The biggest lie has always been to keep quiet; and the best life-enhancer is to provoke, unsettle, rile – in short, to make people face the truth.
Gore Vidal
The firm of board attorney, Tom Gonzalez, has held the job for 37 years, apparently on a handshake.I have suggested several times at the speaker podium that the board fire him and advertise the job so that some new legal blood can be brought in when other area firms have a chance to apply for the job.
My perception of Tom Gonzalez is that he is hip-deep in all the skullduggery of the administration.He was a pivotal person, I believe, in the crucifixion of Mr. Sam Erwin.
Mr. Erwin believed former board member Bricklemeyer was an honest board member and went to her for help.She took him to Tom Gonzalez; they milked him for information and then threw him back out in the ROSSAC badlands so that Dr. Lennard and his thugs could continue the torture of Mr. Erwin.
When the investigator hired by Gonzalez told Erwin that it looked like the investigation was aimed at framing him, Gonzalez cut short the investigation and dismissed the investigator.
Le Gonzalez defends no-bid contracts with great fervor because his firm has had one for 37 years with the board.He also denies that the equal opportunity laws apply to the administration for the same reason I suggest.
Tom Gonzalez's firm, which specializes is ripping off workers for higher-ups I infer, was defense for the board in the Erwin Whistleblower case. Gonzalez did the Erwin deposition.Another lawyer from the firm handled the court-room part of the case. He didn't know his ass from his elbow in handling a jury.He told the jury people sitting for the Erwin case that they had no right to find in Mr. Erwin's favor because they had found that one of the charges, that the administration had violated his contract, was false; hence they had to find that all the charges were false.
That went over like a lead balloon with the jury, of course. It found on the other issues for Mr. Erwin and awarded him $165,000.I heard from a person close to the trial that when the Gonzalez firm complained about the size of the award to the judge, that the judge told Tom etal that if the prosecution had a more competent lawyer, the award would have been even bigger.
I don't think the Gonzalez firm does well before a jury.Most jurors are not the swells and higher ups that the Gonzalez firm is legal servants to.Most juries are ordinary people.I think they feel the condescension directed at them from the Gonzalez gang in court. They talk to them as if they were the hired help.
So I have encouraged a woman administratively mauled when she was a teacher to blow past the negotiations and go to a jury in her case against the schools.People can see what really happened when a case is laid out before them, and they will find for this abused teacher is my belief.
Meanwhile, I want to get from Gonzalez the contract situation that his firm has with the board and the contract the lawyer from the firm had when he defended the board in the Erwin case.If you read the ethics language in the excerpt below from the Ethics Commission, you will infer why I want this information. He will do. Then we will see some labyrinthine twists and turns of the language to extract himself and his firm from responsibilty. But, hey, language is my specialty. I am the linguistics kid. Bring it on is what I say.
Keep in mind that the board did not fire one person for the crimes on school grounds. They looked the other way, or jumped on Erwin, as Candy Olson did, telling him that the would have to prove his accusations. She didn't want to know the truth and did not investigate the crimes herself or preside over an investigation. Like Dr. Lennard and the rest of the thugs who tortured Mr. Erwin, La Olson just wanted him to shut up. lee
http://www.blogger.com/posts.g?blogID=5338509888038553180 I filed ethics charges against Gonzalez in the past. I didn't win officially. Lawyers seldom rule against another member of the legal priesthood.
But overall, I won. Gonzalez was in a panic about being charged with ethics violations. He's not used to being on the other side of an accusation. He must have spent two weeks' billable hours crafting his responses to the bar's ethics commission. He denied, denied, denied in the most convoluted, lawyeresque language possible.
The second time I got to comment, I just tore loose and said whatever came into my head. I even criticized Tom's grammar as well as his ethics (he got a bachelor's in English) and had the best old time. I have one rule in my extra-home activities in my golden years: If it's not fun, I won't do it. But another ethics charge against Mr. Gonzalez would be fun. I am eager to see how he wiggles out of this situation. lee
Web Page on Government Ethics:
A local government attorney whose contract with the unit of local government does not include provisions that authorize or mandate the use of the law firm of the local government attorney to complete legal services for the unit of local government shall not recommend or otherwise refer legal work to that attorney's law firm to be completed for the unit of local government.
Ms. Cobbe: The above I extracted from the Web site on ethics for government employees.
I believe a member of Tom Gonzalez's firm litigated the courtroom part of the Whistleblower case that Mr. Erwin filed against the school board.
May I have as public information the 1. contract that this Gonzalez-firm courtroom lawyer had with the school board when the Gonzales-firm lawyer participated in this case, in which I believe Mr. Gonzalez did the deposition with Mr. Erwin? May I have 2. a copy of the current contract that Mr. Gonzalez and/or his firm has with the School Board?
I still await from you a 1. copy of the grievance procedure that employees can use if they believe the board and administration treat them unfairly and 2. the answer to my question of whether the script cataloguing past grievance procedures is public information that a citizen can review.
I ask also that you check with Professional Standards and Ms. Elia to see when I can expect from Ms. Kipley an answer to my inquiry about the three special-education administrators--Mr. Smiley, the principal, and the administrator-- involved in charging Mr. Steve Kemp with child abuse at the Sheriff's office in the Steve Kemp Professional-Standards case. Thank you.
In your message posted below, I believe you hide behind the economic situation in your school-wide message below for two reasons: 1.Everybody is scared about his or her job, so this email about money stirs people's dread of losing their job and makes them acquiesce to your dictatorship; 2. If you talk about money, you don't have to talk about the other issues that affect employees, especially teachers.
These include (a) the use of the Professional Standards office along with a back-up, behind-the-scenes psychological torture committee headed by LuccoBrazzi Valdez to charge teachers with manufactured infractions against professional standards or to use a trifle to hang a firing threat on teachers to scarify their psyches.
You make decisions in chambers and don't bring the proposals and an opendiscussion of them to board meetings to keep the public and most of the school personnel outside ROSSACignorant of the information that is basis for the board's ratifying decisions as they slavishly follow your lead.These affect the whole school family: teachers, students, and staff; they also affect state taxpayers that foot the bill for behind-closed-doors, out-of-the-sunshine decisions that roll by on the Consent hidden-Agenda conveyor belt with the board members' simply pushing a button that keeps the rationales secret from the public and the rest of the school family. This is not open government.It is closed, dictator-style government based on a pas-de-deux between you and the rubber-stamp board's mocking of open government.
A recent example of defiance of open government is the failure to post principal candidates on the Board's Web page as well as your choice for principal so that people can come to the board meeting and comment on the appointments you make in secret with no rationale but that it is your will. La Gaceta discussed this last-named denial of open government by you and the board in the May 1 column of "As We Heard It." There is no reason except the desire to hold on to the power that secret proceedings bestow on you to deprive the public of the principal candidates' names, their qualifications, and your choice among the candidates. Your failure to share this information online shows that you do not believe the public deserves open government with the right to comment and that you have the right of absolute power over this information and can direct its consequences.
You use the Professional Standards Office as a retaliation tool, not as a locus to investigate real defections from professional standards.You and your toady Linda Kipley , home-ec credentialed head Professional Standards, cook up charges against teachers.The purpose of these charges is to target certain teachers for retaliation for infractions against your sense of absolute power.A current example is the extended suspension from the classroom--a school semester soon--for Steve Kemp.He has a blog. Blogs are anathemas to the administration.
The board and administration hate blogs because they give raw information to the public unlaundered by the Public Affairs Laundromat spin machine. The taxpayers get stuck with paying for their own bamboozling because they subsidize the Public Affairs office.
This Kemp situation is another aspect of your hoarding real information about what is going on in the schools.
One of your creatures telephoned Kemp recently to cite a subject that you did not want discussed on his blog, showing that you do not believe teachers have First-Amendment rights. Your hubris shows that as long as you allow them to work in the schools, they must act as your servile creatures who abandon their civil rights as the price of employment.
Recently, there wasan unwonted board outbreak of brief and loud discussion of Kemp's case, in which you had falsely charged him with Child Abuse
-- a charge the Sheriff threw out.This verbal scuffle showed that Mr. Valdez had made little if any progress in investigating the case after almost a school semester had elapsed since its filing.This delay confirms the analysis that these cases are psychological torture ordeals aimed at breaking a teacher's will to stand up and be a human being in the face of the administration's goal of debasing him or her to non-personhood and depriving the poor wretch of expressing a shred of resistance to the bad leadership by you condoned by the elected board that shows a lamentable
willingness to bow down to your dictatorial reign and ignore its duty to citizens.
Past offenses against teachers with no discussion and with board omerta include 1. imposing a period of more work for teachers without informing them or allowing them to discuss this issue: 2. forcing grade-inflation practices on teachers apparently to widen the pool of students who allow you to claim more "bonus" money for work done by the teachers; and 3. buying the multi-million-dollar Spring program that has failed in other venues without discussing it with teachers that have to implement it. And apparently you did not even apprise the board about your purchase, although the board must have approved your impulse buying post hoc, gutless creatures that board members are.
And most significantly, refusing a settled place on the board agenda for teachers and students to comment. I have myself asked the board three times for this courtesy to teachers and students.The results were icy glares from around the dais.I even emailed Board Members Griffin and Valdes. asking them to work for a teacher-student slot on the board agenda.They both style themselves as teacher advocates.They didn't even answer my email. Some teacher advocates these two poseurs are.
The abuse of your power includes your creating a job with a fancy title and a salary of $140,000 a year for your buddy Dr. Hamilton--one of the thugs whom Dr. Lennard sicced onto Mr. Sam Erwin to discredit him, fire him, and deprive him of his pension--when Dr. Hamilton was due for retirement but needed an office and income while he cold-called candidates for his lobbying venture. Dr. Hamilton left after seven months, having filled his lobbying quota.You did away with the job, showing that it was not a job integral to the running of the schools but a job integral to Dr. Hamilton's rape of the tax kitty with your collusion.
You adhere to the practice of your assigning jobs without advertising them to whomever you wish, be it sycophant, buddy, or passing favorite in your patronage-jobs program.The board allows you free rein in this jobs racket.Not content with padding Dr. Hamilton's pockets with a cooked-up bridge job, you donated additionally to Dr. Hamilton with no advertising a lobbyist position for $65,000 a year which, I hear, you have now bumped up to $96,000 a year.
Those assignments and the raise got no exposure on the board stage in open discussion.They rolled into reality on the Consent Conveyor Belt. This vignette shows that you appropriate the power of creating jobs with no public need but rather for a buddy's financial convenience and that you don't have an open discussion of this outrage on the board podium, and the quiescent board does not demand one.
Such outrages roll by on the Consent Conveyor Belt, and the taxpayer picks up the tab.
One could go on.But the above are representative of your holding on to your out-of-the-sunshine power and making dictatorial decisions backed by a board that will have trouble explaining this anti-taxpayer collusion if the public gets a whiff at election time of the outrages against good government and against open government that your regime propagates with board collusion.
I flag the punctuation errors in your employment message below.It is not too much for taxpayers to expect basic literacy from a superintendent who makes $300,000 a year to run schools in which parents anticipate that their children will master the basic rules of punctuation that you flout in your email to teachers below.Your cited errors do not connect to abstruse concepts, Ms. Elia; they are the basic, beginning rules that children learn in the ninth grade.
Why have a board meeting at all if the decisions have already been made? They are already closing out the public, so why make a pretense of involving the public with a board meeting? These board members are so criminal that they should simply meet in private and break the Sunshine laws (which they already do) and hold their meetings in secrecy. At least they would be more honest. As it stands now they are not only criminal but liars and frauds too.
Lawmakers are nearing the end of the extended legislative session COMMA FOR COMPOUND SENTENCE and we believe it will end on Friday, NO COMMA: RESTRICTIVE APPOSITIVE May 8. We’re doing our best to keep up with all the last-minute changes that could have an impact on our district. We are pleased to see that legislators appear to be committed to protecting school districts as much as possible.
Also, the state formally applied for a waiver to enable Florida to receive “stabilization” funds under the federal stimulus package. That’s an important step because state lawmakers are counting on that money to keep a balanced budget at this time of declining revenues. We need to keep in mind that the stabilization money is non-recurring,NO COMMA: COMPOUND VERB and will not be available after 2011.
We expect to know a lot more soon about how the budget will affect the state’s public schools. As news comes in from Tallahassee, I will let keep you informed.
Now, I would like to address some misconceptions regarding the steps we have taken to cut our budget here in HillsboroughCounty.
As I have indicated before, decisions have been made based on student/classroom needs and avoiding employee layoffs. It is true that some employee groups will have a shorter work year, and that will result in reduced annual pay. But let me point out that we have also taken similar measures in the past with other employee groups, NO COMMA: RESTRICTIVE ADJECTIVAL PREPOSITIONAL PHRASE such as assistant principals, nurses, and agricultural HYPHENATED COMPOUND ADJECTIVE FOR COMPOUND ADJECTIVE BEFORE A NOUN science teachers. While we would prefer not to take such steps, they are in keeping with our strategy of making budget cuts with minimal harm to the classroom, making decisions based on students’ needs, and preserving jobs.
Also, we have worked together with the teachers’ union to help out our impacted employees such as those who will see their year reduced from 253 days to 205 days. Those employees will have first claim to summer contracts needed to support students, NO COMMA: CUTS OFF A RESTRICTIVE PAST PARTICIPIAL PHRASE based on seniority. Together with our unions, we are looking out for our employees.
I have heard people say, as I’m sure you have, that my recommendations have not affected “downtown.” As a matter of fact, our administrative and support staff has been affected. We have eliminated administrative positions, cut budgets, frozen positions, and reorganized departments, reducing costs by more than $14-million. Many people are doing more than one job to support all district functions.
The question of whether to rehire retired teachers also has caused some confusion. We have never proposed that the district rehire retired teachers at “minimum wage.” Since most of the retired teachers are at or near the top of the pay scale, it is costly to allow them to come back from retirement at their current pay. This is what we have recently seen criticized in the media as “double dipping.” Many of the retired teachers are wonderful professionals whom I know well. I wish they had not decided to retire. And I know they now want to continue doing the work they love, NO COMMA: COMPOUND INFINITIVE and to continue receiving health benefits and a source of income.
Here’s what we are proposing. We would welcome the option of bringing teachers back at a beginning teacher salary. That would allow us to employ them and have the benefit of their experience with less of an impact on our budget. I believe many retired or soon-to-be-retired teachers would welcome that opportunity rather than remaining retired. However, this is an issue that must be negotiated and cannot be done without a change in our teacher contract. The district and Classroom Teachers Association are currently in discussions COMMA FOR COMPOUND SENTENCE but to date there has been no agreement. We are in a very deep and long recession in our country COMMA FOR COMPOUND SENTENCE and we are trying to balance the fiscal constraints that we are all facing.
It is also important for me to point out that I recognize that the issue of kindergarten paraprofessionals clearly will have an impact on our elementary schools. Though we would prefer not to have to take such steps, this"THIS" WHAT?VAGUE PRONOUN REFERENCE has been coming for some time. The requirements of the class size amendment have caused us to change the staffing in our kindergarten classrooms. We have had to lower class size and hire more teachers and we cannot afford to continue to employ all kindergarten paraprofessionals. We discussed this probability when the constitutional amendment was proposed and for the years since passage have talked about this eventual transition. Right now, we are facing the most stringent class HYPHENATED COMPOUND ADJECTIVE BEFORE A NOUN size requirements at the same time the budget has been drastically reduced. Despite the formula change, our plan still keeps some kindergarten support at each school.
Let me conclude by saying that it is my job and the job of the School Board to look after everyone’s interests. That includes students, parents, taxpayers, and all our employees. When the budget was healthier, the unions and the district made it a priority to raise salaries. We have increased teacher salaries over the last three years by 20 percent. Now, during more difficult financial times, we have made it a priority to save jobs. With the help of union leadership, our students and employees will continue to thrive, and we’ll get through this crisis in good shape.
One of the best things about living in a democracy is that you can pull up to a CRT screen and write to any public servant that pops into your mind.
I got an Attorney General's opinion once during the early Women's Movement when we were fighting for the ERA. I can't recall what it was about or what his name was except Bob.
One of the most endearing things about the Women's Movement for me was at the beginning before things went bureaucratic and no fun any more, we used to get up in the morning and think up something outre to do that day. We'd call press conferences at the drop of a hat.
It was one of those dicey days when I wrote my first request for an opinion to an attorney general. I think he answered and delivered an opinion because he thought that I was the key to the feminists' vote. Maybe I was--all six of us. lee
Office of Attorney General Jim McCullom State of Florida The Capitol PL-01 Tallahassee, FL 32399-1050 5/6/2009
Dear General McCullom:
Below is an excerpt from May 1’s La Gaceta Publisher Patrick Manteiga’s column “As We Heard It.”
It presents a needed reminder of the blanket secrecy of the Hillsborough County School Board agendas that evades transparency in government. The practice of the board and administration is to decide most things behind closed doors; then everything rolls by on the Consent Agenda. This process cuts out discussion of the issues and deprives citizens the information that they need to decide what their opinion is on any given issue.
The governor has recently given a strong endorsement of open government. One hopes you have the same enthusiasm for the sunshine that government needs to make citizens aware of what's going on in the deliberations of their elected officials so that they can comment if they want to.
I have observed the school board meetings over a two-year period. I doubt that any of the elected board members have the inclination or the nerve to bring up this issue that Mr. Manteiga cites so that the public can witness the discussion of public business.
The only time I have seen a board member ask for an item to be pulled from the agenda was when Board Member April Griffin requested for an item dealing with no-bid contracts to be pulled for discussion. Ms. Griffin is the newest of the board members. Instantly, veteran Board Members Carol Kurdell and Candy Olson laced into Ms. Griffin for her parliamentary move, calling her “disloyal to the staff." The staff decision was that a previous administrator get the contract with no competition. My inference is that Ms. Elia told them whom to choose.
That was the only time I have seen Ms. Griffin ask for an agenda item to be pulled for discussion. My guess is that she wants to avoid more vitriol of the sort that the two board members exposed her to.
Ms. Kurdell and Ms. Olson are long-time board members: their tenure reaches back to when the infamous case of Mr. Sam Erwin was litigated. I am sure you recall it. He had discovered bid-rigging, shoddy school construction, and outright theft in the schools and administration and begged the board and Dr. Lennard to investigate and deal with the problem.
Instead, Dr. Lennard and his administration tried to convince people that Mr. Erwin was deranged and not to be heeded. Dr. Lennard was on track to fire him without his pension when Mr. Erwin sued the board under the Whistleblower law, won, and the taxpayers paid him $165,000 settlement for the board and administration’s dereliction. No board members had intervened to follow up on Mr. Erwin’s disclosures, and Ms. Candy Olson was particularly harsh to him, demanding that Mr. Erwin prove his charges. The board fired not a single person after the trial exposed what really went on that confirmed Mr. Erwin's reports of crime and the board and administration's efforts to shut him up.
Perhaps if the board and administration had discussed this issue in board meetings so that the public could have known what was going on, the situation would have had a better outcome.
I make a citizen’s request to you, sir, to issue an opinion on the issue that Mr. Manteiga cites below: secrecy about principal nominees. I ask that you find that it will be in the community’s best interest and in the interest of open government to issue the principal candidates' names on the board's Web site and the name of the person whom Superintendent Elia chooses as soon as she makes the decision.
All the names should appear on the board's Web agenda as soon as possible so that citizens have a chance to review the candidates and comment if they want to.
Respectfully,
Lee Drury De Cesare 15316 Gulf Boulevard 802 Madeira Beach, FL 33708
From La Gaceta, May 1.
The Hillsborough County School Board should move the business of appointing principals out of the shadows and into the sunshine. The current system of appointment hides the names of those who are up for board confirmation from the public. The names are not released when the superintendent makes her choice, nor are they included on the board agenda. The system is designed to keep parents, peers and students from showing up at school board meetings in opposition to any appointment. The muckety mucks at the district don’t want any such embarrassing public displays at their well rehearsed public meetings. Parents and teachers who would oppose such appointments obviously don’t understand that the superintendent or believe their concerns have any validity.
We want a more open system. Please put the names out there for public scrutiny,
Mr. Whitmore: I can't remember that you mentioned in our 5/4 conversation that the Professional Practices Office dealt with ethics (see underlining below).
If so, you should deal with the lies cooked up by the Hillsborough County Schools' administration in claiming teachers violate professional standards in order to scare them into acquiescence with administrative thuggery and to put the word out that anybody who lets out a peep of criticism of the administration or board will be the target of a false charge.
You should also include the responsible board members for ignoring the vile practices of shutting up teachers for fear that they will reveal how badly the schools are run and how the administration and board have turned the schools into education rackets to line their pockets and increase their sense of power.
I assume that Aristotle'sNicomachean Ethics is the standard of reference for Secretary of Education Smith. I hope to the Lord it is not The Florida Panhandle Good Ol' Boy Bible of Kick 'em When They're Down.
May I have your comment on why we did not discuss the ethics part of the responsibility of the Professional Practices division?
Thank you for your e-mail ofApril 2, 3009. Commissioner of Education, Dr. Eric J. Smith has asked me to respond to youregardingyour concerns.
The Office of Professional Practices is responsible for the investigation of alleged violations of Florida Statutes and Professional Ethics as published in Administrative Rule. To better assist you, please contactour office so that I may discuss your concerns in detail.
Thank you for contacting the Department of Education.
Thank you for your e-mail of April 2, 3009. Commissioner of Education, Dr. Eric J. Smith has asked me to respond to you regarding your concerns.
The Office of Professional Practices is responsible for the investigation of alleged violations of Florida Statutes and Professional Ethics as published in Administrative Rule. To better assist you, please contact our office so that I may discuss your concerns in detail.
Thank you for contacting the Department of Education.
Sincerely,
Jerry W. Whitmore
Department of Education
Office of Professional Practices Services
5/4/200
A conversation today with the Secretary of Education's office's guy who answers questions about Professional Practices in the state school systems yielded these data:
The local administration and board have Louis XIV powers over hiring. If you think you are being shafted in your job, ask to grieve the matter. Grieve anything you don't think is fair. I think I have this right: you don't have to be actually mugged to grieve a matter. I have sent to Linda Cobbe of the Community Services office to give me a copy of the grievance procedure. I asked also if past grievance-procedure stenographic notes were available to the public. I think they are. I will have to check my Florida sunshine book.
The thing about grievances is that you have to have the get-up-and-go to file one and stick with it. And there is a time restraint. Bart Birdsall got around to thinking about grieving his case of the charge Elia and Kipley made up against him, but Elia was able to triumphantly tell him that his grievance window was closed.
I don't know who sits on the grievance committee. If it is stacked with administrators, they will send you to the Ninth Circle of Hell to keep their jobs. Hence, if it's all administrators, I would squawk to the board, to the governor, the local MacDonald's manager and all the customers. who buy burgers and fries that day.
Teachers will never get any traction over their job situations unless they are willing to use the few tools available to them for combating bad treatment. They should keep in mind that retaining your job is more important than being popular. The administration hates you if you oppose their Louis XIV power perquisites, but your attitude should be "C'est la vie" and push back. They will like you if you let them make you roll over and die, but you will still be out of work. If you get fired, however, then you can get a state administrative review. I have just met a former teacher who won that review and will probably have a court case somewhere down the line against the board. It's people like that who determine how far the administration thinks it can go in the abuse of teachers.
Another thing I learned is that if a teacher is kept on the payroll like Goader is, he or she cannot claim he has been mistreated vis a vis his employment. The administration with board back up has absolute power over job assignments. I suppose if they wanted Goader to work as a janitor next year, the fiends could give him an annual contract for that job, and he would have no recourse. As a matter of fact, that dilemma is essentially what happened to one Mr. Wiesner who won his case in court, but when he came back to resume his job, Dr. Lennard assigned him to the jails to teach prisoners. That poor man finally left. I tried to locate him but couldn't. His nerves and health had gone to hell under the ordeal. That's what the administration depends on: the friability of the human body and spirit if the exert enough pressure and degradation.
So cheer up if you get fired: you can get a state administrative review.
I am in contact with a teacher who went that route and won. This case will probably result in a jury trial by the individual against the school board. She will win, and the taxpayers will pony up for another episode of administrative sadism.
It takes guts to file a court case. But my conviction is that if you can get the hijinks of the administration and board before a jury, you win. People like teachers. They don't like administrators. There seems to be a wistful feeling amongst teachers that some big and powerful and wonderful person will rescue a mistreated teacher. That person has to be you. King Arthur has gone out of business, and everybody is on his or her own and the few intrepid souls who won't let you down and will do what they can.
I learned that in cases like Goader's, his being kept on the payroll and reassigned to calling parents of delinquent children is perfectly legitimate as far as the Florida statutes are concerned. Only if the administration fires you can you get an administrative review.
The thing about the torture of teachers by Elia, Kipley, and the Lucco Brazzzi Valdez, chair of the behind-the-scenes torture committee, is that the teacher under duress usually gets no support from anybody unless some citizen comes along and goes to the board to complain about this torture.
Bitching about administrative torture of teachers has been my job off and on. The thing that I have noticed is that teachers who used dwindle into the board meetings to deliver piteous appeals for better treatment of teachers have stopped coming altogether. They don't even dwindle any more.
My conviction is that if only a cadre of six intrepid teachers formed a team and came to every board meeting and complained about the unprofessional, sadistic treatment of teachers, that would make a difference. Just nag them into the ground is the ticket to success. The board might wake up and see that its members would look bad at election time because a half dozen teachers' asking the editorial boards for interviews when the newspapers interview the candidates could have an effect on editorial decisions. Remember that the Tribune laced into Elia after the group I assembled and got an interview for with the Tribune editorial people resulted in their taking a new and unsympathetic look at Elia.
And keep in mind, ta-dah! that the Constitution beats out state laws. So if you want to go for broke and sue the board for abridgement of your First Amendment rights, go for it. You will be a hero to your grandchildren and great grandchildren for eons and role model for their glorious, desperate thrusts against tyranny. I know the best First Amendment lawyer in the area. We are both members of Phi Beta Kappa.
I also talked to one of the partners in the breakaway law firm that peeled off from Holland Knight (two women and a man) and started their own firm specializing in First Amendment cases. They all left HK in disgust of the firm's tolerating sexism so blatant as to make you want to vomit. Holland Knight forgave a sexist thug for running up and down the halls of HK demanding that women "feel my pecs." He's a full partner, by the way. Was and still is. I summoned my old women's rights skills and gave him a Barefoot and Pregnant Award, one of my better productions.
One of the women who left HK told me blogs are havens of the First Amendment because they don't have any money. Newspapers have money via insurance; that's the reason that lawyers will take those cases. Lawyers go where the money is. Teachers running blogs don't have money.
My read on the school board and administration is that their Achilles heel is publicity. They don't want the public to know what utter s.o.b.'s they are in the treatment of teachers. So the best thing teachers can do when they see an administrator advancing to fire them for breathing is to squawk, squawk, squawk. Forget being decorous; get over the need to be liked. Don't be a team player. Be your own team. Just holler at the top of your lungs. You then are to be feared because you will not take guff lying down. And your attacker will be caught in the spotlight too. And these little creeps want to stay under the safety of their little rock in the big system that beats up on teachers. They want to beat up on teachers, but they don't want to get caught. This is the route Thomas took and saved his grits. It's the only thing that works. Don't holler, and you are dead meat.
Ms. Kipley: several months ago I filed Professional Standards charges against three administrators--district head Mr. Smiley, a principal, and a administrator in the special-needs-children hierarchy.
I charged the three with flagrant unprofessional neglect of their responsibilities in the Steve Kemp case.
Mr. Kemp has been on suspension for almost a semester for a trumped-up charge of child abuse by these three-- doubtless at Ms. Elia's behest.
This trio of administrators is responsible for throwing Steve into a junk-filled room that acted as classroom for the profoundly retarded children that the three above administrators assigned him to teach although he had no credentials in the teaching of such profoundly retarded children. The three also gave him no orientation about the assignment and failed to prepare him for the situation he would face in the classroom despite the clear instructions of their jobdescriptions to do so.
Defying logic, the three kept Steve as teacher of that same class for six days even though they had labeled him a child abuser. Their false charge of child abuse had to do with Steve's hooking a restraint sash onto a desk to keep one child from running away while he was chasing another who was running out the door.
None of the responsible administrators had instructed Mr. Kemp about this restraint protocol, which doesn't make sense because apparently it's arbitrary: these children are restrained on buses one infers, hence their wearing the harnesses to class.
If Mr. Kemp were guilty of child abuse as the charge against him with the sheriff's office claimed, why did these administrators keep Kemp with those children as their teacher for six more days after the "child abuse" took place? That behavior indicates not only administration negligence but also administration inability to reason.
The above administrative dereliction of professional duty looms large compared to the so-called child abuse of Mr. Kemp, which the sheriff threw out but which the administration has kept in place for almost an entire semester while it footdrags about dealing with the Kemp case.
The continuance of the Kemp case for a semester has two motives: 1. to scare Kemp into giving up his blogbecause the administration and board hate blogs that give a different view than the laundered one that emerges from the spin cycle of the Public Affairs Laundromat.
With its usual lack of interest with anything that does not concern board members themselves such as travel funds, the board ignored grappling with the Kemp case's contradictions even when the case was brought up at a board meeting and even as it became increasingly clear that this was a set up to force Mr. Kemp to abandon his blog and to be a negative example to the school system's teachers to warn them to be subservient to the administration or lose their jobs.
You are always swift in filing charges against teachers with little or no justification, the Kemp case being illustrative.Why do you fail to act in the matter of the professional defections of these three administrators?
This is an invidious distinction and a malignantly unfair one.
I shall have an opportunity to talk today to Mr. Whitmore of the Professional Practices Services of the Secretary of Education's staff about the Steve Kemp case among others. I am going to contrast your participation in the sadistictreatment of Teacher Kemp with your ignoring unprofessional behavior by three administrators and especially your failure to answer written charges against them that a citizen has filed.
This invidious treatment highlights the administration's policy of the savaging of teachers for cooked-up Professional- Standards charges to keep them abjectwhile the board and Ms. Elia coddle administrators when they commit unprofessional acts.
This double standard is ethically offensive to any fair-minded person.
I request that you send me your findings on the unprofessional conduct of the three administrators involved in dereliction of duty in the Kemp set-up case to scare him into giving up his education blog and to frighten all other teachers in the school system with Kemp's example so that they will not dare criticize the administration.
Ms. Falliero: I understand you have compiled a list of parents to send messages to that describe how wonderful the board and administration are in your effort to combat the contending information of the blogs.
That list is public information.I request a copy of it via the Public Affairs office so that I can provide those parents with a competing view.
Please send me a list of the parents' names that Ms. Falliero has assembled for her anti-blog campaign that she announced in a board meeting.Thank you.
