Blogging to Pierce the Veil of Silence

Juliet's Balcony in Parma

Mr. Otero: The spontaneous outburst chiefly involving you and Mr. Gonzalez at the last board meeting after Bart and I had made our cases against the mistreatment of Goader aka Steve Kemp opened my eyes to some political realities behind the wall of deliberate political silence that the administration maintains. It shuts out the board from vital information it needs to make decisions.

The administration has made the board a puppet of which Ms. Elia and her ROSSAC myrmidons pull the strings. The board allows this condition because its members have no serious intentions of fulfilling the promise of "cleaning up the schools" they all made on the stump. That would require intellectual and political work, not the board's forte.

I wish Board Member Griffin had had the savvy to ask you to deliver to the board a summary of the child-abuse case's accusations against Steve Kemp, a summary of the witnesses' testimony, and a list of other witnesses you have to interview.

And also a board member needs to ask for the date of the hearing to wind-up of the case.

I know this interrupts the Professional Standards' torture committee's plan to squeeze Goader as long as possible until he throws up his hands and stops his blog. Blogs are the bete noire of the administration and board. Blogs print things that the board and administration have had washed, disinfected, and dried in Community Relations office before allowing the information out the door.

I pray Goader never does capitulate.

Meanwhile, the administration and board are babying former Alafia Principal Smith, who is a real insult to Professional Standards. She lacks the talent of treating other people like human beings. But she is an administrator, and administrators get wrapped in cotton wadding when they mess up while teachers are treated like toads. So Ms. Smith resides in ROSSAC until Ms. Elia can find or create her a better-paying job than that of principal.

It's sadistic for the torture committee of which you apparently act Lucco Brazzi to keep Steve in suspension for 6 1/2 months and counting. Losing his job for child-abuse would mean he could never get another job in a school system. You torture addicts know this sad truth and are counting on that fear to bring him to his knees. You want to to break the fellow, his then being so emasculated that he will abandon his blog even though it only occasionally does but a mild piece on the skulduggery in the schools. You do a dirty piece of work simply to keep teachers from using their First Amendment rights.

This torture ritual is so ghoulish that I am considering getting a local minister, priest, imam, and born-again man of God to all visit the board and administration for counseling and expiation. The ROSSAC chambers must be hosed down as moral Augean stables and then besprinkled with holy water.

Ms. Elia's office needs an extra dousing with holy water since that is site of her putative cursing out of lower-level personnel with imprecations larded with the f-word. I can write the holy men and let them know the godless activities that go on in the sinful precincts of the School Board; the spiritual leaders of this community need to know of these devilish activities of the board and its administration minions on civic ground.

I am well qualified to do this task. I am a child of Episcopal parents, the church of whom in the little Georgia town where I was born turned Hard Shell Baptist about forty years ago. The apostates of the family joined the Baptists and outbred the sluggish Episcopal original members of the little family church on the grounds of the cemetery.

Now the church's sermons come from itinerant born-again, bloviating ministers. These pulpit-pounding preachers prey on the ignorance that infests all the little Southern towns of my home state and even my family, alas. Ignorance has suborned my family along with the other dopes in town.

But the point is that I can talk high church and low church. I am fluent in both episcopal doxology and also born-again patois. The born-agains in my family have cooked up an individual buck and wing that is the envy of all the other born-agains. They will drop down to the ground and pray over you in a heartbeat if they think you have done anything wicked like not going to church on Sunday and prayer meeting on Wednesday.

If my kin visited ROSSAC, its members would stay on their knees all the time. You, Mr. Otero, sir, would get a special prayer session for your wickedness as the head of Professional Standards Torture Committee. This ceremony would halve your red blood-cell count and diminish the potency of your bone marrow's defense against deadly infections. Don't say I haven't warned you.

My Catholic husband is still in shock over observing the didoes of the preacher at the annual dinner on the grounds last year, at which the preacher preached himself into near apoplexy at how wicked we all were and how we didn't have a snowball's chance of making it through the pearly gates.

I talk that language. I learned from my cousins. We used to play-act preaching sermons to each other about everybody's going to hell. True, I will have to bone up on imam language, but I can do that. I have a talent for linguistics of all flavors.

So expect the religious community of the Bay Area to hear about what is going on in the schools from the kid here. Think I am just prattling at your peril. The more outre an activity is, the more it attracts me.

Meanwhile, in order to part the curtain of secrecy that the board and administration have kept closed, confirm or deny for me the following rumors:

• Your daughter got a principal's job two weeks after hiring. That surprised me that you might have a daughter. Luco Brazzi would never have daughters; he would father all sons.
• Dr. Lamb's daughter, who alas is said to resemble her pops, holds an administrative position in the schools;
• Ditto for Ms. Ethridge's daughter;
• The Smiths are Dr. Lamb's bosom friends, and hence Ms. Smith got extra-special coddling for her treating the Alafia parents, children, and teachers like slaves.

The administration and board's using the schools as a hiring program for children and relatives not to mention buddies, most of whom are not inhabitants of the upper reaches of the Stanford Binet, needs closer scrutiny. I promise to provide it.

Ms. Elia has not yet confirmed or denied that she showers employees in her office with the f-word. Ms. Olson has not denied or confirmed that she no longer lives in her district after divorce. The public wants to know the answers to these questions.

ROSSAC's not answering questions is a signal to me that I need to keep repeating and adding to them.

lee drury de cesare



Ms. Cobbe: Has the total for the administration's defense of Alafia's Ms. Smith been tallied yet? If so, I would like to have it.

I also want a list, please, of all the federal grants and the agencies that give them to this school system. Thank you.

Schools having federal grants are supposed to have affirmative action plans for disabled workers. Could you get a copy of that for me as well? Thank you.

lee drury de cesare