The young woman on the right end was the first baby born in the original Tampa NOW. Her mother is next to her. This NOW baby is a gynecologist and just had her first baby: a little feminist--6 pounds, ten ounces. The two woman on the left end are Angie Manteiga and daughter Erin. They are from the Manteiga publisher family. lee

WE'VE GOT MAIL!

Ms. Elia:

I received this comment below on my leedrurydecesarescasting-roomcouch.blogspot.com site. Have you used taxpayer technology to shut down free speech? If so, this confirms my conviction that you are a coward. Only cowards use positions of power as you do to bully our teachers. Their centrality to education must threaten you sense of importance.

Instead of blocking a web site, come out of your ROSSAC hole and fight in the open. That's my style. I never skulk around people's back. If I have something to say to them, I say it up front.

Open up my blog if you have closed it down. Or the state's principal for wayward superintendents, Governor Crist, shall hear of your behaving badly. So shall the Department of Education functionaries.

You want Crist to think well of you. This information will not help that goal. Back off and don't try to shut down free speech. You will never get away with that in the end. I will fight your tyranny. lee drury de cesare

From: Anonymous [mailto:noreply-comment@blogger.com]
Sent: Wednesday, January 23, 2008 8:13 PM
To: tdecesar@tampabay.rr.com
Subject: [Lee Drury De Cesare's Casting-Room Couch] New comment on <!-- GoStats JavaScript Based Code --> _gos='mons....

Anonymous has left a new comment on your post " _gos='mons...":

I think Elia has blocked your blog from coming through school district computers. You know you have hit the nail on the head, when they start to censor or ban what you say. They can't take the heat. It is proof you are getting to them!

Usually the district filters block anything pornographic or harmful to children. No child would take the time to read your blog, so the fact they are filtering your blog means they are using the filter to block employees from viewing your blog, because they know employees want to read it.

That is the first thing that people do: shut down free speech.....when they want to hold onto power and are scared. You have them running scared! Otherwise, they would not care less what you write. Who would have thought Elia is such a coward.

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Posted by Anonymous to Lee Drury De Cesare's Casting-Room Couch at 5:13 PM

Anonymous has left a new comment on your post " var YAHOO ...":

Shouldn't that say people "who" need you most? DID I MAKE AN ERROR? TELL ME WHERE IT IS SO THAT I CAN FIX IT. LEE

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Posted by Anonymous to Lee Drury De Cesare's Casting-Room Couch at 5:43 PM

'david.steele@sdhc.k12'; 'Marc.Hutek@sdhc.k12.fl.us'; 'john.hilderbrand@sdhc.k12.fl.us'; 'linda.cobbe@sdhc.k12.fl.us'; 'pmanteiga@lagacetanewspaper.com'; 'Gene''linda.cobbe@sdhc.k12.fl.us'; 'doretha.edgecomb@sdhc.k12.fl.us'; 'candy.olson@sdhc.k12.fl.us'; 'carol.curdell@sdhc.k12.fl.us'; 'jennifer.faliero@sdhc.k12.fl.us'; 'jack.lamb@sdhc.k12.fl.us'; 'susan.valdes@sdhc.k12.fl.us'; 'april.griffin@sdhc.k12.fl.us'; 'stein@sptimes.com'; 'tobin@sptimes.com'; 'hooper@sptimes.com'; 'mbrown@tampatribune.com'; 'ptash@sptimes.com'; 'larsen@tampatribune.com'; 'steveotto@tampatribune.com'; 'palmer@tampatribune.com'

School Employees David Steele, Marc Hutek, John Hilderbrand:

Marilyn Brown, Tampa Tribune, quotes you in the article below as boosters of the new program to dummy down grades in the public schools.

To put your recommendation for grade inflation in context, may I have as public information these data: your terminal degree, in what subject, from what institution, and whether you were a member of Phi Beta Kappa if your institution were prestigious enough to have a chapter?

Could you add as well whether management consulted the teachers at your schools in this radical dilution of grades, or did Ms. Elia order you to just impose it on the teachers without consultation from them? Is, in your opinion, this dummying-down scheme to make Ms. Elia's record look better so that she can extract more "performance" money from the taxpayers than her already bloated salary of $300,000 represents?

Ms. Brown quotes you, Mr. Hutek, as saying this: "It's known," he said. "That's why so many kids are so into exempting their exams." What does this bizarre construction mean in standard English, Principal Hutek? And is this an example of your customary method of expressing yourself?

I will post your responses on www.leedrurydecesarescasting-roomcouch.blogspot for people's edification about how the school system runs.

Please send the answers to this request for public information to Linda Cobbe of the public-affairs office so that she can convey them to this citizen.

Thank you.

lee drury de cesare

The 2007 Florida Statutes

Title XLVIII K-20 EDUCATION CODE Chapter 1000 K-20 GENERAL PROVISIONS View Entire Chapter Tom, not only do federal funds have compliance requirements for equal-employment opportunity, so do state funds. Have you advised Ms. Elia and the board that jobs like the administrative ones she puts her buddies into without advertising and the one she created for Hamilton while he dithered about his retirement and abolished when he left come under both state and federal non-discrimination provisions? If you haven't, I believe that you have been remiss in your job and that this oversight presents just one more reason to fire you. I want to know if you put into writing the warning for the board of the need of extra insurance in case of catastrophic events such as the school's falling down after the contractor finished it that you and the board has such a lively discussion on the 15th? If you didn't, out the door you go. If the board didn't listen to you in case you did commit to writing this warning, that is something voters need to know at election time to send packing the board members who voted down the extra insurance. lee drury de cesare 1000.05 Discrimination against students and employees in the Florida K-20 public education system prohibited; equality of access required.-- (1) This section may be cited as the "Florida Educational Equity Act." (2)(a) Discrimination on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, gender, disability, or marital status against a student or an employee in the state system of public K-20 education is prohibited. No person in this state shall, on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, gender, disability, or marital status, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any public K-20 education program or activity, or in any employment conditions or practices, conducted by a public educational institution that receives or benefits from federal or state financial assistance. (b) The criteria for admission to a program or course shall not have the effect of restricting access by persons of a particular race, ethnicity, national origin, gender, disability, or marital status. (c) All public K-20 education classes shall be available to all students without regard to race, ethnicity, national origin, gender, disability, or marital status; however, this is not intended to eliminate the provision of programs designed to meet the needs of students with limited proficiency in English, gifted students, or students with disabilities or programs tailored to students with specialized talents or skills. (d) Students may be separated by gender for any portion of a class that deals with human reproduction or during participation in bodily contact sports. For the purpose of this section, bodily contact sports include wrestling, boxing, rugby, ice hockey, football, basketball, and other sports in which the purpose or major activity involves bodily contact. (e) Guidance services, counseling services, and financial assistance services in the state public K-20 education system shall be available to students equally. Guidance and counseling services, materials, and promotional events shall stress access to academic and career opportunities for students without regard to race, ethnicity, national origin, gender, disability, or marital status. (3)(a) No person shall, on the basis of gender, be excluded from participating in, be denied the benefits of, or be treated differently from another person or otherwise be discriminated against in any interscholastic, intercollegiate, club, or intramural athletics offered by a public K-20 educational institution; and no public K-20 educational institution shall provide athletics separately on such basis. (b) Notwithstanding the requirements of paragraph (a), a public K-20 educational institution may operate or sponsor separate teams for members of each gender if the selection for such teams is based upon competitive skill or the activity involved is a bodily contact sport. However, when a public K-20 educational institution operates or sponsors a team in a particular sport for members of one gender but does not operate or sponsor such a team for members of the other gender, and athletic opportunities for that gender have previously been limited, members of the excluded gender must be allowed to try out for the team offered. (c) This subsection does not prohibit the grouping of students in physical education classes and activities by ability as assessed by objective standards of individual performance developed and applied without regard to gender. However, when use of a single standard of measuring skill or progress in a physical education class has an adverse effect on members of one gender, the educational institution shall use appropriate standards which do not have such effect. (d) A public K-20 educational institution which operates or sponsors interscholastic, intercollegiate, club, or intramural athletics shall provide equal athletic opportunity for members of both genders. 1. The Board of Governors shall determine whether equal opportunities are available at state universities. 2. The Commissioner of Education shall determine whether equal opportunities are available in school districts and community colleges. In determining whether equal opportunities are available in school districts and community colleges, the Commissioner of Education shall consider, among other factors: a. Whether the selection of sports and levels of competition effectively accommodate the interests and abilities of members of both genders. b. The provision of equipment and supplies. c. Scheduling of games and practice times. d. Travel and per diem allowances. e. Opportunities to receive coaching and academic tutoring. f. Assignment and compensation of coaches and tutors. g. Provision of locker room, practice, and competitive facilities. h. Provision of medical and training facilities and services. i. Provision of housing and dining facilities and services. j. Publicity. Unequal aggregate expenditures for members of each gender or unequal expenditures for male and female teams if a public school or community college operates or sponsors separate teams do not constitute nonimplementation of this subsection, but the Commissioner of Education shall consider the failure to provide necessary funds for teams for one gender in assessing equality of opportunity for members of each gender. (e) A public school or community college may provide separate toilet, locker room, and shower facilities on the basis of gender, but such facilities shall be comparable to such facilities provided for students of the other gender. (4) Public schools and community colleges shall develop and implement methods and strategies to increase the participation of students of a particular race, ethnicity, national origin, gender, disability, or marital status in programs and courses in which students of that particular race, ethnicity, national origin, gender, disability, or marital status have been traditionally underrepresented, including, but not limited to, mathematics, science, computer technology, electronics, communications technology, engineering, and career education. (5)(a) The State Board of Education shall adopt rules to implement this section as it relates to school districts and community colleges. (b) The Board of Governors shall adopt rules to implement this section as it relates to state universities. (6) The functions of the Office of Equal Educational Opportunity of the Department of Education shall include, but are not limited to: (a) Requiring all district school boards and community college boards of trustees to develop and submit plans for the implementation of this section to the Department of Education. (b) Conducting periodic reviews of school districts and community colleges to determine compliance with this section and, after a finding that a school district or a community college is not in compliance with this section, notifying the entity of the steps that it must take to attain compliance and performing followup monitoring. (c) Providing technical assistance, including assisting school districts or community colleges in identifying unlawful discrimination and instructing them in remedies for correction and prevention of such discrimination and performing followup monitoring. (d) Conducting studies of the effectiveness of methods and strategies designed to increase the participation of students in programs and courses in which students of a particular race, ethnicity, national origin, gender, disability, or marital status have been traditionally underrepresented and monitoring the success of students in such programs or courses, including performing followup monitoring. (e) Requiring all district school boards and community college boards of trustees to submit data and information necessary to determine compliance with this section. The Commissioner of Education shall prescribe the format and the date for submission of such data and any other educational equity data. If any board does not submit the required compliance data or other required educational equity data by the prescribed date, the commissioner shall notify the board of this fact and, if the board does not take appropriate action to immediately submit the required report, the State Board of Education shall impose monetary sanctions. (f) Based upon rules of the State Board of Education, developing and implementing enforcement mechanisms with appropriate penalties to ensure that public K-12 schools and community colleges comply with Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 and subsection (3) of this section. However, the State Board of Education may not force a public school or community college to conduct, nor penalize such entity for not conducting, a program of athletic activity or athletic scholarship for female athletes unless it is an athletic activity approved for women by a recognized association whose purpose is to promote athletics and a conference or league exists to promote interscholastic or intercollegiate competition for women in that athletic activity. (g) Reporting to the Commissioner of Education any district school board or community college board of trustees found to be out of compliance with rules of the State Board of Education adopted as required by paragraph (f) or paragraph (3)(d). To penalize the board, the State Board of Education shall: 1. Declare the school district or community college ineligible for competitive state grants. 2. Notwithstanding the provisions of s. 216.192, direct the Chief Financial Officer to withhold general revenue funds sufficient to obtain compliance from the school district or community college. The school district or community college shall remain ineligible and the funds shall not be paid until the institution comes into compliance or the State Board of Education approves a plan for compliance. (7) A person aggrieved by a violation of this section or a violation of a rule adopted under this section has a right of action for such equitable relief as the court may determine. The court may also award reasonable attorney's fees and court costs to a prevailing party. History.--s. 7, ch. 2002-387; s. 1942, ch. 2003-261; s. 70, ch. 2004-357; s. 66, ch. 2007-217.

This Trib editorial is worth featuring. So are the comments. lee



The Tampa Tribune

Published: January 18, 2008

It has been widely thought that Hillsborough County School Superintendent MaryEllen Elia's contract gives her a hefty bonus for student achievement. She earned a $37,620 bonus this year alone, but look close and you will see it is only partly grounded in student gains.

Elia earned $13,600 for each school that achieved Annual Yearly Progress under the federal No Child Left Behind law. She got another $10,100 - at $100 a pop - for the 101 Hillsborough Schools that rated an "A" on the FCAT.

That's fair enough.

But she also was given nearly $8,000 for getting more students, particularly black students, to participate in advanced placement classes and to take AP exams - though the number of students who actually did well enough on the test to earn college credit did not improve.

Participation shouldn't be confused with achievement.

The Florida Department of Education also likes to pretend high schools are better than they are because more kids are signing up for advanced courses. One Texas study showed that students who merely participated in AP courses had a better chance of graduation from college than those who did not take AP classes. But the same study showed the best chance of college success was among students who actually passed AP tests.

In Hillsborough, just 45 percent of the more than 15,000 students who take AP courses score well enough on the exam to be given credit. And among minority students, the success rate was even lower.

On other significant measures, Elia received no bonus. There was no bonus for improvements in reading scores for black and Hispanic students in third, eighth and 10th grades. And although she did get a reward for higher math scores among minority students, at less than $1,800 it was just a smidgen of her overall bonus.

The two best measures of education success are nowhere to be found in Elia's contract: the high school graduation rate - not counting GEDs, which the state shamefully allows - and the number of Hillsborough high school graduates who need remediation when they attend a community college or university.

If the school board measured those things, it wouldn't be pretty.

More than 80 percent of those going into Hillsborough Community College need remediation in math, reading and writing because they are not prepared to do college-level work. At the state universities, 55 percent of new students needed remediation.

Elia can't be blamed for negotiating a good deal for herself. She is earning more than $290,518 this year.

It is the school board that is responsible for the largesse. The contract may say Elia is being judged on performance, but parents and the public should not be fooled.

If the Hillsborough School Board truly wanted to reward the superintendent for improving schools, members would change the measures to ones which show Hillsborough students are learning what they need to succeed in life.
Reader Comments

Posted by ( ToeCutter ) on January 18, 2008 at 11:29 a.m. ( Suggest removal )

She needs a tax break.

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Posted by ( Major7th ) on January 18, 2008 at 2:39 p.m. ( Suggest removal )

and yet the budget for our music programs is 90% less than it was 30 years ago. Way to go bean counter, milk the morons that run this school system for all their worth. You obviously don't any teaching experience to make 10 times what our teachers make.

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Posted by ( twinkobie ) on January 18, 2008 at 8:23 p.m. ( Suggest removal )

The Elia compensation editorial is right.

Ms. Elia is greedy and bilks all the money she can from taxpayers, but the editors are correct that the board is responsible.

April Griffin and Susan Valdes gave her a low evaluation but still rubberstamped her lavish contract. So they did nothing to curb Elia’s greed.

The scheme in which Elia gets "performance" bonus began with Lennard's crafty manipulation of the board.

When Elia came along, the board probably with the complicit attorney Gonzalez's urging just rolled the bonus scheme over into Elia's contract. The teachers did the work that raises students’ scores; it is they who deserve any bonuses for the achievement.

I believe Gonzalez's willingness to go along with anything that the superintendent pushes is to keep on her good side to keep his job. He knows Elia, not the board, is in charge. His firm got the job fourteen years ago from Lennard without allowing any of the other firms in town to apply. Gonzalez knew this was wrong because he is a labor lawyer; but he grabbed the unfair deal anyway.

Presently, Elia has rammed a grade-inflation scam down teachers’ throats without consulting them. As a professor at HCC for 28 years, I predict that this scheme will up the already high number of students from county schools who enter college without being able to write a literate paragraph. Instead of teaching Yeats and Shakespeare, I had to teach these freshman students grammar and punctuation. The dumbing down that the grade-inflation scheme that Elia has forced on the teachers is bound to make this matter worse.

Elia has no sympathy for literacy. She struggles with punctuation herself and writes with the felicity of a 7th grader.

If there were one brave member of the school board who would lead instead of sitting on his or her hands and quaking at the thought of opposing the group tyranny of obeying Elia and giving her everything she wants, that would make all the difference. But there is not one such person on the board now. They are uniformly gutless.

The taxpayers are to blame for that situation of a weak, complicit board. But so are the newspapers that are remiss in not reporting it more clearly and often to the public.

If, as the public asserts, education is the most important concern of people, then the school board abetted by the mute newspapers are not doing their jobs.

lee drury de cesare
tdecesar@tampabay.rr.com

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Posted by ( Major7th ) on January 19, 2008 at 1:03 p.m. ( Suggest removal )

Very well said; Twinkobie

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Posted by ( Montolino ) on January 22, 2008 at 8:30 p.m. ( Suggest removal )

Elia should donate her bonus back to the schools. Taking that bonus is comparable to stealing from children. That is taxpayer money meant for schools, not Elia's pocket book. Shame on her! The only ethical thing for her to do is to donate it back to the school district and earmark it for student incentives.

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Ms. Cobbe: Please send me this public information:

1. a list of the federal grants that the school system currently has;

2. a copy of Mr. Gonzalez's written assessment of the contract and his advice to the board on the contract that I infer Ms. Valdez's office handled.

The board evidently did not purchase the expensive catastrophic insurance coverage that would have covered the collapse of part of the building.

I want to see a copy of the written recommendation by Mr.. Gonzalez to the board to determine if he advised them that it would be prudent to purchase that catastrophic insurance to cover such things as collapse of part of the building.

Thank you.

lee drury de cesare

Anonymous has left a new comment on your post " _gos='mons...":

I get out of school at 4:30pm this year and can not go to a doctor's or dental appointment unless I take a day off. I used to get out at 4pm, and I could make the last appt. of the day at 4:30pm, so I did not have to take the day off to attend an appointment as long as I booked it in advance. Now I must take a day off to go to the doctor. It is ridiculous. I have taken more days off because of the new teacher schedule.

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Posted by Anonymous to Lee Drury De Cesare's Casting-Room Couch at 5:40 AM

This is why the board should give teachers and students a settled spot on the board for them to come and tell the board in person such things as this. Ms. Elia rammed this one-period-more work plan down teachers' throats without even consulting them. The board sat by and let her, and I heard Ms. Olson call teachers "lazy" when they came in numbers to board meetings to protest.

Dr. Lamb told the teachers that clapping was a violation of Robert's Rules. The rest sat silent in compliance with Ms. Elia.

Valdes, Ethridge, Kurdell, and Lamb are up for re-election. There are many more teachers than administrators. So teachers should tell all their relatives and friends who's a friend to teachers on the board and who's an enemy. Teachers know who these are. I go to every board meeting just about. I can give them this information. The ballot box is where the board members who now ignore teachers will have to listen to them at last. lee

Ms. Olson:




I understand that you and Ms. Elia negotiated her most recent contract that earned the Tribune's editorial criticism for its questionable compensation of Ms. Elia.

Perhaps you would be kind enough to explain to me and others who read my blog leedrurydecesarescasting-roomcouch.blogspot.com your thinking in transferring the lavish "performance" bonus formula in toto that Dr. Lennard extracted from an indulgent board on one of its most irresponsible days.

Casting Room Couch gets anonymous negative comments on the board and administration that teachers and staff know from experience will cost them referral to the Abu Ghraib Professional Standards office, which acts as a retaliation mechanism for Ms. Elia's revenging herself on any school employee who criticizes her performance. You have been on the board for twelve years and have done nothing to curtail this sadistic, unprofessional use of the Professional Standards office, so one infers you approve of it.

Logic dictates that the basis of the "performance" money that Ms. Elia extracts from the taxpayers comes from the teachers', not Ms. Elia's performance, and that thus any "performance" money should go to the teachers, not to Ms. Elia, whose already bloated pay package disgraces the board's sense of fairness and proportion. The unseemly pay bloat of Ms. Elia also shows contempt for the taxpayers who provide unawares the money for this bloated, unwarrented pay you devised with Ms. Elia's assistance for herself.

Not only yours but every one of the other board members' unanimous rubberstamps need their individual explanation for approving this contract without demur when it came before them. Puzzling to me is that even members Griffin and Valdes went along with the contract despite their giving the superintendnt low grades on her yearly evaluation. It's as if they said, "This is a C student, but she gets A-student money anyway because it's only taxpayer money, not ours, so we can afford to be irresponsible."

This lavish contract mocks the constant promise of elected officials at all levels--but especially those who sit on the Hillsborough County school board and inevitably when they go on the stump to be returned to office--to award teachers who do the work in the schools with the students that produce the good results a compensation more condign to their pivotal role in the educational process.

Ms. Elia recently augmented teachers' work load by imposing an extra class on them to solve her budget problems without the board's discussing this imposition on teachers or without the teachers having a chance to comment on the move. Some called Ms. Elia's ukase decisive management; others called it administrative hubris backed up by a supine board that takes scant interest in the teachers' and students' wellbeing. The board even refuses to give teachers and students a settled place in the board agenda from which they may express their opinions on such matters. This neglecting of the dignity of teachers gives them no forum to share their views with the board. That there is no place for them on the board agenda tells teachers and students that the board does not value their input and does not not want to be bothered by hearing from them.

Fairness dictates that it is teachers who should get any money available for bonuses, not Ms. Elia, who sits in ROSSAC all day away from the district's schools, where the improvement of students' learning levels take place with teachers', not Ms. Elia's, guidance. Only the distorted thinking that passes for logic in ROSSAC and the board room could ratify this irrational thinking that Ms. Elia merits the bonus from teachers' work.

When the teachers, whom Ms. Elia did not consult about the extra class, complained, you called them from your board chair "lazy."
A parallel comment from the teachers for your outpouring of money in Ms. Elia's contract tete-a-tete between you and her might elicit adjectives "unscrupulous" or "profligate" or "contemptuous" of taxpayers, teachers, students, and the rest of the school family, whose contracts don't get the cozy attention a school board member lavished on colluding with the superintendent to bloat the superintendent's pay package to the point that the Tribune's editorial page found it necessary to remark upon even though the editorial editor, Ms. Goudreau, is a friend of Ms. Elia and a usually reliable flatterer of the superintendent.

You must have notes about the session you spent crafting Ms. Elia's bloated contract with her. As a piece of public information, I would like to have a copy of those notes. I also suggest that at the next board meeting you explain to the public your rationale for (a) participating in devising the contract's content and (b) why the public should not be appalled at your performance.

lee drury de cesare

We've got mail!

Anonymous has left a new comment on your post " Tom, when I...":

Even if the school board is allowed to hand out no bid contracts as the attorney says, is it really the ethical, fair, and right thing to do? His argument is that they do not have to advertise or allow bidding on contracts. Well, taxpayers would like to make sure that they get the cheapest and best contract, so the school board should ethically bid everything out. Better yet, they should hire people who know what they are doing, so they don't have to hire experts to do their jobs for them!

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Posted by Anonymous to Lee Drury De Cesare's Casting-Room Couch at 1:27 PM

Lee's response: As well as I can tell, Tom's and the board's and the adminitration's code of ethics is to rip off anybody who doesn't fight back. So far none has.

I am putting up a fight: a lone granny and do-gooder whom they would like to kill. Come and join me at the school board meetings for the fun. These turkeys can't kill you. They can only leer at you from the podium. lee

Tom, when I said at the January 15th board meeting that I would ask the federal government for a compliance review if the board did not stop allowing Elia to indulge in crony hiring and not advertising jobs so that all qualified people could apply, especially for the bloated-salary administrative appointments, you said I was dead wrong about the compliance requirements on federal funds and implied that my so saying made me a candidate for an extortion law suit against me for mentioning a compliance review in my appearance before the board.

I think you used this same logic when you advised what to do in the Erwin whistle-blower debacle--either you or one of your company's team. You were wrong then; I believe that you are wrong now. Thank God these framers of the equal-opportunity wrote these laws in such simple language that ordinary citizens such as I can understand the language.

You say you have been on the board only three years, but my information is that your company has held the exclusive right to the board attorney for fourteen years and that no other law firm was allowed to apply for the job. If you send me the public information about your relationship with the board that I asked for two months ago--and asked the board to tell you to provide me--then I can determine how long you have indeed had the job.

The information below is the same that I used at HCC to encourage non-discrimination. I infer if a contractor has any federal money at all that contractor is liable to federal non-discrimination provisions in employment and that Ms. Elia's with the board's approval hiring of her cronies or sycophants into jobs in administration for which they are not qualified and which the board has not advertised violates the federal non-discrimination provisions.

I infer if a contractor--such as the Hillsborough County school board--does not practice equal opportunity in hiring that a citizen such as I can ask for a compliance review from the federal government of the contractor's practices to ensure that these are coincident with the equal-employment-opportunity executive order.

I am aware that my inference will earn me another threat from you of my committing extortion for asking that the school board of Hillsborough County carry out the federal laws, for which board you are attorney, but I am willing to take the risk and to spend the rest of my life in the pokey in the name of equal opportunity, my incarceration's being attenuated by my hanging Prisella curtains in my cell, needlepointing wedding rugs for my granddaughters to wile away the hours, and making buddies of all the guards so that we can gossip about the vagaries of prison life.

May your house be safe from tigers as people say in India both in and out of jail.

Your pal, the extortion kid,

lee

	U.S. Department of Labor Employment Standards Administration
	Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs

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January 20, 2008 DOL Home > ESA > OFCCP Home > Laws & Regulations

Executive Order 11246, As Amended Executive Order 11246 - Equal Employment Opportunity SOURCE: The provisions of Executive Order 11246 of Sept. 24, 1965, appear at 30 FR 12319, 12935, 3 CFR, 1964-1965 Comp., p.339, unless otherwise noted. Under and by virtue of the authority vested in me as President of the United States by the Constitution and statutes of the United States, it is ordered as follows: Part I - Nondiscrimination in Government Employment [Part I superseded by EO 11478 of Aug. 8, 1969, 34 FR 12985, 3 CFR, 1966-1970 Comp., p. 803] Part II - Nondiscrimination in Employment by Government Contractors and Subcontractors Subpart A - Duties of the Secretary of Labor SEC. 201.The Secretary of Labor shall be responsible for the administration and enforcement of Parts II and III of this Order. The Secretary shall adopt such rules and regulations and issue such orders as are deemed necessary and appropriate to achieve the purposes of Parts II and III of this Order. [Sec. 201 amended by EO 12086 of Oct. 5, 1978, 43 FR 46501, 3 CFR, l978 Comp., p. 230] Subpart B - Contractors' Agreements SEC. 202. Except in contracts exempted in accordance with Section 204 of this Order, all Government contracting agencies shall include in every Government contract hereafter entered into the following provisions: During the performance of this contract, the contractor agrees as follows: (1) The contractor will not discriminate against any employee or applicant for employment because of race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. The contractor will take affirmative action to ensure that applicants are employed, and that employees are treated during employment, without regard to their race, color, religion, sex or national origin. Such action shall include, but not be limited to the following: employment, upgrading, demotion, or transfer; recruitment or recruitment advertising; layoff or termination; rates of pay or other forms of compensation; and selection for training, including apprenticeship. The contractor agrees to post in conspicuous places, available to employees and applicants for employment, notices to be provided by the contracting officer setting forth the provisions of this nondiscrimination clause. (2) The contractor will, in all solicitations or advancements for employees placed by or on behalf of the contractor, state that all qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex or national origin. (3) The contractor will send to each labor union or representative of workers with which he has a collective bargaining agreement or other contract or understanding, a notice, to be provided by the agency contracting officer, advising the labor union or workers' representative of the contractor's commitments under Section 202 of Executive Order No. 11246 of September 24, 1965, and shall post copies of the notice in conspicuous places available to employees and applicants for employment. (4) The contractor will comply with afl provisions of Executive Order No. 11246 of Sept. 24, 1965, and of the rules, regulations, and relevant orders of the Secretary of Labor. (5) The contractor will furnish all information and reports required by Executive Order No. 11246 of September 24, 1965, and by the rules, regulations, and orders of the Secretary of Labor, or pursuant thereto, and will permit access to his books, records, and accounts by the contracting agency and the Secretary of Labor for purposes of investigation to ascertain compliance with such rules, regulations, and orders. (6) In the event of the contractor's noncompliance with the nondiscrimination clauses of this contract or with any of such rules, regulations, or orders, this contract may be cancelled, terminated, or suspended in whole or in part and the contractor may be declared ineligible for further Government contracts in accordance with procedures authorized in Executive Order No. 11246 of Sept. 24, 1965, and such other sanctions may be imposed and remedies invoked as provided in Executive Order No. 11246 of September 24, 1965, or by rule, regulation, or order of the Secretary of Labor, or as otherwise provided by law.

The picture to the right is a montage of a bunch of us women who put on our goofiest hats and picketed the St. Pete Times and the St. Petersburg ACLU for sexism. After picketing, we entered the banquet hall and plopped ourselves down at our reserved table, circulated amongst the sourpusses we had picketed, and handed them fliers rebuking their sexism. They were not amused. Boo hoo.

The St. Pete Times had hardly any women on its masthead, and most of the front-page bylines were male. The ACLU turned down the plea of St. Petersburg's Planned parenthood to intervene in the anti-abortion crazies' harassing women going into abortion clinics but took instead the case of a one-legged man's right to dance in public places (I'm not making this up). We reamed out the local Pinellas ACLU and sent a copy of the invective all over the state to embarrass its members with other ACLU chapters. I wrote the Columbia School of Journalism to rat out the Times's sexism. Fun was had by all. lee

Analysis comes from the mail:

Anonymous has left a new comment on your post " Ms. Olson: As is your wont, you muttered crit...":

The reason people like Candy Olson do nothing about corruption is that they want to be able to ask for favors from the ROSSAC administration. If a person is friends with Candy she can get Candy to do something about the problem she is having. If Candy were not backing up the downtown administration, their favors to her would stop. So she looks the other way and defends the administration and screws the taxpayers, so she can have a little bit of power to show off to friends.

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Posted by Anonymous to Lee Drury De Cesare's Casting-Room Couch at 4:44 PM

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Heavens, I didn't think Candy an adept at such labyrinthine politics.

The school situation fits loosely a piney-woods Guelphs and Ghibellines scenario. Dante was involved in that struggle on the Guelph side. During that period in history, the Italian Guelphs and Ghibellines traded sword wounds, insults, and interdictions.

I am a great admirer of Dante's poetry, not his politics, so we went to Ravenna to see his tomb. My husband took a picture of me in front of it. I can't find the picture, or I would mount it at the top of this page.

Dante's Guelph sympathies opposed the Ghibelline line-up of his hometown of Florence. So Florence banished him. He pined all his life to go home. He died in Ravenna at 56 unrepatriated but not before writing The Divine Comedy.

That great first poem in the Italian dialect, not Latin, made him Italy's premier poet. So, lo, then the Florence politicos wanted him disinterred in Ravena and brought back to Florence to be put in the fancy tomb the city fathers had waiting for him. Dante was now a tourist attraction.

But the city fathers in Ravenna said no and had the monks hide Dante's bones so Florence couldn't swipe them. Florence's city fathers finally turned to other matters and backed off from trying to make off with Dante's bones. So the monks took Dante's bones out of hiding and put them in his Ravenna tomb, where they still reside.

The tomb in Florence remains empty. You can hear tourists there say, "Now who were these guys the Guelphs and the Ghibellines?"

I like to think of those Ravenna monks' hiding Dante's bones and of the Florentine city boosters' fuming about the situation. It makes me smile every time I think of it. It sounds like a dust-up between the city and the county.

I now am rereading a new version of The Divine Comedy, in which a different poet translates every canto.

I can't decide to which circle of hell to assign the ROSSAC crowd. When I hit that circle in rereading the poem, I will say, "Bingo! Here's where those asses at ROSSAC belong."

lee

lee

Ms. Olson:

As is your wont, you muttered criticism of my comments as I walked away from the mike on the 15^th.

I made out what you said. For a 75-year-old, my hearing is excellent. I believe the blessing is genetic. My maternal Aunt Jewel, who never left the small Georgia farming town in which she was born, had remarkable hearing until the end of her 94^th year. She died at that age and now lies at rest among our ancestors in the family cemetery in Hazlehurst, Georgia. We relatives and admirers of Aunt Jewel’s many virtues made her ability to pick up even a whisper from across a room the subject at family reunions.

Aunt Jewel was born with a hare lip. Grandpa took her to Waycross for a crude surgical procedure that was all available at that time. It helped a little. Aunt Jewel survived the surgery with a crippled face but a blithe spirit and lived out her life, first, taking care of Grandma until she died and then as companion to my Uncle Brown, who I now believe was gay, which must have caused a miserable and sex-deprived existence in that little bigoted town in which Uncle Brown lived out his life. He went to Waycross every weekend to play piano in a supper club. This fond niece hopes he met some gay honeys there. Otherwise, his life must have been quite bleak sexually.

As I retreated from the podium at the 15^th board meeting, I believe you said that I didn’t know how the board worked and that I should consider that we teach the difference between reality and fantasy in grammar-school playgrounds.

I know how the board works, ma’am. It’s a bunch of people whom the voters elected to look out for the wellbeing of the students and teachers in the school system but which obeys without question every impulse and whim of a greedy superintendent whom the board reduced the academic requirements to hire.

The corrupt ethics of the board allowed it to scam a “nationwide” ad for the job, bilking the taxpayers of $35,000 for the board’s subterfuge. In this corrupt flimflamming of the public, the board hired a corrupt superintendent.

This hiring fiasco signaled that the board had succumbed to the entrenched administrative cartel whose only interest is raping tax funds meant for the schools in any way possible with the board’s sitting supinely on the podium at board meetings approving the rape.

You rubberstamp the obscene salaries that Ms. Elia gives her buddies and sycophants when she promotes them to the highly compensated administrative slots in administration sinecures. You don’t say a word when these buddies and sycophants lack education or training for the jobs and need consultants costing hundreds of thousands of tax dollars to guide them through procedures they would know how to do had they the education to do them.

For example, Ms. Cathy Valdez, head of the facililities department, has an early-childhood degree, which explains why she named (Elia’s orders, one infers) a former administrator to a no-bid contract to do school business. He didn't have even a business phone with a live person answering it.

Valdez needed the contractor’s help because she didn’t know how to do the job as head of the facilities division. Were she trained for the crony administrative job she holds, she would not have required an expensive consultant to come in and do her work for her. The ignorance and lack of education of top administrators mean the taxpayers not only pay the obscene administrative salaries lavished on this ignorant ROSSAC crew but also pay the fees of the consultants hired to prop them up.

Then there is Ms. Linda Kipley. Ms. Kipley has a home-ec degree. I had no idea that those superannuated vo-tech citations were still around. I thought they had gone the way of the bustle. But stirring up white sauce was the training that Ms. Kipley brought to head of Professional Standards, which pays at least $135,000 a year and rising.

La Kipley got the job with no advertisement of it, moved from principalship of my alma mater, HHS, where she bungled the job so badly that the faculty was in rebellion. Instead of firing her, the superintendent transferred this incompetent to head Professional Standards. It is supposed to investigate charges of misconduct against teachers. It does not investigate the adultery that board member Faliero conducted after she stalked and seduced the head of Public Affairs, Marc Hart.But

La Kipley appears to spend most of her time helping Ms. Elia cook up cases against faculty and staff under surveillance for not doing Elia’s bidding or rebelling by muttering some criticism of the imperial superintendentship.

I could list other underqualified administrators, but these two citations suffice to show the quality of the superintendent’s administrative appointments, all of whom owe manic loyalty to her because they know they should not have gotten these bloated-salary, unadvertised jobs in the first place; they know their ignorance and inability to perform the jobs should make them ineligible for them.

These incompetents know in their bones that they lack the education to do the jobs Elia gifts them with for being her sycophants. They know too that their getting these jobs without necessary credentials rips off the taxpayer.

And so do you know all this, board member Olson, if you do not blindfold yourself to avoid the knowledge.

You lack not only loyalty to the taxpayers, the students, and the teachers but also courage, ma'am. Had you any courage you would not have joined Kurdell in the cowardly attack on April Griffin when Griffin asked that a no-bid contract that Ms. Elia had ordered Ms. Valdez to present to the board be pulled from the consent agenda for discussion.

The unspeakably stupid Ms. Kurdell, who has hunkered on the board for fifteen miserable years kissing the superintendent’s ass, said Griffin was “disloyal” to the infallible staff for wanting to examine a no-bid contract of $148,000 to an Elia former administrator buddy. In other words, any board member that asks a question is not, in the words of Dr. Lamb, “a team player.”

I fear that Ms. Griffin, made timid by the attack of you and Kurdell, will now subside into a team player; I fear that Ms. Valdes, who defended Griffin in the attack, will do the same. Then there will be unanimous team Elia ass-kissing on the board team.

I believe that the kinds of swaps of favors that the board presides over have great opportunities for graft. I believe envelopes of cash pass between the administration and the people getting the favors both in employment and in contracts. Taxpayers underwrite this criminal trade in money for favors. I believe that graft has gone on for a long time as at ROSSAC lucrative sideline for the administrative cartel and that such board members as you enable this graft with your obtuse acquiescence to everything Ms. Elia dictates.

That the Tribune has finally woken up and editorialized about Ms. Elia’s obscene compensation rip-off of the taxpayers with the board’s complicity is good news. The Tribune says the board is the culprit in this situation. I agree.

I do not believe Elia buddy Tribune's editorial editor Goudreau, Elia buddy, wrote that recent editorial criticizing Elia's greed. She does not write that well. For some reason, the Tribune local biggies had somebody else editorialize against Elia's greed. I hope I helped this circumstance by complaining about Goudreau's lack of skill with the English language and with logic to the newspaper's owners. Ms. Goudreau's lack of skill with punctuation and rhetoric is almost as bad as that of Ms. Elia. That's probably why they are soulmates.

If the board members had the voters’, students’, and teachers’ wellbeing in mind and if they were interested in education instead of remaining incumbent toadies of Ms. Elia's sufferance, they would not have let Ms. Elia’s greed run rampant and would have reined it in.

But the board is so disrespectful of its putative job of protecting the education system and instead has succumbed to what my USF distinguished-professor friend in the email below calls a “robber baron” system of administration that it has lost its bearings as board members and moved into the criminal precincts of the superintendent and her followers.

This man is a distinguished professor at USF and a bright light in his field of anthropology. He indeed knows fact from fiction.

I hope more voters become aware of the situation—that they discern fact from spin, that they turn their eyes to the depredations on education that the elected school-board members slough off to support a greedy superintendent whose inability to even punctuate correctly the board overlooks to give her one of the highest compensation packages in the country. You board members, Ms. Candy, betray not only voters, teachers, and students by so doing; you betray the high purpose of education.

A person who can’t punctuate or write a felicitous paragraph should not get $300,000 a year in tax money while literate teachers who inspire and teach our children get $34,000.

You yourself have engaged in the corrupt pas de deux of board and superintendent for your dozen years on the board, Ms. Olson—even signing off on the legal crucifixion of Doug Erwin when he tried to alert former superintendent Lennard to the hundreds of thousands of dollars of waste in the building department.

Instead of thanking Erwin, Lennard and the board sued him. This is a sorry history from which to address the back of a retreating taxpayer--me--at a board meeting to tell her she doesn’t have a grammar-school awareness of appearance and reality.

I hope the Tribune editorial on Ms. Elia’s greed and the board’s collusion signal the paper’s monitoring more closely the obscene panoply of board-superintendent despoliation of the education system in Hillsborough County without the girlfriend bias of Ms. Goudreau. I hope it signals management’s untying the reporters’ hands on the education beat so that they can report the truth more clearly than has been the case heretofore.

The survival of education in Hillsborough County is at stake.

lee drury de cesare

Lee: I believe that you have analyzed the problem very well. These people seem not to be public servants, but privateers of the old school.