B-Lo's Test and Punish Chernobyl, April 2016

Run DPCC, Gaseous Clay and HairGel dude repping Da Tests for some bullshit Bill Gates Astro Turf

Here in B-Lo it appears the forces of corporate ed reform have reached DEFCON 1. I looked it up on the chart and here's what that means: "Hair fully engulfed in flames, pants shat in and likewise ablaze. Victim running in tight circles, inchoate speech with drool present." Nowhere is the uproar more strident or hilarious than the frantic squealing of ed reform hogs to be heard emanating from The Buffalo News editorial bunker. 

Listen:

• In the span of several days they've run  an ed piece claiming the tests are all fixed and we all desperately need the data. The fact that the last data showed marked improvements in receivership schools yet Cuomo and Elia seem to think these improved schools need to remain in the hands of receivers all the same seems to have escaped the intrepid opinionistas hunkered down in the basement of One News Plaza. 
• The News also ran a wacky tag team article composed by the combined wits of Ed Reform Rappers Run DPCC (feat. Sam Radford and Jayson Zwara aka Jay Zee of BuffaloDeformEd) who teamed up to tell Betty Rosa she sould support their Shut Up and Take the Test campaign. We saw another editorial moaning about Opt Out keeping schools from knowing how bad they really suck.  
• #CorporateEdReformLivesMatter activist Rod Watson made a flaccid attempt at comedy where he proposed to Opt Out of work by writing a  madcap letter to the paper's publisher Warren Buffet -- a billionaire with investments in corporate ed reform -- which pretty much unfunnies the hell out of Rod's attempt at doing schtick -- And in a classic case of Ed Reform cluelessness he includes a "response" from Buffet who (unfunnily) proposes to contact Bill Gates to rent Woodstock and try to soothe all of the hurt feelings etc. caused by the test and punish regimen. Too bad this moron doesn't grasp that he's pretty much confirmed what we all knew already namely that people like Gates and Buffet really do think they run the world and can manipulate the small people into doing their will. And in trying to be funny Watson merely shows his ignorance and contempt for the legitimate acts of Civil Disobedience inspired by the Opt Out movement. He also shows himself to be a suckling lapdog for his corporate masters and a pathetic coward in the face of corporate bullying of parents and kids.  
• We've also seen a robocall and a snotty, misleading letter to parents from BPS  rockstar Principal Willliam Kresse who describes kids and parents opting out as "cowering from a reasonable challenge." Surely it hasn't crossed the good doctor's mind that the people caving in to his bullying and bullshitting about all the swell test improvements are the ones cowering while those who oppose him and all of his connections (Papa K. and the Wendt Foundation etc.) will be remembered as the true heroes when the smoke of the battle for public education clears.  
• Oh but there's more... One B-lo school planned a test prep pep rally for last Friday which I can only hope went better than the one in Florida where the fire eater started his face on fire for hundreds of horrified kids and adults. 
• And in another school kids who'd been opted out had tests put in front of them and their parents called and bullied into reversing their decision and agreeing to have the kids tested. Did I mention these were mainly parents of limited English proficiency -- you know, the ones that are easily intimidated and bullied? Very classy that. 
• In at least one other school, pizza parties were used to bribe kids into participating in the April Foolishness. 
• And at #43 a City Hall, a Central Office suit was dispatched to investigate the high number of sane parents and kids there who just said no to mandated child abuse. My high school friends from Lovejoy who went to Forty Tree woulda lumped the guy so it's prolly good they weren't around. 
• And then there's the subject of my last post the Assistant Principal who told parents Opting Out is illegal. 
• Wait we're not done here folks, Deliverance had a lot less squeal than corporate ed reform's hogs of April are putting up about now. Regentus Flatulentus Gasser Bennett was extracted from a shuffleboard court in Boynton Beach- he looks like he needs a higher SPF -- and trotted out for a pic with Run DPCC Sam and some dweeb with hair gel calling themselves High Achievement NY to bang the drum for their disingenuous Opt In message. 

I can't ever recall writing a post with so many links embedded in it and I try not to do this as I know it can get tedious jumping back and forth and being distracted by 20 pics that look like porn but aren't links and news stories about 18 yr olds from Hutch Tech running against Carl Paladino saying the Board needs some adult behavior and Carl is not the guy to deliver it. 

The point is though that I am not just flinging April snowballs in B-Lo at people I don't like. This shit can be documented and it's happening all over the place. In spite of the ugliness, the cheap shots and low blows employed by the corporate ed reform camp, I have to believe they are feeling the pinch and acting out of desperation. These mofos have had it their way so long with practically zero resistance it's kind of fun to see them squirm when faced with a fair fight. They are clearly not up for one and clearly unable to take the shit they've been dishing out against teachers, kids and parents for far too long. This is not the time to take out foot off the gas or our boot off their necks. Refuse, Refuse, Refuse. It's the only weapon we have and it's working. 

Carl Rings the Bell, Sort Of...

Buffalo News Editorial Board Celebrates Making Sense for Once. No, Really!

You never know where you're going to find someone making sense.

The Buffalo News Editorial Outhouse actually agrees with Carl Paladino today that he's correct to hammer his fellow board members for failing to mine Kriner Cash's contract with Performance Objectives, you know like the ones they all think teacher contracts should be laced with. It's eerily similar to the point I made here the other day when I said there was never a better time or a better guy to  pay according to his success in the various critical improvements he MUST accomplish.

Carl goes on at length to say that's because they're idiots who have no idea how to negotiate a contract and of course, as is always the case with our friend Carl, his lucid moment quickly draws to a close and he is once again enveloped in the dark, invective laced maelstrom we've  all come to know -- the one his enablers and asskissers like to refer to as "Carl Being Carl." I really have to congratulate him this time though as he's managed to knock quite a few pins down in a relatively short rant  -- short for Carl anyway.

I am encouraged and amused to see he's blasted MaryEllen Elia as "a rookie Commissioner" which is very true but because she's gallumping around like Agatha Trunchbull with that playground sour puss making threats, everyone else is too terrified to question or challenge anything she says. She is a rookie same as King was when he stumbled and bumbled his way to an out of state transfer as he failed miserably in the job he was handed while lacking practically every single qualification. I don't see Elia doing much better either.

Where King tried to condescend and pretend he was taking some educational and intellectual high road as critics hammered him for his asinine test and punish regimen, Elia seems more inclined to play the role of the bully, the goon you'd better not cross or else. It's mentioned in several places she was known in Florida for creating a hostile work atmosphere fueled with fear and intimidation. While King made pronouncements and tried to bluff his way past the irate parents and teachers avoiding eye contact and unscripted appearances, Elia is going to try staring people down with the Manson lamps and using tough talk about tool kits and "the law."

I guess you've got to look into your own "tool kit" when you take a job like this and figure which pose is going to be your most convincing. John King knew he couldn't scare a first grader away from the cookie plate on his best day so he played the aloof card seasoned with a dash of irritated petulance. Elia, it appears is going to fall back on her Niagara Falls roots even if they're only by marriage, with some kind of a Maggadino styled tough gal pose.

There is nothing in her personal vibe to indicate an open willing partner and/or listener. She projects the leaden glare of the heavy, the enforcer who was hired to put the kibosh on this opt out crap and take some people down if that's what it's going to take. I would assume her "toolkit" for Superintendents is also an opening salvo across their collective bow to let them know she will tolerate no nonsense from them and she is here to put a stop to Administrators supporting the Opt Out movement.

Back to Planet Paladino I am also encouraged to see him throwing high and inside at Kriner Cash, who, from what he's told us, is in a similar situation as Carl, as they both sit atop a sizeable cache of what he likes to call F-U money. The time out of town has really topped off Carl's battery and he came in with one of his greatest hits of all time in my book when he said Cash needed to install his people in top deputy positions "or be fitted for his career ending casket." Carl characterizes Cash not doing as ordered and hiring Kevin Eberle as number two in command as "messing with me."

Imagine spending a day in that head. You're out of town for the vote and the guy is hired anyway. You come back to town and say he'd better hire this guy for his right hand man and if he doesn't HE'S messing with YOU. Carl doesn't use the ABC of Antecedent/Behavior/Consequence we learned as special educators. In Carl's mind the Antecedent of him saying you better hire my guy is not part of the equation. No, in Carlthink, the Behavior would be Cash saying No, I don't want to put your guy in as my Number 2. From there he goes to the Consequence of calling Reddington's to send him over a catalogue of their finest mahogany containers. 

While the three of them do their dance of egos, an untested rookie Commissioner on a mission, an unknown out of towner who refuses to buy a house or green bananas because he knows he's only going to be here for a minute and a loaded loose cannon who says and does whatever the hell he wants, I know a lot of B-Lo teachers have been setting up classrooms and buying school supplies this week. And in a few days they'll go to work without tweets or headlines or news cameras and they'll deal with whatever gets thrown at them professionally, passionately and without fanfare. The work that needs doing will be done by Buffalo teachers, not loudmouths or heavies. That's how it always gets done. I have never been more proud to be part of that effort. Here's to another great year. 

Friday the 13th Hammers B-Lo's Ed Reformy Board

Whose Schools? 

Well well well. Leave it to Accountability Jim Sampson to zone out on the procedure button and send the whole "special board meeting" into a tailspin. I can't help but laugh thinking the same pompous ass who tried to shut down John Washington II when he didn't like JW II pointing out that Carl Paladino has made race based references to members of the school board screwed up - Royally. When Michael Ziolkowski complained a few weeks back about Sampson himself as CEO of Gateway enjoying memberships to social clubs to the tune of $64,000 on the taxpayer's dime, Sampson got away with shutting him down and having security toss the guy. Wednesday at Waterfront Sampson warned Mad Mike OBowen sounding like an ineffective daycare volunteer giving permission to the rowdy kid to act up one more time before he'd be tossed. The most absurd part of O'Bowen's trip to the mic was that Sampson reminded him he'd been contacted by Buffalo Police and told not to return to board meetings. To which OBowen responded by waving a sheet of paper and saying with a go to hell shrug "I'm on the agenda." Which he was. Apparently, unlike the rougher high schools a lot of us have plied our trade in, the Board doesn't know to publish a standard "Do Not Admit List." Funny, if any of those Majoritarians who are so sensitive to public input had ever worked at Burgard or South Park they'd know you put up a list to keep recidivists from crashing the gate. Ellicott Development and the Sabres apparently are not ideal training grounds for people who want to dabble in Edumacation.

That aside, Sampson flubbed the procedural maneuver. Carl went all Seneca Street for a bit with a real practicing lawyer then dissolved into a funk, playing Angry Birds on his phone for the remainder prompting some wags in the packed City Hall  sweatbox to nickname him The Two Minute Reformer in reference to the way he petered out after such a brief but hysterical exchange. As we know from our dedicated friends and colleagues and a little help from Shane at DailyPublic.com. an oddball reversal of fortune followed with Ogilve's plan being dusted off and amended and finally agreed upon to the point that a unanimous vote sent it forward. This Hatfield/McCoy Board reached a unanimous vote? WTF? The slam dunk of the reformers was denied, the ball slapped clear up into the seats behind where Spike Lee sits. Nobody got charterized. Nobody got privatized. The Movement lives to fight another day. Unfortunately so does The Majority with a seething Carl Paladino skulking in its galley. 

Which brings me to my point, yes friends, aside from recapping with Schadenfreudian glee, the Sampsonian screw up, the Paladinean melt down and the Ultimate Fighting Bitchslap Knockdown of 2015 as Sharon Belton Cottman turned and fixed Leisure Class Larry Quinn with dual eye daggers to explain that Ogilve was not going to do the Majority's bidding in the immortal words : He's not your boy and this aint a hockey game. (cue airhorns, Skrillex bass drop, buildings imploding, Snoop vibing, ICBMs launching and a group of 50 kids at a rap battle falling over backwards yelling Oooooooooooooooooohhhhh Shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit!) As I said, my point...

So far the meetings at someone's house and Spot have done the trick for the grassroots effort taking place in our midst. As usual some are pulling more than their weight and others like me are pulling as much as we can reasonably get a grip on but would like to do more. A friend on FB today made a comment that made me laugh out loud. Yes I actually LOLd friends. Isn't NYSUT supplying buses and the like to get people where they need to be? Well we really don't need a bus since everyone knows where they are going and we're willing to get there on our own. But the larger question remains. Just What the hell is NYSUT doing as Buffalo teeters on the brink of Ed Reform Nightmare Number One? Last I heard we were advised by our great clucking disoriented mother hen of a union to tweet and hashtag against the Andy/Albany Ed Reform machine. We were advised to sign up for "text blasts" I think they called it and wear fucking stickers too. Yes, from what I hear one of those NYSUT stickers works like ricin against the powers of corporate ed reform. Did they think because Sheriff Andy doesn't allow anyone to wear pro union badges, pins or stickers at his parties that these goddamned things have some kind of innate totemic hoodoo we can turn loose against Regentus Flatulentus Bennet and that Sociopathic shrew Madame Tisch? And when a NYSUT apologist hit me with the usual schtick about how hard they are all working and why don't I focus on the real enemy, my friend from downstate chimed in saying As an outsider, I think Buffalo people have every right to be pissed and disappointed with the lack of support they are getting. Hmmm, I had to wonder about this as nowhere in my most recent travels surrounded by the hard corest of the hard core have I heard any mention of NYSUT. It's like they have rendered themselves irrelevant and nobody with a brain is waiting for the white horse of Revive Party to come thundering to the rescue. 

NYSUT chickened out from endorsing and getting behind Zephyr Teachout and they have failed consistently to stand up to Cuomo on any level until very very recently. I said here and elsewhere as these events unfolded "We're on our own, folks." I read the other day my colleague Arthur Goldstein in NYC describing how the real boss of NYSUT Mikey -- punch you in the face if you take my Common Core -- Mulgrew shot down a Test Refusal/Opt Out motion then sent in all of his loyalty oath bound apparatchiks to kill it. Later, Mulgrew sneered at M.O.R.E. guy Mike Schirzer's Anti Common Core motion calling him "one of those" as if a teacher being against CCSS is someone we all need to dismiss as a crackpot. I guess you can say the writing remains on the wall and it tells me the people we should be counting on to have our backs, like Dick Cheney dodging the draft in the 60's, have "other priorities." And really I am fine with that. NYSUT reportedly spent $360,000 getting Marc Pannepinto elected. What has he done to show us that money was well spent?More crickets... When the cliches used by union haters keep ringing up true -- they only care about themselves, they will work with our enemies against us, they have their own agenda, etc. etc. etc-- I think it's time we work for ourselves and deal with them later after the smoke clears and victory can be declared. When we have top union people working against the Opt Out movement and taking potshots at teachers who want to buck CCSS it tells me we have a serious problem within the union's elite ranks. But for now we have bigger, more pressing fish to fry. And once they're fried and served up with coleslaw and potato salad in the fine B-Lo tradition, we'll deal with our so called "leadership" in the same way we dealt with this board. For now, Solidarity and Strength to all who stand and fight. 

Democracy Tramples Ruling Class at Board Meeting. Several Egos Bruised

Proposed Portable Board of Ed Meeting Table

Democracy has struck like a bolt of lightning out of a clear blue sky in Buffalo New York. Board Majority rubber stamp Superintendent appointee to be, James Weimer has removed his hat from the ring because it was made public his wife had worked for Carl Paladino. Why he thought this wouldn't be mentioned escapes most of us but I suspect he was told it wouldn't matter and hoped for the best. Maybe in 1915 you could hope that but in 2015 you can count on your overdue library books being mentioned if someone doesn't want you to get the job.

In the aftermath of the strike, Board of Ed Majority members are being treated for their injuries at nearby taverns. Most notably burnt was Lars Quinn who was barely able to point a circling finger at the heavens croaking repeatedly "Outside forces, outside forces..." In the long held and miserably disingenuous tradition of the ed reform caste Sir Larry of Quinn is trying desperately to direct blame at the teacher's union and "a parent group..." for causing Wednesday's lightning strike. He claimed too that these adults were engaging in the dirtiest tricks you could think of to derail Weimer's appointment. I guess pointing out the conflict of interest when your partner Paladino tries to hire the husband of a former employee to serve as your puppet in City Hall is officially a dirty trick. This coming from the guy who took Tapestry Charter officials inside Bennett High to show them what they'd be getting if he could swing the deal without telling anyone he was doing it. Larry, Please.

Well, Lars, as usual you have it twisted. Some teachers union people held a short gathering beforehand and they actually had some people from the state union there in body but none of them said very much. The talk centered around the Teacher's Contract. It was actually one of the more perfunctory shows of unionism this bloggist has ever witnessed. Afterwards the BPTO ( the shadowy "parents group" of note) plugged in and allowed disenfranchised parents to speak. This is where it heated up. This is where the ions started charging and the gathering overhead took shape and motion.

 It was parents, Larry, pissed off mothers and fathers most of them minorities, who couldn't bear the idea that they were not going to have any say in the direction of their children's public education. I'll say it again : No say in their own children's public education. They weren't going to have any say Larry because your buddy and fellow millionaire Carl Paladino at the last board meeting was asked point blank by a mother if parents would have any say in the selection of the next Superintendent. Your friend and partner Carl Paladino looked her dead in the eye and said "No." You could hear all the air being sucked out of the room when he said it.

You'll see the parallel here in Quinn's comments and those from various State Ed and Test and Punish apparatchiks. They feverishly insist that unions are behind every kid's opt out and they are trying to make the same claim about the raucous unfettered expressions of democracy expressed at Wednesday's board meeting. They have to pin this on unions, it's their only hope. Because admitting that parents have had it up to here with their top down arbitrary power plays and other nefarious bullshit would be too big of an admission of their gross incompetence as stewards of the public trust. For all the talk we've heard especially from Carl the Churl about "incompetence" -- it's his mote juste in describing former Super Pamela Brown -- it strikes me that someone needs to start using the "I" word when the current Board Majority is mentioned.

 What exactly have they accomplished to date with the benefit of their majority other than going all John Henry on the divisions that existed before Lars and Hello Patti were swept into office with the help of a tsunami of free drinks at Doc Sullivan's? What exactly has this Gang of Five accomplished? I say Five because I'm feeling generous. Board watchers and students of the game understand that there are only three players on the board here. Hey Bartender McCarthy is along to repeat Sampson's grunts and gavels while Hello Patti the cute little kitten sans mouth keeps the olives and umbrellas fresh in the man fellow's drinks for them. Jay and Patti vote as instructed and Jay hopes to cash in his Board chips for a seat on the Common Council where he can harrumph and yell See here! See here! after Rev. Pridgen speaks.

And just for the sake of Larry Quinn and his "outside forces" it was revealed yesterday by a newspaper not on the ed reform's top ten list that lobbyists for charter schools spent more money than any other group in recent elections including the one that reinstalled sociopath and shithead Andrew Cuomo as governor. You can read it HERE. Recall when Reformy John King, Dragon Empress Tisch and now Deposed Regentus Flatulentus Bob Bennett went on their "I'm Not Listening Tour" fingers jammed firmly in both ears around the state. When their tour was uphended and overwhelmed in much the same fashion as this this board meeting Wednesday, the most pissed off and raucous people in the angry crowd were parents. With his characteristic petulance you'll recall King tried to call off the whole enterprise blaming the fierce resistance on "Special Interests." To admit they've enraged parents is beyond the ken of the Ed Reform Brahmin. They simply cannot go there. Because admitting you've failed and infuriated Mom and Dad and made pawns of their kids with your profit driven policies is simply more truth than the Ed Reform Caste is built to withstand.

I hear they're looking for a place to display Michael Morgulis's iconic wooden "City of No Illusions" table. How about we put it one wheels and take it to wherever the Board of Education meetings are held. The Board majority wants to create some illusions about where this lightning strike came from. Outside sources they say, unions, they say. The Board Majority have tried to create the illusion that the schools are theirs to do with as they please. Sadly for the Wealthy White Men's Advocacy Group, residents of The City of No Illusions are not following the script. There are too many parents paying attention now for Carl and Lars and Co. to wheel and deal in comfort. Buffalo Public Schools remain Buffalo Public Schools.

Our Schools. We Decide.

Buffalo Board of Education A Confederacy of Abomination

Charter Supporter Rallies His Troops

Rarely have I found myself with so much to hate in a given post that I almost couldn't write it. Today my poetry club girls wanted a topic or theme to write about so I suggested "Ambivalence." Since these are bright motivated kids they quickly dove into it. I am not enjoying the same quick acceleration as this is beginning to remind me of why I haven't watched one episode of House of Cards, Season Two. Namely, I find all of the characters unbearably Hobbesean, insufferable and odious. Hate waits for no man as I well know though so let's get this party started.

Commencing with a crazy exchange of correspondence I tripped across in a scurrilous little blog operated by a rich kid opportunist (Matthew Ricchiazzi)from what I can gather and aided by someone named Mike Madigan whom I saw described thusly in Artvoice by the inimitable Michael Caputo (with whom I suffered through a UB class called Literary Journalism back in the Dark Ages) :  "Mike Madigan is a crazy scumbag, a lying piece of shit, completely clueless about politics, convinced 9-11 is an inside job, and clearly knows absolutely nothing about the League or much else. He's the guy who protested about abortion while selling fetal stem cells for a living. No self respecting Republican would be caught near him and I wouldn't wipe my ass with him if he was 2-ply. Fuck him."

O.k. now that we've got that ball rolling... MM and MR operate this bloggish enterprise called The Buffalo Chronicle whose gothic scripted masthead recalls the age old banner of the Courier Express or Pac's Thug Life tat depending on your frame of reference. There's definitely a right leaning odor coming off this thing but I can't say it's Republican, Caputo won't for damned sure. I can't exactly call it Libertarian either but maybe that's closer than anything else. I have recently coined the derogatory term Teapartarian to describe any sensibility that tends to towards anger, intolerance, excessive violent over reaction and am irrational execration towards anything that could be construed as "liberal" or "Democrat." Tom Bauerle, pm drive time rightie of WBEN AM's suggestion that the Canadian government videotape the Ottawa shooter's body being stuffed inside of a pig carcass and interred somewhere on the steppes of Manitoba is a good example of the Teapartarian pulse. This, according to Tom is meant to offend his recently converted Islamic sensibilities and deny him a respectful burial. As it were.

The "Who Do I Hate More?" daisy petals begin to fall with one of Carl Paladino's (School Board member, Charter School Landlord to the 3rd power with no less than 2 more charter leasees in the pipeline) lawyers sending a Buffalo School Principal a letter on Paladino's Law firm stationery and identifying herself as a lawyer using an Ellicott Development email address. The contents of the letter essentially challenge the Principal for telling a parent active in the Opt Out movement that she is no longer welcome on school grounds. Oh wait now. I do think Carl is a scumbag but where does this Principal get off telling a parent such illegal, bullying garbage? The Principal in question, Tonja Williams, served as administrator of Home Instruction for a few years, a  job usually given to someone of marginal talent with a few years until retirement. I am not aware of her chops as a Principal nor her acquisition of that City Hall shortcut doctorate the dreaded EdD by which one is able to ascend the payscale without incurring much of the edification ordinarily involved in a real doctoral program. As director of H.I. she existed on paper but operated in full stealth mode invisibility and nobody was calling her "Doctor."

To fully enjoy the byzantine depths of invidiousness of both sides in this ping pong of the malignancy one should really read the exchange in all its  putrid entirety HERE. If you fear for the moments of your life you will surrender and never get back I can tell you the Principal forwarded the letter to the Board of ed attorney's office who then wrote back to the Carl's employee who forwarded that letter to Carl who responded to the Board's attorney asking:

Rashondra, I would assume you have some unusual  legal basis for your response.  The State allowed opt out.  What did Mary Bishop (parent)  do wrong?  Does Tanya Williams set her own policies?

I found this pretty reasonable even coming from a guy who sent horse porn to his friends. The Board lawyer responds and CC's Interim Superintendent Ogilve as well as all the other Board Members. And now, it is, as they say on the corner, officially "ON BITCHES!"

Nevergold calls out Carl for using an employee from his private practice to essentially intimidate an employee of the school district for which he serves as a board member. She exhorts Carl's Majority Ally James Sampson the current Board President to address the matter. At this point Carl is out of rational cards to play so he creates a verbal mural like one of those bizarre billboards he slaps up along the 90 downtown on the side of his building. I think the last one was Brian Higgins dancing marionette like on Pelosian strings. Here is the Carl money shot in all its glory:


Ms. Nevergold, you never cease to amaze me.

You have in the past looked the other way when your sisters Ms Cottman and Cassandra Wright acted as the sisterhood muscle to intimidate those teachers at Bennett who dared to speak up at a Board meeting to denounce the incompetent Principal.

Now you complain and blindly defend when one of your sisters is asked why she ignored State Law giving parents the right to opt out of testing and why she imposed sanctions on a parent. In the recent past, the Administration had been impossible to approach, incompetent, dysfunctional and not transparent. As a result,  many parents, administrators and others contact Board members with their problems. We get a huge amount of complaints and I try to answer every one of them.  My assistants always carry themselves professionally.   In this case, I was approached by a parent regarding an incompetent principal, who achieved tenure only by way of chicanery, administered the lowest rated priority school in the district.  She is so unskilled that it has been necessary to pay a full time assistant to follow her around and tell her what to do. She had specifically instructed teachers not to take attendance.  Violence is rampant because there is very little discipline.  She is obviously part of the sisterhood friends and family club.  She was given a fraudulent, exaggerated and incomplete APPR and recommendation for tenure by a Chief of School Leadership who has in the past lied, schemed and acted as the muscle for the past majority/present minority. Intending to respond, I was in the process of getting both sides of the story necessary to do so.

You should find something else to do with your time.  Any Board member who would take money and support from the union, the chief adversary of the Board, and not see it as a conflict is seriously lacking in good judgment.  Your actions opposing matters involving charter schools clearly indicate that you are a pawn of Phil Rumore.  If you really wanted to help the kids you would get Rumore to give up the management prerogative that paralyses the Administration’s ability to function.  You refused to appoint me to the Joint Schools Construction Board when I was the only person on the Board of Ed who had any experience in Construction and now we find that the real reason for not appointing me was that you and Florence Johnson violated the public trust as fiduciaries and were complicit with others to deny transparency on the lack of any reasonable due diligence before certifying payments to the Program Manager during the entire term of the 12-year $1.4 billion contract.  Although the lack of such reasonable due diligence and oversight demands a complete and through independent audit that any knowing and responsible fiduciary would recognize, you chose to lead the minority of the Board to vote against the audit.  Your motivations are highly suspect.  Last year when the Board was considering the discharge of Pamela Brown, you , as President of the Board, conspired to pack the Board meeting with your friends and family club and allow a number of your trained activist friends to spew venom and racist remarks at me during the public speaking portion of the meeting.

I recognize that it is difficult to become irrelevant but the system failed dramatically under the watch of you and your former majority cohorts’.  You are blind to your incompetence and the dysfunction that your racist and union oriented  attitudes brought to the Buffalo Public Schools.  You are obviously more interested in enjoying the power of the office than doing anything positive for the kids.  You should resign.

The Sorority Majority has pretty much been rendered toothless by the May election results where Carl's developer pal and former part owner of the Sabres Larry Quinn breezed into office on a "throw the bums out and bring in the rich connected white guys" ticket. The Sorority Majority were a shiftless, cronyistic and race driven coven, make no mistake. The real damage they did was in creating an "Anyone but Them Mentality" among the 2% of people who actually vote in school board elections. Nobody bothered to ask why Larry Quinn all of a sudden gives a flying fuck about education. Nor did they ever ask Patty Bowers Pierce if she'd ever had an original idea in her vacuous head or if her only contribution to the children of B-Lo would be to vote however Quinn, Sampson and Carl told her to vote. Nobody gave a shit. All voters wanted was to unload this corrupt, self serving, race card playing Sisterhood as Carl loves to call them. They chalked up a 6 year reign of terror hiring thug jackass James Williams and two more years of circling the edu-drain under Pamela Pearls Brown, PhD Harvard. They stuffed their faces on catered meals before and during meetings, they took trips to conferences other members described as shopping and restaurant tours with no report on the conference materials and no feedback to other members who weren't part of their junkets. They hired multiple unqualified incompetents and ran off Amber Dixon a competent knowledgeable Super because she wasn't black. And now they've made it possible for a cadre of moneyed pompous asses to start making deals with Rookie Commissioner King, with Frank McGuire and likely Steve Polowitz and his Chameleons as well. Word has it Eva Destruction and her Suckcess Academy is probing the possibility of a Buffalo franchise. The Sorority Majority's legacy of sucking continues even though their own influence is dead and gone. As I told you a while ago, there is almost too much here to adequately despise all of it. But we'll give it a shot.