My Lord: IT'S WORSE THAN WE THOUGHT

Minions of the Light: Go to this NAPTA site. A woman who's being savaged by the administration got in touch me and sent me this information.

I had begun to suspect that the whole state was trashing teachers as I slowly became acquainted with the problem of teacher abuse.

This site shows the problem is nation wide. When I get the lawyer site where they are swapping tricks to torture teachers, I will post it. lee

Join NAPTA
www/EndTeacherAbuse.com

Also go to www.endteacherabuse.org It will open your eyes. The same techniques are used against teachers all over the USA. The administrators and their attorneys take seminars on how to get law changed to their benefit (over time) and legal techniques for getting rid of or harassing teachers.

They use to be easy to find on the web, but now you must belong to a paid "research" site for lawyers and/or administrators to get information on these lawyers who give such seminars.

One lawyer is McGrath Template. There are others for business and public service. It's horrible.
Later I will send you titles to read. There are many great ones on this site.

Map of blog readers' location

The Best Is Yet to Come

Let's Drink to Fighting the Minions of the Dark

Goader: I read some of the comments in your blog this morning.

The Poverty Law Center has a case against the HC schools for the handling of special-ed children. Go to the Poverty Center online, and you can find the case.

That is a powerful organization. I send it money when I can. I haven't bought a single dress or pair of shoes in months to send this outfit money. The people they defend are the ones the fancy lawyers won't touch because there is no money in it.

I advise your writing the Poverty Law Center and asking if your case can join the current suit against the school system. The picture of the junk-filled room that the administration thought was good enough for these severely retarded children is a killer piece of evidence for the mistreatment of those poor children. Your not being given any instruction when the administration representatives threw you into the classroom, not caring if you knew how to care for the children, would add weight to the case for the HC school system's mistreating special-needs children.

Don't be surprised when you win your child-abuse cooked-up case and exit suspension for the classroom, if I call on you to help me do what we can for the next teacher victim.

A teacher got in touch with me recently who has been treated abysmally. She doesn't want me to reveal details of her case. But I believe she will get past that attitude when she senses how unethical and cruel the board and administration are. Then we can start to shout her case from the rooftops.

The only thing these administration ghouls are afraid of is exposure. They want to do their dirty deeds out of the sunshine. Our job is to make sure they appear in blogs to expose what they are doing to dishonor education.

So polish up your rhetorical skills, Goader. You have a rendezvous with the board-room mike. Lee

PS The reason I can see the big picture even though I often miss the details is that I am old. You will be surprised how much smarter you get the older you get. And there is another advantage to being old. If you have a mop of white hair, cultural protections of the elderly kicks into younger people's psyches. So you as an old person can get away with more daring behavior. And in a pinch, you can always call the Elder Abuse Council if someone annoys you. ldd

Don't Be Naive When Indians Surround You with Their Tomahawks Poised for Action

The above is a letter that Doug Erwin wrote to Carol Bricklemeyer, now retired then the school-board chair. Notice the date. This was in the first couple of years when he was still trying to get the board and administration to fight the crime going on in the administration. The trouble is what he found out later that they both wanted to protect the crime, not stamp it out. Somebody was getting payoffs in the upper administration or board or both.

Mr. Erwin's naivete and trust in the system made him think Mr. Bricklemeyer was honest. She was as honest as a pickpocket. She took him to Tom Gonzalez, they drained him of information, and then threw him back to the wolves.

Beware of board members bearing false faces of honesty when they are knee deep in the skulduggery that is killing you. lee

I can't get this frame to go away, so just ignore it. leeGoader: I read some of the comments in your blog this morning.

The Poverty Law Center has a case against the HC schools for the handling of special-ed children. Go to the Poverty Center online, and you can find the case.

That is a powerful organization. I send it money when I can. I haven't bought a single dress or pair of shoes in months to send this outfit money. The people they defend are the ones the fancy lawyers won't touch because there is no money in it.

I advise your writing the Poverty Law Center and asking if your case can join the current suit against the school system. The picture of the junk-filled room that the administration thought was good enough for these severely retarded children is a killer piece of evidence for the mistreatment of those poor children. Your not being given any instruction when the administration representatives threw you into the classroom, not caring if you knew how to care for the children, would add weight to the case for the HC school system's mistreating special-needs children.

Don't be surprised when you win your child-abuse, cooked-up case and exit suspension for the classroom. I can then call on you to help me do what we can for the next teacher victim.

A teacher got in touch with me recently whom the administration has treated abysmally. She doesn't want me to reveal details of her case. But I believe she will get past that attitude when she senses how unethical and cruel the board and administration are. Then we can start to shout her case from the rooftops.

The only thing these administration ghouls are afraid of is exposure. They want to do their dirty deeds out of the sunshine. Our job is to make sure they appear in blogs to expose what they are doing to dishonor education.

So polish up your rhetorical skills, Goader. You have a rendezvous with the board-room mike. Lee

PS You say I can see the big picture. The reason I can see the big picture even though I often miss the details is that I am old. You will be surprised how much smarter you get the older you get. And there is another advantage to being old. If you have a mop of white hair as I do, cultural protections of the elderly kick into younger people's psych: those under 30 particularly. So you as an old person can get away with more daring behavior because of your "I am an old and helpless lady" body protector.

In a pinch, you can always call the Elder Abuse Council if someone annoys you and gets you in a dither.

The Devil Made Me Do That

I sent this to Senator Storms after my urging her to vote against Senate Bill 1212 to build a railroad around Disney World when so many other needs that affect so many more needy people need attending to. Take the time to write your legislators.

My husband was mayor of our little town for twelve years: he says a letter has the most impact on an elected official. Emails don't count as heavily.

But write no matter what mode you take. You can never tell when your communication may be the one that tips the balance in favor of better legislation. lee

From: lee DeCesare [mailto:tdecesar@tampabay.rr.com]
Sent: Thursday, April 16, 2009 12:38 PM
To: 'STORMS.RONDA.WEB'
Subject: RE: Senator Ronda Storms received your e-mail

Senator Storms: This is a good response letter. I hope you do what you say you do. I am a Democrat: my husband is a Republican. Our representative is Bill Young. He has the best staff for citizen response bar none. Constituent service means a lot to people. Legislators who pay attention to voters' letters show they are in government to help people, not to prance around to blow up their egos.

I hope you pay attention to the Hillsborough County School Board. It is a shame to have such uninformed people sit on the most important board there is: it controls our children's and grandchildren's education. The board and administration have the same mentality as it had when Dr. Lennard and his thugs savaged Mr. Doug Erwin in the early 90s for his discovering theft, bid rigging, and shoddy building from developers. They tried to fire him and deprive him of his pension. Thank God he won his whistleblower law suit against them. Ms. Elia makes $300,000 a year and a beginning teacher makes $34,000. There is something radically wrong with that equation. I think the funding formula needs changing. I think that the Senate could enact changes that would make it impossible to pay school administrators bloated salaries and teachers peanuts.

lee drury de cesare

leedrurydecesarescasting-roomcouch.blogspot.com

From: Anonymous [mailto:noreply-comment@blogger.com] Sent: Tuesday, April 14, 2009 8:24 PM To: tdecesar@tampabay.rr.com Subject: [Lee Drury De Cesare's Casting-Room Couch] New comment on I've Got Mail. Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "I've Got Mail":

Lee--Do you know what has happened to Steve Kemp ? The man is a wonder-- we need to continue to givfe him out support and encouragement. Is he STILL in the equivalent of the rubber room? It has been TEN months!! The school year is almost over!!!!!

If he has hired an attorney to sue the School Board and friend, please tell me where I can contribute to a fund. Thanks for everything you do--I was over at Madeira for Spring Break-- I could be quite content chilling out on the beach if I was you!!!!
pollyanna's gone Publish this comment. Reject this comment. Moderate comments for this blog. Posted by Anonymous to Lee Drury De Cesare's Casting-Room Couch at 5:23 PMS

Steve seems OK, quite feisty, in fact. I got an email from him today. He still has his blog, a good sign. As long as he keeps his blog he hangs on to his humanity. He was tagged with child abuse to scare him into giving up that blot.

I don't think the administration will fire him now no matter how long they keep him on paid leave. To do their dirty deeds, the administration requires it to hidden, and the Kemp case is now too hot to hide.

In addition, I have a feeling the board may turn on the administration if it tries to fire him. That move would make the board look too bad with the voters. Lee

I've Got Mail

I find myself reading your blog from time to time. It seems that you have been extremely vocal about the unfair treatment that Mr. Doug Erwin received at the hands of Dr. Hamilton and other administration and Board members by the Hillsborough County School District. Though, I agree whole heartily that Mr. Erwin was treated unfairly. I think the verdict that awarded Mr. Erwin a settlement in excess of what his attorney asked for was proof to everyone that the Board and the administration didn't get away with this particular harassment. Unfortunately, Mr. Erwin suffered much to receive this award.

I am glad that Mr. Erwin got a generous settlement. Lord knows he had suffered enough from the abuse of Dr. Lennard and his goons to deserve it. I didn’t know it was in excess of what his attorney asked. Good for the fair-minded jury, who had better sense than to believe the glossing over of the outrage presented in court by Tom Gonzalez's firm in defense of the sadists who savaged Mr. Erwin.

The jurors saw that the crucifixion that Dr. Lennard and his thugs Dr. Hamilton and Mr. Davis subjected Mr. Erwin to deserved generous compensation. And Tom Gonzalez deserved to be one of the defendants himself. Mr. Erwin went to him with the then chair of the board now resigned. I can't recall her name. I think it was Bricklemeyer. She took him to Mr. Gonzalez for consultation; then both Board Chair Bricklemeyer and Mr. Gonzalez promised to protect Mr. Erwin but fed him to the administration wolves instead.

And it was the taxpayers who paid for the board and administration crime. The crook paid nothing, not even that guy McClelland, who stole a tractor, lifted about a box car of toilet paper, and bragged about getting rich on the tax payers. The board and administration got away with murder: not single person got punished after the Erwin outrage.

The board fell silent. If it had cared at all for education, it would have fired Dr. Lennard and his henchmen Hamilton and Black.

Dr. Lennard holed up in his office and protested his lack of knowledge of anything--including whether the world still spun on its axis. Board and administration hunkered down and waited for an inattentive public to go back to football games and tractor pulls. It did.

This experience has not deterred the administration from its criminal tendencies. Rather getting away with the savaging of Mr. Erwin only encouraged the board and administration to incorporate criminal protocols in their routine administrative regime. Crime continues today in ROSSAC purlieus. It's just a different flavor of crime: more confident, more outright. The administration with board backup has, for instance, shut up teachers by Ms. Elia’s using the Professional Standards office to either cook up a crime by some teacher or to take a trifle and turn it into a firing offense. So teachers are in terror of losing their jobs if they criticize the administration and board or speak up for their rights.

Currently, with the board’s collusion, Ms. Elia has charged special-ed teacher Steve Kemp with child abuse. The sheriff threw out the charge, but the board and administration continued to hold it over Kemp's head, knowing that Steve Kemp would suffer psychological agony, knowing that if the administrative Nazis fired him for a charge of child-abuse, cooked up or not, he would never get another job as a teacher. He has been on suspension for eight months and counting.

Kemp’s real crime in the administration’s eyes is that he has a blog that has sometimes been mildly critical of the board and administration. They can’t stand even mild criticism. They want the public to have only information about the schools that has gone through the spin cycle of the Public Affairs Laundromat and converts into glowing deeds executed by the board and administration.

Not believing teachers have Free Speech rights, the administration or its designate called up Steve Kemp in a quid-pro-quo move and asked him not to mention a certain subject on his blog again. He agreed. I suggest the unspoken but well understood quid pro quo was "You give up your blog and your civil rights, and we will take you off suspension and not fire you. We will let you go back to the classroom and teach."

Steve Kemp has run out of courage. The board and administration have gutted him and hung him out to dry. Some say he is a coward; but I say he is a human being who suffered all he could take and then gave in. I am a registered nurse. When a patient reached the ultimate of his endurance for pain, we gave him morphine. I judge Steve to be at the morphine stage now. Torture is a routine feature in enemy prison camps. Torture a person long enough, and that person will say what you want him or her to say. That routine is what is closing down Guantanamo. Thank God.

I'm curious, since the Erwin trial went on several years ago, have you ever received any information on Mr. Erwin's replacement? I've read that Mrs. Cathy Valdes who's in charge of the Facilities Divisions only credentials are of early childhood, but I've never seen you address the credentials of the person who replaced Erwin. I wouldn't be surprised if the District saw fit to hire another educator or someone who could easily be controlled to watch over the day to day operation of Maintenance. I would also be interested in knowing if an outside agency routinely audits the business of the maintenance department? As a citizen of Hillsborough County, I would love to have faith that our current School District Administration corrected past behavior with new policy. Hopefully, this new policy is practiced routinely to prevent corruption of their employees and contractors. However, the answers to my questions will reveal how serious the District is about doing what is right for the tax payers or if the District continues to do what is right for their corruption network. I hope you will find my questions of interest to you also and will be reading answers to these questions on your blog.

I don’t know who Mr. Erwin’s replacement is. I am sure the person does an obeisance to Ms. Elia every time she or he encounters her. Ms. Elia is one of those insecure bullies who require a cringing show of worship to make them feel they are important.

I have complained about the ill-educated, ill-trained members of the administration who make four or five times what teachers make. There is only one Ph.D. in the administration, and I don’t know if his is a valid Ph.D. or bought and paid for somewhere in the outback of graduate schools or online diploma mills.

I have several times complained about all the early-childhood-credentialed ciphers in administration. I specifically complained about Ms. Cathy Valdes’s unsuitable early-childhood credentials and lack of experience as well of-as those of Ms. Connie Mileto, kindergarten teacher whom sugar daddy Hamilton promoted past qualified candidates to Tallahassee government representative. She moved from the bottom to top of the ladder on the ancient there's-no-fool-like-an-old-fool gambit. We all know it well.

And everybody in the state knows about her whizzing up as government agent with no suitable experience or credentials and who greased the wheels for her. I have done my best to make sure of that.

Ms. Elia lacks a Ph.D. The board waived it for her because she was the insider they sensed would not disturb their incumbency and its perquisites. I examined the applications for superintendent. All were superior to Ms. Elia. But they weren’t insiders. Being an insider was the sine qua non. Outsiders from Columbia or some such bastion of scholarship might choose the professional path of requiring some effort by the laziest board this side of the San Andreas Fault.

These sitting board members have about as much concern for education as my old bull dog had about opera. Two of them don’t have even a bachelor’s degree. Two have degrees from third-tier institutions. I want to read Dr. Lamb’s Ph.D. thesis and see if he wrote it. He can't speak. I want to see if he can write.

I think board-and-administration corruption continues in new forms. Nobody got punished in the Erwin debacle, thanks to the board’s flaccid refusal to fire the culprits, so why would the administration change its ways?

To show how complicit the board is with the administration in crucifying teachers who give even a whiff of rebellion, I sent Steve Kemp to ask for Board Member April Griffins’ help. She sweet talked him, told him not to tell anybody about their meeting, said that "good things were happening behind the scenes," and then went back to pretending she didn’t know what was going on. Ms. Griffin has pretensions of being solicitous of teachers. She no such inclinations. She merely tries to fool teachers that she has their welfare in mind. She has lapsed into a board yes-person for Ms. Elia just as all the veteran board members are.

The question her gutless, unprofessional behavior evokes is this: If teachers can’t go to board members for help when the administration treats them sadistically as is the case with Kemp, whom should they go to, Mr. Greenjeans?

I believe that the administration and board are worse now than they were in the Erwin saga of sadism. They have gotten more expert at criminal conduct and more apt to pursue it because they got away with it before.

I see your postmark is St. Petersburg. That St. Pete board is awful too. I understand it has a right-wing born-again woman on it who has all kinds of weird ideas about what can and cannot be taught in schools. Go monitor the Pinellas County and start a blog to report the outrages. It’s the least we citizens can do for education. lee

Flimflam or Incompetence? Neither Is Good

One can interpret the memo below from the Erwin court papers two ways: one way is to diagnose it as part of the campaign of the administration dupe Mr. Erwin and make him look incompetent.

The early date of the memo suggests it is in the first-response, delaying time of Dr. Lennard and his goons--chief of which were Jack Davis and James Hamilton, it seems--to Mr. Erwin's demanding that the administration do something about the school crime. This date was before Doug Erwin finally lost hope of their ever doing anything about the crime. He saw they were trying to fire him and deprive him of his pension as well. He belatedly accepted that the board would play along with the administration and dump him without ceremony if they could get away with it. When he finally came to those conclusions after suffering every kind of indignity Dr. Lennard --who pulled the levers behind the scenes--could think up, he went to an attorney and filed a Whistleblower lawsuit.

Memo after memo in the court papers suggests a pattern of trying to confuse Doug Erwin and invalidate his competence. His bosses, Jack Davis and James Hamilton, would write him that his data were incomplete or that they had not received it, and that he had to re-investigate the situation. They used this maneuver repeatedly in what looks like a let's-convince-him-he's-crazy routine so that he would think if he were mixed up on some things, he was mixed up on the crimes he had been uncovering.

The second interpretation is such memos demonstrate the abysmal competence of these people. They can't handle simple administrative tasks. This inability would be OK only in the school system; private industry would fire one and all in a heartbeat. ldd

HILLSBOROUGH COUNTY PUBLIC SCHOOLS MAINTENANCE OPERATIONS CENTER

FROM: Doug Erwin, General Director of Operations

SUBJECT: Purchasing Concerns

There has been no response to the questions that I referred to in my previous letter. (Attachment #1)

There is no Air Conditioning bid in place to take care of the many emergencies that are occurring. This bid was presented to purchasing in May. The urgency ofhavmg this bid in place was discussed with Dr. Bookman and the purchasing staff in a meeting on June 19, 2001. I am now told that the bid may be in place by October or November 2001.

I believe Willie Campbell and I agree that our needs aren't being met in a timely manner and that the problem will continue until personal issues in the purchasing department are resolved.

Air Conditioning Concerns: We have reached the critical point in keeping units running. (Attachment #2)

• Performance contracting did little to solve problems in our thirty worst systems. (Attachment #3)

• Projects on the 5-year plan have been delayed for other priorities. (Attachment #4)

• Major renovation projects have not included total Air Conditioning renovations. (Attachment #5)

Dr, Hamilton Memo Page 2
• Short-term service contracts and training components are not being implemented as suggested. Training of our technicians is costing time and money.
• Rapid growth in new schools and additions to existing schools while we are experiencing cut backs in personnel.

• With the loss of 4 days we will loose man-hours but maybe more importantly the window of opportunity to work in the building without students.

• Many systems that were built in the 90's are labor intensive and are functioning so poorly that the air conditioning department feels that some of these units need replacing. (Attachment #7)

Copies of recommendations that have been presented to cope with the growing air conditioning challenges are attachment #8.

Old Friends Are the Best Friends

Gentle Readers: Before I was a college professor, I was a nurse.

I went to nursing school in Charlotte, N.C., run by the Sisters of Mercy--who had none. My suite mate, Therese, was from Mt. Airy, NC, a small town like the one in Georgia I was born in, White Oak. Her father had died in middle age, leaving her mother to raise a troop of Catholic children on a railroad widow's pension.

Therese nursed until she was 30, when, lo, this fellow appeared in the kitchen of her roommate's apartment in Texas, where she lived then, to give her a big kiss after pinning her to the frig.

They married and have four sons who live in Texas, all commodity traders.

The interesting thing is that this guy who pinned Therese to the frig to kiss her was the son of an oil man. When his father died, he became very rich.

And so it was that Therese has homes in several cities. The fun thing about the current life of Therese is that when she and her husband move from home to home in different cities, they just leave everything behind wherever they are, including their clothes.

They have recently established an art museum in their palatial home in the little Texas town where they raised their family. They have given it up to the town as a museum. I hope some people visit it, but I am not sure those Texans are art fiends.

I have never lost contact with Therese completely; she turns up from time to time. My husband and I visited her and her spouse in their up-scale digs in Sarasota when last they visited that particular home--with all the clothes left in the closets when they exited.

Her husband twitted us for driving my old Mercedes because of how wicked the Germans were. God knows how many cars he has.

Old friends are the best friends.Therese today is the same Therese who exited a little North Carolina town to go on to Texas and marry an oilman's son and become very rich but stayed the same Mt. Airy girl she was when we were suite mates in nurses' training.

I keep in touch with old friends. They keep me in touch with my roots and how I became the person that I am. lee


Letters to Therese:

I found a note to myself saying, “Don’t forget to tell Therese about the Belmont Abbey fellow on the elevator.” I forgot with my first letter.

Here it is:

I got on the elevator, and there was a big old fellow with a collard-greens-and-salt-pork-fried-chicken belly on board. He had a big box that he was toting because he was evidently going home.

“Headed home?” I asked.

“Shore ‘ nuff,” he responded.

“Where are you from?” I asked.

“North Carolina,” quoth he.

“I went to school in North Carolina,” said I.

“Me too,” he came back.

“Where?” I asked.

“Belmont Abbey,” he replied. “Where did you go to school?”

“Mercy Hospital School of Nursing,” I said

.

“We used to date Mercy girls,” he said. “Do you remember any of the names you fellows you dated?”

“Skip Somebody dated my suitemate, Therese Browne,” I returned (that was the little creep who called me up for a date to aggravate you). But,” I continued, “the sisters warned us about dating Belmont Abbey boys.”

“How come?” he asked.

“The nuns said the Belmont Abbey boys were wicked: that they were only interested in one thing.”

He let out a whoop of glee and almost dropped his box in his exultation. You couldn’t have told him that he had just become a Nobel Laureate and got a bigger display of joy.

That’s just like a man. They want to think they are the greatest hunters and gatherers of woman kind since the glaciers of the Pleistocene Ice Age retreated. Even if they are on IV Viagra and require a pulley to lower them into coital position, they still nurture the conviction that they are Mr. Sixty-minute Man supreme. (That song was popular the year we went into training, remember. Sister Carmel used to run through the dorm halls yelling, “Turn that terrible song off girls!”)

I wasn’t sharp enough to ask Mr. NC box-toter his name. But if he has relatives in our condo, he’ll be back, and I will trap him.

I think that was Skip you were dancing with in the picture I shared with you when we last met. I have forgotten the boy I dated for that dance. He was a numbskull.

How the years have flown. How recent that dance seems. How much you still look like the girl in that picture, Therese.

lee

4/5/2009

Dear Therese,

I have been meaning to write you a long time. But I couldn’t locate your address. I finally found one of yours and Malouf’s cards.

Your museum is impressive. I only hope it will have clients. The yokels in the Bay Area where we live prefer tractor pulls to Matisse. I don’t think Texans’ aesthetic sense is much above the tractor-pull level. C students fill the world. If you are unlucky enough not to be a C student, it’s best to hunker down and not call attention to yourself.

I was also glad to learn that y’all had sold your Donald Trump digs. What a shit that guy is. He’s a serial womanizer, and Dolly Parton has better taste than he has. Look at those gaudy buildings. Look at that hair. Better to put that money into art work for unappreciative Texans than to swell his coffers to skirt chase and go bankrupt yet again.

Things are going fine with me and Tom. True, he has had depression for over a year, but he’s coming out of it. I thought I was back at Seton Institute. Men married to nurses are lucky. We know how to do everything when they are sick physically and mentally. I am fine. I had a stent put in for angina. Heart problems are standard for my family. I would feel guilty if I didn’t have some kind of coronary bona fides. When my cousin Shirley, who’s the family genealogist, and I tour the family cemetery in Burnt Fort at the dinner on the grounds and service in the little church that my family established in the 1800s, if I point to a monument and ask, “Shirley, what happened to him?” She always responds, “Honey, he just fell dead.” Heart or stroke.

The church was Episcopal until the low-IQ family apostates commenced going to camp-ground meetings with Elmer-Gantry-type preachers. The apostates outbred the phlegmatic Episcopaleans. Now on dinner-on-the-grounds days, we have an itinerant preacher who yodels at us the whole service about how we are going to hell for various Baptist-type infractions that Episcopalians are too sophisticated to notice.

My Catholic husband exits the service in a state of shock that doesn’t wear off until we get back to Madeira Beach.

Come to see us when y’all are next in Sarasota. Tell me all the gossip and what those Catholic third-floor cats of your clan are saying mean about any members of our class. They tried to get you to desert me and move up with them for the whole time we were in nurses’ training. Now they are doubtless badmouthing anybody who’s had a divorce in our class.

Dreadful cats they are.

Our school board in Hillsborough County is run by a bunch of crooks. I keep on them in my blog: leedrurydecesarescasting-roomcouch. Blogspot.com;