachers called Bart during and after his ordeal to tell him of their scarifying experience with Kipley in Professional Standards. One had to sort pencils endlessly while waiting for Kipley’s sadism to be sated and only then would Kipley decide to release the teacher from the punishment rituals that Kipley seems to relish so much. I believe she slavers over these duties. Kipley told another teacher that she couldn't tell a soul about what went on during her punishment in Professional Standards. Free speech is suspended in the Abu Ghraib cell block. Kipley denied another teacher the right to attend her students' graduation, which broke the teacher's heart. I believe this was the teacher whom the administration brought in on cooked-up charges about a field trip that didn't have all the t's crossed on the application. These referrals to Professional Standards seem always to concern tremendous trifles.

My inference from these data is that Kipley is a sadistic character, moved from principal of Hillsborough High to the Professional Standards job because, I heard, the teachers there and Kipley were at loggerheads and that some would not go into an interview with her without a tape recorder.

So instead of firing Kipley, the administration gave her the Professional-Standards job with a salary jump instead of firing her as would have been condign. This case confirms the adage that if you mess up, you move up in the schools' odd bases for promotion.

The administration did not advertise the job, of course. And Kipley didn't have a psychology or criminal-justice degree but a home-ec degree. Home ec! For the lord's sake, that's making béchamel sauce, not adjudging professional behavior of teachers.

A bizarre footnote to this tale is that Bart came to Tiger Bay because he wanted to hear Elia speak. He joined so he could ask a question of the speaker. He sat with my husband and me. The CTA union collaborators trooped in with a large contingent of administrators and sat at their table, yukking it up and ignoring Bart. I noticed Connie Mileto, kindergarten teacher and Jim Hamilton protégé who zipped past other candidates to get the government-representative sinecure. This munchkin’s professional behavior was not up to the mark. It included jumping on her diminutive legs to lock her arms around the neck of some guy, squealing a greeting betimes. Very professional to be sure. That jumping-and-squealing routine must convey just the right degree of gravitas in the halls of the legislature. The munchkin also made various squawking noises during my question when I got up to address Ms. Elia during question time. Such is swell psychology in her job to bring around the other side to her point of view. One felt that a political science or psychology degree would have given the Munchkin a better background for the government-representative position than a kindergarten sheepskin.

When Ms. Elia descended the platform, Bart and I went up talk to her about his ordeal with Professional Standards. He asked her why she sent the emails from his home to Linda Kipley. She said that she was not very knowledgeable in technology and that she did not know that the "from" line at the top of an email identified from where it came.

Bingo. That's when I knew we dealt with a practiced and not very astute liar. I believe lying is reflexive in Ms. Elia. She lies when the truth would be more to her advantage.

After this interview, I began attending the board meetings, watched the proceedings from the back of the room, and formed a picture of the sorry situation that obtains in ROSSAC and among the board dais potted plants.

The board and administration form a team that exploits the tax base of the schools for their joint purpose of control of power and money. The students and teachers are the field hands who provide the basis for the state's giving money to the administration and board to run their empire. They want teachers and students to keep their distance and leave ROSSAC and the board to pursue their narcissistic agenda, bloating Elia's salary and assenting to all her demands--including loading an extra class on teachers to solve her budget problem and cramming a grade-inflation scheme down teachers' throats without the courtesy of consulting them or even acknowledging their existence on these or any issues. The potted-plant board, poseurs as benefactors of education, goes along with Elia's every whim, rubberstamping all she puts underneath their noses.

Bart's great interest besides Pilates and opera is nutrition. He has striven to nail down the fact that the school cafeteria food is lousy--both for nutrition and taste.

Candy once had the head of the food program to come and address the board on this issue after one of Bart’s food emails. The woman’s spiel was mere template piffle.

Below is Bart’s most recent email to the board on the subject. The people on the podium could use some valid nutrition information. Just about all of them are overweight. Swell role models for good nutrition they are for the students.

______________________________________________

Dear Board Members:

I read with interest the article about the students' questions at your student session. Out of the mouths of babes.....

Vittorio Ottanelli questioned the cafeteria lunch quality. As you know I have been saying that the school lunches are terrible for a while. I pack my tofu and vegetables and rice everyday, because I can not eat the school lunches. Ottanelli may be referring to the taste. I believe the healthiness is the major problem

I hope some of you have gone to the schools and sat down with students and eaten these meals. It will give you a new perspective.

Look at what they choose also. Choose the same things and eat them and see if you gain weight or not. I bet you do.

I believe another problem is the snack lines or the "a la carte"

items that can be bought. These are chips and sweets and ice cream.

There must be a solution to this.

The private sector is not the answer either, b/c then McDonald's will be selling fries in the schools. I would rather eat a dead possum than eat a Big Mac.

At 40 and about to turn 41 I work daily on my weight. It only gets harder as you get older. It saddens me to see 12, 13, 14 year olds with big bellies. They will have an even tougher time losing weight as they get older. We owe it to them to make sure the cafeteria food improves not just taste-wise but health-wise too.

I am confused by the Times article that says Ottanelli's question was drowned out by applause from the supervisors and principals. Why would they start applauding before his question is answered? From the Times article it sounded like rudeness to this student. I hope you will make an effort to answer his question either publicly or to him personally.

It would be easy to find which school he attends and send him a private note.

I am glad that you take the time to listen to student questions once a year. Students are stake holders in their education, and Essrig did a good thing to start this. Why not hold a forum for teachers to come and ask questions also? I have been cc'ed to many emails to you from Lee asking for a time for teachers at each board meeting. I think it is a legitimate request. At the very least offer a once a year forum like you do for students. Teachers and other employees are stakeholders also. Many of us want the system to improve. Many ideas are better than 7, especially when the ideas or questions come from the trenches.

Also, I believe teachers should be on a Facilities committee so that teacher input goes into the building of new schools. Teachers know what problems arise when a bathroom is either too large or too small in a hallway or where teacher planning areas should be. This is another thing you could do to make sure architects hear another viewpoint about what is needed. Supervisors have been out of the classroom for a long time and have forgotten the little details or the problems that arise when some area of a building is built a certain way. They forget that nooks and crannies are places for students to hide and kiss each other, etc.

Sincerely,

Bart Birdsall

I was glad to get this comment. It educates me and reminds me to ask Ms. Cobbe another question for public information. lee

Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "Dinner after Women's March for Choice in Washingto...":

Lee,

In the interest of accuracy, I think a few things should be clarified:

1.) Lawson, who is a software vendor, started out in the 1970s as a supplier of mainframe computer software to IBM. I am familiar with them through a parent's career, and I think I can say without exception that the likelihood of Lawson having a connection within the school district or board is pretty slim. That doesn't mean there could be some sort of connection via relatives or friends, but Lawson itself has been around long before any of the Board members came on the scene.

2.) The IDEAS e-mail system is not filtered, in the sense that e-mails are blocked, to the best of my knowledge. In fact, spam has become such a problem within the system that it takes up a measurable portion of the traffic, despite there being some filters in place to keep it to a minimum.

3.) The Websense system is just that - it is a filter that prevents inappropriate content from entering the District's network, and in doing so, can also be set up to filter or block specific Web sites, classes of sites (blogs) or domains. Websense is a service that provides regular updates to the filters as well as allowing custom configurations to them that the end users (HCSD) can set up to their liking, e.g., block Lee's blog but not April Griffin's.

If you want to look for connections, try poking around in Assessment & Accountability for the link between them and the Scantron company....



Posted by Anonymous to Lee Drury De Cesare's Casting-Room Couch at 2:29 PM

I sent my draft. See corrections below, please. ldd

From: Linda Cobbe [mailto:lcobbe@sdhc.us]
Sent: Wednesday, January 30, 2008 4:41 PM
To: lee de cesare
Subject: Re: suppressing free speech

From what I can tell, this is the part addressed to me, but I'm having difficulty determining what you're saying in a couple of the sentences. I have underlined the sentences I need you to clarify.

I understand a technology committee made the decision to interrupt my blog's and two other teacher blogs' access to the schools.

Please tell me the names of the people on that committee and the name of the chair. Was Mr. Davis, he? Tell me also if the committee got the permission of the board to interrupt the flow of free speech into and from a publicly supported institution so that I can pass it on to elected officials who should know of such derogation of free speech in a public institution supported by taxes. I would like to see the order and who signed it that authorized this shut-down of free speech to and from the schools. This request is all public information.

Every valid committee in tax-supported institutions when it makes important decisions such as curtailing the First- Amendment rights of citizens takes committee notes. The Technology Depar tment must have followed this standard protocol. I would like to have a copy of those notes, please, that order the shutdown of free email speech in the public schools for me and teacher bloggers. Thank you.

May I add this question: where is a list on the school Web of people or organizations that the Technology Committee or other authority has deprived of free-speech rights by denying email access? Are these decisions all approved by the school boad? Thank you. lee

Hooper, I am proud of you. You managed to write something negative about the Hillsborough County School superintendent's greed despite your being a sap for the wiles of her girlfriend La Belle Dame sans Merci Faliero, about whom you wrote a troubadour's newspaper love song in times of yore.

Not so yore, however, as to render this volte face null. It impressed me.

Your fans, among which I number, feared the tenor of that besotted Faliero salute meant she had swished you away to her piney-woods elfin grot and that we would see nor hear Hooper again, what with the lady’s making sweet moan and other allurements of elfin grots in general and Faliero’s in particular.

We feared to find you far gone, alone in the wither'd sedge of Lutz or Seffner, accosting passers-by with, "Is this a planet to which none have gone before?" And "Tell me how to get back to the St. Petersburg Times dispensary."

Keep on the path to recovery. Take your vitamins plus anti-oxidants to dissipate the effluvia of elfin grots, floss twice a day, and avoid those fairy grots that imperil reporters from newspapers which have no counseling departments for staff who rank susceptible to La Belle Dame sans Merci types in this piney-woods venue if yokelism which immures us.

Your mother is proud of you. She has magneted that rebuke of Elia greed to the frig. That's what we mothers do when our children do us proud.

A fan,

lee drury de cesare

Scoring bonus points; a fashionable way to give

By ERNEST HOOPER
Published January 28, 2008

---

Every time I say that a person makes a lot of money, one of my friends reminds me it's relative.

"We don't know their mortgage payment, their expenses or the challenge of their job."

He has a point. Still, a number of Hillsborough school district employees have expressed dismay about the $37,620 performance bonus that superintendent MaryEllen Elia recently received.

I won't say her total compensation of $290,620 is "a lot," but maybe she could find a way to symbolically share some of that bonus with the teachers and support staff. The perception that her wages are out of line with the rank and file needs to be addressed.

Teachers did receive pay increases, but an act of appreciation would mean, well, "a lot." ...

Dinner after Women's March for Choice in Washington. We had over a million who marched for women's reproductive freedom.

From: lee de cesare [mailto:tdecesar@tampabay.rr.com]
Sent: Wednesday, January 30, 2008 12:06 PM
To: 'doretha.edgecomb@sdhc.k12.fl.us'; 'candy.olson@sdhc.k12.fl.us'; 'april.griffin@sdhc.k12.fl.us'; 'susan.valdes@sdhc.k12.fl.us'; 'jack.lamb@sdhc.k12.fl.us'; 'carol.kurdell@sdhc.k12.fl.us'; 'tash@sptimes.com'; 'tobin@sptimes.com'; 'stein@sptimes.com'; 'mbrown@tampatribune.com'; 'jennifer.faliero@sdhc.k12.fl.us'; 'jhill@sptimes.com'; 'steveotto@tampatribune.com'; 'palmer@tampatribune.com'; 'pmanteiga@lagacetanewspaper.com'; 'Tommy Duncan'
Subject: GRAFT

Ever-vigilant Board Members:

I think you should look more closely into the collapse of the school after it was built; the lack of disaster insurance--the lawyer's job; and who's driving a late-model Porsche parked in the administration-board parking lot.

Casting-room Couch smells graft.

Why doesn't each member appoint a community expert to form a citizen's committee to review the bid process, the inspection process, the legal gloss, etc?

lee drury de cesare

Lee,

Did you get my email today about how a deep throat spoke to me?

Apparently, Jim Hamilton was in charge of Facilities when he had Blake High School built. Blake High School is built so poorly that if there is a category 2 hurricane, it will collapse like a house of cards. This was what Doug Erwin thought. Jim Hamilton wanted to "get"Doug Erwin b/c he knew that Erwin knew about this.

Also, the whole Lawson system mess up that resulted in late paychecks for teachers.....well, the person who created Lawson was a friend of a school board member (don't know which one), and the district ended up paying much more for Lawson (to fix it) than if they had used another
company.

At some point Elia was in charge of special education stuff at certain schools, and when she was, some of the schools never saw her face enter the school. She is all about herself and what makes herself look good.

I am working on getting more info for you soon.

This comes from the Anonymous Mail Bag of Casting-Room Couch:

From: Anonymous [mailto:noreply-comment@blogger.com]
Sent: Tuesday, January 29, 2008 11:47 PM
To: tdecesar@tampabay.rr.com
Subject: [Lee Drury De Cesare's Casting-Room Couch] New comment on Susie Creamcheese of The Wall teacher blog has de....

Anonymous has left a new comment on your post " Susie Creamcheese of The Wall teacher blog has de...":

It is horrible how shameless the school district seems to be. There is also a rumor going around that Candy Olson's husband was a lawyer for a malpractice lawsuit years ago. He defended many people who were harmed apparently. At the end of the day they were awarded millions, but they each only saw a couple or a few thousand and Olson's husband ended up with millions and had to lie low in Miami for a while. I hope this is not true, but it is a rumor going around.

It is sad to think that everyone in power in Hillsborough County may be totally corrupt.



Posted by Anonymous to Lee Drury De Cesare's Casting-Room Couch at 7:29 PM

Lee's comment: I don't blame a woman for what her husband does and vice-versa. But I do blame a woman for her shameless anti-citizen, anti-teacher, anti-student performance on the Hillsborough County School Board. lee

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