In typical Buffalo Board of MisEducation fashion, Debbie Buckley, An Assistant Superintendent of Federal and State Programs has been terminated. From what the B-lo News says ( I bitch about her pro-charter slant but thanks again, Mary) all but the new Board President, Mary Ruth Kapsiak, voted for Buckley's dismissal. O.K. there's always one right? ... But wait, it gets better... Apparently the charges against Ms. Buckley took down quite a few trees and ended up being described as a "voluminous report." Only one copy of said report was provided to the Board. And from what's been said so far, guess who is the only Board member said to have read the thing? If you guessed Mary Ruth Kapsiak you get a high five from Alvion Johnson.
Ordinarily I wouldn't bother with such a detail but I am something of a detail guy in my own little weird universe. You recall the Buffalo News ed. beat writer writing - I thought shockingly - that one Board member actually admitted that they were not going to bother reading the resumes of Dr. Newsome, Dr. Brown or Amber Dixon because Cascade Consultants was keeping the resumes at a specified location to keep them I guess out of everyone else's hands. An elected official who is paid a stipend admits that doing their job is going to be too much work and chooses instead to blow it off and admit the same to a reporter. Now if you look up Balls in the dictionary her picture should be posted there. I say she because odds are better that it was a woman since the board is 5 out of 9 women and it gets tedious as hell trying to do all that extra leg work avoiding using a gendered pronoun.
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| Buffalo Board of education 2012 |
"I read all the legal documentation, and in my opinion it wasn't justification for dismissal," said Kapsiak, who was just elected board president. "Plus, she has tenure in a different area. I know she has tenure in the district. I voted against termination based on the fact that she has tenure, and I couldn't see in my mind a reason for termination."
Question : What were the other 8 basing their votes on ?
And then there's Carl Paladino's version of this same twisted story :
In a complaint to the U. S. Attorney’s Office this summer, developer Carl P. Paladino alleged that a high-ranking district administrator, Mark W. Frazier, asked Buckley to sign an $85,000 check over from the district to the Leadership Academy, an internal group that trains principals. Frazier has denied the allegation.
Cambria said Buckley was later asked to sign an affidavit saying the incident had not occurred. She refused and instead provided an affidavit describing a different account of the events, he said. Soon afterward, she was suspended.
Mark Frazier like a few other Williams' cabinteers decided to take a paycut and go back to being a unionized Special Education Supervisor not long after Amber Dixon took over. Nobody has heard anything about any case against him. I should say nobody I know or talk with but truthfully it really doesn't come up much either. So Whom do we believe? The Boardfolk couldn't steer clear of a controversy if you gave them a GPS an AAA TripTik and James Williams' old driver for 6 free months. One curious note is I see Ms. Buckley has downgraded from Paul Cambria to a less high profile defense lawyer named Paul Furlong. No slam intended at Mr. Furlong but I once talked to someone who said the amount their family owed Mr. Cambria for handling a very sensitive case was down to almost 100K after some serious work art paying it off. My only point being that maybe Ms. Buckley's opinion of the case has changed. Either she decided she can't afford this level of defense, she simply doesn't need it, or even Paul Cambria isn't going to be able to win this thing. Here are Mr. Furlong's thoughts, read them and you decide :
"She's being scapegoated because she would not engage in certain acts that some people around her wanted her to engage in having to do with the administration of Title I funds," Furlong said.
"She administered Title I funds, funds intended to help poor kids. But the fact of the matter is the funds were not going to help poor kids..They were going to help everyone but poor kids. Buckley objected to this, so she was on the receiving end of a lot of people's wrath."
Title One funds being misused by some tower dwellers........SHOCKING!! Oddly enough, this year we were allocated $2000 more than we have ever had for our Title One parent involvement funds. I wonder where all that 'EXTRA' money came from all of a sudden? Could it be because some were already caught with their hands in the cookie jar? I'm still trying to figure out how some of them aren't sharing a jail cell with a guy named Bubba!
ReplyDeletePS....The children at PS 72 (which is back on the SINI list) and their families lost those much needed Title One funds this year because the principal couldn't seem to get the paperwork in on time! Go figure
People who went into education with the idea they were going to get rich have always made me uncomfortable. It's one of the first trade offs every guidance counselor career coach and parent points out to anyone thinking they want to educate. You trade off a lot of salary for security. But then again there are always those who think they can have it all like the Michelob commercials told them they could back in the 80's.
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