MEMO
Cc: Pamela Brown
BPS Board of Education
From: Carl
P. PaladinoDate: September 9, 2013
Re:
Supplement to CPP Agenda for meeting of September 11, 2013
A.) Issue #42- Board Presidency
Dr. Nevergold, I asked you to allow the Board of
Education (BOE) to address the critical issues now, before it, in a fair, open
and just manner. Your conduct at the last BOE meeting denying me the
opportunity to question Mary Guinn and Mr. Joftus was improper. You
refuse to commit to transparency. You are predisposed to operate the
Buffalo Public Schools (BPS) in secret and as such you are incapable of
carrying out your responsibilities as President. If you cannot be
impartial you must resign. I submit:
1.) You continue to engage in improper and illegal
small group meetings which you legitimatize by calling them "work
sessions." If they were in fact work sessions, then the entire BOE,
instead of the first 4 to arrive, would be able to participate and the meetings
would be transparent and open to the public. Sub-committee meetings, open
to all members and the public, are "work sessions." Your
private sessions must cease immediately.
2.) With reference to the Joint Schools
Construction Committee, please tell me at the open meeting why I can't serve on
the committee. Is there a BOE Member better qualified to do so? I
also request membership on the team negotiating the union contracts.
3.) Your conduct in the preparation of the last
evaluation of the Superintendent was improper. You were the only person
who saw the scoring of the individual members who, prior to voting, acknowledged
that they never saw an evaluation. I asked that the BOE be shown the
calculations and individual evaluations of all members and you have refused to
make that disclosure. Will you so disclose?
a) Illegally solicit money
from vendors with no accounting of the funds
b) Retain and pay very
large speaking fees to other members of the national sisterhoods and
brotherhoods to speak about their great contributions to education so they can
later return the favor and call on our Superintendent, for very large fees, to
speak about his or her achievements, and
c) Force principals to
attend 3 days of nonsensical intimidation at a time when they are pressed to
prepare their schools for opening.
I would like the name of the person who appointed the
lady who illegally solicited donations from vendors on taxpayer time and the
amount of money she raised. I also request a list of the vendors
solicited, the amounts paid by each, the name of the entity to which checks
were written, the name of the person who controls the checkbook, a complete
schedule of revenues and expenditures, the amount of compensation paid to each
of the speakers, who decided on the speakers, the names of the caterers at the
event, how much was paid to each, whether or not bids were taken, and a list of
other similar events and activities conducted by the BPS.
The seminar, according to many who attended, was a
display of arrogant intimidation with racial overtones meant to threaten
principals and clearly illustrate to them that the new battery of central staff
supervisors intend to micromanage the buildings from City Hall. There are
incompetent principals in the buildings because James Williams and his pawn
spent years appointing principals, not on merit, but for all the wrong reasons,
creating a morale problem with those who sought to achieve the positions by
merit. There are also many exemplary principals who should be empowered
to run their schools and not be subjected to disengaged centralization which
failed in the past and will continue to fail. The problem with the BPS is
not the teachers and principals. It is clearly the lack of competent
leadership and racism.
You have allowed the Superintendent to hire many
outsiders, exacerbating the morale problem. These appointees have not
risen by merit through the system and know nothing about the BPS except who
their godmothers are.
The attached video shows the demeaning conduct of the
seminar.
5.) The Educational Support Services Committee
meeting agenda for last week failed to list my agenda items 1, 7 and 10 which
were assigned to that committee by you.
7.) You obviously abhor Charters, a creation of the
State to assist in the education of our children, and you show no respect for
the State Education Department (SED) or its Commissioner, allowing arrogant
members of the sisterhood friends and family club to dominate the parent
hearings at East and Lafayette with insults to the Commissioner, which denied
parents the opportunity to speak. At Lafayette you said everyone in the
community should be allowed to speak knowing that it was the same people who
spoke at East. It's called stacking the meeting.
One was hired:
·
on a 2 year contract
·
for $130,000/year
·
with 26 vacation days with the right to sell
back 10 days for $542/day
·
12 sick leave days with the right to sell back
1/3 of accumulated days at $542/day on termination,
·
2 personal days
·
health insurance for her and her spouse,
·
retirement benefits or an amount equal to the amount
that would be paid by the district,
·
$1,000/year to belong to associations,
·
approved travel expenses and all unapproved
expenses to go to any professional meetings nationally.
It has a blank ‘Attachment A’ dangerously executed by the
Superintendent presumably to be filled in with whatever and then signed by the
employee. The document is not tailored and appears to be a form on
which blanks are filled in. It is written unprofessionally by someone
seeking to make its provisions vague and subject to interpretation which
significantly favors the employee. The individual has told others that
she has no intention of residing in Buffalo. She will commute 2000 miles
every week. What kind of commitment does that illustrate? What are
the special qualities or experience of these people for their positions that
could not otherwise be found with present staff of the BPS?
Mary Guinn was contracted to prop up Pamela Brown. We pay
$850,000/year for Superintendent services and, like the Superintendent, Mary
Guinn is also clueless and can't submit an acceptable Educational Partnership
Organization (EPO) Plan, Comprehensive Action Plan (CAP) for Public School
Choice, School Improvement Grant (SIG) applications, Strategic Plan, etc.
Guinn simply wings it. The BOE should be embarrassed at the quality of
work of its administration.
10.) The BOE never approved the final EPO's for
East and Lafayette High Schools.
11.) You sanctioned the "brilliant"
hiring of the new General Counsel, with highly questionable competency having
advised incorrectly on 2 of 3 BOE questions presented to her. She left
after two weeks on the job on family leave. Her position is critical and
your reckless disregard allowing her hiring is tragic.
Despite my request, the Superintendent has not told the
BOE why the prior General Counsel was demoted and why our talented staff labor
attorney left.
The new General Counsel has been on leave for three
weeks, chaos reigns in day to day operations and the BOE has failed to appoint
an interim or temporary General Counsel to fill the void. When do you
intend to do something?
12.) The CAP submitted to the State was rejected
because the BOE majority is indifferent to the lives of the children. You
sanction the attitude that the outsourcing of children to BOCES, Charters,
Suburban Districts or Privates is not an option.
13.) Despite promises to the District Parent
Coordinating Council (DPCC) and a cover memo that claims that all stakeholders
were engaged in the process, the 5 year Strategic Plan was prepared in secret
with no input from key parental or community leaders. You then allowed it
to be presented at the last minute to the BOE putting the BOE in the
embarrassing position of having to again vote on a document that most members
had not read. SED should have been told that.
14.) You have sanctioned the repeated lies of the
Superintendent that attendance has improved during the past year when in fact
you allowed her to secretly change the rules for collecting data which was the
sole reason for improved statistics. Teachers no longer take attendance
and a student is presumed to be present unless specifically marked absent.
15.) Despite the glaring unfairness and BPS's
inability to give 2,219 students a choice, you continue to sanction the BPS
policy which allows suburban students to take seats from deserving Buffalo
students in our test schools.
If you refuse to resign as President, I will ask the
Commissioner of Education to dismiss you for cause.
B.) Issue # 30. Motion #6- Dismissal of
the Superintendent
1.) The Superintendent's lack of experience in
management should have been recognized by the BOE at the time she was hired.
The search criteria for the Superintendent was limited by
reactionary and racist BOE members who demanded a weak, minority, female
candidate from someplace else who could then be controlled by the complicit BOE
members. They picked and made great fanfare over Pamela Brown's PhD in
linguistics from Harvard, which had nothing at all to do with the management
position of Superintendent. She had never been a Superintendent, anywhere.
She's a linguistics teacher. No other qualified minority wanted the job
of turning around a chaotic and dysfunctional school system wrought with
incompetence, corruption and a collectively incapable BOE.
2.) She has failed to submit timely, responsive and
proper documentation in School Improvement Grant (SIG) applications,
Educational Partner Organizations (EPO) applications, a School Choice
Comprehensive Action Plan, the 5 year Strategic Plan, etc., either to the BOE
or the SED, which she has insulted and failed to engage in a healthy and
constructive dialogue.
3.) She was intimidated by union leadership in
Annual Professional Performance Review (APPR) negotiations and then conspired
with Ruth Kapsiak and Phil Rumore to fraudulently misrepresent and lie to the
SED in the submission of the APPR without the MOU.
4.) Her last evaluation was highly improper.
The process was faulty. Four members attested that the BOE voted on a
document that didn't exist.
5.) There exists a critical problem recognized by
the teachers, their union, the principals etc. concerning the submission of
highly improper information by the BPS to the SED to arrive at APPR scores
which problem has not been disclosed to BOE members.
6.) The cozy symbiosis of local and State Democratic
politicians (Sean Ryan and Crystal Peoples), the Grass Roots organization and
the BPS teacher and administrator unions with the Superintendent and the
sisterhood is a breach of the public trust to protect and educate the children
and is clearly the root cause of the BPS dysfunction.
7.) The Superintendent, who created a huge fanfare
over the lack of money to support a music program for the children, has been on
a hiring binge creating positions for the sisterhood's friends and
family.
One of the new principals is her very close friend.
Did that have anything to do with his hiring? She never disclosed the
conflict or complete an ethics disclosure form.
The Superintendent has hired a number of Mary Guinn's
very close associates for executive level positions at high salaries.
None of their resumes show special qualities. One was hired for a position
created solely for her because she didn't have the credentials to be Deputy
Superintendent. I called the District where she last worked where she
defined herself as "chief turnaround officer." The person who
supervised her said that title was inappropriate. She claimed to have
been there for three years. He said it was 13 months.
Another of Guinn's very close friends was hired in a
position of authority comparable to that of Deputy Superintendent. They
simply changed the position's title to improperly award the position without
BOE approval. She had worked on projects for Evans-Newton, Inc., a Mary
Guinn Company. I called the districts that she had claimed to have worked
in. No one knew her.
Brown hired an administrative assistant without budget
provision or BOE approval. All have no clearly defined rolls, were hired
from someplace else depriving existing staff of the opportunity for promotion
and were hired without BOE approval which is required for any budget changes,
job title changes, the setting of compensation, etc., whether you call the
employee exempt or not. The attempt by the Superintendent at the
last meeting to justify her lie that her Reorganization Plan was saving $1
million was pathetic. Moving people off the executive staff payroll to
grant payroll are still on the payroll. Retitling positions adds to the
hypocrisy.
Now the Superintendent's faulty Reorganization Plan calls
for her to hire as Chief of Public Relations, at $115,000/year, a woman working
for the mayor's office at $79,000/year. There has been no explanation why
the present experienced and qualified public relations person was not
considered for the position, nor was there any justification for the new
position at all.
Over the summer the Superintendent hired another deputy
director in transportation. I questioned it and was told she was
needed. She and the director had 37 and 38 hours of overtime last week
while clerks were denied overtime. Why do salaried employees get
overtime? Why is the director allowed to approve his own overtime? Why is
the director able to earn $100,000 in overtime last year to apparently build up
for his retirement? According to other employees, only the deputy does
any work, they need clerks, not supervisors and the Director should be fired.
Why must the children of the BPS suffer even one more day
for lack of competent top down leadership?
I move again that the BOE discharge the Superintendent
for cause.
Issue #3. Motion # 38- Reorganization and
Mary Guinn
Why was staff told to bury in a grant, under a Cross and
Juftus consulting contract, Mary Guinn's salary, all of her travel costs to and
from wherever she goes and her meal and hotel bills at the Embassy Suites?
I have requested a copy of the Cross and Joftus contract,
Mary Guinn's job description, a schedule of all compensation paid to her, her
assistants or others on her behalf, directly and indirectly, the name of the
Grant charged with her compensation and the "special" qualities that
she has that are not presently available from the staff of the BPS.
Who negotiated the Cross and Juftus contract? Why
wasn't BOE approval required?
Why hasn't the BOE seen her contract, her resume, her
title, her connections to BOE members and consultants and her job
description? Who granted her authority? Was that one of the other
"sharing" moments in an illegal small group meeting? I've made
repeated requests for that information and I've been stonewalled.
The Superintendent defended the $14,000 raises to the 4
Community Superintendents saying their job descriptions were expanded. Do
the math. We started with 3 Community Superintendents for 57 schools
which amounts to19 schools each. We then added a new position to get 4
with responsibility for 14 schools each and also created 5 new positions of
Supervising Principals to assist them. Where did we specifically give
expanded responsibilities? I request citations to the budget line items
that provided funds for these changes without BOE approval. The fact is,
Mary Guinn wanted to hire her good friend and pay her more money than the job
called for, so she gave all of them raises.
Also why did Superintendent Guinn hire principals from
outside our system? The morale of all those principals who worked hard
for merit promotions was skewed in prior years by a pawn of James Williams, who
appointed incompetents from the Sisterhood friends and family club, most of
whom are now located in failed schools. Now, under the Guinn regime, they
have been shoved to the back of the line again to allow the hiring of a cast of
misfits from someplace else.
All that and at the same time the BPS sought to deprive
its students of a music program and other basic services.
I move that the complete Reorganization Plan and all
requested information on Mary Guinn be submitted to the BOE for its approval.
Issue #31. Motion #37. Outsourcing and
Vouchers
BPS unions feel entitled to extraordinary benefits and
outrageous control of work rules that they bargained away from weak, union
inclined, Boards of Education in the past. Good and well intentioned
teachers and principals fail to keep their self-absorbed and corrupted
leadership under control. Considering the web of contractual rights, laws
and rules and the lack of interest in changing the status quo by our complicit
and disengaged legislative delegation, citizens who seek to reform the
dysfunction have few weapons to employ. One very powerful tool to achieve
productive education and allocate resources to the children is to dismantle the
dysfunctional BPS and outsource education.
Retiree Health Care costs have skyrocketed to $66.6
million for 4000 plus retirees amounting to $16,600/retiree/year. Union
leadership in current negotiations demand more and use as a tactic the art of
standing in the way and filing grievances on everything imaginable.
Inept BOE members are rife with complacency and actually
fear the union leaders. They are bought and paid for by union
donations. Such complicit and compromised people should not be
representing the community and the children.
BPS spends $29,000/year/student after payments to
Charters and still can't make ends meet. Charters receive and must operate
efficiently on only $12,000/year/student. As a result 45 of 57 schools
are failing and the graduation rate is 46%.
Andrew Cuomo claims he wants to do something about the
tragic failure of Urban Education in upstate New York, "but" we have
to wait until January. He doesn't have a plan, and there is the problem
of walking between the raindrops so as to not get Sheldon Silver and his
favorite union, NYSUT, upset.
Cuomo doesn't have the backbone to consider doing what
Governor Jindal did in Louisiana. He gave parents in dysfunctional urban
school districts vouchers so that they too can choose the school to educate
their children. Cuomo is in the wind because he and his liberals want to
keep the urban poor captive and dependent so they will continue to vote for
liberals and elitists like him who live in the big houses in suburban school
districts and send their children to private schools. He is a demagogue
who seeks to extend the hypocrisy that NYSUT and the urban poor have something
in common.
The sisterhood members of the BOE have the same lame
philosophy and game plan. Sam Radford and the DPCC are too timid to say
it. There is absolutely no hope of structurally changing the BPS from
within. Regurgitating the same old promises and hollow plans with new
titles and faces is simply kicking the reality can further down the road.
The present "reform-less" reorganization the BPS will just delay
the inevitable and destroy another generation of the urban poor.
I move that the BOE request that the Governor immediately
convene the New York State Legislature and sponsor a bill allowing vouchers to
every parent of the 27,000 students in the 45 failed schools in the BPS and
every other failing school in New York State.
It will take courage for members of the BOE to vote
"yes" on the resolution but it will finally identify to the community
the hidden agenda of the membership.
Issue #22. Motion #39. Tenure
The motion presented in the memo of August 16, 2013 is
withdrawn and the following motion is submitted.
I move that the Board of Education instruct the
Superintendent to immediately stand-still on all future tenure approvals and
denials for principals and/or teachers pending a complete review of policy and
process by a select committee of the BOE to ensure equity, objectivity and
fairness to the process.
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