Stacy White on Bipolar School Board

On  Wednesday, September 18, School Board Chair April Griffin turned in her review of Superintendent MaryEllen Elia giving her the lowest possible ranking of a ‘1’ in all 9 categories and lamenting that the rules did not allow her to give the superintendent a big fat zero. Board member Susan Valdes had also given Superintendent Elia across the board 1’s. At the other extreme was Carol Kurdell who gave Superintendent Elia her highest rating, perhaps to thank her for using the schools to distribute a Times campaign recommendation during the 2012 campaign. Ironically, each of these school board members have sat on many employee hearings where they ruled on the firing on employees for supposed minor campaign violations among other things.

While Chair April Griffin and Susan Valdes rated the Superintendent the lowest, Stacy White, Doretha Edgcomb, and Candy Olson rated the Superintendent very high in complete contrast. Makes you wonder what is going on with this bipolar school Board. Perhaps Stacy forgot that the Superintendent failed to inform him about Isabella Herrera’s death in January of 2012 during Carol Kurdell’s campaign. Perhaps Stacy is hoping that you will forget this happened in his School District and he claims that somehow he never heard about this child’s death for 9 months until after a second student- Jenny Caballero died. Jenny Caballero might have lived had the first death not been ignored and proper action been taken by the Superintendent and School Board during that 2012 campaign year.

None of the employees that the School Board ruled on firing had been accused of inaction that potentially contributed to the death of a student and yet those employees were fired but the Superintendent gets very high marks from Stacy and other certain School board members. Elections Kill.

Stacy White claimed he was going to find out why the School Board never heard about this death for 9 months. Promises, Promises- we are still waiting for this to happen almost 2 years later. Now Stacy White wants to be your next County Commissioner and do for the County what he did for the School Board, which is very little.

The next school board meeting is tomorrow, September 24 at 5 pm. Please govern yourselves accordingly. Here is our previous article about administrative campaigning:

You’ve probably seen those stacks of the Tampa Bay Timesnewspapers at our schools in Hillsborough County.  They are part of the Newspapers in Education Program. The Newspapers in Education Program is a “cooperative effort” that provides newspapers free of charge to schools upon request so that the newspapers can be used in the schools.

This “cooperative effort” between Hillsborough County Public Schools and the Tampa Bay Times has been going on for years. The Principals receive the Times paper and have their teachers distribute them throughout the schools. The Tampa Bay Timesenjoys it because it boosts their circulation numbers and they have a captive audience of children to be trained to read theTimes. In the Tampa Bay area, teachers order more than 5 million newspapers for their classrooms every year. 5 million divided by 180 days of instruction yields 27,777 papers per instructional day canvassing our schools.

Hillsborough County Public Schools probably also enjoys it for much the same reason- they have a captive audience of staff and students to hand out the Times’ campaign recommendations to. Case in point- on school day October 17, 2012 the Times ran the article “Kurdell for Hillsborough School Board” (http://174.129.77.10/opinion/editorials/kurdell-for-hillsborough-school-board/1256935) in which the Times overtly recommended incumbent board member Carol Kurdell. The Times had previously recommended 3 of the incumbent Board members in its paper, Carol Kurdell was the only one that had to advance to the General Election. The principals and teachers handed out these campaign recommendations throughout their schools.

Quite a system- within the span of a single day area schools were blanketed with thousands of copies of the Times’ campaign recommendations for board member Carol Kurdell thanks to this “cooperative effort”.  

In juxtaposition, many school staff have been selectively terminated for “campaigning” on school grounds. Cases in Point- George Olmo and Carl Kosierowski. Kosierowski was a 2012 candidate for school board. Other school board candidates have ‘coincidentally’ been let go or been reprimanded, such as Mike Weston or Dave Schmidt. Presently, Representative Mark Danish, who is also a teacher at Benito Middle School, is being investigated by the School District for campaigninghttp://www.tampabay.com/news/education/k12/despite-precauions-lawmaker-teacher-danish-faces-school-district-scrutiny/2134512.

One particularly disturbing situation is that of George Olmo who was accused of handing out ballot petitions on school property on January 26, 2012http://www.tampabay.com/blogs/gradebook/fired-maintenance-worker-sues-hillsborough-district/2132376. Many of you may recognize this date; it also happens to be the day that Isabella Herrera died after suffering respiratory distress that began on a Hillsborough County School bus.

So these 2 events happened on the same day and we can compare/contrast how they were then handled by Hillsborough County Schools and the Tampa Bay Times. George Olmo was promptly investigated by and later terminated by Hillsborough County Schools. Meanwhile, neither the School Board nor theTimes managed to report the Isabella Herrera Tragedy to the public for 9 months until after the death of a second student Jenny Caballero on October 22, 2012. But 5 days prior to this second tragedy, on October 17, 2012 HCPS and the Timesmanaged to systematically recommend board member Carol Kurdell for re-election on school campuses throughout the County. Student Jenny Caballero drowned on her Rogers’ middle school campus. Arguably the failure to act for 9 months in the form of training and procedures after the death of Isabella Herrera led to the death of Jenny Caballero. 

Then, just 3 weeks later at the General Election on November 6, 2012 Carol Kurdell had a safe ride to re-election.

Elections Kill.

Then, as if to add insult to injury, 2 days later on Thursday, November 8, 2012, the School Board honors the Times in their recognition meeting as if to say “Thank you for missing some issues while helping the3 of us incumbent board members get re-elected”.

A reasonable person might think that it was kind of crooked that while the Times’ incumbent school board candidate recommendation was systematically handed out on school property, other issues are systematically ignored, conceivably resulting in death, and still others, like George Olmo, are simultaneously being terminated for campaigning.

Is it possible that the School District and the Times were both overtly campaigning and covertly campaigning (campaigning by omission)? Overtly campaigning by distributing the Times’ endorsement and covertly campaigning by omitting and ignoring the Herrera tragedy during a campaign year. That the school district’s failure to disclose or pursue the Herrera tragedy was an intentional campaigning strategy for the School Board?

It would appear that Olmo, Kosierowski, Schmidt, Weston, and Danish, etc. are in good company with every staff member (e.g. Professional Standards, etc.) who covertly failed to disclose or pursue the Herrera tragedy. And they are also in good company with every principal and teacher who overtly distributed theTimes’ campaign endorsement.   

They should all be investigated and disciplined equally, but then that would depend on the District’s own Department of Professional Standards who also ignored the Isabella Hererra tragedy so there is no confidence that the Department of Professional Standards can investigate itself or the school bureaucracy downtown. They only seem to focus on school level staff.

Representative Danish- The state attorney and the Florida State Commission on Ethics, among others should investigate these events. Interested persons and the public-at-large are entitled to no less than a thorough, deliberate and just review of the information provided, along with any other evidence that may or may not be developed in the course of the review process.

I’d like to close with an ironic quote from Paul Tash, Chairman and CEO, Times Publishing Company

“Democracy depends on all of us. We have to be willing to play our part as citizens. Honest and independent journalism and debate is vital to that process. At the Times, we take that responsibility seriously, and put it first among all our purposes."

The operative word here is “independent” There is not much independent about this arrangement.