Susan, Where were board members when this Wimauma meeting described below occurred with immigrant parents of children to be bused in a trial run of this cruel maneuver?

Where was the school superintendent? She must have been gadding about on the taxpayers’ dime attending one of those school-
bureaucracy Cracker Jack prize hoedowns that local, state, and national school bureaucracies give each other to paper over how badly they manage schools.

I believe Ms. Elia has received a half dozen School Bureaucracy Cracker Jack Nobel Laureates in the last three months alone.

But the big question is this: Where, Susan, were you when this meeting of immigrant Hispanic parents took place? This is your constituency. Didn’t you run as a Hispanic who would look out for Hispanic children?

Or have you decided to become an honorary Anglo potted plant to blend in with the rest of the board?

The Tribune via an Elia leak jumped on you for spending the most money of any on the board to get your certification. I thought you were right to get that credentialing.

But now I wonder if the syllabus featured any of the ethics seminars you needed such as “If You Run as a Hispanic, Remember That If You Get Elected”;or “If You Are the Sole Hispanic Board Member, Don’t Let the Administration Jump on the Immigrant Hispanic Children First as the Guinea Pigs for No Buses and Even Five-year-olds Walking Two Miles on No Sidewalks on Terrain by Roadsides Strewn with with Broken Beer Bottles with Semis Roaring by, Only One Crosswalk,
and Pedophiles Lurking in the Tall Grass.”

During Board Meetings I have attended, you have nattered prolix lamentations about the poor children, the poor children, the poor children, and yadada, yadada, yadada. Apparently, you are fond of poor children in the abstract as rhetorical props, but you don’t give a fig about them in the flesh and blood—especially if they are poor Hispanic children of immigrant parents.

The way Hispanics get treated makes even me angry, and I am a Southern Anglo. I just got back from NYC attending the Russian Kirov Ring Cycle at the Met. Walking to and from my hotel for each of the four operas, I saw Hispanics stocking the boutique grocery stores, hustling in the delis in all the low-end jobs, and, on my 12 midnight walk to the hotel, loading big garbage bags onto trucks.

These are the jobs native Americans won’t do. Any large city in this country would shut down without immigrant labor. Yet the anti-Hispanic bigots complain that Hispanics don’t speak English well when not one of those native-born bigots could write a literate paragraph in the English language to save his or her ignorant life and consents to pay a Hillsborough County superintendent $300,000 a year who can't punctuate and write above 7th-grade level.

If you cared about the Hispanic that you should stick up for, you would have been on the scene in that hot cafeteria to talk to those desperate immigrant parents. You would have jumped on Elia and her myrmidons and demanded an explanation of why the cruel experiment with no buses started with immigrant Hispanic children of farm workers, not with a more privileged neighborhood with parents who know how to make their resistance effective?

And did you agree to send Ms. Strickland, who talks like a bureaucratic android with her repeating of“best practices” and “state criteria?”

I think she’s the one that got dumped from the top administration transportation job but reassigned at the same bloated salary, higher than the guy recruited to be her boss.

That maneuver demonstrates the “Mess-up-move-up” history one board member had enough chutzpah to vote against in the crooked assignment of jobs of the brouhaha that accompanied the administrative transportation meltdown. You, to your discredit, did not join the no vote against thespoils-system of awarding administrative jobs.

Elia sent Strickland as the fall guy to avoid the bad publicity that savaging immigrant five-year-olds will get the much-decorated-Cracker-Jack superintendent. She didn't care whether Ms. Strickland could communicate with Hispanic parents or not.

If your cared a bit about the treatment of poor immigrant Hispanic children, you would have insisted that a Spanish-speaking spokesperson go to explain the policies. You would have needed only an ounce of courage and concern for those immigrant Hispanic children to demand that Elia send one who had not messed up in her job and who could not translate into plain terms why the
administration loaded the burden of this policy on the children of a vulnerable Hispanic farm-worker community.

Shame, Susan, shame. You have been on the board for two years and have done nothing to fulfill your campaign promises to represent Hispanics and to work to reform a corrupt administration supported by a politically cowardly, careerist board, which you have willingly become part of.

Now you have the effrontery to ask voters to elect you again after this feckless performance. You have, in short, rolled over and become a potted plant. You have not gone to bat for these Wimauma or any Hispanic children.

My little Southern hometown would say that you “have got above your raisin’.” There can be no worse insult in the rural community where I was born.

You have not protected the community your heritage demands should concern you. You have buckled to Elia’s coercion, have not let out a peep of dissent so as not to antagonize the other board potted plants, and have consented to become merely another cipher on the board.

Scampering about the country racking up points for board certification is beside the point with such a record of collusion with what’s wrong with the administration of the schools. Certification is a band aid on your callous, feckless performance as a board member.

That is a defection indeed from what you promised you intended to do when you ran for this post. You have become just another politician who makes and breaks promises to get into the incumbency rut and never does a thing afterwards to justify your election.

What a letdown you are.

But worst of all is the abandonment of the vulnerable community of immigrant Hispanic children whom you have betrayed. That ranks a major dishonor on your record in my book.

lee drury de cesare

From St. Petersburg Times

PARENTS SAY 2 MILES IS A DANGEROUS TREK

[SOUTH PINELLAS Edition]

St. Petersburg Times - St. Petersburg, Fla.

Author:	SAUNDRA AMRHEIN
Date:	Jul 22, 2007
Start Page:	4.B
Section:	LOCAL/REGIONAL (LCR)
Text Word Count:	738

Document Text

About 200 pupils will have to walk that far in an area not designed for pedestrians.

The cafeteria, small and hot, was packed with 100 parents and their children squirming on small seats.

The mothers and fathers - some pushing Dora the Explorer strollers, others freshly changed from work clothes - waited patiently for the school district officials to speak.

Children living within 2 miles of Wimauma Elementary School will no longer have bus service when school starts Aug. 20, Karen Strickland, a bus system manager, told the crowd.

For many, Thursday night's meeting was the first they heard about changing school bus stops.

Strickland described a financial crunch, using words like "best practices" and "state criteria." Grim-faced parents had different issues. Sexual predators along the routes to school. Speeding trucks. Early work hours that conflict with school times. The change affects about 200 children who will now have to walk to school, up from 30 last year, according to school officials. The district deleted 17 bus stops in Wimauma as part of a pilot project for southeastern Hillsborough County that will expand to the rest of the county next school year.

Magnet schools, school choice and a shortage of bus drivers are behind the cuts, Strickland said. The state doesn't reimburse the county for transporting children who live within 2 miles of a school. State standards allow students to walk up to 2 miles to school.

How, parents asked, could school officials expect small children to walk 2 miles in a rural town with few to no sidewalks, across a highway with trucks hauling lumber and produce?

Parents grew agitated when district officials repeated answers.

"Why are we paying taxes? For this?" yelled Felipe Orenday, the father of a 7-year-old boy.

In a town where parents leave for the fields and other jobs by sunrise, children walk straight from the house to the corner bus stop. In the afternoon, many students take the bus to Bethune Park, where parents pick them up after work. That bus stop will be cut.

"There are a lot of [stray] dogs in Wimauma that are going to bite these children, a lot of bad people looking for children," said Juanita Ortiz, mother of girls ages 10 and 8.

The school opens its doors at 7:30 a.m., but parents said early work hours mean they won't be able to drive their children to school. Wimauma's roadsides are overgrown, their shoulders often strewn with broken beer bottles, they said. Cars race through the side streets, and homeless or unemployed men aimlessly roam the neighborhood in the afternoon.

Twenty-two sex offenders -including four sexual predators - live within 5 miles of Wimauma Elementary School, according to a state law enforcement Web site.

Strickland said the district transportation department can't fix law enforcement and community problems. State Road 674 isn't considered hazardous under state guidelines, she said, and the lack of sidewalks isn't enough to warrant busing as long as shoulders and rights of way exist.

Sheriff's Maj. John Marsicano attended the meeting and told parents he would try to get a second crossing guard for children along State Road 674.

Parents talked of starting a petition, but district officials told them they aren't singling out Wimauma. Families throughout the county will go through similar changes within the next two years.

Wimauma Elementary principal Roy Moral said his families face unique problems. He spent much of Friday trying to find solutions to the busing crisis.

"Many of our parents, because either they are blue collar or migrant farm workers, they have very limited options," he said. "During season they have to be out there at 6 a.m. And if they aren't working in the local area they are being driven down to Myakka City."

The area offers limited day care options, even if the parents could afford them, he said.

"This is not a suburban area. This is a rural area," he said.

Moral is considering opening the school earlier, either 6 a.m. or 6:30 a.m., so parents have a safe place to drop off the children before they leave for work.

Saundra Amrhein can be reached at (813) 661-2441 or amrhein@sptimes.com.

My Burnt Fort family's homecoming at the family cemtery; my aunts are 96 and 84.

School Board Institutional Memory Flimflam

“Institutional memory” ranks one of those gaseous terms that marginally educated people seize upon. They don’t know what it means but think it makes them sound intelligent to use it.

So on May 13^th, when we heard Ms. Edgecombe and Ms. Elia invoke “institutional memory” as if it clinched their right to continue the school system’s malignant hiring patterns, they thought they sounded erudite and irrefutable.

Wrong.

They showed that they didn’t grasp the simple meaning behind the bloated mouthful that has taken a malignant hold on their minds.

All “institutional memory” means is the history of an institution: its policies and practices since its beginning.

Board member Griffin, in criticizing transportation hiring practices, said the school board should change its job culture of “anybody who messes up, moves up.” Culture, of course, is part of the institutional memory or history of the schools.

When Griffin suggested changing bad hiring practices, Edgecombe and Elia jumped in with their mantra of institutional memory.

In effect, Edgecombe and Elia chorused, “Let’s go on with institutional memory. We like institutional memory’s bad hiring practices because so far the public hasn’t caught on to them. The clincher is that institutional memory has served to keep us in power. Hoorah for institutional memory.”

Boiled down, here stand institutional memory’s salient hiring features:

Ø Hire from within;

Ø Hire dumb if loyal;

Ø Hire incompetent;

Ø Cite “institutional memory” to justify the dumb-loyal-incompetent hires;

Ø When they fail, demote the dumb, incompetent denizens who caused the meltdown to their next level of Peter-principle incompetence to give them a chance mess up there too;

Ø Download a ton of taxpayer money as salary on these incompetents wherever they are;

Ø Rock on, racking up institutional memory until another meltdown occurs;

Ø Never learn by failure;

Ø Repeat the process until the last syllable of recorded time.

Griffin stands on the right side of history. Yet not one other board member joined her in voting against the corrupt culture of institutional memory.

Sooner or later, the public will catch on to board-ROSSAC official flimflam of institutional memory in hiring.

If enough people squawk, the abuses that make up the school system’s bad hiring patterns will give way to better practices. Out will go bad inside hiring; in will come good outside-competition hiring.

School board members will pull back from the malignant hiring policies that constitute the schools’ institutional-employment memory and sponsor better ones to maintain their incumbency.

Keeping their jobs is the Number One feature of board members’ institutional memory.

According to La Gaceta, board member Griffin stepped up in the transportation meltdown. I would love to know if it were she who insisted on an outside hire for the top job from which Elia reluctantly evicted the resident incompetent.

Elia claimed credit for the outside hire, of course, just as she claims credit for everything she thinks will give her good press. But I bet she fought it since Mr. Outsider wasn’t inside the system, so La Elia couldn’t be sure of his loyalty to her and institutional memory.

After all, inside hiring and ignoring outside talent defines how Elia got her own job.

Left to her own devices and guided by institutional memory’s malignant role, Elia would have replaced the incompetent top transportation minion with another of Elia’s incompetent, dumb inside sycophants or buddies. She might also have called in somebody from the school-wide snitch system that reports any whiff of opposition to ROSSAC institutio0nal-memory hegemony.

These unfortunates go to the Professional Standards Abu Ghraib for savaging and even firing.

Anyone who produces even a murmur against the holy ghost of ROSSAC stands in danger of firing according to the administrative dismissal liturgy of institutional memory.

After Elia’s rewarding a sycophant, a buddy, or a snitch with the top transportation job, institutional memory would roll on until the inevitable next mess up.

That is the way institutional-memory hiring functions in the school system: hire from within, never tap into outside talent, move the incompetent down a notch when he or she fails, and give nobody outside the school bubble a chance to apply for the job. Initiate a new round of bloated salaries at the taxpayers’ expense and sit back and ride the slo-mo train of institutional memory until the next breakdown. Then repeat the routine.

What is the cure for institutional–memory board addicts?

The voting booth, of course. Kick the institutional-memory bums off the board and bring in new people not addicted to the failed protocol of institutional-memory hiring that cheats taxpayers, students, and teachers of competent administrators. Elections can produce board members dedicated to the taxpayers’ wellbeing, not to that of Ms. Elia and her hangers-on.

Any Lamb or Valdes opponent in the next election cycle who explains to voters the Valdes-Lamb support of the institutional-memory hiring scam will be new board member.

.

J. Stewart Bryan III, Chair

333 East Franklin Street

Richmond, Virginia 23219

June 8, 2007

Dear Mr. Bryan:

That the Tampa Tribune employs an editorial-page writer of such deficient writing skills as Ms. Rosemary Goudreau does not reassure this stockholder.

The Goudreau editorial output demonstrates haphazard organization, illogical thinking. and lack of objectivity. Worst: it is marginally literate.

I taught college English for twenty-eight years and can spot writing errors in my sleep of the primitive type that Ms. Goudreau commits. Here follow samples:

Ø So what does it mean when an elected official – like a school board member, county commissioner or elections supervisor – become Subject-verb agreement error: “Becomes,” not “become” Singular subject (“official”) gets singular verb. certified through their Pronoun-antecedent disagreement: refers to singular antecedent. professional organizations?

Ø But unlike other professions, there are no tests to pass to prove the officials actually Redundant adverb that Strunk & White condemns; “Actually” makes the writer sound as if she were a California Valley Girl.

learned anything. If a certified public official makes a bad decision, you can't revoke their pronoun-antecedent agreement “Their” does not agree with “official.” certification - but you can vote them Pronoun-antecedent agreement: refers to “official.” out of office. Switch in point of view hinders reader understanding.

Ø Faulty logic: Praise for a school-board member’s eschewing certification contrasts with editorial endorsement of a “certified public accountant” and a “board [sic] hyphenated adjective before a noun] certified physician” in the first paragraph

I have worked in the women’s movement for forty-five years. You were probably a reporter at the old Tampa Times when we women made our failed try to ratify the ERA. Both the Tribune and the Times opposed it. Mr. Clendenin and Mr. Stickney proved obdurate. Newspapers have never occupied the forefront in promoting women’s rights. The New York Times opposed suffrage.

Women’s-rights advocates work to open doors for qualified women to jobs heretofore closed such as editorial-page editor.

Ms. Goudreau is not one of those qualified women we have in mind.

Apocryphal information says she came from up North with no editorial experience, having worked in the news side of journalism. Her editorial product makes this claim plausible.

A paranoid person could infer that some guy who wanted to show how unfit women are for editorial writing appointed Goudreau so as to cement that self-fulfilling prophecy.

The editorial from which the above excerpts come demonstrates a peculiar cast of mind that I call girlfriend loyalty. This odd fetish in adult women echoes the high-school ethos I observed in teenage campus cliques when my children went to Plant.

One suspects this trio’s cronyism comes from all three’s being in over their heads in their jobs.

Ms. Elia got her job thorough school-board politics, not ability. Ms. Faliera represents the constant that Hillsborough County voters tolerate ninnies in public office. Ms. Goudreau’s appointment represents Media- General oversight.

So strong is Ms. Godreau’s allegiance to her chums that when a board member or disgruntled teachers challenge either Ms. Elia or Ms. Faliera, one finds Ms. Goudreau’s ill-thought-out, ill-structured, ill-written, grammatically flawed, badly punctuated riposte on the Tribune editorial page.

These Goudreau anti-teacher editorials to fight her buddies’ battles have embittered county teachers, who post such comments as this on their blog The Wall.blogspot:

Did you see that The Tampa Tribune has begun a smear campaign on the only two school board members sympathetic to teachers?

Even if Tribune management can tolerate editorials adorned with primitive writing errors, it should consider that, with dropping circulation, fifteen thousand teachers outnumber three girlfriends.

Rumor says that Ms. Goudreau recently fired a woman whose abilities you will remember from your Tampa Times days: Nancy Gordon. Ms. Gordon probably offended her boss by punctuating well.

This shareholder objects to the illiteracy and illogic of Goudreau editorials. They contrast negatively with the tradition set by Clendenin and Roberts.

Nor does Ms. Goudreau’s self-indulgent bias assist the Tribune in its circulation contest with the competitor across the bay. The editorials of the St. Petersburg Times are often soporific--but not illiterate and rarely illogical.

Media General should fire Ms. Goudreau and replace her with a qualified person, preferably a woman. She lacks skills and judgment for this important job.

lee drury de cesare

15316 Gulf Boulevard 802

Madeira Beach, Fl 33708

Red-pen analysis of Tribune’s Endorsement of School- Board Ignorance: (likely composed by School Superintendent MaryEllen-Elia- girlfriend Editorial Page Editor Rosemary Goudreau, using the editorial page of the Tampa Tribune to air personal pique because teachers at the May 13^th School Board meeting called Susan Valdes and April Griffin their “heroes” for suggesting that cozened ROSSAC administration share some of the financial pain of in the extra-class-Elia attack on teachers).

*********

Voters Provide Elected Officials The Article “the” gets no capital in a title. Newspaper headlines ignore this rule from press ignorance or crochet. Only Certification They Need

We know that having a certified public accountant handle your books is a smart business move. And if you have a serious health problem, it's advisable to seek out a board Hyphenated adjective before a noun certified physician to treat you. And board Hyphenated adjective before a noun certified teachers go through a rigorous program that requires a high-degree No hyphen: There is only one adjective before the noun it modifies. of skill to complete.

So what does it mean when an elected official - like a school board member, county commissioner or elections supervisor – become Subject-verb agreement error; “Becomes,” not “become”: singular subject (“official”) gets a singular verb. certified through their Pronoun-antecedent disagreement with “official” professional organizations? Not as much as you Shift in point of view confuses reader. - or they Pronoun-antecedent disagreement: “they” refers to “official.” - might think.

At the Hillsborough County School Board, the certification issue has been used Pussyfooting passive verb: “has been used by whom”? Don’t go flabby in this excoriation. Assign responsibility. Do you mean the following up-front accusation? “Patrick Manteiga, publisher of La Gaceta, has questioned the professionalism of La Faliera, pitting the professionalism of other board members’ seeking certification against Ms. Faliera’s not seeking it. She finds the perk * unnecessary.” to question the professionalism of some board members, pitting some who are aggressively seeking certification against one who finds the perk unnecessary.

“Perk”*: “Perk” is off-the-mark informal diction. Look up “perquisite.” The editor means “training,” “education,” or “discipline.” “Aggressively” is one of those pumped-up adverbs against which Strunk & White inveigh.

Illogic: Approving a school-board member’s eschewing certification conflicts with editorial endorsement of a “certified public accountant” and a “board [sic] certified physician” in the first paragraph

Taxpayers Apostrophe for possessive before a gerund Shouldering The Costs

We took a close look Probably a cursory look, given the writer’s slipshod writing standards at these certification programs and found that while some good training goes on, it's costing taxpayers mightily.

Strunk & White pleads against redundant adverbs as blemish to decisive style. Besides, “mightily” is inaccurate in context. Compared to the money frittered away on administrative featherbedding jobs and bloated ROSSAC salaries—not to mention Elia’s obscene compensation that the Board augmented by lavishing on the comma-challenged superintendent $48,000 for teacher-generated rise in student achievement--this board-member certification outlay ranks small-change dip into taxpayer kitty.

In these programs, board members can attend workshops on school financing; construction and even the public Will this editor never grasp hyphenated-adjective-before-a noun refinement? records law. But unlike other professions, there are no tests to pass to prove the officials actually Redundant adverb: See Strunk & White. anything. If a certified public official makes a bad decision, you can't revoke their This editor must repair for a long study-hall recess to master pronoun-antecedent agreement. certification - but you can vote them Refers to singular “official” out of office. Two switches in point of view from third to second person confuse.

Which To what does this relative pronoun refer? The editor forces the reader to plow up through the preceding paragraph only to discover that “which” has no antecedent, so the reader must provide it. Does editor mean “this situation” perhaps? goes to show you - the election is the certification that matters most.

There's nothing wrong with our elected officials Possessive before the gerund attending the occasional workshop to keep up to speed “Up to speed”? How recherché: just the kind of linguistic felicity over which the Pulitzer Committee smacks its lips on complicated issues. New board members, in particular, need courses to help them learn the complexities of some issues, Redundant comma cuts off a restrictive adjectival prepositional phrase. like school funding.

But a full certification requires a flurry of travel and classes. In the past two years, the seven members of the school board have spent at least $26,500 on travel and registration fees on certification programs alone.

Imagine such extravagance! It compares to Dr. James-- “your-” and “you’re-” befuddled—Hamilton’s wasting $235,000 to summon above-the-Mason-Dixon-Line consulting fellows to tell him how to make the school buses run on time. A seven-year-old could have provided the solution that 1. buying new buses to replace the wrecks, 2. hiring sufficient mechanics, and 3. paying the drivers better than Third-World wages would solve the problem.

There seems to be little recognition among some board members about their obligation to be wise stewards of the public's money.

Anybody who stewards public money will leave it available for the administration to squander with no rebuke from the board.

Board member April Griffin has only “Only” is a misplaced modifier: it goes before “since.” been in office since November, but already she's attended at least 11 "training events" What purpose do these sarcastic quotation marks serve? This editor should have courage sufficient to come out from behind these insidious quotation marks and say what she disguises with them: “April Griffin, board junior member, has wasted time and taxpayer money since her November induction to gallivant to eleven trifling board-certification festivities.” to earn certification from the Florida School Board Association, amounting to more than 50 hours of training and more than $2,200 in expenses.

Is this editor so benighted as not to see that this effort deserves praise, not condemnation? Is stupidity preferable to enlightenment in the Tribune editorial credo? In one workshop, Griffin actually Only California Valley girls use this locution that S & W condemns. sat through a presentation conducted by Hillsborough's own chief business officer, she recounted. Be this the same “business officer” who routed fake enrollment figures to county government to milk more cash from it for school inepts to waste? A rule of thumb says to expect rascality from anyone with “chief” in his or her title.

Training Could Have Been Free

Yet it didn't occur to Griffin what an incredible waste of money it is to have a board member travel to a workshop and pay tuition to hear a presentation that should have been available back home for free.

“Incredible” is one of those overwrought redundant modifiers against which Strunk & White warns. The editor overlooks that Griffin may have attended other seminars at this workshop besides the one given by the Hillsborough County schools’ “chief business officer.”

More egregious example of money waste is the boutique job that Elia created for Dr. James Hamilton with board acquiescence soon after Ms. Elia’s boundary-scramble debacle in West Chase to cover up her overbuilding of classrooms when she was buildings boss. This Hamilton-designed job got no advertising despite ubiquitous “equal-employment-opportunity” mantra that the Board affixes to its Web page and stationery. “We are an equal-opportunity employer” probably adorned the board stationery page on which Dr. Lamb enlisted a ROSSAC clerical worker to write to Mayor Iorio to abate his condo-association’s water bill.

A school mole revealed that Elia affixed Hamilton’s name to the ersatz job before it went on the books. Dr. Hamilton’s boutique perch costs taxpayers $132,000 plus perquisites. His first move was to subcontract to an out-of-state outfit the decision of how to make the school buses run on time.

Such weighty decisions are above Hamilton’s intellectual fire power. Chronic Hamilton subcontracting represents the sort of waste of tax money one would expect from a man who does not know the difference between “your” and “you’re” and who couldn’t write, if his life depended on it, a literate piece of one page length as his recent lucubration on advice for new board members demonstrated. He had a year to complete that assignment. Anything that involves writing, Le Hamilton should subcontract.

One must also observe that contracts, subcontracts, and vendor agreements yield delicious possibilities for graft.

And last year, when board member Susan Valdes' excessive “Excessive” is excessive adjective here. The editorial commentator needs to give us some comparables such the salaries of over $100,000 for twenty administrators in ROSSAC featherbedding nooks and crannies who do God knows what. travel was called We have yet another sneaky passive verb to disguise the actor. An active verb gives us an honest sentence like this: “Last year when this Tribune editor called Susan Valdes’s excessive travel into question…” into question, she explained most trips were needed Flabby passive verb: “Valdez explained that certification required most trips. Records show that she has spent the most of any board member on certification, more than $11,600 since her election in 2004.

This picayune editorial attack suggests the Tribune favors ignorance over knowledge. The illogic fits this formula: “The Tribune attacks Board members who pursue certification because Goudreau-buddy Jennifer Faliero is too lazy to do the same. Since La Jennifer is Elia acolyte, Tribune-Elia-girlfriend Goudreau must attack all other Board members for the sham charge of extravagance for certification to lay a blanket of virtue over the sloth of La Faliera.”

Now, local political activist and newspaper publisher Pat Ah, here resides nexus of this Tribune editorial Elia-girlfriend attack. It’s OK for Tribune-editor-Elia-girlfriend Goudreau to chide all other Board members except indolent Faliera to get at Valdes and Griffin because they enjoy friendship with Patrick Manteiga. Le Goudreau sneers at publisher Manteiga as “political activist.” The editor’s skewed ethics don’t admit that her own advocacy of buddies on the editorial page equals political activism. has used the certification to bash board member Jennifer Faliero, who sees no urgency in pursuing certification now that she's in a second term and has plenty of on-the-job training.

La Jennifer’s laziness gets no salute from people who believe that education beats ignorance. And her second term shows no fruits of the “on-the-job experience” savvy this editorialist acclaims. On a board with no intellectual stars, Ms. Faliera ranks prettiest but dumbest of the gaggle.

Heaven forbid a member of the public might presume to know something about education. He or she must first be "certified" by those already in the system.

As a matter of fact, the public does not know much about education. If its members did, they would not elect such flaccid specimens to the Board as now occupy it. An informed public would not allow the Board to shaft taxpayers by conducting a sham $35,000 “nationwide” search when board members know they mean to fall in with the political in-house power boll weevils to put Elia-- and before her Earl the Pearl Lennard-- at the head of the school system when the job cries out for an outside candidate with real credentials and first-class skills.

Elia’s lacks requisite bona fides, both academic and psychological, so her reign has featured one disaster after another—culminating with the latest sneak bastinado at high-school teachers to take on an extra class for free to solve La Elia’s class-room-size budget problem. The superintendent has known about this problem for years and failed to prepare for it.

Lamb says the board is currently working toward its "master board" certification at an additional cost of $3,000 to taxpayers. One of the things it is supposed to teach is teamwork - clearly a lesson that didn't quite stick with all.

If this editorial pitting certification board members against non-certification Jennifer stirs up some animosity, so much the better. Strife would be a nice contrast to the obsessive teamwork that defines what ails this board. They all chorus, “Yes, Ms. Elia; yes, Ms. Elia.” They never disagree with each other. Instead, they compliment each other to the point that teachers call them “The Mutual Admiration Society.”

No thinking betrays itself on the podium at board meetings. Thinking goes against the rules of the board’s “Be-Innocuous-for-Perpetual- Incumbency” road map.

Current board members wouldn’t dream of objecting to outrageous statements by other board members. Candy Olson’s tedious, prolix unconscious-train-of-thought animadversions on The Meaning of Life go unchecked. Ms. Edgecombe gives teachers a prissy tongue lashing for their misbehavior of demanding their free-speech rights in the board room with no other board member’s intervening to say a kind word for teachers or the Constitution. Jennifer Faliera delivers one of her anti-birth-control squibs. Dr. Lamb fusses about whether teachers’ clapping be coincident with Robert’s Rules. Sphinx Kurdell sleeps on. Sphinx K has slept since her tenure on the board began a thousand years ago.

Here arrives the on-the-other-hand turnaround in Goudreau’s piece. She gives no clue about the change in direction to the reader, not even a “however.” This lack of transition for the reader is like riding a spavined horse. Both experiences cause a crick in the neck.

School boards are not unique in seeking certification. Hillsborough County Elections Supervisor Buddy Johnson last year became certified through a multi-year program taught by Auburn University. He says the program helped him understand the complicated technical and legal issues of his office. The three-year program cost taxpayers about $9,000 in tuition and travel, he says. Hillsborough County Commission Chairman Jim Norman, though, says he's seen no reason to pursue a lengthy certification process that takes time from serving his constituents. "That's my education," Norman adds.

Buddy Johnson, of all people, endorses education. Mr. Norman’s pro-dumb stand confirms that the man is an ignoramus who wears his stupidity with the ignorant-and-proud-of-it bravado of a cultural Neanderthal. Isn’t Le Norman the one who’s attempted to build yet another stadium at taxpayer expense for the burgeoning gladiatorial culture that specimens such as he boost as an antidote to too much brains around town?

No Substitute For Experience

Hillsborough Clerk of Court Pat Frank is passing up a $2,000 annual bonus by declining to participate in a 240-hour certification course. She prefers to keep herself up to speed on court issues and new legislation by attending annual information sessions. Frank said the certification program seemed like a poor use of public money and was redundant given her years of government experience.

Mrs. Frank speaks for her own special situation. This would not be the first time in her years in public office that she misconstrues the scope of a situation.

The fact that Ms. Frank has been either running for or occupying public office since Pluto was a pup justifies her skipping certification training. If she were not savvy in the rituals of office with having been office seeker or holder since the Jurassic Era, one would wonder why in the world she were not.

"I didn't think it warranted my taking time off from work when I was taking over a brand Hyphenated adjective before a noun new office with a lot of changes," Frank said.

School board members, too, could learn plenty without ever leaving town, considering the association holds its two big conferences in Tampa each year. If some weren't so fixated on a certificate, they could become well versed on the issues without taking taxpayers to the cleaners.

An editorial writer who resorts to hoary cliché of “taking to the cleaners” does not reassure a reader that a fresh and vigorous mind purveys advice. By an extension of this logic, a Board member or anyone could just stay put, stay ignorant, and stay in accord with this Tribune editorial apologist for Jennifer Faliera’s laziness and other board-certified members’ profligacy.

This Goudreau editorial summarized says this: “Let’s hear it for ignorance and especially Jennifer Faleira’s ignorance because she’s mine and Elia’s girlfriend, and the rest of the board members are not.”

Answer to all complaints about the piddling amount spent by all-but-Faliera board members to achieve certification is this: Elia $262,000 salary, which includes $48,000 rip-off from teachers’ work; lavish perquisites; golden-parachute, Riviera-bound retirement package with pension based on the salary for her last five years of work. That amount looks to be about $220,000 compared to teachers’ measly under fifty thousand dollars.

This comparison shows why in-house candidates ambitious for big money seek the superintendent job with such ardor.

The Cost Of Training: What School Board Members Have Spent Since 2004

Doretha Edgecomb $5,766.15; Jennifer Faliero $2,370.56; April Griffin (elected 2006) $2,273.63; Carol Kurdell $1,568.60; Jack Lamb $528.31; Candy Olson $2,423.91; Susan Valdes $11,603.19

Answer: MaryEllen Elia $262,000 salary, $48,000 of which the board purloined from teachers’s work as Elia’s “bonus”; lavish travel budget; Riviera-bound retirement golden parachute; her own nuclear deterrent in due time

Parthian advice to La Goudreau: Get out of the newspaper racket. You lack basic grammar-punctuation skills. You are logic bereft. Your rhetorical felicity shows meager. Your output won’t sell even for prose aimed at the people-who-move-their-lips-while-reading market.

Copies:

Ø Columbia Journalism Review to show big-city journalism sophisticates how a local newspaper in the Tampa-Bay-press badlands reduces the purpose of its editorial page to an attack organ of marginal literacy and minimal logic for editorial-page editor Rosemary Goudreau to prop up political girlfriends;

Ø Members of St. Petersburg Times, competitor across the bay, for schadenfruede;

Ø Reporters of Tampa Tribune on peripheral beats: from thence the young wear away youthful idealism in installation-of-traffic- lights accounts for neighborhood editions. Ms. Goudreau’s personal-pique editorial will show these youthful journalists how not to use an editorial page if a newspaper wants respect in the journalism world;

Ø Moralists at the Poynter Institute of Drive-by Press Ethics and Ms. Manners Lore: They shall ponder the lack of ethics in this approach to editorial-page writing. We expect a white paper on the same from these press-ethics sages with Socratic flourishes and Hegelian love knots.

Ø Hillsborough County high school teachers to confirm their belief that the Tampa Tribune holds teachers’ and students’ needs at a lower level than that of the power principals of the county’s school system under Ms. Elia’s domination, which the board buttresses by its complicit knuckling under to her mistreatment of teachers;

Ø Newsrooms at Media General Richmond Times Dispatch and Winston-Salem Journal to give proletariat reporters there a chuckle over the girlfriend excesses of La R. Goudreau that will never merit her a duplex in the H.L. Mencken suburb of press heaven;.

Ø Janet Weaver and Denise Palmer, Goudreau’s local bosses and, one hopes, not co-conspirators in this high-school-girlfriend clique, the which paradigm I saw when my children attended Plant;

Ø Ray Kozakewicz for the beguiling ethnicity of his name and because he is the representative of the Florida Commutations Group of Media General;

Ø Miami Herald for fun;

Ø Gainesville Sun for more fun;

Ø Tallahassee Democrat for even more fun;

Ø All Members, Hillsborough County School Board, both in and out of accreditation seminars;

Ø Mounted on Grammargrinch@blogspot.com; and

Ø leedrurydecesarescasting-roomcouch.blogspot.com for the delectation of the blog world.

Ø

Lee Drury De Cesare

15316 Gulf Boulevard 802

Madeira Beach, FL 33708

Date:	Sat, 26 May 2007 14:39:45 -0700 (PDT)
From:	"lee decesare" View Contact Details Add Mobile Alert
Subject:	Newsome land sale
To:	linda.cobbe@sdhc.k12.fl.us, "Bruce Burnham" , lisa.caminchos@sdhc.k12.fl.us, "Fred Burns" , angiemanteiga@lagacetanewspaper.com, "patrick" , "Tom Gonzalez" , ptash@sptimes.com, jhill@sptimes.com, suecarlton@sptimes.com, letitiastein@sptimes.com, mbrown@tampatrib.com

Ms. Cobbe: May I have the paperwork that accompanied this
Newsome landsale--the
bids, especially, and any land-use studies conducted by the School
Board as a precaution against such problems alluded to in this article as
the property's being in a flood zone. I want to see all relevant data on
the sale.

I request especially the file information that Ms. Cathy Valdez accrued on
this project.

Real-estate purchase mismanagement seems to be a constant at the School
Board, and nobody ever purports to know what happened.  I refer to the
SPTimes article on the history of real-estate irregularities when Ms.
Elia was head of the building department which she purported to know
nothing about and about which the Board showed peculiar lack of curiosity,
absolving Ms. Elia and as all members are wont to do when some bad
piece of Board news that shows lack of vigilance on its
part comes up.

What current members were  on the Board  when Mr. Newsome retired?  Did
or does the present Board rule on this sale so as to show it responsible for the information?  Has the sale already gone
through, or is it still under review?

I want these data before the Board meeting on the 29th. I can come in
to view them to make the process faster.

Does the Board attorney review such purchases as a precaution? Has he
reviewed this one? Did he review this one?

lee drury de cesare