FACILITIES CHIEF PROMOTED – WHILE INSECURE FACILITIES CITED IN STAFF TERMINATIONS

The Hillsborough County School District has a Facilities Department that is supposed to renovate and update existing school campuses on an ongoing basis to keep schools controlled, safe, and up-to-date. Millions of taxpayer dollars are being spent every year to have the Facilities Department renovate and update the existing schools. Despite that fact, we still have safety nightmares. For example, Jenny Caballero, a student at Rodgers Middle School, scaled a 4-foot-high fence and then drowned in a 12-foot deep retention pond.

In the face of facilities failures and safety shortfalls, many were surprised to learn that the Chief of Facilities, Cathy Valdes, was given a promotion two weeks ago. A week later, a teacher at Pierce Middle School, Ingrid Peavy, was singled out; and, on a 4-3 split vote on the school board, she was fired in connection with an October 2012 incident where another student walked of the campus.

Three senior entrenched board members – Candy Olson, Carol Kurdell, and Doretha Edgecomb, were joined by Stacy White in voting to fire Peavy. This is the same block that previously rated School District Superintendent Mary Ellen Elia’s performance above satisfactory. In complete contrast, Susan Valdes and April Griffin rated the superintendent all “ones” — the lowest possible score. Griffin lamented that she was not allowed to give “zeros”.

And Stacy White wants to be your County Commissioner next. Good luck with that gridlock.

Superintendent Elia used to be Chief of Facilities and ran the Facilities Department. She was responsible for the maintenance and operation of more than 200 existing schools and educational facilities prior to Valdes. Some citizen observers in Hillsborough County are questioning why the superintendent, who recommended the firing of Ingrid Peavy, would recommend the promotion of Cathy Valdes; when it was Valdes, and previously, the superintendent herself, that were the ones directly responsible for making sure that the Pierce Middle School campus was controlled and secure.

What happened?

Superintendent Elia never had any professional design qualifications or design training. How would she know if a facility campus was designed to secure students? Despite the lack of qualifications and training, the School Board appointed the superintendent as Chief of Facilities. Some say it seemed like she was parked there for 2 years — just waiting to become superintendent. In 2005, the School Board had to lower the qualifications for the position, or Elia could not have been appointed superintendent.

Apparently that now makes it Ms. Peavy and the other teacher’s responsibility to compensate for the School Administration’s years of neglect and failure to secure school facilities.

The child protective investigations division of the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office was consulted about the Pierce Middle School incident. The Child Protective Investigations division are CIVILIAN investigators that are not even identified on the Sheriff’s Office website so it is difficult for the public to assess these investigator’s qualifications and training might be, or other relationships.

In March 2013, the Hillsborough County School District’s security expert said, “Many of Hillsborough’s schools were designed decades ago and are a nightmare from an access-control standpoint.”

Questions remain about the scope of the Pierce Middle School investigation. Did the anonymous civilian investigators ever determine the possibility and degree of inadequate supervision by the school board, by the superintendent, or, by the facilities department? The security expert for the school district was correct- this kind of neglect does not happen overnight — it literally takes decades of neglect. Some might call it culpable neglect.

The decision to single Peavy out for termination, while rewarding Valdes and Elia for years of apparent neglect and failure to secure school facilities while they were chief of facilities, appears unjustified.