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
Mr. Bartels, District 4 challenger of Jennifer Falliero: I just read the comments on your Facebook page and read also Mr. Marshall's report that the union had endorsed you.
I am glad the union did not endorse Ms. Falliero: she is morally incompetent to be in charge of children's wellbeing. I don't know about Mr. Stacy.He's a druggist, I understand; but he did not have the political sense to answer my call to his campaign.If Mr. Stacy won't respond to voters during the election, he is not likely to contact them after being elected.
There is enough of that ilk of public officials on the board right now.
I would like to know 1. your stand on using technology to thwart the administration's buddy-and- sycophant hiring protocols by the Board's posting on the Web the jobs open, the people applying, and hyperlinks to their resumes. Then voters could detect favoritism in hiring.
Favortism and using the hiring process as a jobs program means that right now there is only one Ph.D. in the administration. Voters are not getting their money's worth with such shoddy hiring practices by the administration sactioned by the board.
The important head of Professional Standards sports a home-ec diploma; her husband got hired with a high school diploma and no experience in a job that required an accounting degree and experience; he got the nod in preference to four candidates with the requisite degree and experience. My analysis says this was a bonus for Ms. Kipley's doing the dirty work for the board and administration in the Professional Standards office as a threat to teachers' jobs if they speak out about what they think is wrong with the administration and board's managing the schools.
Yet the board stamps on everything not nailed down "We are an equal-employment-opportunity employer."
The CONSENT AGENDA is institutionalized government out of the sunshine. Would you 2. sponsor its being listed on the Board's Web page with invitations from voters to board members to explain questionable aspects of the agenda, a task board members can perform on board nights?
And I would like to know 4. your stance on the use of Professional Standards as a tool to keep teachers quiet and in fear of their jobs by the administration's filing charges against them based on teachers' having said anything about the need of the school administration and board to pay attention to problems that they see in the system or that the intrepid blog about. The board and administration want all data about the schools to come through the Public Affairs Laundromat.
Teachers who don't obey this unspoken rule get charges cooked up and filed against them in retaliation.Two such cases of which I am aware are Media Specialist Bart Birdsall and Teacher Steve Kemp.
My public-information request got a stack of charges against teachers but no charges against administrators for violations against Professional Standards.That statistic cries out for review by the board, which currently pretends it does not know what's going on in this vile practice.Its unfair double-standard application appears in high relief in the cases of teacher Steve Kemp and the King High administration Toe Cracker. Mr. Kemp's lawyer prevented Ms. Elia from her initial plan to fire him for a cooked-up charge by Special-ed administrator Smiley.She kept Kemp on suspension for a year.The administrative attitude toward the King High's administrator foot-fetishist Toe Cracker's acting out his condition on pubescent boys got the equivalent of "Oh, isn't he a card?" from the administration.
Would you 5. recommend appointing a committee of citizens, teachers, and administrators to review the practices of the Professional Standards office? Would you commit yourself to this during the campaign?
Have you reviewed Ms. Falliero's sustained opposition to the First Amendment?Comments on her fight to shut it down on the school board appear in my blog: leedrurydecesarescasting-roomcouch.blogspot.com.
Can you tell the voters your stand on the First Amendment as it applies to board conduct of business and as it applies to teachers' right to speak out without retaliation for their criticism of the schools?
I served as union president at HCC, where I taught for 28 years before retiring.My view of the CTA is that it is too narrow and too timid and too unimaginative to press candidates on issues like those I cite above and too complacent to challenge the administration on them.I think what's needed is the certification of a vigorous new union like the Teamsters that will go to bat for teacher members and not play pattycake with the administration as the CTA did under past leadership and seems likely to continue a similarly flaccid performance under Mr. Whitman's tutelage.
I note that Ybor City does not appear in the District 2 online map. Despite my poor grasp of geography, I believe District 2 is Ybor's place on the map. Since Tampa has a long history of discrimination against Hispanics, I am suspicious that this omission is an instance of that ugly phenomenon.
Ms. Olson, that district's board member, has apparently donenothing to inquire about why Ybor City's name on the map does not appearanalogously with Gibsonton, etc.Can you find out the motive of this omission and let the voters know why the District 2 map omits Ybor City's name?
I will post your responses to the above questions on my blog.I will also post your not answering them.
Nonresponsiveness is a trait if not a policy of the present board.For instance, I asked board members Susan Valdes and Jennifer Falliero to enter a motion to give students and teachers a settled, recurring place on the board agenda to bring up matters from the schools that they wanted to board to know about. HCC administration, no friend of teachers and students, put teachers and students in the Number One slot on the board agenda. I asked also that the board supply protection from administrator retaliation for students' and teachers' doing so.
Even though I had supported both candidates Griffin and Valdes and gave considerable monies to both, they did not even bother to answer my emails.That's a telling datum of board lack of responsiveness once elected.
What will be 6. your policy on answering emails from citizens?
The trick with public-information requests is persistence. If you don't get the data, keep asking for it. lee
Linda, I asked about a week ago about data of the hiring of Ms. Elia as superintendent by the school board members.I have not heard yet from you.It is not possible that a procedure so important to the schools and community would not have notes and/or recording to document what happened in the hiring process.I request such data as public information.I would also like a copy of the ad published by the board that cost, I hear, $35,000.Thank you.ldd
From: Linda Cobbe [lcobbe@sdhc.us]
Sent: Tuesday, June 02, 2009 10:44 AM
To: lee
Cc: Linda.Kipley@sdhc.k12.fl.us; MaryEllen.Elia@sdhc.k12.fl.us; Candy Olson; carol.kurdell@sdhc.k12.fl; Jennifer Faliero; Jack Lamb; Susan Valdes; April Griffin; Patrickmanteiga@lagacetanewspaper.com; genesiudut@lagacetanewspaper.com; Ken.Otero@sdhc.k12.fl.us; Dan.Valdez@sdhc.k12.fl.us; Lewis.Brinson@sdhc.k12.fl.us; Gretchen.Saunders@sdhc.k12.fl.us; Wynne.Tye@sdhc.k12.fl.us; Cathy.Valdes@sdhc.k12.fl.us; Connie Milito; David.Steele@sdhc.k12.fl.us; Gwendolyn Luney; Stephen Hegarty; Sharon Morris
Subject: Re: results of my filing professional standards charges
Lee - No one has ever denied that you sent Linda Kipley an email making charges against people at East Bay High School. The email you include from Linda Kipley at the end of your email to me tells you that there are no records of any "findings," which is what you had requested. There are no findings because no action was taken. The reasons for that are:
1. You have no direct knowledge of what happened related to Steve Kemp;
2. You have no credibility for seeking the truth, and in fact, often repeat rumors and innuendo; and
3. You have no standing to file charges.
An email from you with allegations about employees would not generate a Professional Standards investigation. Certainly, the superintendent had no involvement and undoubtedly had no idea who Steve Kemp was, let alone that he has a blog.
People who work in schools are obligated by law to report possible abuse. Child Protective Investigations is obligated to investigate and they call in law enforcement. When CPI and law enforcement investigate an employee, Professional Standards gets involved. They would be negligent if they allowed someone to remain in a position involving children while CPI and police investigate abuse allegations. If your grandchildren were possible abuse victims, would you want the person under investigation to remain in their classroom?
I hope that clears up your confusion. I have attached several documents related to Professional Standards procedures.
Linda E. Cobbe
External Communications Manager
Hillsborough County Public Schools
901 E. Kennedy Blvd.
Tampa, FL 33602
813-272-4602 (O)
813-493-6964 (C)
813-272-4510 (F)
Our mission is to provide an education that enables each student to excel as a successful and responsible citizen.
Linda, I filed the charges against the three administrators involved in the Steve Kemp case of frame-up for child abuse. I don't think they filed a Professional Standards charge against Kemp. I think Ms. Elia did when she picked up the rumor. She used apocryphal information to hang a charge on Kemp because he has an education blogs, and blogs commenting on anything about the schools are an anathema to the administration and school board. I asked our office for the emails that I infer cover the time that Kipley should have received the charges from me. I await those.
My records say I filed the charges. The administration cannot get away with claiming no professional charges were filed when they were. That trick was played on me when I filed against Dr. Hamilton for using the emails for his personal pursuits. I fell for it then but have smartened up to board and administration tactics in which persiflage is a signal strategy; don't expect me to fall for it again.
I have asked three times your office to send me the literature on the Professional Standards Office. Every business has a copy of such procedures in its central procedures manual. If the school system does not have one, it's management is highly remiss in professionalism. Lee Drury De Cesare
Subject: Re: results of my filing professional standards charges
Dear Ms. DeCesare:
In response to your request for this office's "findings on the unprofessional conduct of the three administrators involved in the dereliction of duty" in the "Kemp-case," no such records exist.
I copy below an email that I sent to the Brandon Chamber. If it does not have the cajones to sponsor the District 4 school-board debate, what about Brandon's legal priesthood's stepping up to the plate and seeing that these four board candidates face the voters of the area? I shall paste this invitation to you on my blog and print any response you make to me.
Your name appears asonline contact for Brandon Chamber of Commerce publications.
Please direct this communication to the appropriate Chamber of Commerce person, probably the one who schedules community events.
Chamber clients--indeed, the whole community--should be interested in the Hillsborough County School Board race in which three incumbents--one from your district--seek re-election.
None is worthy of another term, but the incumbent from District 4, your district, Jennifer Falliero,is especially unworthy to serve another term as one of the elected officials who oversee the community's children's wellbeing and ethical development.
If the Brandon Chamber of Commerce cares about its community's children, the chamber would do well to sponsor a school-board election debate with wide advertisement to give the citizens in your area the chance to evaluate the candidates running for the District 4 office. IncumbentJennifer Falliero is the current incumbent seeking District 4 re-election; her three opponents according to the Supervisor of Elections are Richard William Bartels; Stacy R. White; and Kirk Edward Faryniasz.
I believe Mr. White is a druggist who didn't answer my phone message about his campaign and hence showed slender political skills; I know nothing of the other two.
It is my considered opinion that Jennifer Falliero is not a morally fit person to serve as the community's children's guardian on the school board because of her conduct while in office.
Ms. Falliero engaged in an adulterous affair on school property with the head of the Community Affairs office--Marc Hart--for a span of two administrations: those of Dr. Lennard and Ms. Elia. Knowledge of the affair was widespread in the schools.
Ms. Falliero initiated the affair by haunting Mr. Hart's office in search of "mentoring" so frequently that she became almost a part of the furniture.She did so despite being married herself with two teenage daughters--her husband was a coach in the schools--and Mr. Hart's being married withtwo young children.
The reason I knowthat adultery took place between Mr. Hart and Board Member Falliero is that Marc Hartcalled and asked permission to come to my home on Madeira Beach.During that meeting, he showed me the divorce deposition which detailed the affair.
The adultery Ms. Falliero, your community's board member, initiated broke up her own marriage and contributed to the Hart marriage's break-up. Her illicit behavior caused suffering to four children.I am sure her two teenage daughters suffered pain and embarrassment, andMr. Hart's two young children suffered: the older's illness exacerbating and the younger's grades plummeting.
Any person who engages in such destructive adventure as school-based adultery to the harm of four childrenhas no businessbeing a school board member who oversees the community's children's intellectual, physical, and moral wellbeing.
Theadministration's and other board members' response to Ms. Falliero's adultery can only be called collusive if not protective. Dr. Lennard tolerated it; Ms. Elia did too until her fear of bad publicity led her to have Marc Hart fired for a cooked-up reason to remove him from being an on-site enticement to Ms. Falliero's obsessive behavior. The board and administration did not object to a board member's adultery on the job; they objected to the public's finding out about it and holding the board accountable to the voters.
Mr. Hart couldn't get a job afterward locallyfromblackballing by the government jobs community and so went to New Mexico to seek work.Ms. Falliero followed him and missed board meetings to do soI understand.When she returned, she severed relations with Mr. Hart.My diagnosis is that she discovered another source of mentoring.
The board members' all knowing about the situation did not prevent its members' voting Ms. Falliero in as board chair, showing disrespect for the positions of trust they had sought and held that included seeing to the interests of the community's children--including the moral atmosphere that all branches of the schools are responsible for but especially the board.Those incumbents who voted Ms. Falliero into chair position included all other board incumbents--Dr. Lamb, Ms. Ethridge, Ms. Kurdell, Ms. Valdes, and the two other incumbents now seeking re-election, Ms. Olson and Ms. Griffin.
I doubt if one of Falliero's three opponents-- Richard William Bartels; Stacy R. White; and Kirk Edward Faryniasz--
possesses the political nerve needed to challenge Ms. Falliero on her school-property adultery. They mistakenly and cravenly think, I wager, that the press will rescue them by bringing the issue up in the newspaper.
They err by not knowing how prissy the press is on matters of sexual impropriety. The press likes to masquerade as rough and tough Fourth Estate crusaders for righteous causes, but they quail and turn into wussies when it comes to reporting sexual misbehavior of the powerful and especially of elected officials.That's why mob prostitutes had the run of the White House during Kennedy's incumbency.The male press knew of the situation and printed nothing.Only when women got a toehold in the press did there appear more reporting about elected officials' sexual transgressions.
Had the unorthodox National Inquirer, run by Oxford graduates, not broken the story of John Edward's adultery and love child, he would probably be running for some national office right now, so terrified of the subject of illicit sex is the regular press.
Similar lack of daringof Falliero's opponents' part will explain whythey don't dare confront her with her on-the-job adultery. This cowardicebodes ill for their being able to hold their own againstadministration and other board members if elected to the school board.Such pusillanimity predicts the ones elected willgo through the usual surrender to the siren song of tribal all-for-one-and-one-for-all thuggery that poses as leadership by the current board and administration.
What the Hillsborough County School Board needs is tough reformers not liable to the coercion and seduction ofcurrent indoctrinated board members and administration. I don't know if any of the three challengers of La Falliero has the right stuff to challenge the system by themselves alone without backup until they build a following as they inevitably will if they stick to their guns. I would like to believe that most people running for the board would like to do the right thing when elected and would if they could beat back the attempts of the other board members and administration to Stockholm them into falling in line with the abuse of power that characterizes the current administration and board.
Voters may hope that an opponentof Ms. Falliero's, if elected, may turn out to have theguts and fortitude in the grind of service on the board that includes constant coercion by other board members and administration to convert him so that he will throw up his hands and surrender to the usual self-serving group folderol that passes as schools leadership.
But there is always the chance that a challenger may turn out to be the hero who represents the public and students that the school- board positions cry out for.
Voters can hope so in any event.
Anybody would be better than Ms. Falliero, who has disgraced the office she holds and surrendered her board vote to the dictates of Ms. Elia in exchange for whatever tolerance Ms. Elia has ceded Falliero's adultery and other failures as a board member.
I have seen the extant system suck board members in who promised on the stump to clean up the schools only to become a part of the problem once elected. In this category I would cite Jennifer Falliero and Susan Valdes. Giving in to the crooked mores of school administration is easier than fighting for what is right.Few have the backbone to do that, unfortunately.
And board incumbents quickly learn the sleazy art of lying with a straight face to the voters and, with backs to the wall, pretending that they don't know what's going on. Cornered, they are capable of averring with a straight face that they don't know the way to the bathroom.
I will attend the debate if the chamber has the moxie to have it and ifit will let me know when and where the event is. I shall pose the question to Ms. Falliero about her adultery on school propertyif no one else summons the courage to do so and demand of her to knowwhy Ms. Falliero's on-school-property adultery does not make her unworthy for the position of school board member.
We women are braver than men when it comes to protecting children. Ten grandchildren make my determinationthe greater to free school boards from the influence of adulteresses such as Ms. Falliero.
Adultery should not be a school-based, tolerated form of behavior for the sake of my grandchildren and everybody's children and grandchildren.
The community should not put up with such behavior of a school-board member with a wink and a nod--knowing the conduct is wrong but too prissy or too gutless to say so out loud.
If the chamber is too timid to sponsorthis debate, it doesn't care about its community and its community's children. It's everybody's business to protect children. Refusing to have the school-board debate will go on record as an act of civic cowardice of the Brandon Chamber of Commerce. The Chamber can have the debate itself, or you can locate a sponsor who will. The churches are a natural resort, although I fear they hide behind the skirts of Jesus' robe in this area. If anyone asks what Jesus would do in this situation, the answer is that He would stage the debate, of course.
One way or another, the Chamber of Commerce should find a way to have District 4's candidates appear and debate their candidacy.
Ms. Falliero has other flaws besides indulging in school-site adultery as a board member. She had to be given a First Amendment Romper Room lecture by the board attorney Gonzalez because she doesn't understand what the First Amendment comprises. When she gets a gavel in her hand, she thinks shebecomes dictator by divine right and wields the gavel as if it were a flame-thrower.She wrote a letter to the newspaper editors asking that they put a person on the job 24-7 to intercept messages critical of the board and school administration, identifying the wretch for whatever punishment the boarddevised for the lese majeste of criticizing board members and administrators. She needed help from the community affairs office to edit the letter into literate prose.She then threatened to kick out elected official April Griffin because she did not agree with what Ms. Griffin said. She enlisted the schools head of security to eject from the board room and threaten with arrest the citizen who exposed her adultery.
A person ignorant of the First Amendment should not run for office because she does not know what the Constitution says when she takes the oath of office to uphold it.
Suppressing the First Amendment is worse than adultery--much worse.
Ms. Falliero also wants to notify parents if their children belong to gay clubs in school, although studies have shown that many parents kicktheir gay offspring into the streets to fend for themselves when they learn they are gay. She sought the help of the homophobicpolitical people in the community to have a hearing on this issue.Fortunately, the ACLU appeared as did people from USF to protest the move to exposestudents belonging to gay clubs.The best witnesses against Ms. Falliero's sadistic proposal were students from the local high schools, who spoke with such eloquence and intelligence that their performance assured one the country's future would be in good hands.
Ms. Falliero lost that ugly effort on her part to savage gay students, thank goodness.
Ms. Falliero also avows herself to be a born-again Christian. I don't know whether the born-again community considers her an ornament in their midst or an embarrassment.
Ms. Falliero opposes teaching Darwin in the science curriculum, as well as one can understand from her murky statements. And most puzzling of all, given her own abandoned sexual conduct, she opposesschools' teaching sex education. One does not know how she will greet the news this week that teenage pregnancies have gone down because the use of condoms has gone up. One infers that descent of out-of-wedlock births to teenagers connects with the increasing curricula nationwide that include sex education.
Although scuttlebutt says that she is deeply in debt, Ms. Falliero told a Times reporter that she is prepared and capable of administering the multi-million-dollarGates Grant. She can't handle her own money, but she can administer the millions Gates gave to the schools.
She recently conducted a public-relations campaign opposing the lowering of board members' salaries, although they make $5,000 more than those of beginning teachers and more than the average family of four in the Bay Area.
Ms. Fallieroalso moved secretly from her Brandon district into South Tampa, but the press caught her and reported the move. Ms. Fallierolied when first caughtbut then admitted her covert move and acknowledged thatshe knew it violated the state law that says school board members must live in their districts. Shethen moved back to Brandon, from whence she wants now to run yet again to represent District 4 as school-board member despite her compromised loyalty of moving out of the district by stealth and then moving backonly when the press caught and reported her illegal peregrinations.
I don't know whatdisabilities the three Falliero opponents have, but they can't be worse than Falliero's.I wager that nearly anyone would be a good replacement for her. Any new board member would have a hard time exceeding her record in negative behavior, including her automatic support of anything the superintendent deems appropriate to maintain the administration's power over the schools.
It's up to a responsible Brandon Chamber to have the school board candidates debate and let the community's affected citizens attend to make a judgment in this race.
Please let me know ifI can provide more information.I have learned a considerable amount of startling data during my two-plus years monitoring of the board.
