KNOCK ON EVERY DOOR

Secretary of Education Arne Duncan

U.S. Department of Education

Washington, DC 2022

3/26/2009


Dear Mr. Secretary:


When President Obama announced his run for the presidency and said he would improve education, I sent him a thousand dollars and did without new dresses and shoes for a year. That is how strongly I support education.


The news on education has not emphasized what I see wrong with the K12 apparatus. It’s administrators. They are the C and D students streaming out of college with degrees in academic piffle who home in like lemmings to K12 education bureaucracies. Too many bought and paid for a graduate thesis as a forensics of their on-the-job writing shows. If not, theses committees are asleep on the job.


These scholars manqué head for administrations while bright graduates go into teaching. The lemmings are not smart but smart enough to know administration is where the money is. There exists a national cartel of administrators who bloat their salaries and then cite these as the going rate when applying for jobs. These are people who would never go further than the periphery in private industry.


I have observed Hillsborough County’s school board and administration for two years. I got interested in both because a teacher friend had a false charge filed against him by the superintendent through the Professional Standards gulag for using the school emails for private purposes but really because he complained from his home email to the county library about its kicking a gay display out of the county submitted by a University-of-South -Florida graduate student. Superintendent Elia does not want voters in the fens and bogs of Hillsborough County democracy to think the schools are tolerant of gays.


This routine of intimidating teachers with cooked-up charges to keep them quiet and docile and not daring to object to or give opinions on board-and-administration policies because they could thereby lose their jobs in retaliation through a Professional Standards faux charge exists an obscene oppression of teachers. The elected board colludes with this outrage while it goes along with administrative salary bloat. It pretends not to know about savaging of teachers through administration-manufactured charges.


This is the administration and school board that in the early Nineties drove a Mr. Doug Erwin out of the administration for discovering graft, theft, and shoddy building practices remunerated with top tax money by the collusive or somnolent board. Mr. Erwin insisted that the board and administration clean the crime up. They instead tried to run him crazy and convince him and others that he was crazy. He filed and won a whistleblower lawsuit and $165,000 from the taxpayers’ paying for board and administration criminality. He then fled into retirement.


Nobody got punished for the crimes cited by Mr. Erwin in the administration, starting with then-superintendent Earl Lennard, who oversaw the harassment of Mr. Erwin. The administration became potted plants and saw no evil.


This escape established the administration culture of invulnerability to punishment for bad behavior and even crime. Hence, since then dirty tricks have prospered and become a part of administration theology. The technique of using the Professional Standards Office to suppress any teacher unrest with made-up charges against the outspoken is Exhibit One in this shoddy record. Teachers with blogs are particular targets.


The state of Florida K12 bureaucracy practices incestuous hiring and does not advertise jobs while blazoning “We Are an Equal-opportunity Employer,” a flat-out lie. The board has ceded Ms. Elia patronage power of awarding jobs to kin, buddies, and sycophants. The board gave Ms. Elia a pass on the Ph.D. requirement for the superintendent job while advertising it for $35,000 taxpayer dollars to cover their skullduggery.


Ms. Elia was an inside pick because the board was scared that a Ph.D. from Columbia or other good schools would catch on to their incumbency sloth and put them to work.


The board and administration don’t like criticism. They recently convinced the public-education station to cut out my parts of the citizen comment section of school-board meetings. The board members had their fingers crossed when they took the oath of office to protect the Constitution.


Bottom line, Mr. Secretary: you need to scrutinize administrations and not keep harping on only teachers.


I see you got your credentials from Harvard. Good. In sociology: OK, but sociology is not a demanding major. I see you graduated magna cum laude. Fair. I graduated summa cum laude with four children under five clinging to my skirts. Women always have to do better than men to get half the credit. Keep that in mind when you consider the world your daughter faces.


You have an admirable family background bound to produce a winner. Your record as Chicago superintendent ranks stellar.


That you are handsome is a plus. Being cute has worked for me for 76 years. One should pay attention to appearance to the end of life. It’s the first thing people see about you. Looking like a knight of the road or a bag lady will insure your turn-down at the door of opportunity even if you are peddling a cure for AIDS. I infer your basketball playing provided the panache that pushed you over the top in the President’s pick. The national obsession with sports afflicts our Commander in Chief. My husband of 52 years is a sports zombie who’s worn out two Stratoloungers in front of the round-the-clock sports channel. Were I to do it over again, I would succumb to a Sanskrit scholar.


Your success in this job will hinge on your turning your attention to the worst-performing elements in schools: administrations and boards. Send a team of observers down to Tampa to review the performance of the Hillsborough County administration and board C and D students. The tribe of Hillsborough County administrators has only one Ph.D. in its midst. Ms Elia doesn’t want anybody to outrank her and doesn’t like the reminder that she got her job through political mind games, not credentials and experience.



Hillsborough County Public Schools, Florida USA

AN EQUAL OPPORTUNITY EMPLOYER

Oh, sure



Respectfully,

Lee Drury De Cesare

15316 Gulf Boulevard 802

Madeira Beach, FL 33708

tdecesar@tampabay.rr.com

leedrurydecesarescasting-room couch. Blogspot.com

c: Ms. Michelle Obama






Ms. Michelle Obama

The White House

1600 Pennsylvania Avenue

Washington, D.C. 20500

3/26/2009

Dear Ms. Obama:

I enclose a letter to the new Secretary of Education, that handsome dog Arne Duncan.


For the good of the schools, ponder it and chat with Mr. Basketball Secretary when the chance arises.



I know you will see him because the President will need to have state Oval Office summits with Secretary Duncan on the NFL or whatever it’s called.


I taught English in a community college close to my home so that I could set my schedule and get home in time my four children’s return from school for 28 years. So I know all about the phenomenon of administrators as crooks. Those who misrun the Hillsborough County schools are the real McCoy. This sad fact does not help the county children’s education. That the teachers manage to teach well and get students’ scores high enough to make this school system look good is a miracle.


The superintendent takes credit for what the teachers do despite negative working conditions imposed on teachers by her and the administration sanctioned by the board.


Board members are obsessed with the éclat of their position that gives them opportunity to strut around town to non-stop political luncheons and dodahs. They care as much about education as my youngest of ten grandchild cares about the lore of runic interpretation. This circuit of chow-downs has made the board members so overweight that they can’t offer obesity training for children in the schools because the board is in terror of invidious comparison.


Get the president’s ear on this situation, pray, Ms. Obama. Curtain lectures explain how I have prospered in a 52-year marriage.


Tell your mother hello for me and that she has an admirer in Florida. And keep on wearing those snazzy turquoise boots. Wear them to the next ball. Don’t let those anal-retentive fashion dictators wear you down. You are a breath of fresh air for fashion aficionados after the librarian couture of Mrs. Bush and the eclectic wackiness of Hillary Clinton. Ms. Clinton has finally adopted a uniform of chic pants suits that disguise her fire-hydrant legs so that one can concentrate on her beautiful face. I bet those pants suits are bespoke and cost a fortune. I am glad that President Obama was large-minded enough to give her that job. Now she can wear those pants suits in every color all over the world.


Fashion advice: don’t go cowardly and wear any Chanel. Chanel reeks of Republican insecure women’s retreat to the safety of the past. Republican women excel in fashion frumpiness.


Sincerely,

Lee Drury De Cesare

15316 Gulf Boulevard 802

Madeira Beach, FL 33708

tdecesar@tampabay.rr.com