My challenge to Will Carless at VOSD and Jeff McDonald at U-T San Diego:
Why don't you find out the truth about what's going on at SDCOE?
Now that Will Carless has replaced Emily Alpert at VOSD, why doesn't he conduct a "Crosier Watch" similar to the "Petty Watch" he conducted in 2008?
Over the past few years, only a few limited stories about the tactics of education attorneys have crept into the press. Reporters have to beg and plead and practically stand on their heads to get their stories published. Voice of San Diego dropped its coverage of SDCOE attorney shenanigans, and laid-off its stellar education reporter Emily Alpert. CEO Scott Lewis claimed that he didn't have enough money to pay her.
But that explanation doesn't hold water.
Voice of San Diego benefactors Buzz Woolley and Irwin Jacobs, who claim to care about education, could have easily paid Emily's salary with their pocket change if they'd wanted her to stay. And I suspect she would have wanted to stay if her job description had been made more appealing, which would have included being allowed to publish her stories freely. At one time she must have hoped that all her work would result in some changes for children in schools.
It seems Buzz Woolley, Irwin Jacobs and Emily Alpert weren't on the same page.
I recently discovered (in a story by Jeff McDonald at the U-T) that SDCOE executive Dan Puplava, whom Emily had started investigating, was fined $7000 and had his brokers license suspended while AIG Financial, which was paying Puplava big bucks for moonlighting with them, was fined $300,000 for not properly overseeing him. Still, Puplava retains his job as head of the SDCOE Fringe Benefits Consortium.
Voice of San Diego never even placed a link in its Morning Report to the U-T San Diego story.
To its credit, VOSD's Will Carless is doing a great job investigating a school bond scam in Poway pulled off by board members and their lawyers.
But if VOSD had been willing to aggressively investigate education attorneys, the Poway Capital Appreciation Bonds scandal might have been prevented.
Of course, the downside of that for VOSD would be that it wouldn't have an exciting school bond story to write about.
It seems that journalists are a bit like Plaintiff lawyers: they actually benefit from corruption and wrongdoing because investigation it gets them money and fame.
All along, of course, the school attorneys are making work for themselves by advising school boards to ignore the law.
But the public doesn't hear much about this.
In fact, even private bloggers like me and Scott Dauenhaur get sued by SDCOE lawyer Dan Shinoff for defamation on behalf of himself and his pals at SDCOE. SDCOE should stop tax dollars to stop public discussion of school attorney tactics, but it won't.
Shockingly, it seems that U-T San Diego's Jeff McDonald is more willing to expose SDCOE than Voice of San Diego is. As a member of Voice of San Diego, I never thought I'd be forced to confess that we need the U-T in order to get balanced news reporting in San Diego. I never thought Doug Manchester's rag would sometimes do a better job on education than Buzz Woolley and Irwin Jacobs.
The U-T freely admits that it is using the paper to influence voters and officials. You know you're reading a biased paper when you read the U-T. The Union-Tribune has been killing important stories for years.
The problem with VOSD is that the bias is in the censorship--you don't know which stories they killed because donors didn't like them. Except, of course, in cases where VOSD started a story--and then killed it.
See similar problem in Maryland.
Showing posts with label San Diego Union-Tribune. Show all posts
Showing posts with label San Diego Union-Tribune. Show all posts
Thursday, September 27, 2012
Tuesday, September 11, 2012
The man who calls himself Papa Doug now owns all of San Diego's major papers.
The UT-San Diego yesterday denied that it had bought the North County Times, but today admitted that it had. This makes Voice of San Diego all the more important to San Diegans.
U-T Buys North County Times
September 11, 2012
By DAGNY SALAS
Voice of San Diego
Developer and U-T San Diego owner Doug Manchester now owns two major daily newspapers in the San Diego region: The company jointly owned by Manchester and his partner, U-T CEO John Lynch, bought the North County Times for $11.95 million. Voice of San Diego reporter Rob Davis is on the story and has been tweeting about it this morning:
11 Sep 12
Rob Davis@robwdavis
NCT publisher confirms that, yes indeed, the sale is complete now. Today. For real...
11 Sep 12
Rob Davis@robwdavis
Yesterday's non-sale fiasco has the bad odor of a case of We Wanted to Control Our News So We Denied The Report...
11 Sep 12
Rob Davis@robwdavis
The man who calls himself Papa Doug now owns all of San Diego's major papers. Good time to reread my profile of him. http://www.voiceofsandiego.org/environment/muck/article_171fddf0-4311-11e1-8874-0019bb2963f4.html
PRESS FREEDOM INDEX 2011/2012
Syria, Bahrain and Yemen get worst ever rankings
“This year’s index sees many changes in the rankings, changes that reflect a year that was incredibly rich in developments, especially in the Arab world,” Reporters Without Borders said today as it released its 10th annual press freedom index. “Many media paid dearly for their coverage of democratic aspirations or opposition movements. Control of news and information continued to tempt governments and to be a question of survival for totalitarian and repressive regimes. The past year also highlighted the leading role played by netizens in producing and disseminating news.
“Crackdown was the word of the year in 2011. Never has freedom of information been so closely associated with democracy. Never have journalists, through their reporting, vexed the enemies of freedom so much. Never have acts of censorship and physical attacks on journalists seemed so numerous. The equation is simple: the absence or suppression of civil liberties leads necessarily to the suppression of media freedom. Dictatorships fear and ban information, especially when it may undermine them.
“It is no surprise that the same trio of countries, Eritrea, Turkmenistan and North Korea, absolute dictatorships that permit no civil liberties, again occupy the last three places in the index. This year, they are immediately preceded at the bottom by Syria, Iran and China, three countries that seem to have lost contact with reality as they have been sucked into an insane spiral of terror, and by Bahrain and Vietnam, quintessential oppressive regimes. Other countries such as Uganda and Belarus have also become much more repressive.
“This year’s index finds the same group of countries at its head, countries such as Finland, Norway and Netherlands that respect basic freedoms. This serves as a reminder that media independence can only be maintained in strong democracies and that democracy needs media freedom. It is worth noting the entry of Cape Verde and Namibia into the top twenty, two African countries where no attempts to obstruct the media were reported in 2011.”...
U-T Buys North County Times
September 11, 2012
By DAGNY SALAS
Voice of San Diego
Developer and U-T San Diego owner Doug Manchester now owns two major daily newspapers in the San Diego region: The company jointly owned by Manchester and his partner, U-T CEO John Lynch, bought the North County Times for $11.95 million. Voice of San Diego reporter Rob Davis is on the story and has been tweeting about it this morning:
11 Sep 12
Rob Davis@robwdavis
NCT publisher confirms that, yes indeed, the sale is complete now. Today. For real...
11 Sep 12
Rob Davis@robwdavis
Yesterday's non-sale fiasco has the bad odor of a case of We Wanted to Control Our News So We Denied The Report...
11 Sep 12
Rob Davis@robwdavis
The man who calls himself Papa Doug now owns all of San Diego's major papers. Good time to reread my profile of him. http://www.voiceofsandiego.org/environment/muck/article_171fddf0-4311-11e1-8874-0019bb2963f4.html
PRESS FREEDOM INDEX 2011/2012
Syria, Bahrain and Yemen get worst ever rankings
“This year’s index sees many changes in the rankings, changes that reflect a year that was incredibly rich in developments, especially in the Arab world,” Reporters Without Borders said today as it released its 10th annual press freedom index. “Many media paid dearly for their coverage of democratic aspirations or opposition movements. Control of news and information continued to tempt governments and to be a question of survival for totalitarian and repressive regimes. The past year also highlighted the leading role played by netizens in producing and disseminating news.
“Crackdown was the word of the year in 2011. Never has freedom of information been so closely associated with democracy. Never have journalists, through their reporting, vexed the enemies of freedom so much. Never have acts of censorship and physical attacks on journalists seemed so numerous. The equation is simple: the absence or suppression of civil liberties leads necessarily to the suppression of media freedom. Dictatorships fear and ban information, especially when it may undermine them.
“It is no surprise that the same trio of countries, Eritrea, Turkmenistan and North Korea, absolute dictatorships that permit no civil liberties, again occupy the last three places in the index. This year, they are immediately preceded at the bottom by Syria, Iran and China, three countries that seem to have lost contact with reality as they have been sucked into an insane spiral of terror, and by Bahrain and Vietnam, quintessential oppressive regimes. Other countries such as Uganda and Belarus have also become much more repressive.
“This year’s index finds the same group of countries at its head, countries such as Finland, Norway and Netherlands that respect basic freedoms. This serves as a reminder that media independence can only be maintained in strong democracies and that democracy needs media freedom. It is worth noting the entry of Cape Verde and Namibia into the top twenty, two African countries where no attempts to obstruct the media were reported in 2011.”...
Saturday, April 14, 2012
CVESD gets an award from San Diego Health and Human Services, where board member Pam Smith is a director
Oddly, the story below never mentions the very close connection between CVESD board member Pam Smith and the San Diego Health and Human Services agency, which gave an award to CVESD. Pamela B. Smith is AIS & East Region HHSA Deputy Director.
The new owners of the Union Tribune are continuing the newspaper's tradition of concealing serious problems in Chula Vista Elementary School District while providing frequent puff pieces about specific board members and administrators.
In the story below, the UT touts the award that CVESD board member Pam Smith's employer gave to her school district, and also mentions an award given to Smith's cronies at San Diego County Office of Education. But we are left to wonder about the identities of twelve of the sixteen winners of the awards given in the chambers of the Board of Supervisors.
Chula Vista school district honored as "health champion"
Caroline Dipping
April 13, 2012
The Chula Vista Elementary School District was among 16 entities honored recently by the San Diego County Health and Human Services Agency at the 11th annual Public Health Champion Awards.
The awards are a component of Live Well, San Diego!, the county’s 10-year plan to improve the health and safety of local residents and communities. They reflect achievements related to the 2012 National Public Health Week theme: A Healthier America Begins Today. Join the Movement!
Chula Vista’s 27,400-student district was recognized for several recent accomplishments. It has begun implementing the Healthy Eating Active program aimed at reducing childhood obesity; it mentors other school districts to develop school wellness policies; and it has partnered with WalkSan Diego to provide Safe Routes to School workshops to students, school staff and parents.
“It is an honor to recognize the extraordinary achievements of these individuals and organizations,” said Nick Macchione, director of the health and human services agency at the April 2 ceremony held in the chambers of the Board of Supervisors. “They have made lifelong commitments to educate our residents to make healthier lifestyle choices and create a safe environment, which help prevent disease, injury and disability.”
Among the Public Health Champion honorees this year were UCSD’s Division of Child Development and Community Health, San Diego Association of Governments, and the San Diego County Office of Education.
The new owners of the Union Tribune are continuing the newspaper's tradition of concealing serious problems in Chula Vista Elementary School District while providing frequent puff pieces about specific board members and administrators.
In the story below, the UT touts the award that CVESD board member Pam Smith's employer gave to her school district, and also mentions an award given to Smith's cronies at San Diego County Office of Education. But we are left to wonder about the identities of twelve of the sixteen winners of the awards given in the chambers of the Board of Supervisors.
Chula Vista school district honored as "health champion"
Caroline Dipping
April 13, 2012
The Chula Vista Elementary School District was among 16 entities honored recently by the San Diego County Health and Human Services Agency at the 11th annual Public Health Champion Awards.
The awards are a component of Live Well, San Diego!, the county’s 10-year plan to improve the health and safety of local residents and communities. They reflect achievements related to the 2012 National Public Health Week theme: A Healthier America Begins Today. Join the Movement!
Chula Vista’s 27,400-student district was recognized for several recent accomplishments. It has begun implementing the Healthy Eating Active program aimed at reducing childhood obesity; it mentors other school districts to develop school wellness policies; and it has partnered with WalkSan Diego to provide Safe Routes to School workshops to students, school staff and parents.
“It is an honor to recognize the extraordinary achievements of these individuals and organizations,” said Nick Macchione, director of the health and human services agency at the April 2 ceremony held in the chambers of the Board of Supervisors. “They have made lifelong commitments to educate our residents to make healthier lifestyle choices and create a safe environment, which help prevent disease, injury and disability.”
Among the Public Health Champion honorees this year were UCSD’s Division of Child Development and Community Health, San Diego Association of Governments, and the San Diego County Office of Education.
Thursday, July 28, 2011
The Shelia Jackson brouhaha makes me ask: Which newspaper is better, the San Diego Union-Tribune or the Voice of San Diego?
UPDATE: July 29, 2011
Here are my latest comments on the Jackson story in Voice of San Diego:
To VOSD:
You guys are doing something wrong. I don't think your decisions are motivated by race, but the unbalanced racial makeup of the people you choose to attack exposes a problem. I'm not talking about the top elected officials. I am talking about how VOSD chooses which of the other 3 million people in San Diego to attack, protect, or discuss. There's something wrong with your methodology when so many of the people attacked are black women. There is something arbitrary and inequitable about your methods. The law of probability indicates that you are somehow pulling some of the cards out of the deck before the game begins.
You are exposing your methods unintentionally. The same thing happens with people who cheat on their taxes. The IRS spots them by looking for certain numbers that tend to pop up more frequently in the tax filings of people who are cheating. They use statistics to spot the fraud, without even looking at the reasons given for deductions.
VOSD has stepped gingerly around some stories, and stepped heavily into other stories.
The people that get the gentler treatment from VOSD tend to be white, not because VOSD is racist, but because, I suspect, the people whom Buzz Woolley and the rest of the top dogs at VOSD want to protect happen to be white. People high up on the food chain in San Diego schools are treated gently (and the superintendent there is a black man), while people who rank lower take the heat. Also, people down at SEDC get harsh handling.
Obviously, commenter "bigfan" doesn't like Shelia Jackson, and doesn't want to question VOSD's motives for choosing to attack Jackson while staying silent on more important issues in schools.
My point is that I think VOSD chooses stories for the wrong reasons, but not necessarily for racial reasons. But one must suspect that something is wrong when there is such a surfeit of black women being attacked. The laws of probability are being violated. The choices seem arbitrary. It appears that people are attacked if they are not on the protected list.
Let's look at the facts. When Regina Petty at SEDC wouldn't turn over public records, VOSD went after her with a vengeance. We were treated to 13 "Petty Watch" posts. It took two months of "almost constant hounding" to get SEDC to release public records.
But VOSD reported that when it asked for records from the County Office of Education "that would show if the trips were given to the agency rather than the employee, it didn't provide any." VOSD didn't begin an aggressive "Crosier Watch." No constant hounding. The difference in treatment was not due to the fact that the SEDC lawyer was black and Diane Crosier, the lawyer in charge of keeping public records out of public view at the County Office of Education, was white. It's because Petty had no friends at VOSD, and Crosier apparently does. I call it friendship when you meekly accept a "no" answer to a public records request instead of doing all you can to shame Diane Crosier into turning over the records.
I'm not saying VOSD shouldn't cover the Jackson story. I'm saying that we can clearly see that there is a problem when racial patterns emerge so clearly in VOSD stories. I'm saying VOSD needs to start telling the whole truth about schools in San Diego. And it should start with a "Crosier Watch."
ORIGINAL POST:
My opinion of the San Diego Union-Tribune has been on the rise since it covered the Dan Puplava story about financial company kickbacks to an employee of San Diego County Office of Education.
On the other hand, the SDUT has kept the secrets of lots of powerful people in San Diego Schools.
For this reason, I never expected the SDUT to cover the story when school attorneys managed to get Judge Judith Hayes to issue an injunction saying I couldn't mention them on my website--or even speak their name. I wasn't surprised that no one from the SDUT was there on July 11, 2011 when USD law professor Shaun Martin spoke on my behalf before the California Court of Appeal in San Diego. He did a great job. On the other hand, when the presiding justice asked the opposing attorney if he had any case law to support his position, he said he couldn't find any cases. "I tried! Believe me, I tried!" he whined.
While I had no expectations of the SDUT, I was surprised and disappointed that Voice of San Diego would keep this story quiet. My only explanation is that Buzz Woolley, the chief financial supporter of VOSD, is very much a supporter of school administrators, and this support apparently extends to their attorneys. VOSD apparently wants to protect the secrets of those attorneys even when (or especially when) they obtain unconstitutional injunctions that violate the right to free speech. It also seems to want to protect them when they help schools keep secrets from voters.
Just a few weeks ago I complained to editor Andrew Donohue and CEO Scott Lewis that VOSD had repeatedly protected powerful white men while going after less-powerful black women in the same organization. In each case, the more powerful person knew or should have known what was going on, but VOSD didn't hound them with public records requests. It went after Regina Petty at SEDC with a vengeance, but never took such a stance with Diane Crosier at SDCOE. Instead of an aggressive campaign like the "Petty Watch" against SEDC attorney Regina Petty, VOSD meekly reported, "But when VOSD asked for records that would show if the trips were given to the agency rather than the employee, it didn't provide any. Instead, the County Office argued that in the past, it just wasn't required to report gifts given to the agency. Despite repeated questions, the agency gave no further explanation of why it wouldn't have to report those gifts."
SEDC Chairman of the board Chip Owen had to notice that huge amounts of money were being saved because employees left without being replaced. How did he explain that the agency kept coming in barely under budget? Why is it only his subordinate Carolyn Smith (and her finance director Dante Daycap) who are facing criminal charges? Owen was in charge, for heaven's sake! He was responsible for oversight! Everyone says he's sharp and effective. If that's true, he knew.
The case was similar to the problems in another redevelopment agency across town, where Nancy Graham (a white woman) took all the heat, and her boss, Fred Maas, resigning discreetly about a year after the excitement had passed
VOSD has also been very polite in its public records requests to SDCOE. In addition, it has found no reason to write about Dan Puplava and Diane Crosier's legal issues, and has gone silent on the story of Diane Crosier's odd relationship with the attorney to whom she gives millions of dollars worth of work. Meanwhile, VOSD triggered a state investigation of a lower-level SDCOE employee who recommended that a tiny fraction of the legal work be given to her husband's firm. You guessed it,Crosier is white, the other employee is a black woman.
When I complained, VOSD assured me that it was just a matter of chance that it so aggressively attacked black women. But black women are just 5% of the population. How does VOSD manage to find so many of them to pursue?
Still, I was willing to believe that VOSD wasn't racist. I figured it was simply protecting the powerful, and, of course, the powerful tend to be white and male.
Then I learned that VOSD has been following Shelia Jackson around. Now I'm really wondering what is going on over there on Historic Decatur Road. Did I mention that the law firm that obtained the injunction against me is the next-door neighbor of VOSD? Is there something in the water in Liberty Station?
[I should also mention that NBC reporter Rory Devine, mentioned prominently in the VOSD story below, also decided to keep mum about the school attorneys who got Judge Hayes to protect their secrets from exposure.]
Five Possible Problems on Jackson's Residency
July 27, 2011
by Emily Alpert
We teamed with NBC7 San Diego to do a television version of our story about questions swirling over where San Diego Unified school board member Shelia Jackson lives. Here it is:
Reporter Rory Devine did a good job breaking down this complicated story. She explained that there are three possible problems here:
• Whether or not Jackson lives in the area of the school district she was elected to represent.
We saw Jackson coming to a Kearny Mesa apartment complex late at night or leaving in the morning four times in a week, raising questions about whether she lives there. Jackson says she does not. The apartment belongs to her daughter and Jackson says she stays there a few nights a week. The schools trustee, however, also used that address as hers when registering a business in August last year.
• Whether it is appropriate for her to accept free rent from a San Diego Unified employee.
Jackson says she lives rent-free in her district at a home owned by Gwendolyn Kirkland. Jackson voted with the rest of the board to approve choosing Kirkland as an interim principal last year.
Jackson and Kirkland both argue that she was not swayed by the free rent; Jackson also said she had no role in the selection process that led up to Kirkland being presented to the school board...
Remarks on this subject:
Frances O'Neill Zimmerman
Well, thank goodness the voice, in its zeal to uncover the truth about School Board member Shelia Jackson's legal domicile, mentioned that back in the day it was deemed perfectly okay for School Board President Ron Ottinger to live outside his District D at Coronado Quays and to send his youngest child to Coronado High School.
But Ottinger was rich and Anglo and could maintain a condo in the Gaslamp to keep up the fiction that he was a resident of District D. Ottinger also was the linchpin on the School Board threesome that kept Alan Bersin in business, so there was no way he was going to be sacrificed to some legal nicety that people are supposed to live where they are elected from. That residency rule was proved by Ottinger to be highly flexible.
In contrast, Shelia Jackson is African-American and working-class...
Here are my latest comments on the Jackson story in Voice of San Diego:
To VOSD:
You guys are doing something wrong. I don't think your decisions are motivated by race, but the unbalanced racial makeup of the people you choose to attack exposes a problem. I'm not talking about the top elected officials. I am talking about how VOSD chooses which of the other 3 million people in San Diego to attack, protect, or discuss. There's something wrong with your methodology when so many of the people attacked are black women. There is something arbitrary and inequitable about your methods. The law of probability indicates that you are somehow pulling some of the cards out of the deck before the game begins.
You are exposing your methods unintentionally. The same thing happens with people who cheat on their taxes. The IRS spots them by looking for certain numbers that tend to pop up more frequently in the tax filings of people who are cheating. They use statistics to spot the fraud, without even looking at the reasons given for deductions.
VOSD has stepped gingerly around some stories, and stepped heavily into other stories.
The people that get the gentler treatment from VOSD tend to be white, not because VOSD is racist, but because, I suspect, the people whom Buzz Woolley and the rest of the top dogs at VOSD want to protect happen to be white. People high up on the food chain in San Diego schools are treated gently (and the superintendent there is a black man), while people who rank lower take the heat. Also, people down at SEDC get harsh handling.
Obviously, commenter "bigfan" doesn't like Shelia Jackson, and doesn't want to question VOSD's motives for choosing to attack Jackson while staying silent on more important issues in schools.
My point is that I think VOSD chooses stories for the wrong reasons, but not necessarily for racial reasons. But one must suspect that something is wrong when there is such a surfeit of black women being attacked. The laws of probability are being violated. The choices seem arbitrary. It appears that people are attacked if they are not on the protected list.
Let's look at the facts. When Regina Petty at SEDC wouldn't turn over public records, VOSD went after her with a vengeance. We were treated to 13 "Petty Watch" posts. It took two months of "almost constant hounding" to get SEDC to release public records.
But VOSD reported that when it asked for records from the County Office of Education "that would show if the trips were given to the agency rather than the employee, it didn't provide any." VOSD didn't begin an aggressive "Crosier Watch." No constant hounding. The difference in treatment was not due to the fact that the SEDC lawyer was black and Diane Crosier, the lawyer in charge of keeping public records out of public view at the County Office of Education, was white. It's because Petty had no friends at VOSD, and Crosier apparently does. I call it friendship when you meekly accept a "no" answer to a public records request instead of doing all you can to shame Diane Crosier into turning over the records.
I'm not saying VOSD shouldn't cover the Jackson story. I'm saying that we can clearly see that there is a problem when racial patterns emerge so clearly in VOSD stories. I'm saying VOSD needs to start telling the whole truth about schools in San Diego. And it should start with a "Crosier Watch."
ORIGINAL POST:
My opinion of the San Diego Union-Tribune has been on the rise since it covered the Dan Puplava story about financial company kickbacks to an employee of San Diego County Office of Education.
On the other hand, the SDUT has kept the secrets of lots of powerful people in San Diego Schools.
For this reason, I never expected the SDUT to cover the story when school attorneys managed to get Judge Judith Hayes to issue an injunction saying I couldn't mention them on my website--or even speak their name. I wasn't surprised that no one from the SDUT was there on July 11, 2011 when USD law professor Shaun Martin spoke on my behalf before the California Court of Appeal in San Diego. He did a great job. On the other hand, when the presiding justice asked the opposing attorney if he had any case law to support his position, he said he couldn't find any cases. "I tried! Believe me, I tried!" he whined.
While I had no expectations of the SDUT, I was surprised and disappointed that Voice of San Diego would keep this story quiet. My only explanation is that Buzz Woolley, the chief financial supporter of VOSD, is very much a supporter of school administrators, and this support apparently extends to their attorneys. VOSD apparently wants to protect the secrets of those attorneys even when (or especially when) they obtain unconstitutional injunctions that violate the right to free speech. It also seems to want to protect them when they help schools keep secrets from voters.
Just a few weeks ago I complained to editor Andrew Donohue and CEO Scott Lewis that VOSD had repeatedly protected powerful white men while going after less-powerful black women in the same organization. In each case, the more powerful person knew or should have known what was going on, but VOSD didn't hound them with public records requests. It went after Regina Petty at SEDC with a vengeance, but never took such a stance with Diane Crosier at SDCOE. Instead of an aggressive campaign like the "Petty Watch" against SEDC attorney Regina Petty, VOSD meekly reported, "But when VOSD asked for records that would show if the trips were given to the agency rather than the employee, it didn't provide any. Instead, the County Office argued that in the past, it just wasn't required to report gifts given to the agency. Despite repeated questions, the agency gave no further explanation of why it wouldn't have to report those gifts."
SEDC Chairman of the board Chip Owen had to notice that huge amounts of money were being saved because employees left without being replaced. How did he explain that the agency kept coming in barely under budget? Why is it only his subordinate Carolyn Smith (and her finance director Dante Daycap) who are facing criminal charges? Owen was in charge, for heaven's sake! He was responsible for oversight! Everyone says he's sharp and effective. If that's true, he knew.
The case was similar to the problems in another redevelopment agency across town, where Nancy Graham (a white woman) took all the heat, and her boss, Fred Maas, resigning discreetly about a year after the excitement had passed
VOSD has also been very polite in its public records requests to SDCOE. In addition, it has found no reason to write about Dan Puplava and Diane Crosier's legal issues, and has gone silent on the story of Diane Crosier's odd relationship with the attorney to whom she gives millions of dollars worth of work. Meanwhile, VOSD triggered a state investigation of a lower-level SDCOE employee who recommended that a tiny fraction of the legal work be given to her husband's firm. You guessed it,Crosier is white, the other employee is a black woman.
When I complained, VOSD assured me that it was just a matter of chance that it so aggressively attacked black women. But black women are just 5% of the population. How does VOSD manage to find so many of them to pursue?
Still, I was willing to believe that VOSD wasn't racist. I figured it was simply protecting the powerful, and, of course, the powerful tend to be white and male.
Then I learned that VOSD has been following Shelia Jackson around. Now I'm really wondering what is going on over there on Historic Decatur Road. Did I mention that the law firm that obtained the injunction against me is the next-door neighbor of VOSD? Is there something in the water in Liberty Station?
[I should also mention that NBC reporter Rory Devine, mentioned prominently in the VOSD story below, also decided to keep mum about the school attorneys who got Judge Hayes to protect their secrets from exposure.]
Five Possible Problems on Jackson's Residency
July 27, 2011
by Emily Alpert
We teamed with NBC7 San Diego to do a television version of our story about questions swirling over where San Diego Unified school board member Shelia Jackson lives. Here it is:
Reporter Rory Devine did a good job breaking down this complicated story. She explained that there are three possible problems here:
• Whether or not Jackson lives in the area of the school district she was elected to represent.
We saw Jackson coming to a Kearny Mesa apartment complex late at night or leaving in the morning four times in a week, raising questions about whether she lives there. Jackson says she does not. The apartment belongs to her daughter and Jackson says she stays there a few nights a week. The schools trustee, however, also used that address as hers when registering a business in August last year.
• Whether it is appropriate for her to accept free rent from a San Diego Unified employee.
Jackson says she lives rent-free in her district at a home owned by Gwendolyn Kirkland. Jackson voted with the rest of the board to approve choosing Kirkland as an interim principal last year.
Jackson and Kirkland both argue that she was not swayed by the free rent; Jackson also said she had no role in the selection process that led up to Kirkland being presented to the school board...
Remarks on this subject:
Frances O'Neill Zimmerman
Well, thank goodness the voice, in its zeal to uncover the truth about School Board member Shelia Jackson's legal domicile, mentioned that back in the day it was deemed perfectly okay for School Board President Ron Ottinger to live outside his District D at Coronado Quays and to send his youngest child to Coronado High School.
But Ottinger was rich and Anglo and could maintain a condo in the Gaslamp to keep up the fiction that he was a resident of District D. Ottinger also was the linchpin on the School Board threesome that kept Alan Bersin in business, so there was no way he was going to be sacrificed to some legal nicety that people are supposed to live where they are elected from. That residency rule was proved by Ottinger to be highly flexible.
In contrast, Shelia Jackson is African-American and working-class...
Monday, August 09, 2010
The SDUT Watchdog needs to do a few minutes research about Lowell Billings and Patrick Judd
See all posts about Patrick Judd.
See all posts about Lowell Billings.
See all posts about Francisco Escobedo.
See also: Who will be the new executive director of The Accelerated School?
I sent the following email to San Diego Union-Tribune reporters in an effort to get them to report the truth about Chula Vista Elementary School District officials' past practices regarding hiring school superintendents:
Dear Mr. Jeff McDonald and Ms. Ashly McGlone:
...The Watchdog is pretending that CVESD's recent superintendent search was more, not less, politically contrived than previous superintendent searches. Good heavens, the Watchdog didn't even report that there was NO search when Lowell Billings was chosen. I remember that the SDUT covered the story when Libia Gil supposedly voluntarily resigned as CVESD superintendent in 2002 to take a job in Virginia (but never moved to Virginia). What kind of reporter fails to mention past practice in a given situation that the reporter is presenting as if it were less proper than usual? Any reader who didn't know the truth would assume that superintendent searches had been conducted in an impartial manner in the past.
And the Watchdog quotes Lowell Billings without mentioning that he hired his boss, Pat Judd, as CEO of the Accelerated School. You need to give readers the very important truth about Lowell Billings own history on the very subject he's talking about in your quotes.
When CVESD trustee Patrick Judd retired as superintendent of Mountain Empire Unified School District (after several months on leave, without ever saying why he was on leave except that it was not sick leave), he looked for a job for quite a while. School districts all over the state did searches for him for a long time. I know this because I saw the visits to my site on my web logs. I imagine they did this because he applied for jobs. Apparently he couldn’t find a job, so his pal Lowell Billings got him a job at the Accelerated School, where Billings is a board member.
Here is a link to the TAS board of trustees web page. You see Lowell Billings is clearly listed:
http://www.accelerated.org/board-of-trustees/trustees/
You will perhaps want to look at the TAS board minutes Here are my quotes from and links to the board minutes:
http://www.mauralarkins.com/AcceleratedSchoolTAS.html
http://www.accelerated.org/wp-content/board/081409agenda-draft.pdf
What's more important than whether a person was personally known to a board member before he was hired as superintendent is whether the candidate is actually qualified for the job. It appears that Patrick Judd may not have been. If you read the agenda items at TAS
(see this link: http://www.accelerated.org/board-of-trustees/agendas-and-minutes/)
you will see that they got rid of Judd without even having a new CEO.
You also might want to read regarding this issue:
http://articles.latimes.com/2009/jun/25/local/me-valedictorian25
Here is a legal document about how and why one superintendent candidate at CVESD was ruled out:
http://sandiegoeducationreport.org/AnaStoverVcvesd.html
After refusing my political ad in 2004, even when the ad was limited to the same type of phrases used in a Steve Francis ad, SDUT's credibility regarding CVESD and Patrick Judd and Lowell Billings is tenuous. As I said, I have the emails refusing my ad. The women in the ad department were clearly surprised that the ad wasn't approved. And, of course, Don Sevrens' extensive coverage of and enthusiastic opposition to the transfer of the out-of-control "Castle Park Five" teachers--while failing to mention the $100,000s the district had spent to defend them in court or to follow up regarding their connection to the $20,000 PTA embezzlement--is another chink in the SDUT's credibility.
If you lead your readers to believe that the process for choosing superintendents at CVESD was previously more open and honest than the current process, you are misleading them. You're not a real Watchdog, at least not one that operates on behalf of truth and openness about government. You are, instead, working against truth and openness in government.
Sincerely,
Maura Larkins
See all posts about Lowell Billings.
See all posts about Francisco Escobedo.
See also: Who will be the new executive director of The Accelerated School?
I sent the following email to San Diego Union-Tribune reporters in an effort to get them to report the truth about Chula Vista Elementary School District officials' past practices regarding hiring school superintendents:
Dear Mr. Jeff McDonald and Ms. Ashly McGlone:
...The Watchdog is pretending that CVESD's recent superintendent search was more, not less, politically contrived than previous superintendent searches. Good heavens, the Watchdog didn't even report that there was NO search when Lowell Billings was chosen. I remember that the SDUT covered the story when Libia Gil supposedly voluntarily resigned as CVESD superintendent in 2002 to take a job in Virginia (but never moved to Virginia). What kind of reporter fails to mention past practice in a given situation that the reporter is presenting as if it were less proper than usual? Any reader who didn't know the truth would assume that superintendent searches had been conducted in an impartial manner in the past.
And the Watchdog quotes Lowell Billings without mentioning that he hired his boss, Pat Judd, as CEO of the Accelerated School. You need to give readers the very important truth about Lowell Billings own history on the very subject he's talking about in your quotes.
When CVESD trustee Patrick Judd retired as superintendent of Mountain Empire Unified School District (after several months on leave, without ever saying why he was on leave except that it was not sick leave), he looked for a job for quite a while. School districts all over the state did searches for him for a long time. I know this because I saw the visits to my site on my web logs. I imagine they did this because he applied for jobs. Apparently he couldn’t find a job, so his pal Lowell Billings got him a job at the Accelerated School, where Billings is a board member.
Here is a link to the TAS board of trustees web page. You see Lowell Billings is clearly listed:
http://www.accelerated.org/board-of-trustees/trustees/
You will perhaps want to look at the TAS board minutes Here are my quotes from and links to the board minutes:
http://www.mauralarkins.com/AcceleratedSchoolTAS.html
http://www.accelerated.org/wp-content/board/081409agenda-draft.pdf
What's more important than whether a person was personally known to a board member before he was hired as superintendent is whether the candidate is actually qualified for the job. It appears that Patrick Judd may not have been. If you read the agenda items at TAS
(see this link: http://www.accelerated.org/board-of-trustees/agendas-and-minutes/)
you will see that they got rid of Judd without even having a new CEO.
You also might want to read regarding this issue:
http://articles.latimes.com/2009/jun/25/local/me-valedictorian25
Here is a legal document about how and why one superintendent candidate at CVESD was ruled out:
http://sandiegoeducationreport.org/AnaStoverVcvesd.html
After refusing my political ad in 2004, even when the ad was limited to the same type of phrases used in a Steve Francis ad, SDUT's credibility regarding CVESD and Patrick Judd and Lowell Billings is tenuous. As I said, I have the emails refusing my ad. The women in the ad department were clearly surprised that the ad wasn't approved. And, of course, Don Sevrens' extensive coverage of and enthusiastic opposition to the transfer of the out-of-control "Castle Park Five" teachers--while failing to mention the $100,000s the district had spent to defend them in court or to follow up regarding their connection to the $20,000 PTA embezzlement--is another chink in the SDUT's credibility.
If you lead your readers to believe that the process for choosing superintendents at CVESD was previously more open and honest than the current process, you are misleading them. You're not a real Watchdog, at least not one that operates on behalf of truth and openness about government. You are, instead, working against truth and openness in government.
Sincerely,
Maura Larkins
Thursday, January 08, 2009
SDUT's Don Sevrens says he will correct his erroneous editorial about Tri-City Hospital, but what about his CVESD coverup?
It's Leslie Devaney, not Dan Shinoff, this time, but San Diego Union Tribune editor Don Sevrens has once again gone out on a limb for his pals at Stutz law firm.
[Note: Don Sevrens does not make these decisions alone. He got full approval from editor Karin Winner for the cover-up of Stutz law firm's involvement in the Castle Park fiasco discussed below, and I'm sure Winner approved of all the protection the paper has given Stutz law firm over the years.]
Sevrens told a caller today that he will publish corrections to his December 7, 2008 editorial about Monday's Tri-City Healthcare board meeting. Apparently quite a few people called to complain about inaccuracies in his writing.
Here is my response regarding the inaccuracies.
Currently Sevrens is supporting Leslie Devaney, attorney for Tri-City CEO Art Gonzalez. She's the lawyer who helped Laurie Madigan fleece the City of Chula Vista.
But Sevrens and the SDUT seem more strongly connected to Devaney's partner, Dan Shinoff. The San Diego Union-Tribune has never told the full truth about one of Mr. Sevrens' favorite stories, the "Castle Park Five." Mr. Sevrens championed the teachers in story after story. Many letters of support were printed. But Mr. Sevrens never mentioned that the district was paying $100,000s to cover up illegal actions by teachers, with most of that money going to Daniel Shinoff. The SDUT supported the school board candidacy of Felicia Starr, a parent who was deeply involved with the teachers who had initiated illegal actions at the school. Of course, this may have been designed to split the anti-incumbent vote and ensure the election of board member Pamela Smith, who was authorizing the expenditure of taxpayer dollars on the cover-up.
The SDUT and Sevrens got help in the coverup from Linda Rosas Townson, publisher of the Chula Vista Star-News. Townson published the rants of a couple of former PTA presidents from Castle Park School, including Kim Simmons, who was later arrested for embezzling $20,000 from the PTA. The Star-News didn't bother to present the true story, though it had possessed documentation of wrongdoing at the school long before anyone decided to transfer the "Castle Park Five."
Both Sevrens and Star-News reporter Kelley Dupuis pretended that Castle Park teachers were perfectly ordinary teachers and that nothing out of the usual had been going on in the teachers lounge.
Monday, January 21, 2008
Three school boards stilled the public's voice
San Diego Union Tribune SOUTH EDITION
January 19, 2008
Three school boards stilled the public's voice
[Chula Vista Elementary, Sweetwater Union High, San Diego County Office of Education]
EDITORIAL
Click HERE to see original editorial.
It is quite disappointing when citizens are thwarted from participating in the democratic process.
That was the case when the county Board of Education, in a 3-2 vote, blocked the public's voice from being heard. The entrenched bureaucracies and officeholders of the Sweetwater Union High and Chula Vista Elementary school districts were guilty as well. They threatened legal action to block citizens from having a say.
At issue was a proposal to change the way school board elections are held in the two districts. Currently, candidates must run for a specific seat number, which has no relationship to anything.
Under the proposed change, candidates would run for a seat representing a specific neighborhood, a portion of the district, but would be voted upon districtwide.
The change was proposed to encourage geographic diversity. Each neighborhood would be guaranteed a representative on the board. Chula Vista Elementary is the largest elementary district in the state yet all five trustees live in the same Bonita neighborhood. Sweetwater's situation is similar.
Change proponents presented petitions asking the county board to put the issue on the November ballot. There are three ways to qualify such measures for the ballot, and this proposal met all conditions for doing so at the discretion of the county board.
Instead, school district attorneys Bonifacio Garcia and Jack Parham, who don't even live in the San Diego region, threatened legal action against the county. Even if Garcia and Parham acted pro bono, the implication was clear: Taxpayer resources could be used to keep taxpayers from having a voice.
County trustee Susan Hartley voted against the proposal, finding fault with neighborhood maps attached to the petitions (a non-issue since the county would be tasked with drawing the actual maps). The number of petitions submitted met the standard for this option, yet board President Robert Watkins voted against, saying he preferred signatures of 10 percent of the registered voters. (What, to make the process even more costly?)
There are a number of ways to conduct school board elections. Most common is the open election, with say the top two vote-getters of seven candidates elected. This can pit incumbent against incumbent, something that never happens in the imaginary seat-number system used by Sweetwater and Chula Vista. San Diego Unified has a primary to select the top two vote-getters in a neighborhood. They run system-wide in the general.
County trustee Nick Aguilar, who voted for the proposed change, said there was no compelling reason not to put it on the November ballot. He called the rejection “abhorrent” and “undemocratic.”
Fitting adjectives, those. And why are two school districts so afraid of allowing the public to speak?
We hope the proponents don't give up. If they recirculate new petitions without maps, trustee Hartley, if she is a person of her word, would be honor bound to vote for the proposal. Obtain signatures of 10 percent of the registered voters and forget about trustee Watkins – he will simply be an irrelevant obstacle to the democratic process.
This issue is really about community empowerment. Sadly, neither South Bay jurisdiction has it.
Would it be acceptable for all five county supervisors to reside in Rancho Santa Fe? Or for eight La Jolla residents to comprise the San Diego City Council? Hardly. Neither should geographic isolation be acceptable in the Sweetwater and Chula Vista districts.
January 19, 2008
Three school boards stilled the public's voice
[Chula Vista Elementary, Sweetwater Union High, San Diego County Office of Education]
EDITORIAL
Click HERE to see original editorial.
It is quite disappointing when citizens are thwarted from participating in the democratic process.
That was the case when the county Board of Education, in a 3-2 vote, blocked the public's voice from being heard. The entrenched bureaucracies and officeholders of the Sweetwater Union High and Chula Vista Elementary school districts were guilty as well. They threatened legal action to block citizens from having a say.
At issue was a proposal to change the way school board elections are held in the two districts. Currently, candidates must run for a specific seat number, which has no relationship to anything.
Under the proposed change, candidates would run for a seat representing a specific neighborhood, a portion of the district, but would be voted upon districtwide.
The change was proposed to encourage geographic diversity. Each neighborhood would be guaranteed a representative on the board. Chula Vista Elementary is the largest elementary district in the state yet all five trustees live in the same Bonita neighborhood. Sweetwater's situation is similar.
Change proponents presented petitions asking the county board to put the issue on the November ballot. There are three ways to qualify such measures for the ballot, and this proposal met all conditions for doing so at the discretion of the county board.
Instead, school district attorneys Bonifacio Garcia and Jack Parham, who don't even live in the San Diego region, threatened legal action against the county. Even if Garcia and Parham acted pro bono, the implication was clear: Taxpayer resources could be used to keep taxpayers from having a voice.
County trustee Susan Hartley voted against the proposal, finding fault with neighborhood maps attached to the petitions (a non-issue since the county would be tasked with drawing the actual maps). The number of petitions submitted met the standard for this option, yet board President Robert Watkins voted against, saying he preferred signatures of 10 percent of the registered voters. (What, to make the process even more costly?)
There are a number of ways to conduct school board elections. Most common is the open election, with say the top two vote-getters of seven candidates elected. This can pit incumbent against incumbent, something that never happens in the imaginary seat-number system used by Sweetwater and Chula Vista. San Diego Unified has a primary to select the top two vote-getters in a neighborhood. They run system-wide in the general.
County trustee Nick Aguilar, who voted for the proposed change, said there was no compelling reason not to put it on the November ballot. He called the rejection “abhorrent” and “undemocratic.”
Fitting adjectives, those. And why are two school districts so afraid of allowing the public to speak?
We hope the proponents don't give up. If they recirculate new petitions without maps, trustee Hartley, if she is a person of her word, would be honor bound to vote for the proposal. Obtain signatures of 10 percent of the registered voters and forget about trustee Watkins – he will simply be an irrelevant obstacle to the democratic process.
This issue is really about community empowerment. Sadly, neither South Bay jurisdiction has it.
Would it be acceptable for all five county supervisors to reside in Rancho Santa Fe? Or for eight La Jolla residents to comprise the San Diego City Council? Hardly. Neither should geographic isolation be acceptable in the Sweetwater and Chula Vista districts.
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