Good ol' Tom Gonzalez is in the thick of the effort to run Erwin crazy, of course--just doing what comes naturally to Le Tom.

That's what the taxpayers pay the 37-year lawyer to do: run people whom the administration and board target for annihilation nuts. I understand that Board Member Newsome went about calling Erwin "crazy." That's SOP when a group of sadists are trying to run a person crazy: they begin by labeling him crazy. I think Newsome is the guy who got a bundle of money recently from selling the Board a parcel of land for a school.

The Dark Side has called me crazy so many times that I have begun to answer, "Hebephrenic schizophrenic at your service." I was a psychiatric nurse and read every word Freud ever wrote so know all these abstruse names for states of craziness. It's a good tactic to throw out an exotic one such as "hebephrenic " to educators because their immediate response is to quit the field of battle and run for a dictionary.

Speaking of Romeo Tom Gonzalez, I saw him and Kipley hug at the 15th meeting. Should I alert the National Inquirer? I thought him a devotee of the pole girl. It begins to appear that Le Tom is a ladies' man. There needs to be at least one of that phylum at the board-room podium. But one wishes he were prettier.

The following gives you insight into how these group administrator-board terror tactics work on a person. These people are relentless and sadistic in torturing people this way. It seems they enjoy this activity.

My distinct impression from watching my friend Bart Birdsall react to the manufactured case against him by Kipley and Elia is that such relentless pressure harms a person either physically or mentally or both. Bart went to therapy for a while even though Elia and Kipley with Gonzalez's help could not lay anything serious on him. I did my best to help him fight the fiends.

The original charge was that he had used the school mails for political purposes. It turns out that he had posted a notice on the community bulletin board announcing the gay protest against the shutting down of the library to gays by Ronda Storms when she was county commissioner. That's the sort of thing community bulletin boards are for.

This attempted destruction of Doug Erwin was much more vicious. He was pointing out how badly the administration runs the schools. I wonder if an honest administrator's being put in charge of the transportation debacle would not have listed some of the same kinds of things that Erwin listed in the maintenance department. lee

Here is a sample of the crazy-making conduct the administration and board conducted against Erwin:

Doug Erwin Legal Archives

Mr. Erwin walked into a trap when he took the job over Director of Maintenance. Things were obviously out of control and had been that way for a long time. Why the ROSSAC Mayberry Machiavellis wanted Erwin to manage this outrage is a mystery so far--unless they wanted to set him up to be fired.

It seems the board members just wandered around and managed the college.

I spent three hours with the Erwin legal archives on Tuesday. I will return until I master the information. Recall that I have spent most of my life in academics, and this is the kind of stuff academics do. It's called research.

What I have read so far makes me wish we had just one ethical, brave person on the board. We don't have such a person yet. You can have all the information in the world, but if somebody won't speak up and act on it, the information does no good. lee

This is a response to a number of work related situations that have occurred or that I have become aware of during my tenure as Director of Maintenance and General Director of Operations.

Before accepting the position of Director of Maintenance I had served as a high school principal for Hillsborough County Public Schools. I was very hesitant to accept the position of Director of Maintenance because of knowledge of some long-term problems within the maintenance department (see attachment 1).

Dr. Paul Edwards, Assistant Superintendent of Operations at the time, called me twice to offer the position and I declined twice. Dr. Edwards then made a third request and said that the position would be upgraded to a General Director’s position if I would accept the position and I accepted.

I discovered many unacceptable business practices after taking the Director of Maintenance position.

• Maintenance employees were allowed to leave before the end of the scheduled day on a regular basis.
• There was massive abuse of lunch and break times.
• There was serious abuse of overtime (cx. sixteen employees were being paid for 12 hour days to do 5 hour jobs).
• There was also serious abuse of compensatory time.
• A district level form had been altered giving all employees free access to tools and equipment for personal use on other jobs.
• Many maintenance employees were allowed to purchase materials and supplies from hundreds of blanket purchase orders established with businesses throughout Hillsborough County.
• There was excessive contracting for services that maintenance employees should have been performing.
• There was an extremely long list of items missing from inventory.
• Most vehicles and maintenance equipment was in poor and often unsafe condition.
• Many schools had serious maintenance problems that were not being resolved in a timely manner.
• There were long-term problems in many schools with water intrusion and air conditioning problems which were causing air quality problems.
• No portables in the district met state safety standards.
• Schools that had been built in the 1990’s often had the most serious problems.

I made Dr. Edwards aware of each problem that I had become aware of. Dr. Edwards retired before corrective measures were taken. Dr. Hamilton then took that position (January 1998) and
I shared with hint my concerns. Dr. Hamilton then directed me to develop a plan including corrective measures (see attachment 2). The plan was approved and implemented as much as possible (some improvement was shown).

The source of my frustration has been the obstacles that I have encountered in attempting to carry out this plan and improve the division. Action was often stopped when I was told by the Assistant Superintendent ‘what I should or should not do based upon an employee connection with one or more board members or based upon what an employee might know that could be embarrassing to the district, or to be overly cautious because of sensitivity to public knowledge.

Mr. Newsome and Mr. Rampello got involved in some maintenance personnel issues without having all of the facts needed to determine an appropriate action or outcome. Their involvement caused tremendous difficulties in getting needed support in dealing with these personnel and being able to take proper action. Prior to Mr. Rampello’s and Mr. Newsome’s involvement good progress was being made in the maintenance division (see attachment 3). From that time on, I have had to spend unnecessary time defending myself and my actions (see attachment 4).

Mr. Newsome called me and said that he was meeting with employees from Maintenance West and Maintenance East. He did not ask for input from me nor was I invited to attend the meeting. He also spoke with maintenance managers, David Busciglio, Richard Parrish, and Roosevelt Lawrence. Mr. Newsome told me of those meeting after the fact. Mr. Newsome stated that each manager had very negative comments about me with Roosevelt Lawrence being the most critical.

He also stated that David Busciglio was the least critical. I spoke to each manager and asked what concerns each hail that had been voiced to Mr. Newsome. Mr. Lawrence said that he had made no negative comments and in lict, said that Mr. Newsome was lying. He said that he did not know Mr. Newsome and was not going to be caught up saying negative things to him. David Busciglio said that he did have concerns and that he did make negative comments to Mr. Newsome and that the other two had lied to me and “did not have the balls to tell the truth”. However, Richard Parrish said that Mr. Newsome was not truthfid with me about the meeting. At a later time Mr. Parish came to my office and said that he wanted to share the truth with me about what Mr. Newsome had told him during that meeting.

“As God is my witness, Joe Newsome told me that we needed to work together to get Doug Erwin out of the school system. it is time for him to retire.”

I met with Mr. Rampello at Mr. Newsome’s request. Mr. Rampello stated that Mr. Buscigio (David) was his cousin and that the Hispanic maintenance workers relied on him (Mr. Rampello) to resolve problems if they arose. He stated that he heard that I had verbally and physically abused employees. I informed Mr. Rampello that he had gotten involved in the situation without talking to me and that the accusations were totally false.

I followed all procedures in trying to get Mr. Busciglio to perform his duties as manager of Maintenance West. I did not receive from him the cooperation that I asked for in making appropriate changes needed to make Maintenance West more efficient. On his evaluation I marked “needs improvement” and told Mr. Buscigilo that he would be given an “unsatisfactory” evaluation and put on career observation if his work performance did not improve.

Mr. Busciglio did not improve his work performance and I did the paper work to place him on career observation. Dr. Hamilton intervened and requested that I give Mr. Busciglio a “good” evaluation. Dr. Hamilton said that he would solve the problem by making sure that Mr. Busciglio performed up to Dr. Hamilton’s expectations (which were the same as mine).

I did as Dr. Hamilton asked at that time. Mr. Busciglio still did not improve his work performance and documentation was provided to show that he was not meeting our expectations or requirements. Disciplinary action was not taken and Mr. Buscigio ended up being transferred to another job that he was not qualified to do and received equal pay. Mr. Busciglio also wrote what I consider to be a very slanderous letter to the superintendent (see attachment 5).

Douglas A Erwin

Polly, in regard to your message below: pile into the board meeting, sign up to speak, go to the mike when La Belle Dame sans Merci Falliera recognizes you, and then squawk.

I am backed up in my bar-ethics charge against Gonzalez and reading through the two boxes of trial data on the Erwin case. I spent three hours doing that today before I went to the meeting to complain about cronyism in hiring and Gonzalez's threatening to sue me as a violation of the SLAP law.

I have never been able to find out what the Spring is. I suspect it is a gimcrack device to replace textbooks and earn the illiterate manufacturer a ton of tax money; the Spring toy will do nothing to make the children more literate, of course.

But Ms. Elia will get a new wing to her house probably as a Spring merci beaucoup signing bonus.

Tonight I heard that Kurdell has an opponent. He is the guy who gave Ronda Storms a run for her money in the senate race. His name slips my mind--now I recall: it's Gorham. He is head of computers at HCC. He turned off my access to HCC college email when I blasted the administration for crooked behavior to all the staff and faculty via email and piled onto the effort to save the jobs of the bookstore women, whom the administration were dumping to replace them with subcontractor Barnes & Noble. The women were all old employees of the college who would face the minimum wage and no health insurance.

I made myself unpopular in the board meetings, but we saved the bookstore women.

But the crooks are still in charge in administration. They never die; they just grow new heads. The Board is feckless, of course.

Gorham's one of this gang.

This character closed down my email to the college. Then he opened it back up when I reported the college to the state for free-speech violation and Patrick Manteiga, La Gaceta publisher, called this character to intercede. Patrick has power with politicians because of the political influence of his paper.

I think this guy Gorham also hacked into my HCCDeepthroat blog and disabled it. I can't prove the last crime, but I smell it with unerring scent buds that detect such skulduggery artists. It was the work of an expert; small-time hackers can't do that kind of damage.

Gorham's not perfect as a school-board member replacement of Kurdell, you say? But she's been there fifteen years and is the complete administration tool. He might be better than she despite his criminal tendencies. He might not be an automatic rubberstamp for Elia. Why? He has higher political ambitions and wants to be the president of the world. So he will use the school board seat as a launching pad. To do so, he will have to make news. How? By making a stir on the board in opposing the administration in something.

If Kurdell had any sense, she would rat him out to the press for his suppression of free speech at HCC. But Kurdell is so phlegmatic that she wouldn't rat out Hitler if he goosestepped into town over the Howard Franklin Bridge to attack and occupy City Hall. Besides, she suppresses free speech herself as a member of the school board. The Hillsoborough School Board is anti-free-speech central.

Don't underestimate Kurdell's opponent. He is a good-ol-country-boy wolf in sheep's clothing with the sheep's clothing exuding sincerity when he arises to address the voting rabble. So how's that different from others in local, state, and national office? You tell me. I don't know. They all look remarkably similar from this citizen's vantage.

I will see you at the board podium, Polly. I shall bring my breviary in all of us English teachers' honor: Harbrace Handbook and read from this Holy Book the remarks on the absolute element, known--if you took Latin--as the ablative absolute and announce a pop quiz. That should put the board and administration anti-education crowd in a panic. lee

From: Anonymous [mailto:noreply-comment@blogger.com]
Sent: Tuesday, April 15, 2008 11:39 PM
To: tdecesar@tampabay.rr.com
Subject: [Lee Drury De Cesare's Casting-Room Couch] New comment on Some have asked about getting data on The Spring ....

Anonymous has left a new comment on your post " Some have asked about getting data on The Spring ...":

LEE--
Another breach-- HELP STOP SPRINGBOARD !!! English teachers need to speak up to the board NOW!!!!!Thanks for all your help--so glad you didn't "leave the building". Now--isn't this a little more exciting than retirement?

pollyanna

Messieurs Peron and Ayers: I believe you two must be the guys whom the Tribune editorial referred to as blowing off the parents who wanted information on the boundary fracas.

Dr. Lamb, who refused with his usual laissez-faire attitude toward citizen requests because all his time is taken up kowtowing to La Elia, referred the parent(s) to you, one infers. The Tribune editorial reported that y'all blew the parents off too.

Nice move. These citizen--parents are the people who pay your salaries and whose questions you should promptly answer, but you stiffed them. I can only guess that you did so from abject panic that Ms. Elia would not be pleased if you treated parents with courtesy since she never condescends to give them the time of day.

If you are not totally feckless, come to the board meeting tomorrow afternoon and identify yourselves to me. I will be the woman with a mop of white hair who rides in on a broom.

I shall rebuke you for your bad behavior personally. Meanwhile, pray accept my fervent hope that cow dung be rained from the heavens on your cowardly, impolite heads for biting the hands that feed you.

Other than that, have a nice day.

Some have asked about getting data on The Spring program. Here's how you do it. Email the Public Information office: steve.heggarty@sdhc.k12.fl.us; or linda.cobbe@sdhc.k12.fl.us.

Steve Heggarty is the head person (He replaced Marc Hart when the administration-board booted the latter out for alleged alcoholism but really to cover up the affair with La Falliero) to keep her reputation spotless and to keep the public from knowing the board and administration tolerate and even cultivate hanky panky on the job.

Heggarty got the head job not because he was qualified (he lacked the experience factor) but because he had covered the schools for the SPT and had played kissy poo with the administration and wrote puff pieces. Sycophancy is a winning bfoq for a job in the ROSSAC redoubt.

Steve is not on the ball. His assistant, Linda Cobbe (who had also applied of the job) is. Linda can get you data, but she can be snippy sometimes. Just overlook snippy and be grateful for competence. I don't get the impression there is much of that in ROSSAC.

Below are two emails in which I ask Linda for information. Anything in writing is public information--even if it's on piece of toilet paper. The public information office will not give you anything not written down. So don't ask for it. Or, for a lark, guess that it is and ask on the chance that it is written down: that's ok in my book. Any tactical ploy that does not end in a life sentence or the electric chair is perfectly ok in my rules of etiquette.

But in the end, you will get only what is written down.

If you don't get your data the first time, ask again. And again. And again. With Linda, you usually don't have to keep asking. But never hesitate to repeat the request. Persistence in this as in all things pays off. Never hesitate to be a pest. I am. It's my particular calling.

Right now, I have finally got the data that the boxes of Erwin files are in Linda's office (at the lobby level across from the ladies' room). I had asked Tom Gonzalez for these files repeatedly, but he played his little game of not answering until the rat in the operant conditioning chamber aka as the Skinner box punched the right button to get the pellet. Gonzalez is an anal-retentive officer of the court. He thinks withholding information from citizens enhances his status as a Big, Bad, Bodacious Guy.

I will start going through those boxes when my energy level is high. Meanwhile, I ask Linda for the two unnamed administrators' monikers whom Dr. Lamb referred the parent to when he refused to meet with his constituents about the boundary issues as commented upon in the Tribune editorial blasting Lamb. These two administrators blew the parent off too according to the Tribune editorial. I want to know their names for the ROSSAC Arrogant-Incompetent Hall of Fame.

Those names must be written down someplace. And Linda can find them. I have faith that she can. Or I will ask again.

While on this subject of Lamb's hideous treatment of the public, let's pause to grieve Fred's pulling out of the race. If you know anybody in that district who is breathing and showing other signs of life however feeble, beg that person to sign up and run against Lamb. He/she will be a shoo-in. Lamb's a goner if we can find a candidate in time. Otherwise, we are stuck with Dr. Avoirdupois Lambkins for another two years. He is good for nothing but rubberstamping Elia's ukases and waddling around asking board typists to send a letter from him on board stationary asking Mayor Iorio to abate his condo water bill. He did that. I am not making this up.

The other thing I ask for is the response of the board lawyer (maybe a different one from Gonzalez because it's a different area of the law) to the Satchell conspiracy law suit against Dr. Earl the Pearl Lennard and Ms. Linda Abu Ghraib Bernaise SauceKipley. The board has a month from the day of filing to respond, so this production is due soon to be found on this site if I can lay hold of it.

I plan to get a curb-side seat at that trial to hear Lennard's and Kipley's disingenuous testimony that the lawyer will nail them on. Kipley has participated in so many dirty-tricks scenarios to torture teachers and others of the proletariat class that she deserves the meanest cross-examination in the world of legal torture. I pray the Satchell lawyer is both smart and mean.

Having gotten the days mixed up, which happens often with me--one of the most delicious perquisites of retirement--I am going back to bed until noon. I read until 3 a.m., so I need more snooze time. What am I reading? The Leatherstocking tales, of course: I missed Fenimore Cooper when I was young; so I am reading him when I am old and in love with Natty Bumpo aka Hawkeye, Deerslayer, or Leatherstockings. He's even more attractive because he rejects all liasons with women--his bride, he avows, being the forest. Why don't we run into guys like that anymore? Women need challenges like Natty to hone their seduction skills.

Once more into the breach. lee

From: lee de cesare [mailto:tdecesar@tampabay.rr.com]
Sent: Tuesday, April 15, 2008 11:30 AM
To: 'Linda Cobbe'
Cc: 'rosemarygoudreau@tampatribune.com'; 'patrickmanteiga@lagacetanewspaper.com'; 'marilynbrown@tampatrib.com'; 'letitiastein@sptimes.com'
Subject: re

Linda, I should be able to get to your office between 1` and 2. May I see the Debra Satchell personnel file and the names of the two administrators in charge of the boundary fracas that the Tribune editorialized about? The editorial says that there were two administrators who blew off the parents. These were the ones Dr. Lamb referred the parents to when he said he would not meet with them. The names must be written down somewhere. So that’s public information.

Also, the Debra Satchell Conspiracy lawsuit against Dr. Lennard and Ms. Kipley gets a reply soon. I would like to see a copy of that. I guess you would get that from Mr. Gonzalez, or he will know whom to ask for it if another lawyer is handling it.

I know the boxes of the Erwin files await me. But today I can’t begin to review them. I will find another day for that chore.

Thanks,

lee

Linda, I got the days mixed up. I thought today was Tuesday. That happens a lot when you are retired.

Tell Tom Gonzalez that I had this mix-up, and he will write the Bar Committee an addendum about my being senile and hence my charge against him is null and void.

I think a defense would be that he is a granny basher and that the Elder Abuse Council should call on him for a session of tolerance of grannies.

I will be there tomorrow. Do the best you can on the Satchell file, and I will wait until it’s ready. Let me know, please. Meanwhile, I will see you tomorrow at about one. Thanks.

I want to give board members a one-page handout tomorrow. Do I give that to you to give to them?

Lee