This message below made me laugh out loud. One good thing about teachers is that they are bright and can say witty things. I missed the banter of the faculty lounge after I retired.

The board members are too lazy to learn Roberts Rules. They keep saying, "I want to make a motion" instead of "I move that." That gaucherie drives me crazy. lee

From: Anonymous [mailto:noreply-comment@blogger.com]
Sent: Saturday, March 01, 2008 8:10 PM
To: tdecesar@tampabay.rr.com

Subject: [Lee Drury De Cesare's Casting-Room Couch] New comment on Ms. Cobbe: I request the following as public infor....

Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "Ms. Cobbe: I request the following as public infor...":

Lee,

I can't find where in "Robert's Rules ..." the directive "Do your thing" appears. Do you have the chapter?

Robert Stewart

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Posted by Anonymous to Lee Drury De Cesare's Casting-Room Couch at 5:09 PM

From: Anonymous [mailto:noreply-comment@blogger.com]
Sent: Saturday, March 01, 2008 10:24 PM
To: tdecesar@tampabay.rr.com
Subject: [Lee Drury De Cesare's Casting-Room Couch] New comment on My ten grandchildren: they will pass down through ....

Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "My ten grandchildren: they will pass down through ...":

The 3 minute limit seems terribly restrictive - deliberately designed, perhaps, to ensure that few citizens have sufficient time to address any issue of real importance. I have a suggestion... if the board members cannot allow a reasonable length of time to citizens, they should, at the very least, apply the same 3 minute restriction to their own (so often too-lengthy and unproductive) ramblings.

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Ms. Cobbe: I request the following as public information:


1. A form for or a description of the appeal process for a Professional Standards decision with which I disagree;


2. A description of the Spring program now planned for downloading on the teachers; how much does it cost? Who is the local corporate contact? Who is the administrator in charge of the program?


3. What did the taxpayers pay for the motivational speaker that the board members hired for a seminar recently?


4. What is the ratiionale--legal or administrative--that allows Tom Gallagher to keep his personnel files while all other school employees are housed in the ROSSAC archives? If administrative, could I have a copy of the document granting this unusual privilege to Mr. Gonzalez? If Mr. Gonzalez has described this privilege arrogated to himself, could I have a copy of that statement?


5. The written description of the duties of the chair of the board; a copy of the litany of things a citizen cannot say before the board under penalty of getting kicked out;


6. I want to review the file with the 35 resumes for the job recently awarded to Dr. Pansy I-Have-Forgot-the-Last-Name. I want to see the job description and pay scale. I will come in early on the 19th to see this file in your office. I will pay my late printing fees then.


7. What does the administration policy manual say about a teacher's duties as an employee in the school system as opposed to a teacher's privileges as a citizen? How does the administration and board define these two roles of its teacher-workers? For example, in the Professional Standards case that Ms. Kipley and Ms. Elia mounted against Bart Birdsall, his emails from his home could not be attributed to his school work duties because they were personal emails from his home and were thus a citizen's privilege. So Ms. Elia and Ms. Kipley had to manufacture a trifle for Bart inside the email system of the school to trap him as a violator of the rule not to use the school emails for private purposes. This distinction between teacher as worker and teacher as citizen is so important that the administration or board must have commentary on it in policy manuals. Perhaps the lawyer can locate it for you. Or maybe there is a body--though not large, one would think--that deals with this question of professional responsibilities of the teachers versus a teacher's private rights.

Thank you.
lee

Polegirl Falliero in a Characteristic Pose


From: lee decesare
To: chacter@tampatribune.com; march@tampatribune.com
Sent: Wednesday, February 27, 2008 12:57:27 PM
Subject: teachers' meeting with Ms. Palmer

Ms. Chachter:

I messed up on the time for the meeting on Thursday with Ms. Palmer for the teachers. I got their quitting time wrong. Some don't get off until 3:15 or even 4. Some schools are far from downtown's Tribune site.

So could you ask Ms. Palmer to please delay the meeting to 4:45 to 5:00 p.m? Everybody would appreciate her doing so.

Also, somebody told me that the guards are stern at the Tribune property. Could you give teachers clearance to go to the conference room?


Merci de votre aide.

Bientot,

lee drury de cesare

More comments from the underground below. If you see Fred wandering around, give him resusitation. I think he had an acute chalk-dust attack when he told me 3:30 was ok.

--Jason has left a new comment on your post "How was I to know the time was inconvenient for th...":

I presume you are aware that high school teachers do not get out until 3:15 and middle school teachers get out later than that. I fear a meeting at 3:30 might be difficult for teachers to attend.

Jason, never presume that I know anything. In fact, presume the opposite. I will change the time to 4:30. Straggle in if you are a little late. And look pretty. lee

Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "How was I to know the time was inconvenient for th...":

I'll be there.

Look teachers, if we want to really have some control over our working life and stop being bullied, this is your chance.

Imagine the power of dozens of us standing together.

Please dont let others carry the water for you. There is power in numbers. We need you.

If you can take a personal day to get your car fixed, you can take one for this Lee has gotten the attention of an important person. I agree that even 4:30 will be difficult but think about all the days you will be adversely impacted by the decisions of the "good ole boy network" that cares little for you and respects you even less.

This may be our best chance to be heard. Lets not blow it.

Time to walk the walk. Our contract grants us personal days. Is there anything more "personal" than the chance to air our grievances to someone in a position to help us?????

I will be there and I hope others will be there to support Lee's effort to get justice for us.

David

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Posted by Anonymous to Lee Drury De Cesare's Casting-Room Couch at 9:06 PM

Thank you, David, for this homily. I get tired of giving buck-up lectures. When I was an intensive-care head nurse (I nursed for 15 years before I got tired of seeing my favorite patients die on me and checked into Columbia University), I used to go on duty and make my rounds of Death Valley to see how each patient was doing. If I said, "Well, Mr. Terminal Emphysema, how's it going?" and the patient replied, "Oh, nurse, not good. I think I'm on my last legs," I would chirp, "Oh, no, you are not--not on my shift. You are feeling better--much better. You will make my record look bad if you aren't." If he were able, the patient would laugh--and live another eight hours. Had I sympathized with him, he would have turned over and died for sure.

Tapping into other areas of the human spirit during my intensive-care death watch often hit the place of resilliance in a fading soul.

Remember that tip and use it. It works outside the intensive-care unit too. lee

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How was I to know the time was inconvenient for the meeting with the Tribune publisher when Fred Our Board Candidate told me that time was ok? I hope this does not indicate the precision with which Fred performs on the Circle-of-Power Dais when he gets elected and replaces Lamb. Remember, I taught in college, and we had great control over our schedules. I forgot that I am dealing with the inmates of a penal colony.

I am going to get the time changed for the meeting to 4:30. Any objections to 4:30? Speak up if you have.

Then I want to see the three I have heard from get their buns to that meeting and squawk to a person who can make Elia ease up on teachers. Goader, I will kill you if you aren't there. By the way, I find your columns enlightening. They educate me.

Ditto for the other two whose message appears below: David and "Would love to come."

If I can risk Jennifer Pole Girl and her boyfriend Jolly Green Giant Security Behemoth David Frederick's sending me to jail in leg irons and handcuffs, people can screw up their courage to the sticking point and join Granny Lee at this meeting.

I wonder how in the hell the wonderful patriots of this country faced down King George. If I have said it once I have said it a thousand times, bullies run when you say, "Dammit, NO! I won't take it any more!" You have to squawk and squawk loud. You know in your heart that's the only way to get control of the schools again. And don't forget our goal is to inform the public what is going on in their schools so that we can get new people on the board who are not in sync with the crooks at ROSSAC. I am eager to see what the Ethics Commission from the Florida Bar does in its "further investigation" of Tom Gonzalez when it comes to town.

So the time is 4:30. Speak up and speak fast if it needs to be 5 pm. As my son--now a NASA engineer--used to say to me until it ran me crazy: "Be there, Ma, or be square." When he got too big for me to menace, I used to chase him with a broom, which amused him.

I expect Susie Creamcheese present if she has to come in a Halloween mask. This is a command performance for La Creamcheese.

This response tells me I am going to have to charm Paul Tash to come over the water from St. Pete to the downtown Tampa St. Pete Times bureau to meet us. He hates my guts for correcting his grammar, so that will be a challenge. But trust me, the kid here will do it.

Never underestimate the power of a Southern girl to charm her way to victory. In times of crisis a Southern girl can also pick up a gun and blow the brains out of the Yankee soldier who wants to rape Tara's women and steal the silver. Did you see Gone with the Wind? I have--twelve times. Scarlett is the role model of all of us Southern girls.

Versatility: that's the way to glide through life. lee

PS: I am now trying to confirm that Jennifer Pole Girl is a Republican. If so, I shall write the national, the state, the county, and the women's local Republican club run by Faye Culp to describe Jennifer's moral turpitude, the board's lack of ethics, and Ms. Elia's boss pathology to register a protest against a Family Values Protagonist on the school board. Oh, and the governor. Believe it or not my asking him in a public forum once if he were gay has paid off in his paying attention to my requests. He remembers me, you see. Don't ever praise politicians if you want them to remember you. Kick them. That's what they recall. I have lived with a mayor for twelve years and met boatloads of the breed and observed the phylum up close. I know what I am talking about. lee

From: Anonymous [mailto:noreply-comment@blogger.com]
Sent: Friday, February 29, 2008 11:23 PM
To: tdecesar@tampabay.rr.com
Subject: [Lee Drury De Cesare's Casting-Room Couch] New comment on <!-- GoStats JavaScript Based Code --> Gentlepeo....

Anonymous has left a new comment on your post " Gentlepeo...":

Would love to go... but we are stuck at work until at least 3:15 by contract...

Now it's 4:30, so be there. lee

Posted by Anonymous to Lee Drury De Cesare's Casting-Room Couch at 5:52 PM

From: Anonymous [mailto:noreply-comment@blogger.com]
Sent: Friday, February 29, 2008 8:53 PM
To: tdecesar@tampabay.rr.com
Subject: [Lee Drury De Cesare's Casting-Room Couch] New comment on <!-- GoStats JavaScript Based Code --> Gentlepeo....

Anonymous has left a new comment on your post " Gentlepeo...":

Would love to go... but we are stuck at work until at least 3:15 by contract...

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Posted by Anonymous to Lee Drury De Cesare's Casting-Room Couch at 5:52 PM

From: Anonymous [mailto:noreply-comment@blogger.com]
Sent: Friday, February 29, 2008 8:12 PM
To: tdecesar@tampabay.rr.com
Subject: [Lee Drury De Cesare's Casting-Room Couch] New comment on <!-- GoStats JavaScript Based Code --> Gentlepeo....

Anonymous has left a new comment on your post " Gentlepeo...":

Geeeez Lee. 3:30 on a work day? I love you but but similar timing of School Board Meetings is another area of concern for teachers as we are not able to attend unless we take a day off. This will make it extremely difficult for most of us to be there.

David

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Gentlepeople:

I have set up a meeting with the Tribune publisher, Ms. Palmer, for this Thursday at 3:30 pm at the conference room in the TV building of the Tribune, on Kennedy near the bridge.

The purpose is to allow teachers to let the Tribune publisher know the teachers’ view of their struggle with the board and administration. It will be the teachers’ voices telling the most powerful media presence in our area their views of what is wrong with the school system, the superintendent, and the board.

Teacher attendance will be my test for the interest of teachers in improving education and teachers’ status in the school system.

I will not accept the excuse that teachers are too scared of their jobs to show up at this meeting on Thursday, March 6^{thp>, 3:30 pm, at the Tribune conference rooms in the TV building at the Kennedy Tribune Building near the bridge.}

^{Teachers can come to the meeting and give false names, explaining that they are too concerned about retaliation to give their real name. But if they do not come, they do not care about their situation. Griping in the halls is easy; showing up for this meeting and speaking out are challenging.}

^{I can fight but will not fight for people too scared to do anything to save themselves. That’s class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_33"> just spinning my wheels.}

^{I look foreword to the turnout on Thursday March 7thont class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_34"> at 3:30 p.m. at the Tribune Building. It will tell me the truth about teachers’ commitmont>ent to their betterment.}

^{If teachers aren’t sat class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_36">isfied with things as they are, they will show up.}

^{If we have a decent teacher turnout, I continue to fight; if we have only a few quixotic, brave objectors, I leave for other projects and leave the schools to a greedy, power hungry Elia, to the gutless board, and to heaven.}

^lee

Pole-Girl Falliero Is Getting Some Bad PR

Column

Speaking freely not part of the agenda

By Sue Carlton, Times Columnist
Published February 27, 2008

St. Petersburg Times

---

You watch your local school board meeting for the latest, and suddenly find yourself tumbling down the rabbit hole.

At the start of last week's Hillsborough County School Board meeting, Chairwoman Jennifer Faliero helpfully read a list of rules for those who wanted to speak before the board. You get three minutes, she said. No "personal attacks," no "inappropriate speech," nothing threatening, racist, obscene, profane, etc.

Oh, and this: "You will also be called out of order if you use someone's name," she said - no explanation, as mystifying as if she was requiring all comments be spoken in Pig Latin.

Okay, wait a minute here - so you risk getting the boot just for saying the name of the person you're talking about? Come again, Chairwoman Fal -

Whoa! Close one there!

Strictly speaking, I have to say I heard the careless throwing around of "Mr." this and "Mrs." that throughout that meeting, though no one was wrestled to the ground, Tased or taken away and handcuffs.

Though one person did get tagged for it - a well-dressed, white-haired lady named Lee Drury De Cesare.

Lest my description lead you astray, please know that despite her delicate bearing and precise enunciation, De Cesare is the sort of ever-present gadfly who stirs fear and loathing in the hearts of certain elected officials. Why? It seems there is nothing she will not say, nowhere she will not go, in her biting criticism. Poison pen does not even begin.

So the well-known De Cesare took her place at the podium to speak and lobbed a few mild ones, an "utter piffle" here and there. Then she asked the board to consider the case of a teacher who had spoken out about an extra-class policy and who might be facing retaliation for it. The bell dinged and Faliero interrupted with, "Thank you, your time is up, ma'am," but De Cesare kept going and said the teacher's name.

Alert the authorities!

You would think I was kidding, but no. "You're out of order," said an angry-sounding Faliero, to which De Cesare replied as she was leaving, "Why, thank you, my dear. How delicious that I am."

Then came the line that could one day replace, "Don't Tase me, bro!"

"Chief Friedberg," Faliero said, sounding like one of those tough Law & Order prosecutors and referring to the security chief in the room, "Do your thing."

And so the officer escorted De Cesare out.

By now you're saying: back story, please?

Faliero, who is very familiar with the jab of that aforementioned poison pen, said the rule against naming names was "to prevent people from personal attacks." She mentioned De Cesare and her history in specific. Although technically De Cesare was actually advocating for the person she dared name this time.

Faliero noted De Cesare went beyond the allowed time. "She behaved her way out of the board meeting, in my opinion," Faliero said.

And what of the potential problem of a say-no-names policy in the face of the First Amendment? The chairwoman said this week the rule is "not going to be something we're going to continue."

So here's a lesson to go with the one on free speech. Savvy politicians learn that sometimes you just sit back and listen to the citizens - even if it's the longest three minutes of your life.

My first granddaughter's graduation rug: it took me two and a half years to needlepoint it. At first I thought it would be her wedding rug; then she told me she wouldn't get married until she was in her thirties. So I switched it to a high-school-graduation rug. lee


Dear Area Director of School Boards Diane Coleman:


Hillsborough County’s school board needs guidance in some of its unfortunate behavior patterns on the podium during board meetings.

One infers that the Florida School Boards Association is just the source to provide it.

Here follows one of the worst problems’ affecting school-board members’ behaviors on the dais during meetings.

First is that they sit silent with other outrages transpire on the dais such as the chair’s insulting a citizen speaker who comes to address the board so that the speaker shrinks away vowing never to return for such cuffing around.

Yet these same somnolent board members, if one of the board members gets up enough nerve to ask for an item to be pulled from the consent agenda for scrutiny, come alive. Board members who have remained silent and visibly bored during outrages such as the chair’s insulting a citizen will leap into action to excoriate the board member who dared to ask for discussion of the item designated to be pulled from the agenda.

Such was the behavior of Board Members Candy Olson and Carol Kurdell recently when Board Member April Griffin asked for the customary no-bid procedure that gave a $148,000 no-bid contract to a former administrator in what looked like a buddy contract by Superintendent MaryEllen Elia.

Both members Olson and Kurdell gave Griffin a dais tongue lashing about her so-called “disloyalty to the staff” by questioning their infallible judgment. Olson and Kurdell added Board Member Susan Valdes to this tongue lashing because she had spoken up and supported Griffin's proposal.

Board Member, Jennifer Falliero, now board chair, had at a previous workshop told April Griffin to resign if she couldn’t go along with automatic support of the superintendent’s prerogatives such as appointing incompetent buddies to high-level administrative jobs. That's what I call the Zeig-heil Rule.

The superintendent of the schools' crony hiring means that incompetent, unprepared people who are superintendent buddies and hangers on get plum administrative appointments of $130,000 or more.

An early-childhood degreed person heads the building department; a home-ec teacher with bad grammar in her written decisions about professional behavior leads the Professional Standards Department, a kindergarten teacher heads the political affairs department because she was protegee of the second-in-command to Elia, male administrator Dr. James Hamilton.

When the transportation department melted down from bad management, a former bus driver was its head. Ms. Griffin had to force Ms. Elia to advertise this job. Then Ms. Elia took credit for this enlightened hiring decision, which was disingenuous of Ms. Elia.

Endemic to this crony hiring of incompetent buddies and sycophants is that the board then must hire pricey consultants to teach the people unequal to untrained and unprepared for these top jobs.

So the taxpayers pay twice for the incompetents' service: first the bloated salaries; second the whopping costs--$350,000 in the transportation meltdown--of consultants to come in and clean up the messes the incompetent, unprepared administrators of Ms. Elia's cronyism hiring make.

If you want a broader picture of the problems of the board’s inability to affect the negative practices of the administration, go to FloridaBarEthicsComplaint.blogspot.com.

The Hillsborough County School Board needs outside, objective mentoring from the State School Boards Association.

I hope that the Florida School Boards Association will provide it for the good of the ill-performing school-board members, the good of the whole school family, and the good of the citizens of Hillsborough County.

lee drury decesare
15316 Gulf Boulevard 802
Madeira Beach, FL 33708 tdecesar@tampabay.rr.com

c: All members Hillsborough County School Board

c: All members of the Florida School Board Association: Claudia Brown-Curry, Vicki Drake, Kris Barnes, Ana Rivas Logan, Bill Mignon,
Andy Griffiths, Larry Nichols, Jo Ann Barber, Bill Mignon, Andy Griffiths, Patricia C. Carrol, Margaret Lofton, Lori Cunningham, Tina Pikoson, Wes Eubank, George Cox, Billy Gwin, Joie Caiger, Anne Geiger, Mary Tuis Brown, Nancy Bostock, J.M. Holtzclaw, Jerry Taylor, Brenda Carlton, Tim Alexander, Walter Miller, Barbara Harvey, Kathryn Starkeu, Allen Altman, Beverly Gallagher, Bill Graham, Paulette Berdick, Janice Kershaw, Mary Kneessey, Maggie Lewis-Butler, Judge B. Helms, Lorrie Shekailo, Kathy Hensley, Tom Greer, Larri Metz, Sandy Nicholson, Linda Powers, Carloyn Zucker, Barbara Rendell, Barry Gainer, Dede Shaffner, Jane Kukel, Steve Tuber, Judy Conte, Candace Lankford, Jane Galucci

From: Anonymous [mailto:noreply-comment@blogger.com]
Sent: Wednesday, February 27, 2008 10:17 PM
To: tdecesar@tampabay.rr.com
Subject: [Lee Drury De Cesare's Casting-Room Couch] New comment on My ten grandchildren: they will pass down through ....

Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "My ten grandchildren: they will pass down through ...":

I think you are being insulting to people who live in trailer parks!

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Posted by Anonymous to Lee Drury De Cesare's Casting-Room Couch at 7:16 PM

Dear Anonymous: Yes I did, and I am sticking to it. I grew up poor and have no illusions about the romance of poverty. I also say things such as "Palm Beach overdressed snobs." I hit both ends of the economic spectrum.

I decline to become a verbal eunuch for anybody. If I hit on a metaphor that delights me, I use it. If I invoke an old metaphor like "trailer-part trash," it's because I judge it expresses my meaning.

You can't tie a writer's hands and expect anything but rhetorical mush. I decline to have my hands tied when I pull up to the CRT screen. lee

I picked a picture blind from a trove that has numbers, no identity. I got a group shot of a bunch of us who went to the March for Women's Rights in DC a few years ago. We had a million people who marched for choice for womankind. lee

I agree with this guy or gal below. lee

From: Anonymous [mailto:noreply-comment@blogger.com]
Sent: Wednesday, February 27, 2008 8:50 PM
To: tdecesar@tampabay.rr.com
Subject: [Lee Drury De Cesare's Casting-Room Couch] New comment on My ten grandchildren: they will pass down through ....

Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "My ten grandchildren: they will pass down through ...":

Sorry 2:09

I dislike Jennifer and Rhonda for WHAT THEY DO - or did. Not who they are. A fine line I admit but one that maintains a person's integrity.

I happen to like rednecks, meat, beer, nascar, real conservatives or liberals, character/characters, and overall authenticity.

Brandon is not my cup of tea but it is home to some really great people and some repulsive people. Just like North Tampa, South Tampa, Westchase, South Beach, - I'm sure you get the point.

Everyone has a "voting voice" if they are willing to make an effort to get to the polls.

If you don't like the neighborhood, move to an area where you feel comfortable - this isn't high school.

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Posted by Anonymous to Lee Drury De Cesare's Casting-Room Couch at 5:49 PM

From: Anonymous [mailto:noreply-comment@blogger.com]
Sent: Wednesday, February 27, 2008 6:08 PM
To: tdecesar@tampabay.rr.com
Subject: [Lee Drury De Cesare's Casting-Room Couch] New comment on My ten grandchildren: they will pass down through ....

Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "My ten grandchildren: they will pass down through ...":

You can take the girl out of the trailer park but not the trailer park out of the girl. That explains Faliero and Ronda Storms for that matter. Anyone who would want to live and be elected in that Brandon area where a bunch of rednecks live and control the area (despite many nice people who have no voting voice there) has a screw loose.



Posted by Anonymous to Lee Drury De Cesare's Casting-Room Couch at 2:09 PM