Do You Want to Know When Your School Is Being Investigated?

A March 26, 2006 Seattle Times article makes one wonder: should students be told when a school is being investigated?

Here are a few quotes from the article:

"In the eight years that Judy McKinney was attending the Court Reporting Institute in North Seattle, the state investigated her school three times. But she didn't know about it.

"Neither did other students attending the Court Reporting Institute. A state analysis found that only 6 percent of CRI students graduate. One percent become court reporters...

"McKinney took out nearly $28,500 in loans to pay for school. After eight years of school, her transcription still isn't fast enough or accurate enough to pass the state's test to become a court reporter.

"Now the state Workforce Training and Education Coordinating Board, which oversees some vocational and technical schools, is trying to shut down the school...

"The students said they were left on their own to learn to type in court-reporter shorthand and had to work off of taped dictations so garbled that they often couldn't understand the words. Computers didn't work and classes were taught by lab assistants — current students who weren't court reporters...

"Some former students say that by the time they realized there were problems with the school, they had invested so much time and money that they thought they should stick it out. Some say they were so beaten down by failure that they didn't have the confidence to quit. Others were so far in debt that they couldn't afford to drop out because they would have to start paying back their loans..."

Emily Heffter: 206-464-8246

SDCOE JPA Lawyers Are Outraged When School Personnel Held Accountable

San Diego County Office of Education lawyers maintain a constant state of outrage at the thought that any school employee might be asked to testify about violations of law in our schools. They clearly feel that the public and the courts have no business prying into the actions of public school employees.

When the public pays hundreds of thousands of dollars to lawyers, it has a right to expect that the lawyers will not violate the law to protect those who have harmed the public.

In the Maura Larkins case, one SDCOE lawyer became so outraged in court that she pointed her two index fingers at the plaintiff, holding her two hands like a pair of pistols, and jabbed them toward the plaintiff, as if she wanted to shoot her. This out-of-control hostility regarding the judicial process is not appropriate for publicly-funded lawyers. This lawyer was angrily trying to protect individuals who had harmed public school children and employees, and had cost the taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars. Why did taxpayers pay to defend these individuals?

Interesting Documents

Four interesting documents from the Maura Larkins OAH hearing are posted at mauralarkins.com/page22
Maura Larkins