Teaching in the Shadow of the Swoosh

Oregon Education Reform: Fart in a Limo

2012-02-23T07:50:00.000-08:00

The Jeremy Lin phenomenon isthought-provoking for a lot of reasons.

Public education is under fire aswasteful and ineffective...and a lot of support is available forthose kinds of arguments.

Evaluating teachers and testingstudents and holding administrators accountable are all on the table.To which we should add: Adjust our expectations of schools. Ofadministrators. Of teachers. Of students.

No great teacher compensates forinstability at home. Ideally he/she supplements, not initiates, achild's development. But ours is not an ideal world, despite ourcollective propensity to dwell on the fantasies.

A teacher basically deals with theseagendas:

1. The ADMINISTRATORS want all paperwork on time and no problems from parents

2. The PARENTS want A) constantconfirmation that they are raising superior children or B) the leastamount of interaction with the school as is possible

3. The STUDENTS want to pass throughthe day with their respective dignities intact.

Those of us who got into education to"TEACH" had to learn some other stuff to get by.

That said, there are others beside theMayans who are bleak about Twenty-Twelve. A lot of people sense asocietal fuse burning. It's time for people of conviction to stepforward, ladies and gentlemen. That's you and me.

This is about more than an embarrassingfart in the limousine. We can no longer politely ignore the factthat schools NEED to CHANGE.

"Achievement compacts" tailored to individual school districts spins nicely in the media,but...really?

As we watch Jeremy Lin learn to how ballwith 'Melo and Amare, the rest of us can learn something aboutcultures and expectations. Much of life is about opportunity....andhow we prepare when it arrives. Number 17 got way better 'cause hebelieved he was able to get better, and when his time came, he wasready.

(They say Harvard can do that for you.)

Public schools get Asian kids ready todo well on the SAT because the individuals in the systems expectthose kids to do high-level math.

Some pretty wonderful human beings withwhom I worked as teachers had very limited expectations of childrenbut didn't recognize that fact; they were simultaneously having HIGHexpectations for these children in their "EXPECTED"stereotyped domains. That's what happens: The bigotry of lowexpectations lies at the opposite end of the continuum.

We as teachers are fallible humanbeings who are too often empowered to label, categorize and rank thetalents and abilities of our community's youth. Much of our work isskillfully guided by influential parents who know how to access thesystem.

(A vast bureaucracy has sprung up toserve kids who are "special." God save us from Special Ed.)

The truth is, we need to expect thatour schools--that is: the teachers, principals, coaches andsecretaries--are trained to recognize the unknowable potential in ALLkids.

(...And are allowed to teach that way,Beaverton School District.)

In too many public middle and highschools, the kids who can pay for elite team memberships dominate oursoccer and tennis programs. That's about coaches' egos and sellingNike gear--let Phil pay for it if it's making him rich.

Our schools can be about seeing howmany community members we can get to play in weekend tournaments inthe parks and schools. There are places for the elite, but they needto be removed from public schools.

And on the other side of the coin: Whenwe expect the poor kids merely to "study hard," we will getone result--the one we have been getting. But when we expect thepoor kids to become leaders, to become wealthy and successful, wewill get a different, more desirable result.

Especially when they believe us.

Let's not continue the farce of forcingchildren to come to school to watch curiously-qualified adults assignsuperior status to other children. That's counter-productive to themission of public education.

And we are a democratic society relianton public education.

The public education reform we trulyseek: A cultural shift away from schools as branding institutions forprivileged kids and as factories for public school millionaires, manyof whom are intentionally remote from what actually happens in aclassroom.

Teachers (and the systems thatostensibly support their work) need to practice their craft with thebelief that "little Jeremy" and "little LeBron"have the same inherent potential to excel in Keynesian theory andTomahawk dunkin'.

I don't think it works that way now inenough places. It often takes the unexpected to make us self-awareabout what we expect.

Oregon Education Association Fraud

Oregon Education Reform: But Lisa is Leaving?...and Why?

2012-02-21T10:09:00.000-08:00

"Beaverton School Board has a Full Agenda..." by Wendy Owen of The Oregonian

http://www.oregonlive.com/beaverton/index.ssf/2012/02/beaverton_school_board_has_a_f.html

Like a family torn by unspoken shame,the Beaverton School Board will assemble publicly and behave as ifall is well at home. A brave public face.

These folks, with vast influence andpower over the livelihoods of so many Beaverton citizens, will makedecisions tonight that will affect the futures of hundreds--no,thousands of others.

The agenda will include a visit from aprominent state-level education official so the publicity will beheightened. This is BSD PR whiz Maureen Wheeler at work.

Everyone will put on a brave face,occasionally fidgeting and looking away from all the cameras, and allof them will try to forget, for a while, the secrets they keep.

Secrets that led to Ms. Shultz'sdeparture. Secrets that maintain the facade of functionality for aVERY expensive public enterprise.

But Lisa is leaving...and why?

Mr. Ben Cannon, the new face of Oregoneducation reform, will address an assortment of people gatheredtonight. Many of these educators and board members are prominent inour community, but they are people who have systematically placedthemselves first in line at the Beaverton public education buffet formany years.

An identifiable problem Mr. Cannoncould easily address in his public appearance tonight is the numberof conflicts-of-interests that are present when the Beaveton SchoolDistrict leadership congregates.

And how much money the secretive BSDleaders are able to spend unaccountably, to hide unsavory personnelissues that might taint Ms. Wheeler's scripted public images.

A lot of big decisons will be made whenthe Family gets together tonight...

But Lisa is leaving...and why?

Without oversight and accountabilityfor school administrators in the Beaverton School District, educationreform is smokescreen hypocrisy that taxpayers can no longer afford.

See: "RETIRING TEACHERS CREATESCHOOL SURPLUS"

Anitha Reddy Oregonian October 28, 2004

Running in the Deep

2012-02-17T06:47:00.000-08:00

"School reform: Real work begins after feds reject Oregon's plans" by Susan Nielsen Oregonian Feb16 2012

Ms. Nielsen is doing something thatOregon's Fourth Estate should have been doing for a long time. Toomany schools in Oregon are top-heavy and overloaded with patronageappointments, creating poor morale and inequitable opportunities forkids and teachers.

Dr. Sandy Husk, superintendent atSalem-Kaiser Schools who is quoted by Ms. Nielsen, appears so oftenas an "expert" in the news that her future consultingcompany (after her "retirement") should pay somepromotional fees to some of The Oregonian staff writers on herbehalf.

Dr. Husk recently helped the BeavertonSchools hire a new superintendent. Actually, the Beaverton schoolboard hired an expensive headhunter from Chicago AND Ms. Husk to helpthem find a superintendent. After what MAY HAVE BEEN an extensivesearch (we don't really know--the board members refused to releasethe names of any candidates other than Jeff Rose), the board foundtheir man, Dr. Rose...in Canby.

I bet he knows some of the same peopleSandy Husk knows.

But Ms. Nielsen opines that we shouldgo DEEPER with teacher evaluations. When I was fired forinsubordination after asking that my bosses be held accountable formisconduct, the lawyer for my "teachers" union, the OEA,and the school district's "specialty" lawyers fromHungerford Law tried to have my evaluations removed from a civiltrial process that I was forced to endure for years.

These lawyers were making a deal withthe federal judge: Anything potentially embarrassing from my medicalhistory and financial records that they had subpoenaed would not bemade public by Beaverton's lawyers if my work evaluations were leftout as evidence...

Good ol' OEA--now that suing Sizemoreis no longer a career opportunity for "education" lawyers,work is limited, but they are still hiring Tom Doyle fromBennett-Hartman to "help" Oregon's teachers.

My former building principal atWestview HS, Malcolm Dennis, was coming to work drunk and, aftergetting caught, got a secrecy agreement and paid insurance because heknew too much. Meanwhile the director of an Oregon state agency, theTSPC, harassed me for almost four years to sign a false confessionbefore making an unprecedented ruling to shelter her several closeassociates who were running the B'ton schools.

I had been cheated out of $20K in fairpay and my mom, a teacher for 35 years, died watching me fight with aunion I had paid a decade's worth of dues.

(BTW: In 1997, when I first arrived inOregon as an experienced classroom teacher, I was given the job ofhelping to train a new teacher, Dan Jamsa, at Meadow Park MiddleSchool in Beaverton. Dan would soon leave Beaverton and go on to winachievement awards for teaching ESL kids in Ms. Husk'sdistrict.)

Nick Kristof, an Oregon native writingin today's NYT about education reform in New Haven, CT, mentions howleaders there have used a crucial element to genuine reform:"Teachers were protected by a transparent process, and byaccountability for principals." Outside evaluators, oraccountability. Checks and balances.

If Beaverton had such a policy, I wouldstill have my teaching career and you, taxpayers, would have savedthe several hundred thousand dollars they spent beating me up andpaying unethical people to resign quietly.

The man whom Ms. Husk recently helpedpick to lead Beaverton Schools, Rose, could lead the state in such"transparency" by revealing to the taxpayers how much theBSD adminstration paid their lawyers to bully me into submissionwhile my mom was dying: StateSponsoredTheft.blogspot.com

Dr.. Husk could actually start this newtransparency process herself, by explaining why the Beaverton SchoolBoard was able to conceal the names of the other candidates for Dr.Rose's job.

Ms. Nielsen is on the right "track"with this essay but seems to be listening to the wrong "engineer"in Dr. Husk. Surely she will read Kristof's insightful essay when itappears in The Oregonian.

Nick Kristof:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/16/opinion/kristof-the-new-haven-experiment.html?_r=1&ref=opinion

How Beaverton School administrators silence people who know too much...

How TSPC investigator Susan Nisbett lost her job:

Sheltering "friends" in Beaverton School District administration

Former Westview Principal Malcolm Dennis's

REAL REASON for leaving in the middle of the year...

Essential Imperatives for Extravagant Facades...

2012-01-31T11:54:00.000-08:00

Re: "Behind Portland's dropout rate" Oregonian editorial board Jan 31, 2011

*First, drop your defenses.  

*Second, publish all the data, even theembarrassing stuff.  

*Third, build a district-wide strategythat is grounded in the individual relationships between adults andstudents.

In three imperative clauses, theOregonian editorial board provides the Governor and reform-mindedlegislators with the answers to our public school debacle.

However, the sagacious editors havebeen too mild in their admonishment:

1. "Drop your defenses" istoo vague. "Fire your lawyers" is more specific.

2. "Publish the data" can bepreceded by "Fire the PR personnel."

3. The last (and most important)suggestion is the relationship-building strategy that recognizes thatany traction in education begins with the"teacher-student"contact, where rubber meets the road.

Ironically, this strategy will best beaccomplished by acting on the previous two suggestions. Withoutlawyers and PR spin, school administrators will be forced to hirecompetent and professional subordinates and the patronageappointments that create public employment hierarchies willself-destruct.

We currently have too many entrenchedadministrators who no doubt started careers with noble intentions butwho are now caught up in maintaining the extravagant facades thatmany of our schools, through negligence and niavete, have become.

I observed such a facade at the largestpublic high school in Oregon (Westview HS) when I worked there.Voicing my concerns was unhealthy for my career: Oregon Education Association Fraud

All three of The Oregonian'ssuggestions fall under the umbrella of administrative oversight andaccountability. Without those, the rest of reform is a smokescreen: Teaching in the Shadow of the Swoosh

(P.S. The master teachers with whom Ihave worked would be honored to serve with an administrator as humbleand self-aware as Roosevelt's principal seems to be.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jn4LVpbLN9A&feature

Education Reform: Anger, Courage and Change

2012-01-23T20:23:00.000-08:00

Reform Continuum

1. To change, we have to be different.

 2. No one at the top is letting go easily. The phrase "miredin mediocrity" comes to mind.

 3. We need something new. 

4.We can't afford anything new, so we have to divide the "old"and let one part become "new."

 5. New school isdifferent: It has focused, experienced master teachers and principalswho have actually been in the classroom. It has no prom, varsityfootball or dance team* and no administrators are required to spendtime with that stuff. (*Those programs, very much part of ourculture, are kept with the old schools.)

I hear the collective gasps of all thepeople who "know in their hearts" that big sports programsand school dances and other stuff are why kids come to school--whilethe taxpayers foot the bill.

Pshaw! I know plenty of teachers whomake learning attractive for it's own sake, teachers who make geologyand robotics more interesting to sixteen-year-olds than sitting inthe stands at the play-offs.

Please don't tell me kids won't come toa user-friendly environment to learn computer skills andcommunication skills, just because there is no varsity football,dance team or prom. These are desperate times.

Let's put all that social/entertainmentstuff, and the teachers who do that, into another space and time--andlet private businesses and interested parents pick up the tab. Inless affluent neighborhoods, we can let parks and rec departments,churches, benefactors, etc., sponsor after-school sports programs andother community-focused gatherings for children to supplement whatparents can't support.

Certainly there is value in all thosehigh-profile, big-budget activities that drive the agendas of mostpublic school administrators, but...cough...they are out of control.We can honestly teach football skills and sportsmanship to all kidswithout artificial turf and neon jerseys. Communities should be tiredof school big shots who use most of their resources creating socialopportunities for affluent kids and helping some vain old coaches runup their records. That's "public school" as we know it now,maybe, but it has never been public education.

We already do PROMS and THE PREPARATIONof OCCASIONAL NOTEWORTHY D-1 ATHLETES very well at most public highschools. We don't teach enough math, communication skills andcitizenship.

This is not an expensive change. We canseparate the institutions we have and, in one part of the day, buildreal schools--then let the status-seekers split into somethingdifferent at another time of day. We will save money becausevolunteers, as well as the media, are welcome in the media-friendlytransparent new school--because it never needs to conceal pedophilesbecause they can coach ball.

Over time, what works and is deemedworthy by the taxpayer will endure...maybe real teachers will getschools back from union hacks, selfish parents and millionaireadministrators. We will again have equitable, focused organizationsthat provide what they tell the citizens they are providing:Education.

And provide it for all kids equally.

"Hope has two daughters: Anger andCourage." Saroyan

www.statesponsoredtheft.blogspot.com

Welcome to Our School: Watch Your Back

2012-01-22T10:29:00.000-08:00

Re: Oregon schools: Floating on Lake Wobegon, soaked by the facts

January 22, 2012 by SusanNielsen

They say there are two kinds of people:Scouts and settlers. If that is true, I would fall into the firstcategory. Licensed to teach English in four states and a signlanguage interpreter, I was able to move around a lot before I gotmarried. I learned that if I could "sub" a little bit for aschool district, I could usually get a job offer.

That's what happened in '97 when Iarrived in the NW with a headful of ideas and a heartful of

ambition--and an honorable-mentionTeacher-of-the-Year award from KY,.

I soon landed a job at an over-crowdedmiddle school in Beaverton, teaching 7th grade language arts andrebuilding an abandoned drama program. Three months into my new job,the guidance counselor told me--after I had to seek out theinformation--that my second-term drama class would double in size.

This is not the kind of informationteachers are supposed to get from guidance counselors in publicschools; my building principal was unaware of this unfair situationuntil I told her.

The ensuing conflict was "won"by me: The class size did increase class, but only by 50 % (kidswanted to stay in it and it was hard to say no). But, in theaftermath, another counselor told me, portentously, to "watch myback."

Welcome to Beaverton School District#48. Watch Your Back.

When I was fired for insubordinationseven years later, my union rep was called beforehand. A contrivedsexual harassment complaint, sought by my administrators from animpressionable employee whose complaint did not rise to the standardof harassment OR sex, was used to supplement an insubordinationcharge and to damage my reputation in the community while I wasunable to refute it fro six months. My union lawyer, selected by BSDHR personnel, filed a manipulative free speech suit about something Isaid truthfully to the new superintendent to silence me.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jn4LVpbLN9A&feature

When my license to teach in Oregon wassuspended three and 1/2 years after I was fired, the sexualharassment issue had long since disappeared. The TSPC director (hiredby the former Beaverton superintendent in 2002) used an undocumentedallegation from ten years previous, a snippet of blatantly salaciousinnuendo originated by the same counselor with whom I had conflictedabout doubling my class size.

Beaverton school leaders secretly paidinsider lawyers to make that happen, using a shadowy state agencyimpressively but deceptively named the Fair Dismissal Appeals Board.

I learned during the first four yearsof my ordeal that we Oregonians are deeply invested in a system thathas too long celebrated the wrong parts of education. Real teachersare not in it to get rich. Never have been. While I encountered manywonderful teachers at two schools and was given some greatopportunities to work with some remarkable kids, I still spent a lotof my own money and my own time trying to make it work, just as I hadhad to do in Kentucky, Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Pennsylvania.

In the course of my unnecessaryconflict (I had actually asked the HR director to allow me to resignwithout penalty just weeks before this nightmare began), I discoveredthe extent to which some public school millionaires can go to concealbureaucratic misconduct.

Disclosure: I am not without fault. Iwill accept my part in the initial conflict; I did not deal well withbeing bullied by my bosses.

But I can assure the public--when wefinally do develop metrics to evaluate "good"teaching--that good teachers do not readily accept tyranny andinjustice; they would no longer be good role models.

I know that the real problem withOregon's schools does not start with money. There are, here in Oregonas well as everywhere else, great schools successfully educatingkids, filled with great teachers who have already been conditioned tothrift and are not overwhelmed by austerity.

(It is the EXTRAVAGANCE that "tricklesdown" in public institutions, motivated by vanity andaccompanied by materialism and avarice.)

Our priority should not be aboutfinding MORE money; rather, we must learn to watch what's there morecarefully. To that end, we must choose stewards who wouldn't DREAM ofhiring lawyers who earn education money making smokescreens formisconduct.

I earned the equivalent of a doctoraldegree in the conflict I encountered when asking to be treatedfairly, when standing up for my rights (and, by extension, mystudents' rights). What happened to me in Oregon's public schools canSTILL happen too easily...for the same reasons.

(And maybe editorial writers like Ms.Nielson will step forward to acknowledge that the complacency createdby our collective "good enough" attitude is created inlarge part by a media who has long enjoyed the profits generatedthrough biased service to influential school leaders.)

www.statesponsoredtheft.blogspot.com

Unethical Oregon School Boards and Rain

2012-01-21T11:53:00.000-08:00

Audit of Oregon School BoardsAssociation finds improper spending, pay raises

http://www.oregonlive.com/pacific-northwest-news/index.ssf/2012/01/audit_of_oregon_school_board_a.html

So the union of elected officials whooversee our public schools is full of dishonest, self-interestedpeople.

Yawn.

That this revelation is considered"news" in the Portland area is as amusing to me as how muchcoverage the rain gets: Double-billed expenses...unallowablecosts...personal expenditures on an association credit card..payraises without documentation...patronage and blatant nepotism in theHR department...

Yawn. More rain.

What precipitated this audit? We needmore of this sort of scrutiny at the local level, applied to ALL our"overseers" in large school districts. ln Beaverton,entrenched administrators have been shielded by deceptive schoolboard members and their highly-paid lawyers, earning BeavertonSchools a well-deserved reputation for opaque management. In light ofthe current OSBA debacle, my on-going ordeal at the state levelserves as evidence that the need for school district audits isprobably pretty widespread.

It will take some serious politicalwill to begin investigations of important people with high profiles.They are well-connected within the education bureaucracy.

In my conflict with Beaverton, Ilearned that the lawyers from all sides worked together, manipulatingclients and enriching themselves through protracted conflictssustained by extra-legal state agencies like the "FDAB."

...Just the sort of environment favoredby secretive school board members with a propensity for some of thesame conduct that has apparently hastened the departures of theOSBA's Executive Director, the Legal Council and the Human ResourcesDirector.

Wow, that's a LOT of power andinfluence. I bet that, not too long ago, all those folks with thosefancy titles had seats at the head table.

Probably sitting near them were OEApresident (non-teacher and DNC Super-Delegate) Gail Rasmussen, aswell as State Superintendent of Education Susan Castillo (neither asuperintendent nor an educator) and Hanna Vaandering, OEA VP now ofthe OEIB and (formerly) elementary PE in the BSD...

Crooked union leaders and rain. We aregetting soaked to the bone.

www.statesponsoredtheft.blogspot.com

Answers to how Beaverton (OR) Schools can overcome $40 mil more in cuts to classroom teachers...

2012-01-19T10:44:00.000-08:00

Beaverton School District superintendent says cuts could reach $40 million

Perhaps the BSD could revert to the policies once openly practiced by Yvonne Katz, one of Dr. Rose's predecessors as Beaverton superintendent.

Dr. Katz had a deal with Energy Inc., an entrepreneurial effort run by retired school administrators. Dr. Katz, it was reported by the Houston Chronicle after this same practice forced her out of a job in Texas, was earning $500 a pop for meetings she arranged between Energy Inc. representatives and Beaverton School District employees. This arrangement apparently met with school board approval in Beaverton. In suburban Houston, it did not."WHY DID KATZ SCAT?" by RICK CASEY Houston Chronicle Sept. 2, 2004

(Disclosure: I mention this in part because some of the same board members who allowed this practice also were instrumental in violating my employment contract and contributing $200K of education money to an unethical extralegal process that demeans teachers while shielding public school millionaires.)

But I digress. The issue at hand is shortages in funding for schools:

Hey, no problem, Beaverton board! Revert to a wider use of the Katz strategy.

Variations of the KATZ Method of Added Revenue would allow Beaverton's struggling teachers to use free enterprise innovations to shore up the depleted budgets, same as the superintendent did!

Elementary teacher could make deals to represent businesses that provide service and products to that market: Pediatricians and companies that manufacture board games could have huge logos painted on the cafeteria walls and, unless the "job-killing" health overseers object, we could have the McDonald's arches leading to every public school playground.

Our middle school teachers have a wealth of opportunity because they teach the nation's most irrational and impulsive creature , the thirteen-year-old, widely thought to wield unparalleled influence on a typical suburbans family's expenditures. Middle schools would have Apples stores and orthodontists on sight. There are a lot of people who would pay for a little access to the 7th grade. Pimple cream companies cold build whole libraries. Celebrity appearances at Parent Night would bolster attendance and soon the coffers would overflow. Justin Beiber would come...or Donnie Osmond.

And high school teachers could sell ad space on their exams to college recruiters, or military recruiters, or credit card companies and clothing manufacturers--to just about everybody else out there who want to capture the market. A corporate logo, right above where the grade goes.

It doesn't have to stop with teachers. Counseling offices could market the kind of demographics that ad agencies would Just Do It for. Everybody who works at the school district, not just the superintendent, could leverage extra money from his or her connection--if, like Dr. Katz--the board allowed it.

Except that she took her extra money home, and then to Texas, because Beaverton was not paying well enough.

Actually, Dr. Katz was not that unique. We are headed in that direction--outside-contractor, commercial-access-to-schools--as we sell more and more of our government to people in the private sector because we despair of our ability too oversee our public servants. The monolithic inertia achieved by big bureaucracies has reduced a single citizen to an after-thought in a system of government that was created to protect that citizen even though all of the blood that has been shed and all of the national treasure that has been spent has been to honor a commitment to the concept that all are equal.

I can think of few places where I saw that commitment abandoned so freely as in one of Oregon's largest public schools when I worked there.

So, while I am empathic to the trials of Beaverton's real classroom teachers who are buying supplies with their own money, I am able to recall that teachers have been doing that for years.

The people of Beaverton have a wealth of wonderful teachers in our schools but, for too long, educators have been constrained by a secretive leadership, a group of insiders who use the public schools for personal gain. An historic lack of continuity in leadership, evidence of systemic failed oversight, and the number of patronage appointments to unqualified personnel are reasons that Beaverton schools are not where they should be.

And now they are broke.

This austerity provides some public school millionaires a chance to move on and may even provides incentive for taxpayers to investigate the BSD board, like the Oregon School Board Association's new leadership is investigating that group's activities and expenditures.

Bless your heart, Dr Rose. It was much easier in the days where money flowed and they had more than they could spend. Those other bosses, who had unlimited money and spent it, are still spending, somewhere, for life.

Now you have to clean up. I suggest you do it, like the OSBA is, in the daylight.

Tom Doyle of Bennett-Hartman, employed by the Oregon Education Association, coerces union member with conflict-of-interest civil suit in U. S. District Court.

Larry Wolfe, then-president of the Oregon Education Association, announces findings of an investigation resulting from complaints about member's legal representation against Beaverton School District and state gov't agencies; denies the existence of lawsuit referenced above.

"Alas," the School Boards Sigh/ "It's For the Children," They Cry...

2012-01-13T06:13:00.000-08:00

"Alas," the school boards sigh... 

"It's for the children!" they cry...  

Then pay the lawyers to lie.

The Beaverton School Board got pretty famous for a while, with Nike moving in and all. Some of those folks became local celebrities. Same with some of the BSD superintendents at that time, AND the fund-raising chief. Actually, the CEO of the BEF was even Grand Marshal of a Beaverton parade.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jn4LVpbLN9A&feature

And they were all in the newspaper, a lot. Local and state-wide celebrities, for sure.

1. The Beaverton School Board once allowed Yvonne Katz, an ostentatious caricature of an administrator in the 90's and early 00's, to take kickbacks from her night job at Energy Inc, one of those consulting firms that retired administrators create to "double-dip" into public education money. When the extravagant Dr. Katz moved to TX in 2004 in search of a fatter paycheck, she encountered school board members in suburban Houston who actually practiced oversight and she soon lost her job. So did a couple of former Beaverton administrators, Voytilla and Maloney, whom she had taken with her, who may not have been honest about their qualifications or their work here in Beaverton. We will never know.

 http://www.chron.com/news/casey/article/Casey-Why-did-Katz-scat-1984016.php

2. The Beaverton School Board (still?) allows school administrators to spend public money on lawyers and secret agreements without accounting for it publicly. This is a great way to avoid embarrassing truths and to make friends with expensive, well-connected lawyers. It is a poor way to run a public school system: "BEAVERTON SCHOOL DISTRICT SETTLES RACIAL BIAS SUIT" (The Oregonian Anitha Reddy January 10, 2005) "The Beaverton School District has agreed to pay $120,000 to settle a discrimination lawsuit by an African American former custodian, after admitting in a court filing that a co-worker called the man a racial epithet...District administrators agreed in December to pay nearly $80,000, including $10,000 in gross back wages, to James Sanders and $40,000 in fees to his lawyer, Thomas Steenson...The settlement, drawn from the district's $1.55 million insurance reserve fund, did not require school board approval, said Linda Borquist, an assistant superintendent...Board member Ann Jacks said Tuesday evening that district lawyers had briefed the board on the case but had never discussed possible settlement amounts...'It's not an insignificant sum or an insignificant issue,' Jacks said. 'I'd like, in the future, to be a little more active in this.' 'Board approval is necessary only if the settlement amount exhausts the reserve fund, which is set aside during the budget process and requires a transfer from the general fund,' said Janice Essenberg, district administrator for budget services...Because the district's insurance policy covers liability claims greater than $500,000, board approval would be required only in rare cases involving hundreds of thousands of dollars. Large settlements can be entered into without board approval, unlike contracts, which require a board vote if they are worth more than $50,000...In neighboring Portland, the school board must approve all settlements greater than $25,000."

That is skillful surgical removal of the "public" from public school administration.

3. Jerome Colonna and the school board members paid Amy Gordon, former Southridge High principal, $120 000 to stay home for a year--he paid Len Case (now of Beaverton High) to come out of retirement to work for her. The current BSD HR director Sue Robertson and the current BSD board members felt the taxpayers didn't need to know why:  "BEAVERTON SCHOOLS WILL SEE CHANGES IN LEADERS, STAFF" July 23, 2010 by Melissa Navas, Oregonian: "One notable position change is at Southridge High School where Principal Amy Gordon has been permanently replaced by Todd Corsetti, a former assistant principal at Sunset High School. The district continues to pay Gordon, who has been on leave since November, her annual $120,000 salary....Gordon's leave will continue until early September, according to Sue Robertson, chief human resource officer. Robertson would not say what the nature of her leave is and did not specify whether she'd return...Robertson added that there was nothing unusual about Gordon's leave. 'It's not disciplinary, it's not any of that,' Robertson said. Gordon could not be reached for comment. Len Case, a retired Beaverton administrator, served as Southridge's interim principal for the remainder of last school year."

4. Mr. Colonna and the Beaverton School Board spent about $200K firing me after I had complained about some chicanery by administrators at Westview High School AND I HAD ASKED TO QUIT...Instead, Colonna and the the BSD board contacted the OEA rep and arranged for me to have an, uh..."amenable" lawyer (Tommy Doyle of B-H), then fired me by sneak attack for contrived sexual harassment charges used as a public smookescreen while the OEA lawyer had me in limbo (for years) defending my "free speech" rights, instead of my employment rights and my public reputation... (www.statesponsoredtheft.blogspot.com).

5. Soon after voiding my contract mid-year, the BSD board was obliged to give Westview's recently-hired principal, Malcolm Dennis, a secrecy agreement to include health insurance--and, within a couple of years, a new job out-of-state--in exchange for resigning quietly after being caught coming to work drunk..."Mac's" fingerprints are still on the knife in my back...

"Beaverton will replace Westview principal" Oregonian November 12, 2004 Anitha Reddy

"Beaverton School District administrators will begin a search in January to replace Westview High School Principal Malcolm Dennis, who unexpectedly resigned late last month. Gail VanGorder, a retired vice principal at the 2,300-student school, came out of retirement last week to serve as Dennis' temporary replacement. With Dennis' departure, the Beaverton School District has first-year principals leading six of its seven high schools. Carl Mead, Sunset High School principal, is in his second year at the school. Dennis, who cited health reasons when he left the school Oct. 27, could not be reached for comment. Maureen Wheeler, a district spokeswoman, offered no specifics concerning his departure...

VanGorder said Superintendent Jerry Colonna offered her the interim job on Oct. 27. VanGorder retired in July after nine years as vice principal at Westview, the state's second-largest high school.

VanGorder said she was surprised and excited by the opportunity...The 58-year-old educator began her career in the Beaverton district as a library aide at Meadow Park Middle School. She worked as a librarian at Beaverton schools for two decades before taking her first administrative position as a vice principal at Merlo High School in 1993, the year it opened. She moved to Westview as a vice principal in 1995."

6. Camellia Osterink, the "in-house" BSD attorney who replaced Nancy Hungerford in 2005, created a bogus settlement document to conceal BSD school board misconduct in the "million-dollar" freedom of speech lawsuit filed improperly by my union lawyer. I had already signed a settlement contract (after 3 years of abuse) and the school board's lawyers were holding my check to leverage my signature on a confession the TSPC director designed to exonerate Hungerford and the BSD employees who had lied about me at the FDAB hearing. I refused. Ms. Osterink had Hanna Vaandering (then BEA president; now OEA VP) bring me a new settlement document (even though the federal court had been falsely nformed that we had reached a settlement) to help Hungerford cover up her complicity in the TSPC's manipulation of a "million-dollar" federal suit--filed unethically prior to my first employment hearing ("FDAB") and designed to erode my resistance and manipulate my obeisance. I have copies of the second sttlement and of an email sent to me by Tom Doyle, telling me he had seen and approved of a document that Hanna Vaandering was bringiing me.

7. Recently, the Beaverton School Board used public education money to hire Hank Gmitro, a headhunter from Chicago, to lead a "superintendent search," after which the board members refused to release the names of the candidates he had selected for this PUBLIC school job, curiously revealing only their finalist, Jeff Rose from Canby. Two school board members refrained from voting at all on Mr. Rose's selection and one member, Lisa Shultz, is apparently following her conscience and resigning, much like former BSD school board member Ann Jacks did a few years ago, rather than to continue to deceive the people who have placed their trust in her.

http://www.oregonlive.com/beaverton/index.ssf/2011/03/beaverton_school_board_keeps_superintendent_candidates_a_secret_but_other_districts_announce_theirs.html

This is all information that can be gathered from media reports. Imagine what would be available if law enforcement chose to investigate. Imagine the reform that might follow...

Rent-Seeker of the Week: Vickie Chamberlain of the Oregon TSPC

2012-01-10T14:52:00.000-08:00

David Brooks, the "Steve Duin" of the New York Times, has done it again. His surgical filleting of the liberal movement places some juicy cuts on display on today's digital butcher paper. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/10/opinion/brooks-where-are-the-liberals.html?ref=todayspaper

According to Brooks, liberals have not yet abandoned the faith. Instead, he opines that the left still supports the tenets of liberalism but no longer trusts the instruments: our government and the people who are managing it.

Why are the liberals disenchanted with government?Accordig to Brooks, "it’s more likely because they think the whole system is rigged. Or to put it in the economists’ language, they believe the government has been captured by rent-seekers..."

Brooks' solution for liberal lethargy is brilliant: Identify those "rent-seekers" who have "captured" our democracy."

These are: a) "corporate types* b) (unaligned) groups (that) are dispersed across the political spectrum** and c) those who "exercise their power transparently and democratically."***

Brooks delivers this Duin-like assessment of a concept he can't quite call "greed": "This is the disease that corrodes government at all times and in all places."

His solutions call for bold and decisive steps: "Make the tax code simple. Make job training simple. Make Medicare simple. Every week choose a rent-seeker to hold up for ridicule and renunciation. Change the Congressional rules. Simplify the legal thickets that undermine responsibility."

I call attention to Brooks' fourth imperative: "EVERY WEEK choose a rent-seeker to hold up for ridicule and renunciation."

I am all for that. Let's start in the education arena since it has been identified as a place where a lot of unaccountable money ends up. Let's look at the woman who was appointed the director of an important state agency in 2002: Vickie Chamberlain, director of the Oregon Teacher (Double) Standards and (Deviant) Practices Commission.

Ms. Chamberlain's qualifications for Rent-Seeker begin with her unethical interactions with representatives of our teachers union, the OEA, and with bureaucrats who enrich themselves through opaque government processes like "the FDAB," TSPC "stipulations," and other extra-legal manipulations of employment law.

A further endorsement is in her reliance on "secrecy agreements" to whitewash any blemishes on a favored administrator’s record and to avoid uncomfortable publicity for some of her well-positioned friends on school boards. There is some evidence that the vast majority of Oregon's secrecy agreements have been the creation of one firm, Hungerford Law, and that Ms. Chamberlain's companion, Nancy Hungerford, has made a lot of education money practicing creative law for public school millionaires. (http://www.oregonlive.com/special/index.ssf/2008/02/schools_let_sex_abuse_cases_sl.html).

Those now-illegal agreements, beyond the fact that they reduced our laws to the arbitrary reckoning of secretive insiders with hidden agendas, are tainted with hypocrisy when Ms. Chamberlain blatantly uses unsubstantiated allegations or contrived infractions that do not rise to the standard to abuse her authority by harassing and demeaning teachers like me, who have run afoul of some of her cronies in the education establishment.

Two former state employees who helped Mrs. Chamberlain demonize me on behalf of dishonest administrators in the Beaverton Schools: Former ALJ Andrea Sloan and former TSPC investigator Susan Nisbett. Both have been forced out of their jobs, quietly.

Also quietly removed was the former Westview principal who fired me, Malcolm Dennis...AND the former HR director, Linda Borquist, who lied under oath at FDAB about my work history so that she could illegally void my employment contract.

(It is widely known that the former HR directors (Holly Lekas and Borquist) ALWAYS reminded disgruntled Beaverton teachers that they owe 90 days notice or they face TSPC sanctions. They preferred indentured servitude to public service.)

Ms. Chamberlain, I learned during my four years in conflict with her, can influence state and federal court cases without accountability, in large part due to her connection to OEA lawyers who are being paid by the same teachers they betray (www.statesponsoredtheft.blogspot.com).

I support David Brooks...Let the "renunciation and ridicule" begin. EVERY WEEK, like Brooks sagely suggests. Identify the phonies who take WAY more than they give, those PERS millionaires now trying disingenuously to de-public themselves, to stay off the radar.

Some I have encountered are basically bullies, cowards with government power and big spenders who have bought influence and status with Other People's Money.

Rent-Seeker of the Week: Vickie Chamberlain, director of the Oregon Teacher (Double) Standards and (Deviant) Practices Commission since 2002.

_______________

* George Will notes that "the federal government delivers sugar subsidies that benefit a few rich providers while imposing costs on millions of consumers."

**The tax code has been "tweaked 4,428 times in the past 10 years, to the benefit of interests of left, right and center."

***As Will notes that, in 2009, the "net worth of households headed by senior citizens was 47 times the net worth of households led by people under 35. Yet seniors use their voting power to protect programs that redistribute even more money from the young to the old and affluent."

Sue Robertson and Camellia Osterink: Protecting Beaverton's Public School Millionaires

2012-01-07T09:17:00.000-08:00

The Judas PERSona

2012-01-04T10:59:00.000-08:00

When I read The Oregonian editorial board's article about PERS, I first reacted with appreciation for clever use of the extended metaphor ("window...blinds" in the title lines),

Then I thought about the importance of what these writers are doing by pursuing this story, whose publication is making some influential people uncomfortable, I would bet ($10,000).

The people who are covering up, instead of correcting, this injustice are dong some vile things to our democracy. When I read about the lawyers and bureaucrats who are making (public) money trying to prevent the return of money that was pilfered with avarice and...well, when people take something they know isn't theirs, we all learn about their character...

When they find out they got some they shouldn't and refuse to give it back, they provide even more insight.

The thing about that conduct is, we are now under more stress as a governable society and we are uber-dependent on leaders with integrity. When people are hiding information that is public by definition, they are intentionally undermining the democratic processes which fuel our Constitutional form of government, as much as any terrorist with a shoe bomb and a Koran.

The people who are preventing the PERS repayment inspired me to research the concept of "treason."

TITLE 18 > PART I > CHAPTER 115 > § 2381 TREASON Whoever, owing allegiance to the United States, levies war against them or adheres to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort within the United States or elsewhere, is guilty of treason and shall suffer death, or shall be imprisoned not less than five years and fined under this title but not less than $10,000; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States.

There are some powerful synonyms for "treason" terms just a couple of clicks away on the internet: apostate, double-crossing, faithless, insubordinate, mutinous, perfidious, recreant, subversive, traitorous, treacherous, two-faced, two-timing, unfaithful, unpatriotic, untrue, wormlike...

The editors would serve the public by publishing the names of the public employees (and contracted lawyers) who created the 20% "outrage" in 2000...and perhaps provide some narrative describing how these "public servants" may be continuing to benefit today. Who knows, when we celebrate their "public service" in our media, we may be calling some of them, many enjoying lavish retirements, the wrong names.

Most Powerful Opening Paragraph of the New Year: "The misjudgments of the past continue to haunt the Public Employees Retirement System. Days ago the Oregon Supreme Court issued the last word on years of litigation that goes back to 2000, when the PERS board tried to credit member accounts with outlandish 20 percent earnings."

Is Willie Lyles Help Us Find School Administrators, Too?!?

2012-01-03T07:24:00.000-08:00

Fernandez is like another administrator brought to the Portland area from Texas (why is Oregon finding BOTH football players AND school officials south of the Red River?) only to have their welcome wear out after a short, high-paid run.

"Portland schools' defense in lawsuit: Incompetence, not discrimination, got Diana Fernandez fired" by Betsy Hammond Oregonian

Malcolm Dennis, now principal over there in White Salmon (Columbia High School), was run out of Beaverton after 2 years at Westview High because he was coming to work drunk. To his credit, he was working for some pretty shifty supervisors, as we may presume was the case with at least some of the FIVE (?) bosses that Fernandez had in the same number of years (continuity not a big management focus in Portland, huh?).

Dennis, courtesy of Beaverton's highly paid (with your education $) lawyers, got the benefit of a secrecy agreement, paid-for insurance and, because he was a good "company" man, eventual placement in a little out-of-the-way school just across the state line...and closer to his home in Gresham.

So when the headline at the top of today's article says "incompetence" was the reason for this administrativee firing, the taxpayers should consider: If "incompetence" were a fireable offense, there would be a surplus of unemployed administrators in the PDX area, many forced out of jobs they had not earned during the Beaverton tenure of Yvonne "Kickback" Katz (another schooladministratorr from Texas?), who hired people who were not who they said they were on their applications: http://educationwonk.blogspot.com/2005/04/liar-liar-rsum-on-fire-mike-maloney-of.htmlâ€¨

http://www.beaverton.k12.or.us/pdf/community/community_fall2002.pdf

Dennis immigrated from San Antonio to replace Len Case who, while principal at the state's largest high school, let a lot of teachers do double-work while some of his buddies in the "teaching" profession did "attendance" or other jobs with offices instead of classrooms. Mr. Case, now at Beaverton High and formerly of Southridge (see Amy Gordon's secret $120,000) is on his second new job after retiring from Westview in '02. Mr. Case is a very nice man...He has a lot of friends, many of them had cushy jobs when I worked for him; our morale was great...in part of the building.

The story I love best about Mr. Case--there a many--is that, as a jayvee football coach (ironically, he was hired as principal of Oregon's then-largest high school without ever being chosen as a varsity coach), he had a special "red zone" offense he used when his team was close to the goal line. The play--we all did it on sand lots--involved the receivers running into the end zone and waiting while the quarterback took the snap, turned his back to the goal and flung the ball up high...blindly.

Blindly. Hoping for the best. This story, better than any I heard, offers some insight into the leadership I worked under in Beaverton.

"Teaching in the Shadow of the Swoosh"

Voicing my legitimate concerns cost me my job and my career in a system that is skewed to demean and humiliate teachers while protecting the sorts of people about whom Ms. Hammond is now beginning to write. That should concern those responsible for reform.

I have been writing comments about failed administrative oversight for a long time. The system I experienced protects unqualified, entrenched bureaucrats at the expense of disposable teachers and, by extension, their unsupported students. Betsy Hammond is getting to see some of the nasty inside action of people who are viciously protecting jobs.

In the past, she and other Oregonian education reporters have viewed schools through the rose-colored press releases of school district PR personnel and in-house lawyers...those truly important employees in some public school districts.

Because competent teachers are WAY down the list. When vindictive administrators wanted to get rid of me, they contacted my union and arranged for a lawyer who would help their friend abuse me for several years.

My mom, a classroom teacher for 35 years, watched me fight with union and state education officials who were in the habit of protecting entrenched cronies in big school district jobs.

Evidence that the beat goes on: In her informative report, Ms. Hammond mentions that Glen Soloman is representing Ms. Fernandez but has failed to name the lawyers who have been retained with public education money to defend the PPS administrators. Given my personal experience with the lawyers of choice for many of Oregon's school administrators (Hungerford Law), that is a frightening but not surprising omission; these guys like to make their money the old-fashioned way...secretly.

Without a scouring of the OEA and the COSA and some genuine accountability and oversight of school administrators, all the new programs with the official-sounding acronyms are just smokescreen hypocrisy to preserve the status quo.

www.statesponsoredtheft.blogspot.com

2003 Westview High School "Advisory" program starring A. J. Anderson

2012-01-02T14:34:00.001-08:00

Created and produced in 2003 by Don Bellairs, Westview High School video productions teacher, for former Westview principals Malcolm Dennis and Gail Vangorder for a presentation to Jerome Colonna and other Beaverton School District administrators and principals.

1995 Woodford County (KY) Middle School Accelerated Language Arts unit...

2012-01-02T14:29:00.000-08:00

An eighth grade "Creative Enrichment-Language Arts" for 35 "TAG-identified" students at a small middle school in horse country in central Kentucky...

Troy Shencker and others star in 2003 Westview High School freshman lit/comp class project: Parent Night

2012-01-02T14:22:00.000-08:00

Westview High School (Beaverton OR) Freshman Lit/Comp Parents' Night 2003 with special guest star Sean McKeen in class production of "Romeo and Juliet"

Julie Leahy, Sam Vore and Todd Telle in 1999 Westview High School Media production of "The Kentucky Killer"

2012-01-02T14:17:00.000-08:00

Julie Leahy, Sam Vore, and Todd Telle in 1999 Westview High School (Beaverton OR) original media studies production of "The Kentucky Killer"

Chase Fulton and Trevor Crowe in scenes from 2002 Westview High School Media dept's original productions "Dream Girl" and "Erika the Existential Eggplant"

2012-01-02T14:12:00.000-08:00

Chase Fulton in scenes from Westview High School Media "Dream Girl" and "Erika the Existential Eggplant
t

Trevor Crowe and Eric Ball in a scene directed by Sean McKeen from 2001/02 original production of DREAM GIRL (Westview High School, Beaverton Oregon)

Brandon Chandler in 2001 Westview High School Media Studies production of "Dream Girl"

2012-01-02T14:05:00.000-08:00

Directed by Sean McKeen and Keegan Garrity (and others). 2001 Westview High School (Beaverton OR) Media Studies original production of "Dream Girl" starring Paige Dutro, Brian Berg, Mike Geurts, Eric Ball and Brandon Chandler in this scene about four different stereotypes, all falling in love with the same girl...

First starring role for Gavin Bristol in 1999 as Odysseus in Beaverton OR middle school production

2012-01-02T14:01:00.000-08:00

Gavin Bristol's early movie experience includes the starring role in Meadow Park Middle School's (C Hall Lang Arts) 1999 production of "The Odyssey"

Outtakes from 2003 Westview High School media project "Wishes, Wisemen and Little Pigs"

2012-01-02T13:57:00.000-08:00

Westview High School (Beaverton OR) advanced media studies original production"Wishes, Wisemen and Little Pigs" with Mike "Puppy" McDonald, Fritz Brayton, Larry Arnold, Ryan Varella Nikki Smith, Crystal Bradford...

Gavin Bristol in early movie appearance in Westview High School (Beaverton Or) 2002 Advancedd

2012-01-02T13:53:00.000-08:00

Gavin Bristol, Dan Aske, and Nolan Garrity in 2002 Westview HS (Beaverton OR) Advanced Media Studies original production "The Thrope School Method"

Gavin Bristol in 1999 Meadow Park Middle School Theater Arts production "You Know My Name

2012-01-02T13:49:00.000-08:00

Gavin Bristol early in his career, in 1999 Meadow Park Middle School (Beaverton OR) original stage production of "You Know My Name"

2003 Westview High School Adv. Media Sean McKeen/Brian Zaro: "Hair Hazard"

2012-01-02T13:47:00.000-08:00

Sean McKeen's 2003 Westview High School Advanced Media Studies project "Hair Hazard" Edited by Brian Zaro. Starring Pete Melillo, Sean McKeen and Ryan Churchill.

Travels with Jerry: The Life of Oregon's Highest Paid Public School Millionaire

2012-01-02T07:56:00.000-08:00

"Retired Beaverton School Superintendent Jerry Colonna travels to China, Africa" by Wendy Owen, Oregonian

Mr. Colonna padded his retirement with 8 years in a school district where he couldn't get fired (remember he followed Yvonne "Kickback" Katz, who didn't last fifteen minutes in suburban Texas after leaving B'ton amid much fanfare and praise).

Because what happens in Beaverton public school administration STAYS in Beaverton public school administration...

I suspect Jerry and the Chinese have a lot of common ground to discuss about leading secretive, vindictive bureaucracies that frequently betray the public trust. Readers sold be grateful to Ms. Owen for some follow up on the activities of one of the many PERS millionaires manufactured in Beaverton schools in recent years.

BTW, Jerry: MY mom, a classroom teacher for 35 years, died watching me fight the lawyers you were paying secretly to cover up my illegal termination...after I had asked to resign. I know a little of how you must feel.

1. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jn4LVpbLN9A&feature

2. SCHOOLS LET SEX CASES SLIDE by Amy Hsuan, Melissa Navas and Bill Graves (Oregonian)

3. "Beaverton schools will see changes in leaders, staff"
February 15, 2008 by Melissa Navas (Oregonian)
BEAVERTON -- Some Beaverton School District schools will see new principals next school year as the district fills vacancies and promotes others to central office positions.
One notable position change is at Southridge High School where Principal Amy Gordon has been permanently replaced by Todd Corsetti, a former assistant principal at Sunset High School. The district continues to pay Gordon, who has been on leave since November, her annual $120,000 salary.
Gordon's leave will continue until early September, according to Sue Robertson, chief human resource officer. Robertson would not say what the nature of her leave is and did not specify whether she'd return.
"I didn't say she's coming back," Robertson said. "Her leave ends then."
Robertson added that there was nothing unusual about Gordon's leave.
"It's not disciplinary, it's not any of that," Robertson said.
Gordon could not be reached for comment.
Len Case, a retired Beaverton administrator, served as Southridge's interim principal for the remainder of last school year.

www.teachingintheshadowoftheswoosh.blogspot.com

"Oregon Education Association Fraud"

Yvonne Katz, formerly supt. of Beaverton OR and Spring Branch TX school districts, embarrassing retiring Westview High principal Len Case.

Dan Wieden talks about the night he wrote "Just do It" to a fascinated Wesview Media Studies class in 2001.

The Clarity of the Abstract and the Complex...and coaching 13-yr-olds

2012-01-02T07:43:00.000-08:00

WESTVIEW HS GIRLS HOOPS '01-'02

I learned a lot about teaching reluctant middle school writers by coaching eager middle school basketball players.

One of the most important things: You really need the kids' cooperation if you're gonna have a successful class/team experience--so your approach should reflect that awareness.

Also, after everybody is on board and "trying" because they feel you are treating them fairly and appreciating their effort at their particular skill level, you have to demonstrate empathy. All middle school kids write, and dribble, at different levels--and a coach won't have a very good team if he/she can't work on the fundamentals at varying skill levels.

In writing, two of the easiest techniques to immediately improve how kids with differing intelligences communicate clearly--and with some depth--is to show them how to use a) complex sentences and b) abstract nouns.

With the introduction of those two "domains" of knowledge--kind of like a crossover dribble and an up-and-under move--lots of kids can make sentences that convey layers of ideas with nuance.

Took me a while to learn to do that, just like it took a while to develop dribbling drills that improved a wide range of abilities.

So when I read these words by the the editorial board of the NW's most influential newspaper: "Though this complex conversation is essential, it's dull as dirt -- and far removed from daily life," I am heartened by their poetic rhetoric and that the issue of "change" is squarely in their erudite focus, but I am skeptical of their commitment.

The people who have profited from perfunctory oversight of the system are still in place and not likely to "go gentle into that good night." Oh, repetition is an important part of teaching ANYTHING to 13-year-olds. (Allusion, class...Remember, those are references to thing we are s'posed to know about already).

I had a public school millionaire administrator tell me she could do anything she wanted to me when I told her about my concerns with my bosses...Then we went into a media studio I oversaw for her and watched a video project I was helping her son make on my lunch hour--after which she met with my principals and my union rep and began planning a sneak-attack termination, accompanied by false, salacious charges created to discredit my reputation in the community. The lawyer who my union rep hired to "represent" me after she contacted him filed a conflict-of-interest "freedom of speech" federal law suit to manipulate me and to sabotage my ability to defend myself, to keep my job and to challenge a blatantly unethical violation of my employment rights in state court.

Oh, did I mention that my mother was dying and I had asked to resign after being underpaid several thousand dollars by dishonest Beaverton principals, one of whom was secretly removed for being drunk at work, just months after firing me? (teachingintheshadowoftheswoosh.blogspot.com)

Did I mention the education money they spent to cover up?

Over the next few years, the collaboration of lawyers employed by the OEA, the state government, and the Beaverton School District changed the trajectory of my life and exacerbated my mother's suffering at a crucial time. She died watching me fight my former employers and my union.

Because I had expected to be treated fairly in my job as a public school teacher.

The ability of the people who have exploited and abused my family to do so to other teachers is still in place, concealed by complacent media and complicit overseers. While working long hours in over-crowded classes in poorly supervised schools, I paid the OEA for a decade for support and advocacy they never intended to provide.

So, class, when the editors of the NW's most influential newspaper use the abstract noun "clarity"--(Can anyone change that abstract noun into an adjective?..."Clear!" Yes! Excellent!)--those editors are trying to to convince their "audience" that the theme is to be able to see something so "clearly" (adverb form!) that you can see right through it.

But the editors of the paper are not trying to see through anything, really. Too much that is apparent is being ignored: Hanna Vaandering on the OEIB!?!? Holly Lekas as president of COSA?!?! Those two are the Mark Hatfield's (allusion and metaphor!) of contemporary Oregon educational leadership?

When you say the opposite of what you mean, class, that is known as "verbal irony." On the basketball court, that is like encouraging your teammates to play hard while not guarding your own man.

Close out on your man, Oregonian editors! (That is an extended metaphor, class).

www.statesponsoredtheft.blogspot.com
An eighth grade "Creative Enrichment-Language Arts" for 35 "TAG-identified" students at a small middle school in horse country in central Kentucky...

Where is Oregon's Mr. Puffer?

2011-12-30T09:30:00.000-08:00

http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/story/2011-12-29/schools-test-scandal/52274708/1

Mr. Puffer, the investigative reporter who nearly a decade ago shook the stuffy establishment of New England public education, is as much a hero in our democracy as some of the guys who went to war in Iraq at about the same time. He had a lot less artillery for his "shock-and-awe," but he maybe did more to change America than the expensive war we just abandoned.

Surely he is as much a hero...maybe more of one? And at some personal risk? Because he must have pissed off some powerful insiders...that act is usually followed by bad fortune. I discovered that fact after working in the Beaverton schools.

For, without oversight or accountability, people in power will behave improperly. That is a given in our democracy and the motive behind checks and balances and the Bill of Rights.

When our state courts can be manipulated--blatantly--on behalf of entrenched bureaucrats concealing misconduct, as happened in my case, we have crossed a line.

www.statesponsoredtheft.blogspot.com

The people who stripped me of my dignity so that I would abandon my cause would not have been able to behave so cruelly had they feared any accountability for their unethical conduct (NOTE: The philosophy behind THAT statement is my motive for writing, daily, almost eight years after I was stabbed in the back by people who are STILL gaming the system, growing rich with public money...by being secretive).

Our system of educational governance is still broken, despite the accouterments of reform recently applied to agencies in Salem. The lawyers who manipulated me are all still in place at the OEA. The then-Beaverton union president, Hanna Vaandering, who brought me an illegal contract to help conceal administrative misconduct, is now VP of the state's union AND a member of the Governor's new OEIB.

And my sordid ordeal is merely one example of unsupervised and curiously-qualified public school millionaires using our schools as status ladders and ATMs.

When I met with Hanna Vaandering, in desperation more than two and 1/2 years after my termination, to share concerns about my legal representation, she called the lawyer who had been "representing" me and discovered she had been deceived about my (conflict-of-interest?) federal law suit. Then Ms. Vaandering broke my heart by bringing me a NEW contract created by a new BSD lawyer (Osterink) nearly a year after I had signed the first one...Ms. Vaandering knowingly became part of the cover-up (helping Nancy and Jennifer Hungerford mislead Judge Robert E. Jones in federal court) and now she enjoys a rapid ascent in state politics.

Where is Mr. Puffer?

The closed and dysfunctional system that swallowed me and chewed on me for years when I asked for equitable treatment in Oregon's public schools should be a red flag to investigative education reporters. I am not without fault and had some bad days, like all over-worked teachers in over-crowded schools--and I will quickly concede to a (nonviolent but mercurial) temper, usually reserved for bullying or injustice--but I am a very skilled, educated and experienced professional and often had to work for people in Beaverton who were not.

Long ago in my quest for dignity and fair play, when I realized I had been betrayed by the representatives of the Oregon Education Association to whom I had been paying dues for a decade to protect my employment rights, I became committed to trying to write something everyday until I had achieved a sense of justice in my conflict with secretive public employees who use public resources to take from Oregon's poorly-represented teachers (and, by extension, their students), everyday.

I see opportunists like Vaandering given jobs they do not deserve and I realize they are being rewarded for their convenient lapses in ethics. I silently scream for our Mr. Puffer. Until there is accountability from sheltered elites in our public school bureaucracy and some atonement by the leaders of Oregon's erstwhile union of teachers, the OEA, then all "movements" toward reform are detours to dead-ends.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/story/2011-12-29/michelle-rhee-lobbying/52276930/1

Response to Sue Robertson, current Beaverton School District HR chief.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jn4LVpbLN9A&feature

Trickle-down Megalomania

2011-12-29T11:09:00.000-08:00

The USA Today is boldly doing a number on the gods of college coaching, that pantheon of Ego and Money. Quick self-awareness quiz: Who among us would not behave as many of them behave, given the influence and power they wield? Considering the incredible rock star status these big time coaches enjoy, usually in some places (Baton Rogue, Tuscaloosa, Storrs, Eugene) where there is little competition for their adoration, can any of us honestly make judgments about self-interested conduct that we ourselves, in the same situation, would be very inclined, given our human nature, to emulate?

Because, according to the article's salary chart, coaching can be a pretty lucrative gig. Perhaps we should start saying, more aptly, that successful touring musicians "enjoy college-coach status."

(The chart shows that Rick Pitino makes seven million bucks coaching basketball at Louisville. FYI: Pitino started hanging with the horse people when he was coaching in Lexington--at UK--a couple of jobs ago; his basketball salary, while not incidental, is certainly not required any longer.)

USA TODAY has recently published a series of articles that conclude that these guys have a disproportionate influence on leadership in many of America's institutions of higher learning. Hard to argue against that.

Let's face it: Entertainment pays much better than education so problems exist when those industries overlap. Inequity breeds unfairness, diminished oversight and ultimately corruption. Self-evidently.

Robert Lipsyte, the award-winning sports writer, said a day earlier in the same paper, bleakly, that he really didn't see an end to this problem. The will, he concludes, to hold powerful people accountable is a hard one to summon. All around us, everyday, we see things being done by others that are not good for the common good. We are frustrated but silent.

We have to speak out as individuals so that all voices are one. I sense that to be the commonality of the "occupy" effort--to unite the voices of the oppressed. (Beware: The Truth Often Begets Trouble. Even right here near River City: teachingintheshadowoftheswoosh.blogspot.com)

But only the expressed will of the people, all of us demanding accountability, will challenge the growing momentum of a more entertaining but less moral culture.

In an ideal world, the deep-pocketed athletic conferences, the authentic forces behind these monolithic college sports programs, would split away from the colleges and become legitimate private enterprises that employ these coaches. It's that simple.

But, equally ideally, our millionaire legislators would forego their public salaries and retirements and pay their own staffs and travel expenses until we are out of this mess they have gotten us into.

Equally ideally, big shot bureaucratic employees who have surrounded themselves with expensive sycophants and spent public money to win friends would revise their retirements to reflect something closer to that of people who worked for a living.

But that will never happen until we demand it and right now--Go Ducks--we don't want it to. But one day Eugene will be State College and we might. We have tough times ahead. We are looking for incorruptible people willing to do exasperating work on behalf of an irrational public.

Sounds impossible and depresses writers like Lipsyte.

But we can start with our own personal awareness that this corruption is ubiquitous and the only thing keeping a lot of us from cheating, too, is opportunity. We must start with our own humbling self-awareness BUT move quickly to holding EVERYBODY accountable, even our icons.

There is something sad about the Ducks becoming more like the Buckeyes and the Crimson Tide but don't tell anybody that ton January 2nd. Drinks all around!

There is also something sad about the Southridge High girls or the Westview boys getting (faux) national basketball rankings. Tuning teenagers and history teachers into celebrities in the impressionable world of public high schools is an aberrant alchemy--very black magic.

Trickle-down megalomania.

Attention investigative journalists: We should proactively scrutinize those places in the public domain where power has been concentrated and leadership is entrenched...and from where public information is not easily made public. Here in Oregon, we shouldn't have to wait until a fifteen-year-old in Happy Valley has the guts to speak Truth to Power.

www.statesponsoredtheft.blogspot.com

"Sweeping Education Reform"...under the rug

2011-12-27T09:02:00.000-08:00

A courteously composed letter to the Oregonian from Rex Hagans, the founder of Save our Schools, poses (and answers...sort of) five questions under a headline about "sweeping reform."

The "sweeping" that takes place in the state's education bureaucracy is a verb, not an adjective, and describes the act of relocating inconvenient truths "under the rug."

All five of Mr. Hagans' questions highlight but do not address the curious disparity of effectiveness between public elementary schools and public high schools. All five questions have one answer:

Greed.

In public elementary schools, a) teachers have the same jobs, b) the principal was almost always a teacher before and c) aggressive parents are not yet bullying or bribing school staffs to demonstrate that their children are superior.

Ergo, those public schools work for all children.

Little that describes elementary schools holds true for public high schools as I have experienced them.

They are hijacked by status seekers and social climbers and the wrong kinds of teachers and kids get disproportionate attention and opportunities. Administrators who cannot be fired have no incentive to perform capably or honestly as long as they are able to meet the needs of a few influential people. In Beaverton, that influence extends (through "specialty" lawyers paid with education money) to state agencies and courts: www.statesponsoredtheft.blogspot.com

The fact that one member of the Governor's ballyhooed OEIB, Hanna Vaandering, originates in a public school district--Beaverton--that has created vast inequities in opportunities for kids and teachers while propagating crops of PERS millionaires is evidence that there is much work ahead for the 99%. Ms. Vaandering is nice enough in person and I'm sure she taught some great gym classes in the Beaverton elementary schools in her day, but she is obviously on the fast-track in a union with a questionable history of public service (what is it about B'ton employees and union leadership, anyway?) that should make us all very suspicious.

My personal experience is, when she was president of the Beaverton Education Association, she acted intentionally in a way that concealed misconduct by Beaverton administrators and lawyers. She should be in legal trouble (she meddled in a federal lawsuit in the court of Judge Robert E. Jones) instead of ensconced on a state board, buttressing credentials she hasn't earned.

Mr. Hagan's genteel academic approach is well and good, but needed reform will require heat and light. Until we (and THEY) know that public school administrators can and will be held accountable for the activities that are making them wealthy in failing public schools, all the rhetoric about reform is smokescreen mendacity.

Oh, and I would like my career back. It was taken improperly by the TSPC director, Vickie Chamberlain, who harassed me while my mother was dying in support of her friends in the BSD administration, one of whom hired her.

For review: http://blog.oregonlive.com/myoregon/2011/10/beaverton_bond_a_quick_history_1.

Education Reform and the Lingering Odor of Cats

2011-12-11T17:17:00.000-08:00

Before my teaching career was halted abruptly, I already worked part time in residential real estate sales and had formed a number of "truths" about the industry.

One is that most people who live with cats forget what their litter box smells like.

Speaking as the best friend of both a cat and a dog, I completely understand the reasoning behind this smell. The quality of living for many homemakers is vastly improved by the presence of the animals, despite their scents...quid pro quo.

However, when presenting a home to a prospective buyer, the influence of the olfactory senses is almost always apparent immediately. Small children wrinkle their noses and innocently state the obvious, especially if they have never been exposed to the smell of an indoor animal.

Uninhibited prospective buyers are usually blunt about the stink.

And many homeowners, understandably, have been blissfully unaware. Usually a little fresh paint and sometimes some new carpet and the issue is mitigated (Realtor's note: Easier for you homeowners with animal roommates if you can relocate before you go on market).

When people are accustomed to a situation or condition that might be unpleasant or undesirable to others, the awakening can be painful.

As a peripatetic public school teacher and sign language interpreter, I learned how easily schools can become insular and administrators and teachers can become territorial. I have been in classrooms in several states and have always seen hierarchies of space, time and resources.

Perhaps never quite so much as at my last place of work as a public school teacher, at Westview in N. Beaverton, where a "Camelot" of sorts, replete with royalty, had formed around our glamorous, big-budget theater department.

Because people are who they are, we have learned to create checks and balances for those leaders whom we choose or elect and on whom we bestow power and authority--by virtue of our democratic government. They are, after all, deciding how public resources are used.

When those checks and balances are not in place, when our government employees are blatantly circumventing oversight and accountability (and spending taxpayer money on lawyers to conceal it), we are obliged as citizens in our democracy to speak out.

When I experienced over-the-top waste and abuse of resources, inequities in assignments and pay, and other unfairness at the state's largest high school, the act of voicing my concerns caused me to be fired illegally and harassed for several years by complicit state employees, most of whom continue to draw nice paychecks from the public's account.

For the record, I made a new Beaverton superintendent (J. Colonna) aware of specific concerns--some that would later become known as "Katz' Litter", a phrase referencing former Beaverton School superintendent Yvonne Katz and coined by Rick Casey, a writer for the Houston Chronicle. I was fired several days later, by sneak attack, for sexually harassing a woman whom I did not.

Oh, and insubordination.

The next few years of my life were, by design, a nightmare created by greedy, ruthless lawyers, one of whom was paid by the OEA, an organization that accepted my dues fraudulently for a decade.

The previous seven years of my work in Beaverton schools were publicly revised by dishonest lawyers and administrators being paid by oblivious Beaverton taxpayers, taxpayers I had served well as a teacher and school supporter.

The inequities I experienced began immediately in Beaverton, in 1997, when I and another teacher new to the Beaverton (Dan Jamsa, who has since won some nice national awards for the S-K district) were assigned an outlandishly oversized drama class, scheduled by the veteran school counselor and resulting in some VERY SMALL classes for some veteran teachers.

The counselor, a year from retirement (being paid for life) smiled smugly when I objected and explained that "this was the way it was always done"

In the ensuing conflict, I discovered that our school principal was unaware of this inequity and, in a fair resolution, she decided in favor of Mr. Jamsa and me AND our students--and, by extension, those teachers and students who might be cheated by this process in the future.

As a result, I was told portentously by another counselor, just three months into my Beaverton teaching experience, that I should watch my back.

Note: When, ten years later, the Beaverton lawyers had exhausted their efforts to slime me with salacious charges from five years of work at Westview High School, they went back to a undocumented allegation that had originated with this counselor at Meadow Park Middle School, a decade prior. They had included as a "finding" in a bogus "FDAB" hearing and were able to have it published in the paper.

There is no documentation or testimony for this allegation, anywhere.

For years, I refused to sign an array of changing confessions for the TSPC that all included this charge (as well as, at first, instructions to get alcohol counseling--because I told an state investigator I had freely given up alcohol, before I moved to Oregon in the '90's and purchased a license to teach in Oregon schools.)

My mother, a career special ed teacher, died watching me fight with dishonest people who still have unlimited public money and no accountability.

Because I noticed a smell that had been in Beaverton Schools for a long time. It is still there.

When elected officials and administrators with big paychecks are held responsible for their behavior in the jobs they have assumed, we will begin serious school reform.

It is a big job, but some fresh paint and a new carpet in the education bureaucracy would be a start. After some of them move out.

www.statesponsoredtheft.blogspot.com

June 2004 FDAB testimony of Linda Borquist, then-Associate Superintendent for Human Resources of Beaverton Schools, on her "unique" collaboration with Tom Husted, uniserve representative for the Beaverton Education Association. Husted was serving concurrently on the board of the Beaverton Education Foundation, a non-profit run by JANET HOGUE, a Westview parent with an office in the Beaverton HR building.
BORQUIST'S SWORN TESTIMONY JUNE 2004:
Q. Do you have contact with the Beaverton Education Association as you work with various personnel problems?
A(Borquist). Uh-huh. I think we probably are a little bit unique in how we work with our association. The person who is the administrator of certificated personnel, which is a job I have also held in the past, and I meet usually twice a month and go over any kind of what we call "issues sessions." We look at, you know, things that have been brought to either of our attentions, and we go through and have an open discussion about what we're hearing or seeing. The hope is that we would, again, resolve it at the smallest level. We are very frank with each other. We don't really hold any secrets or hold any information back. But we try to proactively work together. We've operated
that
(begin pg 47)
way for at least 12, maybe 15 years, ever since I can kind of remember with, you know, past association presidents. It is a culture that we have built. Because of that we have very, very few grievances. I can maybe think of three in my ten years in -- 12 years in HR. You know, I've never sat before this kind of a board before with a Fair Dismissal hearing. We're actively working together. Obviously they have a role of representing in this case a teacher, and we have a role that we need to play. But
we try and work cooperatively. When I have a meeting that I'm going to be setting up with a teacher, I give what I would call a heads-up phone call to the association president or the Uniserv rep saying that this person will be expecting a call from X because they'll probably be calling you. We're going to have a meeting. I want to make sure you're available when they call so they can have representation. That's how open our relationship is.
Q. You mentioned that you had these meetings generally twice a month. Who are those with?
A. It's my administrator for certificated personnel, the Uniserv rep and the BEA president.

Jerry Colonna, Joe Paterno and the Cover-Up Culture of the Elite.

2011-11-09T08:00:00.000-08:00

“And you wonder where we're going 

Where's the rhyme and where's the reason 

And it's you cannot accept 

It is here we must begin 

To seek the wisdom of the children...” 

John Denver

In all of the failed humanity discovered recently in Happy Valley, notice should be taken that A FIFTEEN-YEAR-OLD BOY FINALLY STOOD UP FOR WHAT WAS RIGHT AND A DYNASTY HAS BEEN SHAKEN.

Because now a whole society is forced at last to look at the alarming close-ups of the sickening results when expensive, sophisticated branding and image-manipulating overlap the monstrous egos of big time competitive football men.

Penn State's ignominy is the merely latest “denial” card to fall in our cover-up culture. Is anybody out here in Oregon thinking about Neil Goldschmidt right now?

Before we waste a lot of energy talking about the criminal and the crime, we must address the prevention. That people will behave selfishly and brutishly should not be a revelation any longer. What may surprise people is the number of “decent” folks who become silent conspirators to bullying, cheating, and power-abuse...people who use denial to cope with their own complicity...because they don't want to rock the boat (yacht?).

The candle glowing in this recent human darkness: Future potential victims (and advocates for children) are reminded that the face of evil can be a grandfather wearing classy college logos and high-priced sneakers. More significantly, this sordid revelation could create the resolve to finally address the root problem: Covering up.

Lack of oversight. No accountability. Instead, problems are obfuscated by lots of lawyers using obscure processes to prolong cases while demeaning vulnerable people, often until they are forced to accept some secret, silent settlement.

Explaining this phenomenon provides an unusual opportunity to juxtapose pronouns: “WE” keeping paying “THEM” to keep “US” from knowing what “THEY” do.

Our public justice system is super-injected with free-market ethics. For the right $, you don't have to do the right thing. If D-S-K were involved in this latest unsavory saga, we might already be hearing innuendo-spin about the lascivious character of the victim in the Penn State shower.

I write regularly in an effort to expose a cover-up process that has injured me and my family, one that education bureaucrats continue to enjoy in Oregon, facilitated by the OEA leadership.

When, in 2004, I told my new superintendent in Beaverton that some supervisors needed supervising, my employment contract was broken within weeks. I was locked out of my building in a surprise attack by administrators I had served well--for “sexually harassing” someone whom I didn't.

Within two days, I was introduced to one of the lawyers who would manipulate and demean me for the next several years. The opposing attorneys were paid by the public, secretly, while my “advocate” was paid by the union to which I paid dues for a decade.

No one involved, other than me, was interested in either expediency or justice.

The ordeal I experienced has taught me much about who in our society gets “secrecy agreements” with quiet settlements and who gets manipulation and abuse, preclusion and delay. (www.statesponsoredtheft.blogspot.com)

This unequal protection of the elite, we are now learning from the National Restaurant Association, is not limited by race. It is an economic thing. I can't say for sure, but I think the reason many of those American citizens are camping out in the cold is because they know it JUST ISN”T FAIR but nobody is doing anything about it.

Maybe now, as a very surreal Saturday looms over State College, Pennsylvania—the FINAL home game against the newest conference rival—we can quietly discuss why America has become a culture of people who once mocked a brilliant artist like John Denver to his death while hiding Jerry Sandusky's brutal bullying because he could defend against the triple option?

Rhymes and Reasons  

by John Denver

So you speak to me of sadness 

And the coming of the winter 

Fear that is within you now 

It seems to never end 

And the dreams that have escaped you 

And the hope that you've forgotten 

You tell me that you need me now 

You want to be my friend

And you wonder where we're going 

Where's the rhyme and where's the reason 

And it's you cannot accept  

It is here we must begin 

To seek the wisdom of the children 

And the graceful way of flowers in the wind

For the children and the flowers  

Are my sisters and my brothers 

Their laughter and their loveliness 

Would clear a cloudy day

Like the music of the mountains 

And the colours of the rainbow T

hey're a promise of the future 

And a blessing for today 

Though the cities start to crumble 

And the towers fall around us 

The sun is slowly fading 

And it's colder than the sea

It is written from the desert 

To the mountains they shall lead us 

By the hand and by the heart 

They will comfort you and me 

In their innocence and trusting 

They will teach us to be free

For the children and the flowers 

Are my sisters and my brothers 

Their laughter and their loveliness 

Would clear a cloudy day

And the song that I am singing  

Is a prayer to non believers 

Come and stand beside us  

We can find a better way

School District of the Latter Day Saints

2011-10-31T07:49:00.000-07:00

Re: "More schools host church services as controversy lingers" Nicole Dungca, The Oregonian 10/31/11

If you are driving north on NW 185th and cross Highway 26, just as you see the silhouette of Westview High School looming on the right, you may observe an unimposing structure right at the corner of the school lot. This building is not mentioned to Westview's new teachers, even though a lot of Westview students will leave school during the course of the day without any formal check-out and go to that building...during "study hall" time.

Ms. Dungca's able colleague, Betsy Hammond, wrote a piece ("Portland-area high schools increasingly require study halls" 9/21/11) about how high schools "warehouse" kids during study hall. She quoted an assistant principal from Westview High School, Cheryl Ashdown, who contributed some fluff about expecting kids to "go to tutoring centers, retake tests, meet in study groups or use the computer lab for research." What Ms. Ashdown failed to mention and what Vicki Lukich, Beaverton's executive administrator for high schools, did not reveal to Ms. Hammond is that, in Beaverton, there are small innocuous buildings located in close proximity to public schools where, in the past, Beaverton's Mormon students go durig their "non-class" time, instead of being assigned study hall, like other students.

I don't know if these buildings are on school property or private property, but I know that the vast expansion of the Beaverton Schools occurred during two decades of leadership under one superintendent, Boyd Applegarth, also a leader in the LDS church (like Phil Knight, who moved Nike to B'ton right about this time).

The curious juxtaposition of these buildings and this special treatment of the LDS kids always puzzled me, but I had over-crowded classes and unsupervised administrators and a full plate, so I never spent any energy there.

Now, with Ms. Dungca's revelation of a blurring of the church/state separation in Milwaukie, coupled with the approaching deadline for ballots deciding the fate of the Beaverton Board's request for more tax money, the public enjoys an opportunity to take a close look at the involvement of church leadership in our public schools.

I don't think Ms. Hammond or her contacts in the Beaverton School District mentioned Beaverton's off-campus LDS study halls when they spoke, on the record, about the use of that time by public school students.

Ssssh...

www.statesponsoredtheft.blogspot.com

1995 Woodford County (KY) Middle School
Accelerated Language Arts unit "The Renaissance"
(Talented and Gifted class)
An eighth grade "Creative Enrichment-Language Arts" at a small middle school in horse country in central Kentucky...

The Oregonian insists that Oregon City Schools accept their merit pay?!?

2011-10-26T07:48:00.000-07:00

Where all the teachers are above average

Ed. Board: "Ask yourself: In every school you've ever been in, couldn't you and everyone else identify the best teachers, the Frank Caros?"

Not to take anything away from Caros, but I bet you could find kids with whom he didn't do well.

The editorial board, with curious fervor, has condemned the decision of the Oregon City teaching community, scoffing and diminishing a democratic gesture by branding it capitulation to the union.

Probably the secretive union leadership has it right here for the wrong reasons; regardless, the powerful language in this essay (“far from the philosophy;” “closed minds of Oregon's teaching establishment;” “isn't even willing to try”) seems to place the authors in the same sort of stubborn, pre-determined mental state that they accuse Ms. Noice and her employer, the ominous OEA (cue sound) of inhabiting.

While all this brouhaha about unions and merit pay roils the news, real teachers (mostly oblivious) are still getting up early, buying supplies with their own money, greeting the janitors who arrive early and the blue-haired, red-eyed kids who are always there before the building opens. While the editorial board of the NW's most influential newspaper prints language that makes schools, like bakeries or banks, sound like free-market enterprises, real teachers continue to toil in over-crowded classrooms with challenging children, leaving late in the day with hours of work after meeting with overwhelmed parents or supervising some club of neglected kids.

In the '80's, the teachers at the American School for the Deaf, where I was working while earning my education degree, made in the low 20's to mid-20's, tops. Administrators made in the 30's. Houseparents like me made something in the teens. No one made noise about what they made. It was just a rewarding job.

The problem with this merit pay proposal is that it exacerbates existing inequities that already discourage a lot of good teachers—inequities that create a lot of dropouts, among teachers and students. Veteran employees who have stayed in the same district for decades--who in some cases have fled the classroom for the rewards of administration--are now in charge of deciding who will be paid as good teacher—often without being required to provide empirical evidence for their decision.

Who has earned that trust?

That is the problem that Oregon City teachers are addressing when they vote to avoid putting a potful of education money in another political kitchen. Who gets the meat and who gets the broth? They are trying to SHARE in the OC schools--it is not that way everywhere, I assure you.

Mr. Caros, for all his skills, has been elevated above his colleagues by people who systemically reward sycophancy—it is the nature of the beast in bureaucracies. I do not wish to detract from his good fortune but I hope he is humble and self-aware enough to acknowledge that there are, out there in Education Land, hundreds of others who routinely perform with at least equal skill and effort.

Some teachers, without public recognition, may even exceed his virtuosity in their different classroom settings but labor on in obscurity, unsupported by the entrenched bureaucrats who require unwavering loyalty, if not unadulterated sycophancy. These teachers, however deserving, will never get the Milken or any federal money. Not the way the system is now.

So, when the editors of The Oregonian diss the OC education professionals for not taking federal funds impulsively--without some ground rules established, without some safeguards to prevent the possibility for misuse—those editors seem to miss the point of public education, which is to mitigate the economic stratification inherent in a free-market system.

As we go forward, we will expect our public servants to grow more thrifty with our resources, too.

P.S. Mr. Caros would do well to share his reward generously. He stands on the shoulders of a lot of selfless, brilliant people who labored blissfully in obscurity.

www.statesponsoredtheft.blogspot.com

PARENT NIGHT 2003
Freshman Lit WESTVIEW HS

The Law of the Commons

2011-10-25T07:55:00.000-07:00

Gavin Bristol in 1999 as Odysseus in a Meadow Park Middle School 7th grade languages arts class presentation of

The Odyssey

by Homer

Two articles in today's NYT offer some insights into the challenges lying ahead of a universal education reform:
1. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/25/us/screen-time-higher-than-ever-for-children-study-finds.html?_r=1&ref=todayspaper

2. http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011/10/23/us/poverty-in-the-suburbs.html

Access to technology, especially in public schools, is contributing to the American (world?) socio-economic chasm (personified in the “Occupy” camps).

Like a lot of writing teachers, I was already comfortable in my methods when the arrival of the Commodore computer changed the whole process of “revision” for kids. I had to learn and change, and I noticed early on that kids from more affluent families were already comfortable with floppy disks and DOS commands.

As technology became more available in schools, it became apparent that some students already had mastered much of what we were learning. The rest of us, often including me, were dependent on the kids who had the software and hardware at home.

Being human, kids were selective about who would be helped. Teachers were frequently hostage to their own students' technology expertise.

I began my teaching career in the '80's, as an old “Spanky, Alfalfa, and Darla” English/drama guy: Write-yer-own-script, make-yer-own-costumes and use-what-you-already-have to put your best show out in front of people. The advent of the desktop video editing was a paradigm shift for my literature classes—now we could make movies, which played very well with seventh graders...(Example project: We made “The Odyssey” with 120 kids and teachers...whew.)

All of this sounds wonderful except I “earned” myself a job as the video production teacher at Oregon's then-largest high school, charged with the job of converting a small analog studio that served 8-9 kids into a digital classroom that housed 35 students at a time (in a very limited space). I started my year with four MacIntosh G-3's, each with 4 GB of hard drive.

All came with primitive editing software called Avid—not to be mistaken with the professional editing program. The ability to move clips and sound around so easily was amazing, but using that technology as a learning tool added a ton of work to my teaching load. A TON.

And, for some reason, the counselors at my new high school decided my media classes could serve freshmen through seniors simultaneously—we never discussed it but I was forced to create groups according to age and gender. Most teachers did not bear this burden. For equally nebulous reasons, these counselors would also assign repeat kids to a class they had just completed, so I would have them for two consecutive semesters...These were usually kids with special requirements and our program was able to accommodate them. I did not complain.

My personal challenge was to teach visual story telling, sound and lighting, shot composition, etc., to a wide range of kids with all sorts of interest...while using technology I didn't know much about. The technology support person at my new school was a recent graduate of the same high school, a bright and loyal kid who, unfortunately, never warmed up to me.

Time passed with a lot of struggles. Our department made movies for our administration as well as for other schools in school district, for local businesses like Shari's and Intel, ad for almost every sport in our school. Because of a parent's support, we had Dan Wieden from Wieden + Kennedy come to our school to speak to my classes.

And it took a while, but I got more equipment, developed some routines and learned some methodology. Significantly, the damn hard drives got bigger.

Most of my energy in my first three years as the video production teacher consisted of spending a lot of time after school and on weekends, making the computers accessible to the freshmen and less-assertive kids who were often pressured by "big kids" to give up their alloted time during the school day.

(A whole lot of what I did was time and equipment management. These days, I am able to block out memories of a lot of kids' bitter disappointment when they discovered, after hours of hard and passionate work, that some upperclassman had inconsiderately deleted their project to make room for a skateboard or girlfriend video.)

I shared these computers with three or four other teachers, often working in the same room simultaneously, but I was the only one using video--which was hard on the small processors' limited functions. The school technology support guy would get frustrated (and a little possessive) and, in the early going, would sometimes change our passwords without telling me at first.

I would discover during class that my teaching equipment was no longer available to me. If you have never taught, you are probably not able to imagine how frustrating that experience is. Fortunately it stopped after a few months, when the head principal understood the challenges of my job.

(Unfortunately, as soon as he retired, it began again. I was fired for insubordination soon after, in part for an embellished “outburst” about this situation. “Tech Kid” is now a head custodian for the same school district.)

My point is: As technology changes, affluent kids have access to new stuff at home and often find MORE access at school—because they already know how to use the stuff. I worked a lot of extra hours to compensate for not having enough equipment. I am sure that happens to others.

When the NYT tells us how much more time kids are spending on personal technology, we an be assured these are not the growing number of impoverished kids. When the NYT tells us that the number of kids who are poor in the suburbs is rocketing upward, we can deduce that the socio-economic/technology gap i suburban schools is widening.

My effort to teach ALL my students fairly with new technology resulted in unnecessary conflicts with a lot of people who earn education money but don't really understand what is happening holistically in classrooms. Good education is helping someone love to learn...he or she can take it from there.

Good education does not happen for everyone when class distinctions are being reinforced in schools.

The economic principal “Law of the Commons” teaches that, given a finite public space, our more affluent citizens will use more public resources because they inherently have greater needs: A farmer with forty sheep is going to use more of the common grazing ground than the farmer with four sheep.

So it is with public school and technology. A lot of good teachers have had to relearn their jobs for the public good and many of them have not been treated well because of this “Law of the Commons” effect...I am one.

As we go forward with education reform, we need to look at ways to re-design public schools to overcome this disparity in resources. Certainly we can turn existing facilities into (24-hr) computer labs that can be accessed by...the 99%.

www.teachingintheshadowoftheswoosh.blogspot.com

Oregon School Refuses Federal Grant for Merit Pay

2011-10-24T06:28:00.000-07:00

"Oregon City School District walks away from $2.54 million grant for performance pay" by Nicole Dungca

"Merit" is in the eye of the beholder; administrators and counselors have different views about who is successful, too often with limited information and biased perspectives.

At the end of a loooong year in an Oregon public high school, an appreciative assistant principal came into my empty classroom and surpised me by thanking me for my work and mentioning, without preface, that $750 had been added to my pay to "take a class."

Similarly--but earlier in my tenure, near the end of my first year at a middle school in the same district (Beaverton), someone from the union got me $20 bucks an hour for 50 hours that I had not sought for a lot of extra time I had spent on theater projects.

In those same time periods, other administrators were actively seeking ways to fire me...and were eventually successful. Whacky world, public ed.

Oregon City seems to have a proper union advocate in Ms. Noice (not all of us have). She's out there on-the-record and seems to understand, cogently, that until a system is in place to evaluate teachers honestly and efficiently, we should guard against abuse by patronage administrators dishing out gratuities.

www.teachingintheshadowoftheswoosh.blogspot.com

DAN WIEDEN OF WIEDEN + KENNEDY ("JUST DO IT") VISITS A WESTVIEW HIGH SCHOOL MEDIA CLASS

Super Moms and Scary Moms

2011-10-23T08:45:00.000-07:00

Re: Eliz. Hovde's essay "Parents need to remember teachers aren't the enemy"
http://blog.oregonlive.com/cgi-bin/mte/mt-comments.cgi

I always had volunteer parents--I called them Super Moms--when I worked in public schools. My last Super Mom was a shy, unassuming woman who, in her eventful past, had worked on the early Nike administrative team and helped two young Portlanders launch Wieden + Kennedy. This Super Mom was why I was able to invite Wieden come to speak to my public school Media Studies classes.

Most of the magical experiences in my career as a teacher were the result of the shared efforts of caring parents, committed kids and dedicated teachers.

I have had my share of Scary Moms, too. We see templates of them on those shows for toddler beauty queens. You know what I mean?...Glossy cherry lips and mascarra on their two-year-old's? Those moms become public school moms.

But far worse, in my experience, are the "superior" people who just cannot understand that their prodigy benefits from a process that enriches the entire group--and that even their children must, from time to time, not be guaranteed a position atop the opportunity ladder.

I have discovered that most Scary Moms mellow out with time, usually after their adult children develop alcoholism or marry a foolish spouse or something human like that, but while they are in charge of their kid's trajectory, these self-interested parents are very challenging for teachers like me. They are more likely to appear in affluent, upper level schools where the “prizes” are significant but can occur among the working class, too.

Scary Moms are a big reason new teachers get out of the field. These parents can easily access tons of political power--think: soccer sidelines--and can be cruel and vindictive...with your public resources. Think "Housewives of..." shows. Your teachers are vulnerable from all directions—rude kids, bullying parents, and unqualified administrators. The teachers' union (OEA) is so connected to state politics that those school districts with “insider” administrations are immune from accountability. I asked to quit and instead got fired for almost four years...

God help those real teachers who do not give in—who continue to seek respect for their efforts and equitable opportunities for their students. In that vein, I nominate for Scary Mom-of-the-Millennium a woman who, after teaching AP for a while, became a school district fundraiser with an office in the district HR building and the local union rep on her board. She convinced taxpayers to build a new high school with a state-of-the-art stage that featured her daughters for a decade, a school where she ”served” on the site committee, deciding who worked where.

I would learn Scary-Mom-of-the-Millenium had several connections in the state education bureaucracy. What I remember most about this woman is that, when I was teaching her kid in the seventh grade in the late '90's, she became disenchanted with my approach. Instead of meeting with me, she arranged a school counselor for her daughter to be removed from my class and assigned her own teacher (from our technology dept) for an online class with a teacher from Stanford (this was still in the '90's and not very common). I was, by this point, not surprised by this very unique turn-of-events; I was working in a rabbit hole.

The public paid for this kid's privilege, btw--probably not much, but certainly not fair, either.

It was then I should have recognized my days were numbered in the District but I was experiencing success in a lot of arenas and received promotions, raises and added responsibilities. I was good at what I did, and I did a lot. In return, I asked for fair treatment.

I lost my job after seven years of 70-hour weeks when, in a small faculty meeting with the new superintendent, I held up a school paper with a picture of this Scary Mom's daughter above an article referencing the drama club’s recent foray to Europe...when the rest of the school was told to stay in the building because of budget shortages.

“She may have deserved the part,” is what I said to our new superintendent, setting off a four-year conflict with the OEA with the state's teacher licensing agency. Sadly, I was telling the truth to my new boss; as far as I could tell, the poor kid NEVER got a chance to learn what she could do on her own...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jn4LVpbLN9A&feature

(P.S. You are on to something here, Hovde. Pushy parents ALSO influence patronage administrators to inflate grades. I am evidence of what happens when a teacher pushes back.)

Westview High School's Keegan Garrity features Mike Geurts in classic music video "Eight Track Soul"

OEA dues merely political surcharge

2011-10-20T07:57:00.000-07:00

Recent revelations suggest that sometimes Oregon's citizens have trouble accessing justice in our courts.

We will not solve our issues of governance, particularly regarding the inefficiency of public schools, until we reintroduce accountability in leadership.

The less evidence of snobbery at the top of anything belonging to the “public,” the better off We the People actually are. We seem to have abandoned that insight during the Halcyon days of flipping our homes and adoring Paris Hilton.

Face it, someone is always going to have a lot of power—everyone recognizes the need for structure in organizations and so there has to be a top to anything we build.

We just have to realize, if we ever going to have confidence in our ability to self-govern again, we need to see less aristocracy and more accountability.

Change is necessary. Problem is, when someone talks about change to powerful people, his or her trip up the ladder is imperiled. Better off to go along and get along, huh? Lawyers circle like buzzards over the carcasses of too many vulnerable citizens who lie parched in some desert of delayed justice until they give in to a predetermined destiny. Better to shut up and keep your job.

But the path to mediocrity passes though such submission.

My personal experience became brutal for me and my family because I refused to play along in a dysfunctional system developed by some lawyers and education bureaucrats to protect retirement packages and public images. I was forced to travel for years with a duplicitous union lawyer through an gauntlet of abuses by a state employees over whom, apparently, no one has oversight.

I was appointed this lawyer by the OEA after my union representative had discussed my imminent termination with my employers at the Beaverton Schools. Those kinds of clandestine meetings with management are frowned on in legitimate unions.

I did not know about these meetings until after I was fired; I was busy teaching lots of kids in an over-crowded high school run by some pretty dishonorable people. I have, since my illegal termination from the Beaverton School District, provided a number of legislators with evidence that the OEA lawyer who was appointed to “advocate” for me had broken the law by betraying my trust and involving me in a conflict-of-interest civil suit that was designed to prolong my case and make me vulnerable. In short, I was manipulated by the lawyer my union hired for me.

The experience has been demeaning and despairing. My early complaints to OEA employees fell on well-compensated, deaf ears. I was distracted by the illness of my mother and clung foolishly and too long to the belief that my teachers' union was run with integrity.

I have discovered it is not.

Since then, all I have gotten from state legislators is advice to hire a lawyer—to paraphrase Mark Twain, that would be like going back to the brothel to cure the venereal disease. No one wants to offer me an official explanation for my “first-of-its-kind-in-Oregon” treatment in a state court, in an expensive, unnecessary conflict with employees of a state agency who have been circumventing laws for a number of years.

What happened to me personally will rarely happen because the system is designed make employees hurt for a protracted period of time until they give in and sign “stipulations” to keep their careers.

I am still working for fair resolution of my conflict with state employees and union officials who have acted in bad faith with public resources. My family and I continue to be punished by allegations on a state website for which no one at Beaverton Schools was ever required to provide evidence or testimony.

No one wants to look me in the eye. I've NEVER SEEN the state judge who made it possible for me to lose my ability to teach with her "first-of-its-kind" finding. Those were CONSTITUTIONAL rights that disappeared in my conflict with some selfish bureaucrats.

That is the underlying theme of both ”Occupy” and the Tea Party: Accountability for those people whom we have trusted with our public resources. Nowhere is that accountability more important than in our public schools. In our current system, administrators who will be paid for life (some for work they never did) can avoid accountability through patronage promotions--and by casting aspersions on dissenting employees who work their asses off in poorly-supervised schools.

We will change our schools and our other government agencies when the bureaucrats who run them are no longer able to hire insider lawyers with public money to conceal misconduct. Teachers' dues are merely a political surcharge in Oregon. Without accountability and oversight of school administrators, the rest is hypocrisy.

www.statesponsoredtheft.blogspot.com

June 2004 FDAB testimony of Linda Borquist, then-Associate Superintendent for Human Resources of Beaverton Schools, on her "unique" collaboration with Tom Husted, uniserve representative for the Beaverton Education Association. Husted was serving concurrently on the board of the Beaverton Education Foundation, a non-profit run by JANET HOGUE, a Westview parent with an office in the Beaverton HR building.

BORQUIST'S SWORN TESTIMONY JUNE 2004:

Q. Do you have contact with the Beaverton Education Association as you work with various personnel problems?

A(Borquist). Uh-huh. I think we probably are a little bit unique in how we work with our association. The person who is the administrator of certificated personnel, which is a job I have also held in the past, and I meet usually twice a month and go over any kind of what we call "issues sessions." We look at, you know, things that have been brought to either of our attentions, and we go through and have an open discussion about what we're hearing or seeing. The hope is that we would, again, resolve it at the smallest level. We are very frank with each other. We don't really hold any secrets or hold any information back. But we try to proactively work together. We've operated

that

(begin pg 47)

way for at least 12, maybe 15 years, ever since I can kind of remember with, you know, past association presidents. It is a culture that we have built. Because of that we have very, very few grievances. I can maybe think of three in my ten years in -- 12 years in HR. You know, I've never sat before this kind of a board before with a Fair Dismissal hearing. We're actively working together. Obviously they have a role of representing in this case a teacher, and we have a role that we need to play. But

we try and work cooperatively. When I have a meeting that I'm going to be setting up with a teacher, I give what I would call a heads-up phone call to the association president or the Uniserv rep saying that this person will be expecting a call from X because they'll probably be calling you. We're going to have a meeting. I want to make sure you're available when they call so they can have representation. That's how open our relationship is.

Q. You mentioned that you had these meetings generally twice a month. Who are those with?

A. It's my administrator for certificated personnel, the Uniserv rep and the BEA president.

Westview High School's Chase Fulton stars

in a Media Studies class project

"ERIKA THE EXISTENTIAL EGGPLANT"

Arriving with Empathy: The Beaverton School Experience

2011-10-19T08:27:00.000-07:00

When I was driving to Oregon in first days of January, 1997, I made an impulsive decision. When I got to the Great Plains, instead of heading north and running along a mountain ridge through Wyoming to get across the Rockies (usually the safest route in winter), I stayed south, opting to cut through Colorado with the thought that I would stop to ski at one of those places with--to me, a Kentucky boy--magical names: Breckinridge, Steamboat, Copper Mountain.

My traveling companion was guinea pig named Empathy that my seventh graders at my former school had given me to bring to my new school. In Oregon, I would reunite with my soon-to-be wife and we would marry in the Columbia Gorge that summer while I was looking for work.

I stopped in Vail and gave Empathy to a puzzled but amenable concierge at a hotel at the bottom of the mountain and skied (poorly) for an afternoon, then retrieved the rodent and drove on into the setting sun. The blinding snow in Utah made me realize that I probably should've stayed on the high wide road through Wyoming.

By that fall, I was teaching middle school English and theater arts in an over-crowded middle school in Beaverton. I poured myself into it. Loved a lot of it because there was a lot of money for creative projects and the kids were clever and the parents were supportive. Mostly.

Early troubles:
I had some problems adjusting to the fact that attending church was an acceptable excuse for not doing homework, but I finally succumbed...after some conflict with a few parents who, I soon learned, did their leveraging through a veteran school counselor—a woman who was de facto administrator of our section of the school.

I would learn that counselors in Beaverton tend to have those administrative connections.

Early on in my new job, I also had some trouble with my “specialty” class, an early-morning period when teachers did something "special" that they wanted to do with kids who specifically chose that class. It is a sound educational philosophy when applied fairly.

My “specialty” was drama—my theater experience was one of the major factors in my hiring--and I enthusiastically accepted the challenge of rebuilding a program that had been abandoned.

In my first specialty class, kids worked on a play ("...Becomes the Rose") that we had written ourselves—it was pretty basic but involved a lot of kids. I made the mistake of asking the counselor to help me find costumes for this first effort—I had learned she made costumes for a high school program that did some big-budget shows.

However, this counselor at my new job in my new school district replied that she was learning to say, “No.” As a new guy with not much to work with, I was disappointed she was practicing her "no's" on me. Four years in the future, I would be one of three teachers to write a letter of recommendation to Colorado State for this same counselor's son when he asked.

Irony abounds in my Beaverton saga.

Long story short: I discovered by November of my first year in the Beaverton Schools that, unbeknownst to me or my building principal, my specialty class was about to double in size—courtesy of this counselor, who was in charge of specialty scheduling. She neglected to inform me of this major change in my job. I had struggled during our first play to find significant roles for forty kids—to discover abruptly in mid-year that my load was about to double to 80 was unfair.

The ensuing conflict, ending in compromise (60 kids), damaged my relationship with this influential woman although, as I said, I would write her son's letter at his request some four years later. I experienced a number of unnecessary conflicts because of this failed relationship—I accept responsibility for some of that—and I had moved to the high school where I met her son, mostly to be away form her.

At the high school, I assumed responsibility for changing a video production program from linear to digital technology (while teaching English and creative writing classes).

When my boss at the high school retired a few years later and I no longer had his support, I was fired in mid-year for insubordination. It happened by surprise, after I told a new superintendent that I had been paid unfairly and had asked about resigning.

On the day I was fired, I learned a librarian had been approached (twice) by an asst. principal and convinced to sign a complaint listing charges that-–even in the BSD employment rabbit-hole—never amounted to harassment.

But when you are a teacher in a place like Beaverton and someone powerful wants to get rid of you, THEY DO NOT DO IT NICELY. I was fired in a vicious surprise surprise attack after working all day by administrators who still did not know where the light switches were in my building. I was charged with a trumped-up smokescreen sex complaint, given a lawyer by a shady union official with whom Beaverton people met weekly, and then abused for the next four years by state employees covering up for Beaverton administrators and their lawyers.

Most of these guys meet a few times of the year in places like Sisters and Bandon.

To recap: After I had asked to quit, Beaverton officials locked me out of my building on the last day of the first semester in '03-'04. At the time, I was working with kids who were seniors in high school who had been in that first play with me, when they were sixth graders in '97. I did not get to attend their graduations because bureaucrats had banned me from the property.

My grades for the first semester had not been due until after they fired me—yet I was called back in three days later and fired some more—for not doing these semester grades. Kids and parents were told that I had intentionally sabotaged scholarships. My female students were called in and asked pointed sex questions by malicious school officials, most of whom had never taught a teenager.

In the end, I was manipulated by my union lawyer for several years while watching phonies get secrecy agreements, early retirements and promotions. I couldn't get the licensing bureau to leave me alone because of complaints that Beaverton had made. Finally, after paying the OEA for ten years for support I still have never gotten, I lost my license to teach in 2007. I had refused to sign an array of confessions that lawyers in Oregon use to prolong teacher discipline cases.

I am capable of making mistakes and sure had some bad day in some crowded schools where a lot of people have driven personal agendas, but I have always felt good about my ability to accept accountability for my mistakes. However, I refused to sign a confession because the licensing agency was using a salacious, undocumented charge from the middle school counselor in '97, suggesting that I tried to lure a seventh grader to my truck in the faculty parking lot during class time. If it had been true, I should have been disciplined. It wasn't and I wasn't.

Ten years later I am told I have to confess to it or lose my license. I refused.

So the TSPC director (who had been hired in 2002 by the Beaverton superintendent) chose to get a state judge to “accept certain facts as true” for a first-of-its-kind-in-Oregon finding to put on my permanent record.

I have not slept properly since.

My mother died watching me fight these people. I am bitter. The licensing board director continues to say I need anger management therapy—she has had a great deal of impact on my life without ever looking me in the eye. Ditto the judge who abandoned precedent to “accept certain facts” in support of bureaucrats. T add insult to injury, I was at first being required to attend alcohol counseling, even though I am one of the few people in my tragic drama who was smart enough to quit drinking years ago...before I ever drove Empathy the guinea pig across the Rocky Mountains.

It is sad to me that, because I once asked a veteran guidance counselor in Beaverton to treat me fairly as a new teacher--not to double the size of my classes--the state of Oregon would take away from me the opportunity to do a job that is needed here. I taught kids whom a lot of people chose not to—I have a lot of special training and am able to teach in two languages. The purpose for this letter is to help raise awareness: Teachers are very vulnerable In Beaverton and in oregon at large. Schools are insular and can very easily be mismanaged. Government agencies whose employees have enjoyed freedom from oversight and accountability often become corrupt—at the least inefficient and defensive. A lot of money is at stake in education.

But something more is lost. My guinea pig didn't make it through that first year in Beaverton. I have never replaced her.

www.teachingintheshadowoftheswoosh.blogspot.com

Westview High School students Yao Zio and Jeff Hanson

compassionately capture the diversity of Westview High School

in a 2001 Adv. Media Studies project

"The Eyes of the World"

To Oregon Senator Mark Hass: The financial case for full-day kindergarten

2011-10-17T08:09:00.000-07:00

Oregon's education outcomes: The financial case for full-day kindergarten

by Mark Hass Oregonian Oct 16 2011

Senator Hass has it right here. If you have much experience with American high schools, you realize that the last couple of years are focused on social stuff that skews toward upper-income kids. If we just moved the K-12 range down to ages 3 to 15, then we would be able establish quality early education as well as eradicate the patronage systems that too many big high schools have become. Move the whole program, sir, and give Oregon's kids an a) even start in the public education system and a b) chance to earn a living or go on and do real education when they become old enough.

The recent scores tell the tale: Elementary schools work. Public high schools can follow the model: Less starring roles; more ensemble casts...

Let the media-genic entertainment part of "school" that dominates the last two years (and creates poor education climates) find another domain until some gravity and reason are again applied to the way we allocate public resources for our schools. We can still put good coaches in contact with kids in the early years--they just won't be competing out-of-state at Christmas with the 5-Star-All-Americans until after those kids can drive.

Move it all up two years, Senator. Let's be innovative.

Oh, and remember oversight and accountability in school administration. Without those, the rest is smokescreen hypocrisy.

www.teachingintheshadowoftheswoosh.blogspot.com

Trevor Crow and Eric Ball star

in a scene directed by Sean McKeen

in a Westview High Schools media class production

DREAM GIRL

Where there is light, there is heat...

2011-10-16T08:17:00.000-07:00

Whatever Oregon's trying to communicate, it's costing you millions The Oregonian Oct 15 2011

I hope this becomes the most important story the paper has ever presented. The hard copy article showed it off properly--front page above-the-fold. The paper listed Michelle Cole and Ryan Kost as the writers.

Aren't they good here?

Quite possibly did some damage to their futures with such legitimate reporting. Someone with a lot of influence is pissed off at the Sunday paper, for sure.

I am not alone in smiling. The message of "Occupy" is that we (the 99) don't believe anyone with authority is doing much beyond perpetuating themselves.

The PR boom this story addresses reflects a change in our culture that allows government (and anyone with economic and creative ability) to manipulate messages more easily.

According to the Oregonian, "spin" must be pandemic in Salem. The evidence suggests this problem is a problem everywhere a little pond of public money has formed. Sometime in the past few decades, we sort of gave up holding people accountable, collectively. We are now paying for our unspoken mantra: "Let somebody else do it."

Greed became a social norm and the "ends" justified some pretty despicable "means," if you could afford them. We became desensitized to cheating and bullying, and they grew like blackberry vines.

Now the Governor and some sincere and humble leaders are going to have to use this moment to clear some land. A lot of political will is required to dislodge some of the entrenched, undeserving bureaucrats, in part because they go to work everyday beside sincere, hard-working people who don't want to make waves and aren't likely to do much whistle-blowing. Bureaucrats are insular and, with someone to create the news for them, can survive like cockroaches. Damn good job, government work.

However, our Governor has recently stared down both the OEA and the AG—he knows what he is doing and he knows how to do it, it seems. But he will not succeed in a vacuum. Without information like we have been given here in this report, this futile process of taxpayers paying PR people to mislead us about how public employees are misleading us will continue.

Someone more clever than I will have to create a way to surgically remove the legal profession from all these state agencies. Perhaps this operation requires the skills of a Doctor.

In the meantime, I continue my quixotic quest to be treated with dignity for my service to the Beaverton community. I sought equity and professionalism in an environment of patronage and, as a consequence, was harassed by an element of our state government for refusing to sign a confession.

This same state agency currently employs people to tell you I am angry; in my case, at least, they are being honest. Bless you, Michelle and Ryan. But be careful; where there is light, there is heat.

www.statesponsoredtheft.blogspot.com

DOUBLE-EDGED SEX SWORD

2011-10-11T08:02:00.000-07:00

Steve Duin: It's a man's man's man's man's world

Published: Monday, October 10, 2011, 5:20 PM

Wonder what Jack Roberts would think about my "sex" case, custom-designed to coincide with my mid-year termination for insubordination and sprung on me the day I was locked out of my career. Some entrenched officials wanted to get rid of an employee who was seeking accountability for the actions of building administrators who enjoyed the patronage of an affluent parent with influence at the union.

I was toast before I was even fired.

Nasty business, sex charges. I lost a lot of sleep and a lot of weight waiting to provide a defense to a case that NEVER approached the legal standard for harassment (see below).

Sprung on me the day I was told to turn in my keys.

Sex charges as a tactical weapon in the hands of lawyers paid with public education money--well-connected lawyers with friends at the OEA AND the TSPC--those take a toll on a man. Beaverton's oblivious taxpayers spent over $200K to beat me up after I had asked to resign…

While I was trying to care for my dying mom. BSD lawyers, paid secretly, were manipualting me with my union's tacit support.

Mr. Duin deems more newsworthy the defense of political types who engage in "horseplay.” Hello, Steve--the reason people are in the streets is because of the double standards (AK: injustice). After seven years of trying to get state and union officials to investigate my first-of-its-kind-in-Oregon treatment by state courts, I have learned my story belongs down there with the folks in Lownsdale Park because I don't have gov't influence or money.

All together now: “This land is your land…”

When the Beaverton lawyers (Hungerford) wanted to discredit me, The Oregonian printed a slanted press release without ever contacting me (see: David Anderson ca. 2004). Mr. Duin, concerned herein lest his readers think "horseplay" deserves state intervention, has been aware for a LONG TIME that public money was paid to lawyers to deceive a federal judge on behalf of Beaverton administrators in my case. I refused for three years to sign a confession; my license was finally suspended by a state agency whose administrator, as was recently exposed in Gresham, shelters pedophiles for her school district cronies.

But I’m just another disposable teacher. Save room for my tent downtown...

FDAB Hearing June 2004
(This was the first chance I had to answer these charges after being fired in JANUARY. For the record, my mother was dying, I had been cheated out of $20K by a new principal who was coming to work drunk, and I HAD ASKED TO RESIGN weeks before my surprise termination. The taxpayers paid a lot for the state government to harass me for four years...unnecessarily. No one has been held accountable.www.statesponsoredtheft.blogspot.com

"A" is the librarian who signed a complaint after being approached by her supervisor, the asst. principal, numerous times.

Q. In the interest of time here, I'm probably going to move fairly fast. During year '02-03 Mr. Bellairs was an activities director for the building; correct?

A. Correct.
Q. And as a consequence of being named activities director, did he interact with you or was he in the library space more often?
A. I would say yes, more often. He had more freedom within the building or he had more free time. I don't know which. But, yes, he was in the library more often.
Q. Did you have interaction with him when he was in the library?
A. Yes.
Q. Of what sort?
A. In retrospect, it is because he wanted something from me or something that I had in the library. Just him being there -- I think he just got used to being there. It became uncomfortable.
Q. You said because he wanted something from you. What kinds of things did he want when he was there?
236
A. Either equipment or perhaps a better working computer. Oftentimes, many, many mornings, he'd come in first thing and want to know if the coffee was on, if I'd made coffee for him, if we had any treats. The treats came from volunteers usually that volunteer with us in the library. They were brought in, and he would simply help himself to those. But it's usually because he wanted something, so he'd schmooze up to me, warm up to me and try to win me over with that.
Q. Did he ever make a comment to you when there weren't any sweets around?
A. Yes, he did.
Q. What was that comment?
A. Something to the effect of, "Can you put a little sweetness in this for me?" or "Can you sweeten it up for me?"
Q. Did that comment cause you any note?
A. Well, I remembered it. It wasn't appropriate. It wasn't -- it was around other staff members, and I think there may have been students present. It wasn't a professional thing to say.
Q. Were there any times when you were uncomfortable with his physical presence around you?
A. Yes. Part of his initial charm I think with everyone was that he liked to get to know people. He was
237
a real touchy-feely person. That became cloying. It became -- well, I grew to hate it. It no longer endeared itself to me, and I know to other people in the building. But, yes, the longer he was around me in the library, it increased.
Q. Was there a time in the fall of 2003 when he came up to you while you were walking down the hall?
A. Yes.
Q. What happened?
A. I was leaving or I was trying to leave. It was right as school was recessing, and students and teachers were in the hallway coming in the opposite correction. I was trying to leave to avoid getting caught in the buses, as I had a meeting outside the building. I don't know
where he came from, but he came up and put his arm around me. It was a hug much more intimate than he'd ever given before. It was very close and very -- it was very uncomfortable, very close.
Q. What did you do?
A. I immediately tried to shrink away. I'm short, so I thought I could kind of maybe weasel out of it or kind of shrink away from him. The harder I tried to get out from underneath his clutch, the harder he clutched me. It just became more intense. During the course of this
embrace, because that's what it more or less ended up as,
238
he wanted -- he asked me if I would like to start ascandal. Let's get tongues wagging. Could we have an affair. I said, "I don't think so." And at that point I wanted to slap him, but there was so many people
around, and I didn't want to get into any kind of embarrassing situation. I didn't want to get his anger going at me. I just finally just really jerked away, and I was able to leave, to get away from him.
Q. How did you -- what did you do after that when you were in the building in terms of Mr. Bellairs?
A. That same day?
Q. No.
A. I tried -- well, the very next day -- well, actually that evening I went and discussed the situation with my husband. He said I needed to at least speak to my administrator about it, that I probably didn't need to file some kind of complaint, but I needed to let
Somebody know that that had occurred. I was embarrassed. I didn't want anyone that may have seen us to misconstrue the facts, because I
didn't provoke it. So the next day, after discussing the incident with my husband, I talked with Gail VanGorder. She said -- she didn't write anything down, but she said that she no longer handled Don, that she would pass on the
239
information to Mike Chamberlain. She offered some suggestions on what I should do if it happened again. Then I briefly let the two girls that I work with up in the library know that I didn't want to be in the same room with Don, that I didn't want to be in a position that could be misconstrued. I tried not to give them too many facts, but I had to give them some foundation -- their names were Sherry and Nancy -- so
they knew that if Don were to come in to the library, I didn't
want to be alone, or if they saw him come in, that they agreed that they would come into that room where I was so that I wasn't going to be alone with him.
Q. Did you tell Gail VanGorder that you wanted to file a formal complaint and proceed with a complaint at that point in time?
A. No. I didn't.
Q. Were there times when Mr. Bellairs asked you out to dinner before or after this incident?
A. There was one before, yes.
Q. And was there a time after?
A. Actually, during the course of that incident in the hallway, yes, he did.
Q. What did you tell him?
A. I said, "No. I don't think so."
Q. What had been your response earlier when he
240
asked?
A. I'm not quite sure what the verbiage was, but I know I said no. He knew I was married. I knew he was married. I mean, it was just so far out of anything that I would have ever considered.
Q. Was there a time then later -- this incident in the hallway, can you place it somewhere in a time period?
A. It was on a Monday. I remember it was Monday because I was going to the district librarians meeting, and because we have them on Mondays. I believe it was in November, the second Monday in November.
Q. Was there a later time when there was another situation where you had physical contact with him or he had physical contact with you? And this one I think was in the library.
A. Yes. It was in December. I eat lunch up there with another couple of people in our back room. I was eating lunch. I sit on a chair with wheels. And he comes swooping in and puts his arm around me. And I didn't want anything to do with it. And the harder I tried to get away, scoot away on my chair, the more -- I ended up next to the wall just cowering, and I was continuing my conversation with my lunchmates, slinking away. I was flattened up against the wall. Finally, he took that as a hint and left.
241
Q. Was there any conversation that you remember?
A. I don't remember any. I think there was, but I can't remember what was said.
Q. Did you make any statements to your lunchmates or did you go on as though --
A. I said something to my lunchmates, yes.
Q. What did you say, if you remember?
A. I said, "You saw that?" And they said, "Yes, we did."
Q. Was that all that was said?
A. That was all that was said.
Q. After that was there another episode that involved a statement by Mr. Bellairs that made you uncomfortable?
A. Yes. That was in December also. Well, there was actually a couple. Which one are we on?
Q. Any of them.
A. There was one where he was in the library, and we were at the front desk. I don't know what he'd come in for, but Sherry saw that he had come in and she was standing right next to me. There was a thread on his shoulder. I said, "You need to take the thread off your shoulder." He said something, well, with a horrible sexual connotation to me. Sherry took it the same way. It was, "If you could pull it from my behind," or "if you
242
could pull the thread from behind me."
Q. What made you feel that it had sexual connotations?
A. Just the way he said it.
Q. Tone of voice?
A. Tone of voice. Sort of his body movements, yes.
Q. Do you remember how you responded to that?
A. I just walked away.
Q. Do you know whether -- you said there may have been other situations. Do you remember anything else?
A. There was another one. Again, we were at the counter. Sherry was standing there. There were also other students about. He came over to me, and he said, "Would you mind going over to the photocopy machine," which is housed in the library," and ask the young lady that's standing over there to cover up? She's not particularly good looking, and I'm not enjoying looking at her."
Q. Was the young lady a student?
A. A student, yes. So, yes, indeed I went over there and I did
ask her to cover up.
Q. He made that statement in front of other people and students?
A. Yes.
243
Q. In your account I'm understanding that you never directly said to Mr. Bellairs, "Take your hands off me," or something to that effect. Is that correct?
A. That's correct.
Q. Can you explain why not?
A. Well, I felt my nonverbal communication was strong enough, the force of which I tried to pull away. It was all nonverbal. I just felt that I was doing everything I could nonverbally. I didn't want -- did
not want to get into any kind of verbal confrontation with him because I had seen his anger.
Q. Where had you seen his anger?

Teacher Double Standards and Deviant Practices Commission

2011-10-09T10:09:00.000-07:00

"New documents show Reynolds High School vice principal has further history of misconduct allegations" Saturday, October 08, 2011, 9:00 PM by Steve Beaven, The Oregonian

The hypocrisy of the system is on full display here, thanks to some diggin' around by the Fourth Estate...Good job, Mr. Beaven (any chance your first and last names rhyme?)

I have the equivalent of a doctoral degree in conflict with the director of TSPC, Vickie Chamberlain, and some of her cohorts--individuals who have profited personally by creating a secretive domain of unaccountable administrators who populate some school boards and administrations in Oregon education.

Beaverton's former HR director, Linda Borquist, always warned ANY disgruntled employees who were threatening to quit about the fragile status of their teaching license.

Always.

I learned she was not messing around with that...

Unlike Mr. Dixon, I was never spoken to by administrators about my transgressions—apparently they were being collected and harbored secretly until the end of the semester, when I was fired by sneak attack.

After a few years of harassment by collegial lawyers representing Beaverton and the OEA, I was supposed to sign a confession for the TSPC—much like Mr, Dixon apparently did. I refused from the outset, seeking due process to defend myself against undocumented allegations. I was given several variations of confessions over the years; meanwhile the OEA lawyer used the settlement from my civil suit to leverage me to sign for the TSPC. I continued to refuse and my license was eventually suspended, 3 ½ years after my termination--despite the recommendation of an oversight judge (ALJ John Mann).

My ability to earn a living in my field was seriously damaged by punitive, self-serving bureaucrats for allegations that former Beaverton administrators have NEVER had to prove. I had asked to quit after being paid unfairly; instead, my mother (a classroom teacher for over thirty years) died watching me fight lawyers representing my “teachers” union.

Today, the TSPC defames me on the state government's website though their lawyers cannot provide ANY historical documentation for alleged disciplinary violations. I was set-up to fail by unaccountable union employees while Ms. Chamberlain was able to use a first-of-its-kind-in-Oregon preclusion motion to shelter her friends in Beaverton in a civil suit.

Yet, even with a criminal record, Mr. Dixon was able to continue teaching.

So, Oregon, when some of your teachers have the freedom that Mr. Dixon has enjoyed as a public servant while others work under the kind of oppression Ms. Borquist was able to apply in Beaverton to teachers seeking fair treatment, it ain't democracy anymore. It is certainly not good public education.

It IS criminal employment law manipulation. www.statesponsoredtheft.blogspot.com

FYI: Dr. Tom Greene of the the University of Portland was on the BSD administrative team that fired me improperly in 2004. He currently serves on the TSPC executive commission, a position he enjoyed when my license was suspended, almost four years after my illegal termination.

Educationball instead of Moneyball

2011-10-05T06:59:00.000-07:00

"Moneyball: Lessons for the Economy" USA TODAY Paul Osterman Oct 5, 2011

The USA Today offers an appropriate filter through which to view Oregon's current challenges with under-performing schools and over-paid bureaucrats. The underlying wisdom offered in this essay is for management to value employees—to actually possess and use the CAPABILITY of discerning what constitutes a valuable "player" in the education game.

When I was fired by the Beaverton School District's high-priced lawyers after asking to resign, my records (promotions, raises and positive evaluations) were hidden under a mucky layer of lies told by former Beaverton school administrators, many of whom were quietly replaced while B'ton school board paid influential “education” lawyers $200K to smear my name and discredit my work.

To cover up for Beaverton administrators' inability to do their jobs.

The asst. principal who was making it difficult for me (and many others) to teach classes had NEVER been a teacher: Gail Vangorder, former administrator of Westview High, was trained as librarian. She had prepared for the job of “overseeing” classroom teachers at the then-largest public high school in the state by being personal librarian for the Beaverton district administrators, when she no doubt made a lot of friends during the era of expansive patronage that typified the tenure of Yvonne “Kickback” Katz—a period that continues to cost Oregon taxpayers in inefficiency and failed oversight.

I worked for people who didn't know what building teachers were doing—or how they were doing it. When they decided to be rid of me (I had asked the new supt. for some administrative accountability), a few of my bosses contacted the union official with whom they regularly dined and drank, then threw me under a legal bus for three years before insisting I sign a confession to keep my license active. This effort, designed to create psychological pain for me while my mom was dying, was abetted by the Oregon's teacher licensing agency--the TSPC--whose director, Vickie Chamberlain, was hired by the former BSD superintendent, Jerry Colonna, to whom we are now paying $1000 a day for work that his lawyers made sure he never had to do.

(I have NEVER had a conversation with Colonna about the list of false charges he signed without an investigation.)

YOU, taxpayer, continue to pay dearly for a lot of unexposed phonies--to finance the daily rounds of golf and the vacations overseas and to pay for second homes on the coast and fancy European sports cars—ALL for work no one ever expected them to do.

Perhaps some real accountability is in order so real teachers can play some real Educationball in our schools...instead of Moneyball for secretive administrators.
www.statesponsoredtheft.blogspot.com

The Unprincipled Principals

2011-09-28T07:04:00.000-07:00

Principal famed for helping all students aim for college cited by judge for failing to pay his own child's college costs Betsy Hammond Oregonian

Ouch. Betsy is again the "accountability" advocate.

Poor Mr. Ramos has had a character flaw revealed publicly. He will not last long in the current fed-up-with-bureaucratic-cheaters zeitgeist, though his crime is one committed by a lot of divorced men as their children grow older. One would think, with 100K+ and all those benefits, that Ramos has been doing some some sloppy personal budgeting--surely he is not banking that cash, but is over-extended with the expense of supporting two families? Gambling habit? Mistress? Who cares...

Without Ms. Hammond's article, Mr. Ramos would move into the privileged pantheon of retired school administrators, with a government appointment on his resume and a smile on his face, and draw a ton of taxpayer money for doing work he may have never done. Now, Ms. Hammond and her editors have changed his life.

Doesn't happen enough. I bet she got a lot of principals' attention today... : )

But, careful...Could be that a spiteful teenager created some of the issues that precipitated Mr. Ramos' errant priorities. My experience with divorces is that the kids can make it pretty hard on the parents--some are angry and tired of being in the middle and can be vindictive and cruel when they get some play in the game. There may have been times when Ramos would have paid, except that he felt manipulated by his former family and pressured by growing expenses. We don't know. Seems harsh to publicize his "criminality" without an explanation that he can never give us now without shaming himself further. Ouch.

But the hypocrisy in this school principal's conduct is self-evident and needs to be aired out. We will probably never know if, as a public servant with a ton of power over his teachers' livelihoods and his students' opportunities, he was predisposed to taking advantage of his staff or shortchanging some of his kids. We will never know if he had a habit of getting a little more extra pay when it was available. My experience is, the way the system works for Oregon's school administrators, we are often not getting what we pay for.

Accountability and oversight of public school administrators. www.teachingintheshadowoftheswoosh.blogspot.com

While that may be changing, you should be careful, Betsy...you, too, wield enormous power. And you understand the game well enough to know that, if Ramos were D-S-K, Jazmin's flaws would soon be in somebody's story.

What a mess. Pray for the children and volunteer to work in our schools. They are ours and we can fix them. www.statesponsoredtheft.blogspot.com

To Dawn Phillips, legislative asst. to Matt Wingard, Oregon House of Representatives

2011-09-27T13:28:00.000-07:00

From: Rep Wingard <rep.mattwingard@state.or.us>
To: Don Bellairs <bellairsd@yahoo.com>
Sent: Monday, September 26, 2011 2:15 PM
Subject: RE: Second effort to get oversight of abusive gov't agency head

Don,
I will talk to Rep Wingard further about your inquiry but at this point I do not believe there is anything more our office can do to be of assistance.

Sincerely,
Dawn Phillips
Legislative Assistant
State Representative
Matt Wingard
House District 26
900 Court Street NE H-372
Salem, OR 97301
www.leg.state.or.us/wingard rep.mattwingard@state.or.us
503.986.1426

Dawn,
Please thank Representative Wingard for his interest, however limited.

I am a hillbilly artist/teacher who came here in '97 and poured myself into a middle school teaching job. I was pretty good at different kinds of things with different kinds of kids and so they kept giving me more to do.

Along the way, some of my colleagues were not supportive of my success. That almost always happens, in my experience.

What is different this time is that, after being paid unfairly, I had asked to quit and, instead, was fired by below-the-belt sneak attack, then demeaned and manipulated by collaborating lawyers who were working with state employees to game the courts.

Whew. And it's much harder to live through all that than to say it.

To imply that my OEA lawyer, Tom Doyle (who was surely pre-arranged when the BSD HR administrators initiated contact with the OEA reps) EVER represented my interests is to be naive or dishonest. His multiple requests for delays of my FDAB appeal for "work load" reasons for 2 1/2 years while he manipulated me with a conflict-of-interest federal lawsuit and badgered me to sign TSPC "stipulations" in a state court are evidence of his breach of trust.

I was fired in a below-the-belt sneak attack by some punitive bosses with a lot to conceal. With the OEA's de facto permission, I was harassed by a TSPC investigator (Nisbet) who has since been replaced; years later, I was found "guilty" of "accepted facts" (what are those?!?) by a judge (Sloan) whom I have never met, who has since been removed from her job.

In the meantime, the TSPC director and OEA officials colluded to help BSD officials conceal the abrupt, secretive departure of the Westview principal, Malcolm Dennis, who was "in charge" when my employment contract was violated. He was coming to work 1/2 days, hung-over. By the start of his second year, he was on a plan-of assistance that the public never knew about and would soon be forced to resign quietly and would be given health benefits to buy his silence.

Because I refused to sign a confession, my license was suspended, three and 1/2 years after my employment contract was violated. State employees were using my licensing to leverage a federal court settlement on behalf of BSD administrators. That Hanna Vaandering, now OEA VP, brought me a second settlement contract in the federal case is a big red flag about the legitimacy of OEA legal advocacy.

So maybe there is something that Rep Wingard can do for me. For four years after I was fired, I was in an abyss with greedy lawyers, dealing with a deluge of notifications from the OEA and the state of Oregon about scheduled and postponed hearings and delays and cancellations and re-scheduling and unique findings and...

My brother and I had just moved my mom out here--she was dying. I was trying to resign from my school after being mistreated and, instead, was harassed and abused by individuals being paid by Oregon's government.

Ask Mr Wingard to prod these individuals out from behind their lawyers:
1. Jerome Colonna, former BSD superintendent, who signed a termination notice to violate my employment contract listing charges he had never investigated. He has never asked me about them. Never looked me in the eye--he just took my job.
2. Andrea Sloan, former Oregon Administrative Law Judge, who made a first-of-its-kind preclusion "finding" that has cost me my career, and I have never seen her face.
3. Victoria Chamberlain, eminent director of the TSPC, harassed me with an array of protean stipulations for years before taking my license and trashing my career to shelter unethical lawyers. I have never met her. Never.

I believe ALL these people would behave differently if they felt they would be held personally accountable for their actions. The system, if nothing else, promotes cowardice in its leaders.

Tell Mr. Wingard I hope we have a chance to talk about the challenges facing real teachers in Oregon. There are a lot of people spending taxpayer money to avoid that sort of eye contact.

Thank you for your response. If I can be of help, text me.

Don the teacher

To NYT: Secrets of a Bad Principal

2011-09-26T11:31:00.000-07:00

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/26/nyregion/the-secrets-of-a-good-principal.html?_r=1&ref=todayspaper

To the editor

NYT

I lost my teaching career because the Beaverton (OR) School District's patronage policies encompassed an unqualified high school assistant principal, Gail Vangorder, whose intrusive conduct and uninformed decision-making made it difficult for me to focus on my classes and my students when I worked under her administration. I taught both humanities and technology courses (in two languages) at the then-largest high school in Oregon. Additionally, I served as sponsor for several clubs, was the PA announcer for the school's varsity football and softball teams, and even worked as assistant girls' basketball coach. I served on the administrative team as activities director.

And taught five classes.

I threatened Ms. Vangorder and alienated some of the more entrenched staff. (Note to reformers: New teachers with chops do not always get the welcome mat--this is one of the significant problems with the way teacher unions work now.

Vangorder convinced our new principal (since secretly forced to resign for coming to work drunk) to replace me as Activities Director and pay the new person twice as much money, then persuaded the librarian she had supervised for several years to sign a bogus sexual harassment charge--it was thrown out six months later, after doing it's damage.

She changed my life, this principal who never taught. I had asked to quit after discovering the demeaning pay disparity. My mother was dying of lung disease at the time.

Vangorder never taught a class. Never went to any at our school, as far as I can tell. I know she never came to my class in five years. I don't think she went into our halls without her security guard. She had a library degree from a time when they called it that and, other than a vanity year overseas, had spent her whole career in one place.

She was catapulted into school administration after serving...as a librarian to the Beaverton School District's administrative headquarters (See: Rick Casey "Katz' Litter" Houston Chronicle ca. 2005).

Think about that. I was fired by a woman who had trained to be my supervisor by running a library for the school bureaucracy.

To terminate my contract, she would lie under oath about my work. Now, "retired" and quietly re-situated in a part-time university job, she is being paid for life by oblivious Oregon taxpayers for work she didn't ever know how do do.

And, sadly, never had to. After years of effort, I remain eager to clear my record and to expose the dysfunctional and hypocritical process that makes Oregon's teachers second-class citizens.

Mr. Winerip's article is the most important education piece I have read in some time.

www.statesponsoredtheft.blogspot.com

Crying for Angelina

2011-09-18T09:54:00.000-07:00

Money for schools: For Angelina to graduate, state must address poverty

At a small faculty meeting, I mentioned to my new superintendent, back in '04 when the rest of the school had been told to ditch any plans for field trips that year because of budget shortages, that it sent a bad message, letting our prestigious school drama club go off to Europe with the school board chairman's daughter and the district fundraiser's daughter.

The result of my comment to the superintendent (I never actually spoke with him again after that day--the HR department chiefs took over) was a below-the-belt, sneak attack that included blatantly false sex charges, perpetrated by greedy, well-connected lawyers being paid education money to cover up for dishonest and inept school administrators. I had asked to resign; instead, my supervisors chose to spend $250,000 of the taxpayers' money secretly to fire me for FOUR years. Employees of the state and of the OEA were helpful to collegial lawyers--they all conveniently work together, earning "education" money.

Today's Oregonian has a letter from a mom whose daughter is getting swallowed by her unmanageable new teaching job. Left unsaid: That stuff has been going on for a long time; Beaverton has long had a turnover rate that rivaled McDonalds. This imbalance of work equity is kept in one corner of most schools, where disposable teachers do more work with kids like Angelina so the veteran insiders can do cushy "faux" teaching and avoid the heavy lifting that public school teaching requires.

Mr. Olson's earnest efforts will soon put him on the wrong side of the OEA and those assorted individuals who have used education as a cash cow; he will find that, in very successful schools, the lead teachers don't live in million-dollar homes...or need to. Where there is no oversight or accountability, there is no equity for Angelina.

Beaverton's citizens should demand that their school board immediately fire anybody in the school bureaucracy who has any vestigial odor from Katz' Litter Box (see Rick Casey: Houston Chronicle, 2005). When I taught for her, a lot of unnoticed kids passed through the system while she and her entourage commanded so much attention. Talk about a parade of naked emperors. I discovered how far-reaching this phalanx of phonies has extended into our school bureaucracy; it concerns me deeply today.

My unnecessarily expensive, prolonged conflict with Beaverton's school administrators could NEVER happen to a teacher who belongs to an authentic teachers' union. We are in an education abyss and we should cry for far more kids than Angelina.

But, through our tears, we should thank God for Mr. Olson, who is on the right track by holding folks accountable...AND by getting volunteer medical/dental treatment introduced in the elementary school process.

You go, Tom. There are fat cats purring while Angelina suffers.

www.statesponsoredtheft.blogspot.com

Daily rushes from 2003 Westview High School Adv. Media original production "Wishes, Wisemen and Little Pigs"
In an effort to learn the structure of story-telling, our script committee focused on "three's"missing from the list in the title: __Wishes, __ Wisemen and__ Pigs. (To English teachers: Do you use the 'Oxford comma' after "Wisemen"?