Saturday, August 30, 2008

Always Fighting Ignorance



http://www.palmbeachpost.com/blogs/content/shared-blogs/palmbeach/extracredit/entries/2008/08/20/teachers_union_board_doesnt_ca.html

This Extra Credit blog echoes the situation in Hillsborough County, but the teachers there seem to have a more spirited CTA. At least it is able to express disgust. Anybody would be more lively than Hillsborough County CTA. If it were any less active in teachers' interest, it would be motionless. lee
__________________________________________
file:///C:/Documents%20and%20Settings/Owner/Desktop/30supplies.html NYT articles on school supplies

Get Pad and Pen: The School Supply List Is Long


Published: August 29, 2008


I want to suggest that the board donate its frolicking travel money to the poor children of the county who can't afford supplies and hence can't participate in class activities. Susan's Valdes's $50,000 spent going to cities to pick up those ridiculous gimcrack awards that the education bureaucracy downloads on each other by the Dempsey dumpster would be better--much better--spent buying supplies for poor children.

Here's another issue I picked up in the NYT:


A Teacher on the Front Line as Faith and Science Clashfile:

Documents%20and%20Settings/Owner/Desktop/24evolution.html

Why do I undertake such reading projects? In this case I wanted to remind myself about the Galapogos Islands' birds' beaks that made the evolution light-bulb go off in Darwin's head as a young ship naturalist on the Beagle in his early twenties.

When I finished the section on the Galapagos discovery, curiosity made me flip to the front of the book and continue reading through the four major Darwin books--The Voyage of the Beagle, The Origin of the Species (most challenging), The Descent of Man, The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals, and the excellent two-book biography by Janet Browne: Voyaging and Pride of Place.

I have been such a reader since I was a child. The habit seems to be congenital. My father used to rebuke me, "Get your nose out of that book and go out and play and get some air. You are going to go blind if you don't stop reading so much."

I am now ready to take my state boards on evolution and extract from the board the status of evolutionary teaching in the science classes of the county. I asked my granddaughter (senior, Plant) if her science book discussed evolution. She didn't have it at home, and she said she wasn't sure. I wanted to see if it distorted evolution to propitiate the religious zealots who oppose science if it contradicts the Bible. You will recall that Elia buckled when the religious zealots from the fens and the bogs of the county stomped into the board room, called Muslims "towel-heads," and demanded that only Christian holidays get days off.

I bet my favorite pair of Manhola Blahniks that not one of the board will be able to define what natural selection is. lee




Friday, August 29, 2008

Good Advice from a Reader

I wholly agree with this reader below's insights. Teachers have enough votes to elect board candidates. If each teacher makes his or her family a little election pod that goes to the polls and votes for the candidate that will replace the present board member, that is the direction to go to get a better deal for teachers and students. This current board has shown that it does not count students and teachers as important; it counts only itself, its board privileges and eclat, and Ms. Elia's dictates as important. And everybody knows how down on teachers and students Elia is. The election box is the way to get rid of the bad board members, Elia and her pots-and-pans Professional Standards sadist Kipley.

This approach goes not only for this current election but for every election until teachers have made themselves into a political force that can impact who sits on the board. Only when you can kick them out of office will board members such as sit on the board now pay attention to you. We deal with politicians, not with humanitarians.

If I lived in Hillsborough County, I would vote for Steve Gorham, not because he will be perfect but because he will be better than Kurdell.

I was in Tampa last night in my old neighorborhood for a final-night convention party. I worked on two women to run for the board against Olson. Somebody who knows
Brandon people, find a candidate out there to run against Falliera. I will do everything I can to expose her immoral behavior as a board member who initiated an affair with a ROSSAC administrator, Mark Hart, catalzyed his divorce, made his two children suffer, and sat by in her new appointment as board chair that her board member buddies gave her dispite her school-site adultery and watched while Hart was fired on a trumped-up charge to saver Falliera's "reputation."

Maybe Fred can run again against Lamb; and maybe a candidate will turn up to challenge Ms. Edgecombe. Susan and April are collaborators, but if they had just one strong member on the board, they would follow him or her.

lee

Subject: RE: [Lee Drury De Cesare's Casting-Room Couch] New comment on Underground Railroad Message Service to the Board.

From: Anonymous [mailto:noreply-comment@blogger.com]
Sent: Thursday, August 28, 2008 11:16 PM
To: tdecesar@tampabay.rr.com
Subject: [Lee Drury De Cesare's Casting-Room Couch] New comment on Underground Railroad Message Service to the Board.

Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "Underground Railroad Message Service to the Board":

Everyone get out and vote for Gorham in November to get rid of Kurdell. Then, when it is time for Candy Olson to run again in a couple of years people need to vote for whoever runs against her. There's nothing we can do about Lamb since he had no opponent this time around. Like Lee says these 3 were on the board when Erwin needed their help and they allowed people to ignore the Whistle Blower Act. This is criminal behavior that they condone when they do not act. I hear that Candy's husband is a judge. Her unethical behavior should upset her husband. Make sure to get out and vote. It is the only way things will change. The school board members have proven that they care nothing about taxpayer dollars, they care nothing about doing the right thing or having ethical behavior. They are all about keeping the status quo, getting jobs for friends, and doing whatever Elia tells them to do. What point is there in having a school board? All they do is nod their heads in agreement with whatever Elia says. So why bother having a board. Let's just get rid of the board and let Elia have a free for all.

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Posted by Anonymous to Lee Drury De Cesare's Casting-Room Couch at 8:16 PM



Thursday, August 28, 2008

Underground Railroad Message Service to the Board


This 40-year-old picture depicts a group of us women who went to meet with Mayor Dick Greco (whom I had graduated from HHS with--he was a jerk then and remains a jerk to this day, when the city is putting a statue of him downtown). The city discriminated against women--wouldn't let them be police officers, for example--so we women wanted to protest this unfairness. Our mission puzzled Dick because he was familiar with women only as objects to hit on, but we preached our equality sermon anyway. Gwen Cherry and Elaine Gordon both came from Miami at their own expense to help out. They were state legislators later on and are now both dead. I filed EEOC charges for a young black woman supporting three children on a nurses' aide pittance. The city personnel jerk, Marshall Jessee, had "lost" her application for police officer three times. We won the charge, and Thelma (her name) got the police job. My husband and I went to her graduation ceremony from the Police Academy. The city had to file an affirmative-action plan. Dick runs around the state 40 years later claiming his was the first city in Florida to have an affirmative-action plan. He doesn't mention that a bunch of women made him file it via the EEOC and the Justice Department.

PS: I have sent Stephen Gorham some more money and encouragement to fight Kurdell. He did well. It's entirely possible for him to win in the November general election. If you have any extra cash, send him a donation and encouragement. If you don't have cash, send encouragement and offer to hand out flyers. lee

The Bart of the second message below is the reason I became interested in the schools' skullduggery.

Elia and Kipley cooked up a case against Bart because Elia's county buddy Pat Bean sent her emails that Bart had sent from his home computer to Joe Stines, head of the county library, who cooperated with Rhonda Storms in depriving gays of library privileges. Bart and Stines are both gay. Elia is terrified of bad publicity and didn't want a gay agitator for gay rights associated with her schools, hence her recourse to pots-and-pans Kipley's services.

The two fiends and the technology department--headed by one of Erwin's chief torturers, Jack Davis, couldn't find anything significant in Bart's emails to show he was using school emails for personal reasons, so Kipley called Bart in for mind games as a culmination of the charge and tried to mess up his synapses with her veiled threats--the kind a pots-and-pans-degreed person is expert in. But they didn't fire him because they could not discover a reason to.

Bart went to counseling because he was rattled by the experience. I told him never to back down ever: to face the ROSSAC torture crew and call their bluff. I guaranteed him that if he faced the cowardly crew and threatened to go public, he would have a Teflon shield. He has learned to protect himself. Such people prey on the weak to provide a cautionary example to anybody who may see wrongdoing and have the urge to oppose it. By standing his ground, Bart freed himself from the dirty sadism practiced via pots-and-pans Kipley at Elia's behest. Their power rests on fear just as the board's incumbency rests on the voters' ignorance of their behavior on the board. lee

From: lee [tdecesar@tampabay.rr.com]

Sent: Tuesday, September 30, 2008 2:29 PM

To: doretha.edgecomb@sdhc.k12.fl.us; candy.olson@sdhc.k12.fl.us; jennifer.falliero@sdhc.k12.fl.us; jack.lamb@sdhc.k12.fl.us; carol.kurdell@sdhc.k12.fl.us; susan.valdes@sdhc.k12.fl.us; april.griffin@sdhc.k12.fl.us

Cc: ptash@sptimes.com; rosemarygoudreau@tampatribune.com; 'Letitia'; Marilynbrown@tampatrib.com; 'Angie Manteiga'; 'Gene Siudut'

Subject: FW: [Lee Drury De Cesare's Casting-Room Couch] New comment on Wisdom from Grass Roots.

The latest below from the ranks of teachers giving their opinion of Ms. Elia, the candidate whom you chose for her being an insider and no threat to your incumbency and your lazy acquiescence to the criminal comportment of the ROSSAC crew.

You lowered the academic credentials for Elia to qualify and pissed away $35,000 in tax money for a faux “nation-wide” ad to cover your tracks. You should have hired the professional from New Orleans who had been a superintendent in three venues. Now you are stuck with a character in the superintendent chair who is money and power mad and who fills ROSSAC vacancies with her D-student cronies with deficient academic and professional backgrounds who are too dumb to do the jobs with the result that the schools are going to hell while these poseurs posture as big and important people in ROSSACm, and you sit as potted plants on the board dais or gad about town posturing as patrons of education. The guy who wrote Springtime for Hitler should use this crew of board and ROSSAC as principals in a satire on dumbasses in the outback bungling the running of the schools even though they are equipped with no brains, no ethics, and no class.

You should all be ashamed of yourselves; and Olson, Lamb, and Kurdell should be doubly ashamed for their sitting through the torture of Erwin and pretending they didn’t know what was going on. The court papers tell a different story.

People with such low morals should not be on school boards. School boards above all places should demonstrate impeccable ethics. But how would a bunch of peripatetic sightseeing cheats with bloated trip expenses know anything about ethics? Their travel exploits show they are devoid of a sense of responsibility to the tax payers, yet they begged voters to put them in office because they would guard taxpayers’ monies.

lee drury de cesare

From: Anonymous [mailto:noreply-comment@blogger.com]
Sent: Wednesday, August 27, 2008 11:56 PM
To: tdecesar@tampabay.rr.com
Subject: [Lee Drury De Cesare's Casting-Room Couch] New comment on Wisdom from Grass Roots.

Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "Wisdom from Grass Roots":

Overheard in a voting line on Tuesday:

"I hate that fucking bitch Elia! I hated her when she was my Reading Supervisor and I still do. If she were a candidate for something I would vote NO!"

Everyone you meet hates her. She has made lots of enemies in the district. All of them are people who worked under her. She knows how to schmooze with peers or people above her. She squashes the little people and goes out of her way to make them feel terrible.

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Posted by Anonymous to Lee Drury De Cesare's Casting-Room Couch at 8:55 PM

From: William Birdsall [montolino@aol.com]

Sent: Thursday, August 28, 2008 12:06 AM

To: lee de cesare

Cc: doretha.edgecomb@sdhc.k12.fl.us; jennifer.faliero@sdhc.k12.fl.us; susan.valdes@sdhc.k12.fl.us; april.griffin@sdhc.k12.fl.us; carol.kurdell@sdhc.k12.fl.us; jack.lamb@sdhc.k12.fl.us; candy.olson@sdhc.k12.fl.us; tash@sptimes.com; rosemarygoudreau@tampatribune.com; Marilynbrown@tampatrib.com; Letitia; Angie Manteiga; Gene Siudut

Subject: Re: Broken acs and no help for the classes suffering from the incompetence of ROSSAC

Dear Board Members:

I believe there are a/c problems at some schools. Have compassion and go to to the schools in your district that have had their a/c redone over the summer and take inventory of which schools have problems. It would show teachers that you have compassion for their plight.

I hope the board and Elia will put employees' and students' health first in this issue and possibly go back to how the a/c systems were working last year (much better).

Molds can make human beings sick. There are even life threatening molds. I know this, b/c I learned about molds in one of my library science classes which said whole library collections can be decimated by mold. Ideally, the libraries would have a/c even in the summer when not in use to protect the collections.

When you visit schools, look at the outside of buildings (if mold is growing), look at carpet that might be bubbling up, any wetness on walls, the general humidity in the rooms. It is important to do this to protect employees and students from illness.

Bart

On Sep 29, 2008, at 11:52 PM, lee de cesare wrote:

More from the classrooms: the board doesn’t give hooey about classroom problems but which citizens expect you to see to the needs of the teachers and students. One major problem in teachers’ being as importunate as they should be about these conditions is they know Elia will sic the ROSSAC pots and pans sadist on them, Linda Kipley, to set them up for punishment of some kind or even firing.

After all, that’s what happened to Erwin when he reported problems: Lennard, Hamilton, and Davis crucified him with the whole of ROSSAC’s populace cooperating and the board pretending not to know what was going on. Olson, Kurdell, and Lamb were on the board then and turned a blind eye. But the Erwin court papers show they knew the score. Those board members who have joined them since will turn a blind eye too.

I bet not one of you has the courage to call Elia and demand that she deal with this problem. You show no care for the students and the teachers. All your board life is lived in ROSSAC, and you refuse to give teachers and students a slot on the board agenda and a promise of protection from retaliation to come and report problems that deter them from teaching effectively such as these.

Shame on you all. I hope Gorham beats Kurdell. There is a chance he will be more forthcoming in helping teachers since his wife is a teacher.

lee drury de Cesare

From: Anonymous [noreply-comment@blogger.com]

Sent: Wednesday, August 27, 2008 11:15 PM

Subject: [Lee Drury De Cesare's Casting-Room Couch] New comment on Wisdom from Grass Roots.

Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "Wisdom from Grass Roots":

The thermostat is set at 76, but the humidity is horrible. We sweat and sweat and sweat. Elia probably has her office nice and cool. When they redid the a/c in our school something was messed up with the humidity and papers and posters are falling off the wall. Papers on my desk literally feel damp. It is unbearable.

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Posted by Anonymous to Lee Drury De Cesare's Casting-Room Couch at 8:14 PM

From: Anonymous [noreply-comment@blogger.com]

Sent: Wednesday, August 27, 2008 11:13 PM

Subject: [Lee Drury De Cesare's Casting-Room Couch] New comment on Wisdom from Grass Roots.

Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "Wisdom from Grass Roots":

At my school one teacher has been teaching his class in the media center for weeks, b/c district people can't fix his ac. It goes back to what Lee says about the ROSSAC officials not knowing how to do their jobs, so they hire consultants, etc. This time they aren't hiring consultants, so the ac does not work.

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Posted by Anonymous to Lee Drury De Cesare's Casting-Room Couch at 8:12 PM

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