Colonna says leading Beaverton's schools a "gift."
Disclosure: I am not a fan. I taught for Colonna for four months in 2003-04, yet his signature was at the bottom of a list of false charges covering a period of several years, a document created by ruthless lawyers (no longer employable in B'ton) and dishonest administrators (some of whom received "secrecy agreements" to resign or retire). Mr. Colonna's former HR director, Linda Borquist, is on record under oath (FDAB 2004) as saying that Colonna, the then-new BSD superintendent, didn't actually didn't know anything about my case when he signed my termination papers.
He also didn't bother to talk to me about it...
When he was on the TSPC board of commissioners in 2002, Colonna voted to hire the current director, Vickie Chamberlain. Chamberlain, aided by her former investigator, Susan Nisbet (no longer employable by the state government) harassed me for almost four years to sign a confession that would shelter Mr. Colonna, as well as his lawyers and some bad actors STILL performing in the BSDrama.
(I would learn this is standard operating procedure in Oregon's education bureaucracy, coercing these confessions, euphemistically called "stipulations.")
My OEA rep, Tom Husted, dined and drank with Beaverton's HR administrators while serving on the board of the Beaverton Education Foundation, whose director at the time, Janet Hogue, shared a receptionist at Beaverton district headquarters with Borquist and Hollis Lekas (who used to be Hogue's neighbor).
That is a cozy situation.
My tale is one of the firing of a stubborn and opinionated hillbilly who arrogantly stood up to some bigshots with a lot of influence and huge self-importance. I'm guilty: I believe schools that are run by snobs are failing their communities and Westview was one of those when I was there. I hope it no longer is. I also want to be treated and paid fairly when I am doing my job. At Westview, I was not.
Mr. Colonna, during his first four years at Beaverton, paid the Hungerford Law Firm to coordinate a long, painful termination process that required the tacit support of my OEA lawyer, Tom Doyle, about whom the nicest thing I can say is he is dishonest. I was supposed to sign a confession for the TSPC to keep my license to teach so I would never tell this story--but I CAN'T QUIT TELLING THIS STORY.
The taxpayers paid Colonna a generous salary to do a prestigious job and I am certain he has worked hard. I know I worked 70-hour weeks, frequently with kids whom other teachers did not want to teach. I have been licensed in three other states and some of the best teachers I worked with were at Meadow Park Middle and Westview High, but I encountered a lot of selfish people, too--it seemed to be a professional objective for some of our teachers to avoid classroom assignments.
But even opinionated hillbillies have rights in our state. The complicity of the OEA leaders and the TSPC administrator (as well as the curious conduct of former ALJ Andrea Sloan, who used a "first-of-its-kind-in-Oregon" legal maneuver to deny me due process) is the matter that should concern Oregon's citizens.
And, in that light, Colonna's poetic recollection of his time in Beaverton as a "gift" is easy to understand...He was in a job where he was virtually unaccountable, where he could secretly spend education money (over $200,000 to fire me for four years--just weeks after I had asked to quit) to conceal the misconduct of his administrators and preserve his enviable public image and generous retirement package.
Some of the people who have cheated me and my family continue to work in the BSD. My teaching record has been damaged by unethical, punitive public employees. I remain eager for someone in administration to be held accountable.
Without administrative accountability, Jerry, teachers are vulnerable, disposable chattel--second-class citizens working for poorly-supervised principals, naively paying a union representative who cuddles with your administrators.
Without administrative accountability, Jerry, all the programs with the cute names (and the additional costs) are merely smokescreen hypocrisy.
www.teachingintheshadowoftheswosh.blogspot.com