A school official’s unbelievably racist texts

Many people in top jobs at school districts have no business being there. Politics, not professionalism or even good will, rules most school districts. The Pennsylvania school superintendent in the story below was obviously very good at putting on a hail-fellow-well-met facade to hide the sickness within.

Now how do we go about replacing the other corrupt, callous and incompetent school officials? It's hard, because when administrators get in trouble, usually the problem is covered up, and they're sent on to another district with a warm recommendation. Also, since school firings are so often politically motivated, there's a good chance that the fired person is an excellent employee. Obviously, the people in power want to keep playing their game. If problems were revealed, then they'd have to clean them up. Perhaps that is why San Diego County Office of Education and Chula Vista Elementary School District are supporting the effort to shut down this blog by paying taxpayer dollars to Stutz law firm to quash subpoenas.


A school official’s unbelievably racist texts
Tip to bigots: Don't text on your work-issued phone
By Mary Elizabeth Williams
Salon.com
Sep 24, 2013

Not your best moment, Keystone State. Just last week, Pennsylvania was in the news when gun-loving small town police chief Mark Kessler’s expletive-infused rants against “libtards” went viral – and cost him his job. Now, Coatesville Area School District superintendent Richard Como and Director of Athletics and Activities Jim Donato have gained national attention for their abrupt departures from their positions – and the slew of hateful and racist messages discovered on their district-issued cell phones. Board president Neil Campbell has called the texts “sickening and obviously unacceptable.”

The incendiary messages, which all date from this past June, are a regular cavalcade of bigotry. And a source told the Philadelphia Inquirer Monday that “What has been made public represents a fraction of the messages between the men.” In one exchange, the two riff on how “All should have whatever first names they want… then last name is [n-word]!” Over the course of their messages, they also speculate in details on other people’s sex lives, discuss a “Jew red haired ESL” teacher, “that ape,” “cotton pickers” and a “skinny bitch,” among others. Intriguingly, there’s also a reference to a “MAJOR sneak” who “made at least 1500 – 2000 on kickback.”

But to be honest, my favorite is the damming understatement that “This fucking phone! No idea how to work!”

A district IT worker allegedly discovered the messages last month while transferring data to a new device. Superintendent Como announced his retirement shortly after on the district’s Web site – a letter that now appears to have been quietly scrubbed. Director Jim Donato resigned a few days later. On the District’s site now, there’s a new letter from Acting Superintendent Angelo Romaniello, Jr., acknowledging “inappropriate and racial comments… made by people we trusted.” The Times-Herald reports that “the departures were the direct result of discoveries found on Donato’s cell phone.” And because of questions regarding the extent to which the District was aware of the texts and whether appropriate protocols were followed in Como and Donato’s departures, the District Attorney’s office is now conducting a criminal investigation.

According to records obtained by reporters Michael N. Price and Kristina Scala, Como’s 2010 salary was $192,897 – not a bad income for someone with a barely disguised loathing for the students and faculty he works with. But a comfortable salary can’t buy basic human decency. And for that matter, it definitely can’t provide a working understanding that if you’re going to be a hateful jackass, you should really consider whether you want a text record of that hateful jackassery – or least whether you want to be mouthing off on the equipment your employer issued you.

There is so much that’s contemptible about the exchanges between Como and Donato – the simmering, near constant anger they display, the grotesque, dehumanizing way they view pretty much anybody who isn’t a white man (to their credit, though, I didn’t notice any gay slurs in the lot) and the jaw-dropping amount of arrogance and privilege it takes to speak that hatefully, that freely. But what stinks most is the betrayal it represents, the lie that their jobs were. The disgust they had for their own kids. “They were friendly to our faces,” Zhaqweyza Armstrong, a 16 year-old Coatesville High junior, told the Inquirer Monday, “and then they talked about us behind our backs.”

Mary Elizabeth Williams is a staff writer for Salon and the author of "Gimme Shelter: My Three Years Searching for the American Dream." Follow her on Twitter: @embeedub.

Employers Hire Potential Drinking Buddies Ahead Of Top Candidates

Teachers on interview panels ask: Do we want you teaching at our school? Or, more importantly, do we want to go out for drinks with you?

I saw teachers in my district, Chula Vista Elementary, being chosen in exactly the manner described in the article below. One job applicant made his addiction problems an asset by highlighting his drug problem and then charming the teachers on the hiring panel who were looking for someone to support their agenda. Weak personalities delight in the power they get from weaker personalities.

In the same manner, excellent, experienced teachers are pushed out of the district. Compromised individuals have little trouble as long as they excel in school politics.

See also Were CVESD and Chula Vista Educators negligent in Kinloch child molestation case?

Employers Hire Potential Drinking Buddies Ahead Of Top Candidates
Susan Adams
Forbes
12/03/2012

I’m pretty sure I once got a job because the person who interviewed me decided that she liked me. Looking back, I couldn’t have been the most qualified person to apply for the position at the nightly television news program where I got hired. I had never worked in TV and though I had seven years of journalism experience under my belt, it was at a specialized trade magazine, The American Lawyer. But the producer who hired me knew that we would be working very closely together on a four-person team that put together nightly discussion segments with hard on-air deadlines. She knew she wanted to have good chemistry with the person she hired.

Now an academic study by an assistant professor of management and organizations at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management confirms what I experienced when I got hired at the TV news show: Hiring managers don’t always pick the most qualified applicants. They hire people they like and want to spend time with. They hire people who they think could be their friends.

The study, by Professor Lauren Rivera, looked at hiring in elite investment banks, law firms and management consulting firms. Rivera conducted 120 interviews with hiring managers over the space of two years. What she found: “interviewers often privileged their personal feelings of comfort, validation and excitement over identifying candidates with superior cognitive or technical skills.” In other words, they hired people they could relate to, whom they liked. Writes Rivera, “in many respects they hired in a manner more closely resembling the choice of friends or romantic partners.” Though Rivera focused on a narrow range of professions, I would venture a guess that her findings apply in a broad range of fields.

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The stories in Rivera’s report are revealing. One of her findings: The majority of employers in her study described their firms as having distinct personalities that come from the hobbies and presentation styles of their employees. For instance, some firms are “sporty” and “fratty,” while others are “egghead” or “intellectual.” Rivera quotes a hiring partner at a consulting firm who says, “We want people who fit not only the way we do things but who we are.” These findings underline the perils and advantages of listing interests in the “other” section of a résumé.

One striking example from Rivera’s paper: A legal hiring manager at a “scrappy” firm rejected an otherwise qualified applicant because “I’m looking at the interests [on his résumé]—lacrosse, squash, crew [laughs]. I’m sort of giving him a personality type here, and I don’t think he’s going to fit in well here. . . we’re more rough and tumble. . . . I’m going to let him go.” She tells another story of a hiring manager who rejected a candidate who had expressed an interest in 18th-century literature and avant-garde film because he seemed too “intellectual.”

To put it more broadly, one investment banking hiring manager said, “One of my main criteria is what I call the ‘stranded in the airport test.’ Would I want to be stuck in an airport in Minneapolis in a snowstorm with them?”

Among law firms, investment banks and consulting firms, demand for cultural fit was most prized in law firms, where more than 70% of evaluators said “fit” was an important part of the hiring decision. At investment banks, it was important in a bit more than 60% of cases and at consulting firms, in 40% of cases. Because evaluators at consulting firms often use case-based business questions, they link the hiring process more closely to skills. Rivera quotes one consulting firm hiring manager: “Even if someone’s a perfect fit, if they absolutely bombed the case, they’re out.”

Rivera’s paper underlines how important it can be to include non-work interests on your résumé. She quotes a banker who says, “She plays squash. Anyone who plays squash I love,” and ranked the squash-playing applicant first among potential hires. A banker who was interviewing candidates says, “She and I both ran the New York marathon. . . we talked about that and hit it off. . . we started talking about how we both love stalking celebrities in New York. . . we had this instant connection. . . I loved her.”

Though nothing in Rivera’s paper surprises me, it’s striking to read work by an academic who has systematically measured the extremely subjective aspects of job interviewing. The paper underlines what all job seekers know: There is an aspect of the hiring process that is profoundly subjective and ultimately unfair. You can’t control who your interviewer will be and whether they will share your personality and interests.

There are a couple of things you can control however. As you’re researching a firm where you might want to work, do ask questions about the culture and think about whether your personality would fit in. Along with speaking to competitors and to people who work there and who used to work there, spend some time on a website called Glassdoor.com, that lists worker reviews of employers. Also do include a section under the heading “Other” or “Interests” on your résumé, and include hobbies, sports and foreign travel. Your passion for squash or for running marathons might wind up getting you the job.


MORE EMPLOYEE POLITICS

Here's an example of workplace politics that apparently was the last straw for a hospital nurse. Obviously, the nurse must have had other problems, but her death was a more serious loss to the hospital than was the approval of the royal family.

The royal family is far more high-maintenance than the United States president's family, and the royals don't even do any work beyond their appearances at events. But it seems that co-workers of Jacintha Saldanha felt that the need to cater to royals warranted the harassment of a colleague.

Can you imagine an American nurse committing suicide because she accidentally told a radio show that the first lady was throwing up? Not likely. Those mean English co-workers need to put things in perspective: a nurse deserves as much consideration as the royals do.


Nurse Jacintha Saldanha criticized hospital staff in suicide note after DJs' prank call: report
Saldanha wasn't happy with how her coworkers treated her after she was tricked into helping two Australian DJs secure private information about Kate Middleton's pregnancy, British media reported.
By Rheana Murray
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
December 14, 2012

Jacintha Saldanha reportedly left behind three suicide notes.

The London hospital nurse who killed herself after being pranked by a pair of Aussie shock jocks reportedly condemned her coworkers in a suicide note.

Jacintha Saldhana criticized the hospital staff for her treatment after the hoax in one of three notes she left behind, British media reported.

Saldhana, a 46-year-old mother of two, was found dead by hanging days after she was duped into helping two radio DJs secure private information about newly pregnant Kate Middleton, who was staying at the hospital for a bout of severe morning sickness.

She killed herself inside the nurses’ quarters of the King Edward VII Hospital...

“Needless to say, Ben wants a full inquiry into what happened and he wants to make sure the truth comes out,” a source told the Daily Mirror.

In another suicide note, Saldhana reportedly explained how she dealt with the aftermath of the DJs’ hoax, which sparked trouble for the hospital as the royal family became infuriated by the breach of privacy.