I Nevcr Take the Fifth

John D: The three administrators against whom I filed Professional Standards charges not only disrespected Steve and tried to turn his innocent mistake by an uniformed teacher into a crime, but they themselves all three--Smiley, Sosa, and the other one whose name I get mixed up (Morris, I think)--also put severely disabled children into a room with junk piled on the walls, an accident-prone situation.

And they threw Kemp into taking care of these children without paying any attention to his lack of training to care for severely retarded children--his specialty is teaching reading to children who have trouble with the skill. They as well didn't give him a word of orientation or make themselves available for consultation as their job descriptions say they should. That administrative behavior constitutes child abuse in my book.

And the Secretary of Education's Professional Matters committee online says both teachers and administrators are liable to lose their licensces for child abuse--not just teachers. In addition, it does not mention a qualification to file a complainte except the knowledge that a child or children were abused. Ms. Kipley probably with Ms. Elia's help as well as that of Linda Cobbe made up the "standing" objection to my filing the charge. One does not appear on the Secretary of State's site for Professional Behavior breaches.

One does not see most child abuse. He or she infers it when seeing evidence of child abuse as I did when I was an emergency-room nurse, or people infer it from other situations such as the one I describe above involving Kemp and the careless administrators. I also witnessed child abuse when I worked as court observer for domestic violence for almost a year in Pinellas County courts.

I hope this answers your question.


lee drury de cesare

John__D has left a new comment on your post "Sherlock Holmes Rides Again": >I need also to know where you got your information that I do not have "standing" to file a Professional Standards charge. The written material you sent me does not mention such impediment. The Secretary of State's Web site's Professional Practices Section says otherwise. The Education Secretary's language suggests anybody who knows of child abuse should report it.< You write youself "anybody who knows". Perhaps Kipley writes that you have no standing because she believes that you don't actually know. What evidence do you have for Kipley that demonstrates that you know of abuse as opposed to "kind-of know", "think it could have", or "heard that it happened"?

Child and Teacher Abuse by the Baord

Minions of the Light:

Read below the sadistic treatment of Goader by the board, the Professional Standards home-ec director, Mr. Valdez, Ms. Elia, and the entire indifferent board regarding the dwindling path of the false charge against him for child abuse.

At the last board meeting, the board was mewling over the especially picked show-and-tell children they had summoned for their TV show of how much they cared for children. Meanwhile, they are savaging the children's teachers in every possible way. The treatment of Goader's case is a primie facie example of board brutality toward the teachers who teach the children they moon over on TV to fool the voters about their dedication to education.

I am going up the command tree of the state authroities to nail the board for its dereliction of duty on this matter. If the state doesn't fix it, we move on to the national authorities, starting with the national Secretary of Education.l lee

leedrurydecesarescasting-roomcouch.blogspot.com


The item below was posted by the man that Lee has talked about. It was posted on May 31 on his blog. He doesn't seem to have been told what was going on "months ago" as Tom Gonzalez and Dan Valdez said at the last board meeting. This is confusing, and I believe someone is not telling the truth.


When will you all open your eyes and realize that the people you seem to trust are not trustworthy, in my opinion?


Since the police dropped this man's case long ago, and he was left hanging all school year long, I think someone owes him a letter explaining what transpired. To tell you the truth, I think the district owes him an apology as it owes me one too. I know that is too much to ask for, so he should at the very least get a letter stating what happened and the resolution. That is the decent thing to do. You all should be outraged that a teacher could be mistreated like this. It could have been a relative of yours. No one should ever have to go through this sort of thing. Read his blog entry below and compare with what Tom Gonzalez said. Read one of the comments that the man in question makes to Lee when she comments on his blog. He makes the comment on June 2nd. That is not "some months ago" as Gonzalez claims. I believe that the man in question should file a bar ethics charge against Gonzalez. I feel and believe that Tom Gonzalez lied to me, and now he may have lied about this man. The school board attorney should not be unethical, which I believe him to be.


I shouldn't be, but I am shocked.....absolutely shocked how this man was treated, and I am even more shocked that you all allowed it to go on and simply believe what you are told by Gonzalez. I think Gonzalez is going to leave the school board wide open to lawsuits, if he continues to act in his reckless and, in my opinion, lying manner.


If each of you doesn't make sure this man gets a letter resolving his case, I frankly don't know how you can live with yourselves.
Bart


So Long: Felony Pt17 (The End)
Filed Under Blogroll Pt1 Pt2 Pt3 Pt4 Pt5 Pt6 Pt7 Pt8 Pt9 Pt10 Pt11 Pt12 Pt13 Pt14 Pt15 Pt16

It has been an entire academic year plus the better part of last summer that I have been in limbo wondering what was next. It was July 2 of last year that I was abruptly ordered to go home banned from any public school campus. It was a long drive home as it always had been—35 miles one-way.
I had been home for an hour or so when the deputy sheriff investigating the case called me on my cell phone. He told me the district attorney was not going to file any charges against me. Even though I was sure no crime had been committed, it was a relief anyway to here the news. It was potentially a serious charge: felony child abuse.

Since law enforcement considered the case unfounded and closed, I assumed any other investigations by would swiftly come to the same conclusion.
At least it was summer, plenty of time to join the rest of my colleagues in August with this all behind me—or so I thought. Little did I know I would be sitting here, almost a year later, still under its cloud.
I am happy to say, though, that it is all but cleared up as I write this. All the investigations have been completed—finally water under the bridge. I was wondering if I would ever write those words.

As of this writing, I have a teaching assignment for next year at a new school—Hallelujah! It is the position I wanted at a school half the driving distance from my last school.

The end to this saga appeared a few weeks ago when I happened to be looking through the teacher pool list and my name was on it. The words “pool 2” were next to my name and that meant I was destined to get any scraps left over from the first pool. I made it known I was none too pleased with such a scenario and waited to be placed in the first pool.
It turns out it didn’t matter because I was to be administratively placed in a position at a school. That meant I didn’t have to deal with either of the pools.

I found a couple of jobs that appeared on the district vacancy list and wondered if I would get one of them. I got the call a couple of days ago and as fate would have it, I was offered the one I wanted. Did I already say Hallelujah?

Why was it so long? I honestly don’t know.


Goader on June 2nd, 2009 5:52 pm

lee—
No, I received nothing that gave the disposition of my case. I happened to be looking through the list of teachers in the pool and found my name. This happened last week. I notified my CTA representative and Monday I was offered a position. It’s rather undramatic.

Sherlock Holmes Rides Again

Ms. Linda Cobbe:

Am I to understand that you have discovered no written evidence for having claimed in an email to me that I nor, by inference, any other citizen has "standing" to file a Professional Standards charge although the Secretary of Education's Professional Practice site does not cite this or any other limitation?

Does your baseless, made-up impediment mean that no citizen complaint gets standing to be investigated or that only mine gets this treatment?

Did one of your superiors tell you to say that I had no "standing" to file a Professional Standards charge, or did you manufacture this false impediment to a citizen's filing charges yourself?

If you expect your superiors at the administration or the School Board to come to your defense, you are naive, indeed. They are interested only in rescuing themselves and are willing to throw any number of underlings under the bus to save their hides. That you have not discovered this fact after years in ROSSAC bespeaks your naivete.

Do you stand by your statement and still affirm that I have no standing to file despite your not being able to cite a written ruling to that effect either in ROSSAC's literature or that of the Secretary of State?

Do you believe that it is reasonable for me to believe that you "do not seek the truth" in this matter as you accused me of not doing in a previous email?

Do you refuse to apologize for your manufacturing Professional Standards "rules" that don't exist to thwart my attempt to file charges against administrators Smiley, Sosa, and Morris?

Pray let me have your answers interpolated after the questions. I want to be definitive when I appeal to the state authorities who trump the ROSSAC administration and School Board in this matter.

lee drury de cesare

Bullies Complaining About Bullies

My Granddaughter Graduating from Plant: She goes to college to become a grammar-school teacher. I know she will love it.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/09/health/09klas.html?em Times article on bullying


The school board Hillsborough County is singing a different tune on bullying than it did a few years ago when I became acquainted with Bart Birdsall, who along with the mother of a gay son at Hillsborough High was trying to get the board to do something about the bullying of gay children.

Bart, who is gay, had gay students' telling him they wanted to commit suicide because of the bullying they endured in the schools.

I recall running Dr. Lennard down at a Tiger Bay meeting in a pair of Manola stilettos to catch him and get him to promise to have the seminars Bart pleaded for that has worked in Miami schools to quell bullying. He promised he would. He lied.

I also recall my first encounter with Candy Olson at this time. A teacher had a Bible on his desk and used it to proselytize a gay student, telling him he would go to hell for being gay. Since this school was in Olson's district, I wrote her to complain about this teacher with his Bible's torturing the gay student.

Ms. Olson, who now gives full-throated support to the new awareness of the need for controlling bullying, sent me back a snippy email in which she said, "The last time I heard, we still have the First Amendment."

She has not shown much fondness for the First Amendment in my observation of the board for two years. Nor did she fulfill a promise to Bart Birdsall to attend to a gay student being bullied at the time when she was sending out asinine emails to people complaining about a teacher with a Bible on his desk torturing a gay boy by telling him he would land in hell for being gay.

I am never one to suffer obnoxious public servants in silence. I wrote back to La Olson with one of my crisper rebukes and called the principal. She stopped the teacher from torturing the student and made him remove the Bible from his desk, good administrator that she was.

Suddenly, bullying is getting not only local but national attention, and things are looking up for abused children. This is no thanks to board members like Ms. Olson who has sat on the board forever and never raised a finger to intervene, although she promised Bart Birdsall that she would.

Now she is in full-throated praise of the bullying situation's coming to the attention of the flaccid group of administrators who sit on the board and never see what's before them for the needs of the students. They are too busy scurrying around trying to propitiate bully Elia and get on her good side, a fruitless task since Ms. Elia has no good side.

Ms. Olson, Dr. Lamb, and Ms. Kurdell, all on the board when Dr. Lennard and his two ghouls Hamilton and Davis, were systematically torturing Mr. Erwin, trying to run him crazy, claiming his was crazy, trying to fire him, and trying to deprive him of his pension until Mr. Erwin shut them down with the jury's help in his Whistleblower suit against the board.

Bullying is just fine with board members if it's the administration's bullying teachers with the Professional Standards bullying machine or an administration's bullying an administrator who asks the superintendent and board to do something about rampant crime on campus or some other pressing need not felt at ROSSAC.

This situation is political hypocrisy of elected officials if anything is. Ms. Kurdell called Mr. Turlington a liar for not devoting a hundred percent of the lottery money to the schools instead of only 33 percent. Now she knows how people who wanted her and the rest of the board to protect gay children from bullying feel.

The board is all hat and no cattle in the things that count. If Ms. Olson and her board colleagues were any less active in protecting the county's children with both academic and social problems, they would be motionless. lee drury de cesare

The Ground Skirmishes To Defend Democracy Begin

Ms. Cobbe: The schools are supposed to retain other applicants' files in all hirings. If there were none, then you should state that. I don' know whether you refer to my request for your hiring or Ms. Kipley's. I requested and still want both.

Also, I need an official answer to whether Steve Kemp's case is officially closed and who the "lawyers" are whom Mr. Gonzalez referred to last night as closing the case. Ms. Kipley's comments on the Professional Standards procedure is says a person may ask for the report at the end of the case. I should like to have that as public information.

I asked Ms. Kipley to reinstate my Professional Standards case against the three supervisors involved in the child-abuse special-ed case that stemmed from charges of child abuse against Mr. Kemp. I want a yes or a no on that query from her office.

I need also to know where you got your information that I do not have "standing" to file a Professional Standards charge. The written material you sent me does not mention such impediment.

The Secretary of State's Web site's Professional Practices Section says otherwise. The Education Secretary's language suggests anybody who knows of child abuse should report it.

I am concerned, Ms. Cobbe, about your suitability for this job of providing citizens with public information if you distort or make it up or amend data in any way as appears to be the case in this "standing" claim for one to file Professional Standards charges. The public needs a person of impeccable honesty to do the job you do. I had no reason to doubt that's being the case until this instance emerged. Your only fault was foot-dragging on requests, and that is not an ethical flaw. I can deal with that by repeated requests. I cannot fight lying in the person who occupies your job. That flaw is not acceptable in a person in your position of trust.

If I discover that you cooked the record on one's right and ability to file a Professional Standards charge, I will employ all the means in my considerable grasp to see that you get the punishment you deserve for betraying democracy and your allegiance to the good of the public to have straight information.

And here's an employment tip that I picked up during my 77 years on the planet, having worked as a grocery clerk, airline stewardess when one had to have either a nursing degree or bachelor's degree to qualify, registered nurse, and college professor. Government bureaucrats don't get to lecture the public and impugn its members' morals and ethics as you did in an email to me in which you questioned my ability to arrive at truth. When I was nursing, if a psychiatric patient threw his food at me and called me gutter names, I did not throw food back at him and call him gutter names. Such conduct in a professional is not acceptable, be it registered nurse or public bureaucrat.

Conduct in your case such as insults you included in an email to me and other acts of sub rosa insult over time are not professional. No sophisticated company would hire you to do public relations if this information came to its attention. A person's sophistication as an employee not involved in digging ditches or picking tomatores requires more judgment and restraint that that. Only in the fens and bogs of civility that obtain in ROSSAC would one get away with this conduct. ROSSAC is an uncivilized entity in the midst of the Bay Area's civic life. And the public subsidizes it without knowing this fact.

The big piece of information you need to keep in mind is that in a democracy, a citizen has a no-holds-barred right to criticize his or her government. Check this out with Mr. Gonzalez. He mauls data in other instances, but he will confirm a citizen's right to lace into its government I warrant. He just gave Ms. Falliero tutoring in that area. I do my government critiques in standard English, although I sometimes wish that I had Mr. Klutho's talents for bellicose diction and rough syntax.

Keep to your place in the scheme of things in mind and trim your conduct to its configuration is my advice.

If I find that you have misinformed me on "standing," I shall file a Professional Standards charge against you and expect Ms. Kipley to process the charge and give me a written report which I can accept or challenge, using the resources of the state government apparatus.

Yours may be the first Professional Standards charge that Ms. Kipley has ever processed against an administrator, so you will set a benign precedent that says the Professional Standards apparatus is for democratic use for both teachers and administrators. Heretofore, it appears to have punished only teachers with mostly Rossac-manufactured charges to terrorize them that they will lose their jobs or to act as a warning to the whole teacher family of the schools that its members would do well never to challenge the administration and board on the slightest thing. The Alafia Smith principal case acts primie facie in this invidious practice.

If you have skewed the record about standing to file a Professional Standards charge and apologize to this citizen for doing so at her expense, I will accept that apology, not file charges, and expect that you henceforth to guard your impulse to make up data to buttress your insults to elderly, infirm, and feeble citizens such as I. You will emerge from this experience as a sadder but a wiser young woman if you follow this course.

Lee Drury De Cesare

Just As I Thought: Lies, Lies, and More Lies

This fellow helps me out when I get stuck with a hard problem. lee

Ms. Cobbe: I cannot find on the three pages of Professional Standaards literature you emailed me any reference to a "standing-to- report-abuse" requirement to file a charge with the Professional Standards office.

Pray tell me where you got that information. Did you manufacture it yourself, or did some other administrator such as Ms. Elia or Mr. Valdez verbally give you the information without a written source?

Since I could not locate the "standing" criterion in your offering, I checked with the Secretary of Education's Web site under the Professional Standards Committee. It cites no "standing" criterion for a person's reporting child abuse but says each complaint will get serious attention. It did not say that it would pretend it did not get the complaint and ignore the charge as Ms. Kipley's office probably with instructions from above did.

I consider the negligence of the three people against whom I filed Professional Standards charges child abuse. They put teacher Steve Kemp into a classroom with severely retarded children as substitute when he lacked training to care for them since his area of professional expertise is teaching reading to slow learners.

The three supervisory personnel gave him no orientation for the assignment as all their job descriptions require.

A photograph shows that the classroom was a storage room that contained junk stashed against the walls that could have fallen and injured the children, especially these children who tried to explore the junk when they ran around trying to discover a way to get out of the room.

I am astonished that a member of the administration would cite imaginary criteria for Professional Standards charges. The state site does not cite any standing-to-file criteria. The Hillsborough Count School Board is not allowed to make up its own. If you have a "standing" data file, pray send it to me for review.

In the absence of such, I consider my charge mishandled by people the citizens of Florida pay salaries to do more competent jobs than this situation illustrates. Four months have elapsed since I filed the charge that Ms. Kipley ignored whether under her own volition or instructions from Ms. Elia I don't know. But it is a valid charge filed in a timely fashion that is four months overdue for investigation. I demand that it be investigated and a report issued by Ms. Kipley. I also want the report that she should have issued on Steve Kemp's charge filed by the administrators and Ms. Elia or whoever instigated sending Mr. Smiley to the Sheriff's Department to file the child-abuse felony charge against Mr. Kemp.

Ms. Kipley: Please email me that you have received my charge in February and still have not investigated it but will begin to do so immediately.

If not, I can appeal to the state authorities to review this slipshod manner of evading Professional Standards charges against administrators.

The teachers are charged with any little thing with violation of Professional Standards. The administration either exaggerates or cooks up cases to keep teachers terrified of their jobs' loss. I doubt that your office has ever filed a charge against cozened administrators. Let mine be a benign exception to this invidious rule. I expect an answer to this request.

Southern Poverty Law Center:

Southern Law Center Legal Division of Extant Cases:

The attachment shows how slovenly is the care of severely retarded children in the Hillsborough County schools and how administrators' complicity and cover-up of their part in the louche care afforded these children is endemic to a broken system of ignoring the needs of special-needs children. Please add these data to your NAACP-sponsored case against the Hillsborough County School Board for its negligence in caring for special-needs

Verification code: 47998

Sincerely,

lee drury de cesare

Schools Across the Nation Are Run by Crooks

Dallas ISD program meant for disadvantaged students aids superintendent's son

• Written By: A Global Leading News Source - EducationNews.org
• Categorized in: EdNewsDaily, K-12

Dallas ISD program meant for disadvantaged students aids superintendent's son

Dallas School Superintendent Michael Hinojosa – who lives in Preston Hollow, has a doctorate degree and earns more than $300,000 a year – allowed his son to participate in a federally funded college prep program geared toward disadvantaged students.

His son, who is also named Michael, is valedictorian at Hillcrest High School this year and has been admitted to Harvard University.

During his senior year, the younger Hinojosa participated in a new college assistance program at Hillcrest that's run by a contractor who was paid $1.6 million by DISD. The contract called for the vendor, Academic Success Program, to help students at 12 high school campuses get into Ivy League universities. Only campuses with a significant number of disadvantaged students were eligible to have the college prep classes run by ASP. The district has touted the program as one that "connects first-generation college-bound students with top-tier universities."

District officials said they see nothing wrong with the younger Hinojosa's participation because Hillcrest qualifies for the federal Title 1 funds, which target low-income students. They say ASP met its contractual obligation to provide services to 10 students on each Title 1 campus. They say Hinojosa and other high achievers were added to the program after the threshold for disadvantaged students was met.

"We actually actively recruited Michael Hinojosa because programs like this don't work when they're exclusionary," said Michael Martinez, director of operations for ASP. "It's best when you've got first-generation kids sitting next to the valedictorian."

Martinez could not say, however, whether Hinojosa was allowed to participate at the expense of other students from less-privileged backgrounds.

"All of our students were handpicked," Martinez said. "But at the same time, we got a lot of feedback both from the students in the school and from teachers about their achievements in schools."

As a condition of participation, students and their parents are expected to sign a contract stating that they will attend college preparation workshops after school and on weekends. The program offers help with SATs, college admission forms and financial assistance.

"It is important that you understand that program outlines specific roles for parents, as well as for students, in order to be considered active members," the contract states. "Failing to meet the requirements can result in expulsion from the program."

It appears, however, that the Dallas school superintendent may not have fulfilled the parental requirements. DISD spokesman Jon Dahlander said Dr. Hinojosa's wife "met with" the ASP coordinator at Hillcrest, but he could not say whether she attended the required meetings.

Hinojosa declined to be interviewed but issued this statement: "I have full confidence in the ASP program and its ability to select student participants that the program's leadership believes will help the schools and students achieve their goals."