For years I've wondered about Amalia Cudeiro and her "research" on former CVESD Superintendent Libia Gil. The "research" seemed to demonstrate breathtaking cluelessness. Now my curiosity has been sated. I find that Cudeiro and Gil are in business together. It also appears that Cudeiro was doing research on herself. According to this biography, she worked for (or currently works for) the districts whose success she proclaimed in her "research."
Also see my "site-based management" page for a peek at some of Libby Gil's more recent cheerleaders.
I recently noted that Richard Hanks and Monica Sorenson have become principals at Chula Vista Elementary School District. I suspect this is an omen that Libia Gil's top-down decision making management style will continue at CVESD, and will continue based on the same principles of doing what's best for the people in charge.
Former Superintendent Libia Gil remade the district in her own image, and it has remained the same even though she herself was pushed out in March 2002. [I suspect she was pushed out not because she broke the law, but because she made such a mess while doing so.]
Gil beat the union (Chula Vista Educators) by co-opting and corrupting its leaders, specifically Jim Groth, Virginia (Gina) Boyd, Tim O'Neill and the board of directors.
It was obvious all along that neither Libby Gil nor her assistant superintendent Lowell Billings believed in the democratic principles they were spouting to sell site-based management. Chula Vista Elementary School District's Superintendent Lowell Billings apparently watched closely and learned from his predecessor Libia Gil, who managed to increase her power without ever saying much of anything.
Billings continues to promote the system as implemented at CVESD, which always involved top-down decision-making, never democracy at the school site.
It also involved laziness and neglect. So things would often get out of hand at various schools, and then the district office would swoop in and fire people, or, if they were political allies, bring them back to the district office for their own protection.
In 2008 CVESD superintendent Lowell Billings had a new problem. The school that was trying to make its own decisions was a charter school. The staff didn't think that principal Erik Latoni should make all the decisions.
Once again, Lowell wanted to swoop in and take control. He threatened to to terminate the charter of Feaster Elementary School because the people who run the school actually work at the school. Instead of "site-based decision-making," this is now being called "a conflict of interest" by Mr. Billings. The meaning of the words changes whenever the people in charge feel it's necessary.
It's probably worthwhile to note that CVESD rehired Daniel Shinoff of Stutz, Artiano Shinoff & Holtz in 2008. Apparently the board was impressed with Shinoff's work at MiraCosta College. I notice a striking similarity in the arguments used to attack Feaster Elementary and the arguments used to justify the actions of the majority-bloc of trustees at MiraCosta.
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query Libia gil. Sort by date Show all posts
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query Libia gil. Sort by date Show all posts
Thursday, June 18, 2009
Saturday, June 20, 2009
Amalia Cudeiro is starting out in Bellevue exactly like Libia Gil started in CVESD
See more on Amalia Cudeiro.
UPDATE MARCH 8, 2011 Steve McConnell said...I do wonder whether we in Bellevue are getting what we thought we were with Dr. Cudeiro. Check out my blog on the topic...
UPDATE: AUGUST 9, 2009 ANONYMOUS COMMENTER REPORTS: "I hear from reliable sources that she's cleaning house at the dictrict, firing old reliables and hiring outside people at MUCH higher salaries. Haven't seen any news reports about this yet but I'm wondering how local parents and educators will react to this kind of drastic change." MAURA LARKINS' COMMENT: Wouldn't it be hilarious if Curdeiro hired Libby Gil's right-hand man Richard Werlin?
ORIGINAL POST:
Back in 1993 Amalia Cudeiro's friend Libia Gil was hired as superintendent in Chula Vista Elementary School District. Gil said she was just going to listen to other people for the first few months. She went around listening to business people and politicos, everybody except the teachers. And when did she begin to speak? Never, as far as I can recall. The ability to sit quietly and say nothing seemed to be her strongest trait. But she ruled with the help of a few close associates, particularly Richard Werlin, assistant superintendent for human resources.
Gil instituted site-based management, which meant that as long as they kept things quiet, principals were on their own. If a problem developed, Richard Werlin swooped in and started yelling and putting people on administrative leave.
There were few tears when Libia Gil left mysteriously in 2002, supposedly for a job in Virginia. But she never left San Diego, and she never has been hired as a public school superintendent since then, though not for lack of trying.
Amalia Cudeiro and Libia Gil are old friends and business partners. I imagine that the Bellevue School Board has a majority of rigid, right-wing members who wanted someone just like Libby Gil. They picked the right person if that's their purpose.
She's going to listen: where have we heard this before?
New Bellevue schools superintendent says her first assignment is to listen
Seattle Times
March 30, 2009
By Katherine Long
Amalia Cudeiro, a 52-year-old education consultant, will officially become Bellevue's new superintendent in July, although it's likely she'll work informally with the district in the months leading up to that date.
She's a good listener and a no-nonsense administrator who makes her decisions after poring over assessment data.
[Maura Larkins' note: Actually, I think she makes her decisions BEFORE poring over assessment data, as seemed to be the case when she did "research" on Tom Payzant and Libia Gil.]
She holds a doctorate from Harvard University and lectures at the school's Urban Superintendents Program, but as a parent she's known firsthand the frustration of trying to find a school that works for a daughter with a learning disability.
Amalia Cudeiro, a 52-year-old education consultant, will officially become Bellevue's new superintendent in July, although it's likely she'll work informally with the district in the months leading up to that date.
She swings through Bellevue today, her first visit since being offered the job, with a packed itinerary that includes meeting with district officials, signing her contract and talking to the media.
Cudeiro will take leadership of a district considered one of the best in the state, with schools with a national reputation for excellence.
But the School Board wants to make more headway at helping lower-income students perform better. About 18 percent of Bellevue's students are on free- or reduced-price lunch, and more than 80 languages are spoken by students in the district's increasingly diverse schools.
Cudeiro says her first job will be to listen to what others have to say, especially teachers who went on strike six months ago over the district's standardized curriculum. "I am going to have to spend a little time understanding what has been put in place," she said.
Cudeiro's most recent public-schools job was as deputy superintendent of Boston Public Schools from September 1999 to June 2001. After that, with her husband, Jeffrey Nelsen, she founded a consulting firm, Targeted Leadership Consulting. She became an adjunct lecturer at Harvard University's Urban Superintendents Program in June 2004.
As a consultant, she's worked in school districts across the country, helping principals and teachers become better leaders and work together more effectively. The company also diagnoses a district's weak areas by examining data that show how students are doing, then building a curriculum based on that work.
"She has had the unusual experience of having been in literally dozens of school districts," said Tom Payzant, a professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. "She has a frame of reference that's much broader than you'll see in a lot of candidates."
As a consultant, she's done work in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada; Chicago; Chula Vista, Calif.; Elizabeth, N.J.; and internationally with Department of Defense schools.
Payzant was superintendent of Boston Public Schools when Cudeiro worked as deputy superintendent. He described her as a good listener but someone who didn't hesitate to make tough decisions, such as not renewing the contract of a principal who wasn't doing a good job.
One of her high-profile assignments was to overhaul Boston High, a school with some of the lowest test scores in the district.
Lowell Billings, the superintendent of Chula Vista Elementary School District in California, worked with Cudeiro's consulting firm on education reform in the diverse district south of San Diego. "Our achievement trends have been rather impressive, and Amalia played an important part in that," Billings said.
He said Cudeiro's work, which focused on developing better leadership skills among principals, helped raise test scores in low-income schools. But it also helped schools in well-to-do neighborhoods, where there was a core of students whose failure rate was masked by the overall success of the system.
As a mother, Cudeiro has also known what it's like to battle the system. She spent years trying to find a Boston public-school program that would help her dyslexic daughter catch up to peers.
She said she eventually "had to make a real tough decision" to pull her daughter from public school and put her in private school.
Cudeiro's daughter is now in college and doing well, she said.
UPDATE MARCH 8, 2011 Steve McConnell said...I do wonder whether we in Bellevue are getting what we thought we were with Dr. Cudeiro. Check out my blog on the topic...
UPDATE: AUGUST 9, 2009 ANONYMOUS COMMENTER REPORTS: "I hear from reliable sources that she's cleaning house at the dictrict, firing old reliables and hiring outside people at MUCH higher salaries. Haven't seen any news reports about this yet but I'm wondering how local parents and educators will react to this kind of drastic change." MAURA LARKINS' COMMENT: Wouldn't it be hilarious if Curdeiro hired Libby Gil's right-hand man Richard Werlin?
ORIGINAL POST:
Back in 1993 Amalia Cudeiro's friend Libia Gil was hired as superintendent in Chula Vista Elementary School District. Gil said she was just going to listen to other people for the first few months. She went around listening to business people and politicos, everybody except the teachers. And when did she begin to speak? Never, as far as I can recall. The ability to sit quietly and say nothing seemed to be her strongest trait. But she ruled with the help of a few close associates, particularly Richard Werlin, assistant superintendent for human resources.
Gil instituted site-based management, which meant that as long as they kept things quiet, principals were on their own. If a problem developed, Richard Werlin swooped in and started yelling and putting people on administrative leave.
There were few tears when Libia Gil left mysteriously in 2002, supposedly for a job in Virginia. But she never left San Diego, and she never has been hired as a public school superintendent since then, though not for lack of trying.
Amalia Cudeiro and Libia Gil are old friends and business partners. I imagine that the Bellevue School Board has a majority of rigid, right-wing members who wanted someone just like Libby Gil. They picked the right person if that's their purpose.
She's going to listen: where have we heard this before?
New Bellevue schools superintendent says her first assignment is to listen
Seattle Times
March 30, 2009
By Katherine Long
Amalia Cudeiro, a 52-year-old education consultant, will officially become Bellevue's new superintendent in July, although it's likely she'll work informally with the district in the months leading up to that date.
She's a good listener and a no-nonsense administrator who makes her decisions after poring over assessment data.
[Maura Larkins' note: Actually, I think she makes her decisions BEFORE poring over assessment data, as seemed to be the case when she did "research" on Tom Payzant and Libia Gil.]
She holds a doctorate from Harvard University and lectures at the school's Urban Superintendents Program, but as a parent she's known firsthand the frustration of trying to find a school that works for a daughter with a learning disability.
Amalia Cudeiro, a 52-year-old education consultant, will officially become Bellevue's new superintendent in July, although it's likely she'll work informally with the district in the months leading up to that date.
She swings through Bellevue today, her first visit since being offered the job, with a packed itinerary that includes meeting with district officials, signing her contract and talking to the media.
Cudeiro will take leadership of a district considered one of the best in the state, with schools with a national reputation for excellence.
But the School Board wants to make more headway at helping lower-income students perform better. About 18 percent of Bellevue's students are on free- or reduced-price lunch, and more than 80 languages are spoken by students in the district's increasingly diverse schools.
Cudeiro says her first job will be to listen to what others have to say, especially teachers who went on strike six months ago over the district's standardized curriculum. "I am going to have to spend a little time understanding what has been put in place," she said.
Cudeiro's most recent public-schools job was as deputy superintendent of Boston Public Schools from September 1999 to June 2001. After that, with her husband, Jeffrey Nelsen, she founded a consulting firm, Targeted Leadership Consulting. She became an adjunct lecturer at Harvard University's Urban Superintendents Program in June 2004.
As a consultant, she's worked in school districts across the country, helping principals and teachers become better leaders and work together more effectively. The company also diagnoses a district's weak areas by examining data that show how students are doing, then building a curriculum based on that work.
"She has had the unusual experience of having been in literally dozens of school districts," said Tom Payzant, a professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. "She has a frame of reference that's much broader than you'll see in a lot of candidates."
As a consultant, she's done work in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada; Chicago; Chula Vista, Calif.; Elizabeth, N.J.; and internationally with Department of Defense schools.
Payzant was superintendent of Boston Public Schools when Cudeiro worked as deputy superintendent. He described her as a good listener but someone who didn't hesitate to make tough decisions, such as not renewing the contract of a principal who wasn't doing a good job.
One of her high-profile assignments was to overhaul Boston High, a school with some of the lowest test scores in the district.
Lowell Billings, the superintendent of Chula Vista Elementary School District in California, worked with Cudeiro's consulting firm on education reform in the diverse district south of San Diego. "Our achievement trends have been rather impressive, and Amalia played an important part in that," Billings said.
He said Cudeiro's work, which focused on developing better leadership skills among principals, helped raise test scores in low-income schools. But it also helped schools in well-to-do neighborhoods, where there was a core of students whose failure rate was masked by the overall success of the system.
As a mother, Cudeiro has also known what it's like to battle the system. She spent years trying to find a Boston public-school program that would help her dyslexic daughter catch up to peers.
She said she eventually "had to make a real tough decision" to pull her daughter from public school and put her in private school.
Cudeiro's daughter is now in college and doing well, she said.
Wednesday, May 31, 2006
While I was investigating Chula Vista Elementary School District...
While I was investigating Chula Vista Elementary, some interesting information about Cajon Valley Union School District in El Cajon popped up.
I have known for a long time that San Diego County Office of Education was spending large amounts of tax dollars on lawyers representing CVESD, so I reasoned that CVESD's insurance premiums must be going up.
I found some interesting figures on the Ed-Data Website.
CVESD was doing very well in 2001-02, paying only $331,539 for insurance, which was half as much per child as the average elementary district in California.
Then things started to go south. The next year that amount almost doubled. The year after that, CVESD reported expenditures of over $2 MILLION for its self-insurance fund, and $1,606,693 for 2004-05.
What happened? The "site-based decision-making" policies established by former superintendent Libia Gil in the 1990's began to bear fruit.
Gil's strategy was to allow problems to fester at schools until things went out of control, at which point Libia Gil, Richard Werlin and Lowell Billings came in and, without investigating, took arbitrary action in violation of the law. The superintendent's salary skyrocketed, but this was justified by the fact that Gil eliminated the positions of many district administrators who had been overseeing the schools. This was exactly what the school board wanted. In fact, the school board had brought Libia Gil down from Seattle to establish just this sort of top-down management-without-accountability.
The insurance figures I found for CVESD looked bad, but I wanted to be fair. I thought I should look at a similar district for comparison.
So I looked at Cajon Valley Union School District. I was shocked to see that Cajon Valley went from a pretty reasonable $402,611 in 2001-02, to (hang on to your hat) more than $14 MILLION in 2004-05!!!
I know that CVESD is corrupt. But what does this information tell me about Cajon Valley?
What is going on in Cajon Valley???
How could school districts save millions on insurance premiums and payouts? By obeying the law!
Obeying the law would have the added advantage of eliminating one of the basic reasons that schools are failing in their job of educating children. School board members, school administrators and teachers devote vast amounts of taxpayer money and teacher union dollars to protecting the power of the corrupt. This money, and the huge amount of time and energy that these individuals devote to protecting their personal power, should be spent on educating children.
The three members of CVESD's ruling clique, Patrick Judd, Pamela Smith and Larry Cunningham, seem to be incapable of acting in their own best interest, much less the best interest of children and taxpayers. These three have led the district into multiple and continuing violations of law. And the other two board members, Cheryl Cox and Bertha Lopez, are shamefully silent about it.
I have known for a long time that San Diego County Office of Education was spending large amounts of tax dollars on lawyers representing CVESD, so I reasoned that CVESD's insurance premiums must be going up.
I found some interesting figures on the Ed-Data Website.
CVESD was doing very well in 2001-02, paying only $331,539 for insurance, which was half as much per child as the average elementary district in California.
Then things started to go south. The next year that amount almost doubled. The year after that, CVESD reported expenditures of over $2 MILLION for its self-insurance fund, and $1,606,693 for 2004-05.
What happened? The "site-based decision-making" policies established by former superintendent Libia Gil in the 1990's began to bear fruit.
Gil's strategy was to allow problems to fester at schools until things went out of control, at which point Libia Gil, Richard Werlin and Lowell Billings came in and, without investigating, took arbitrary action in violation of the law. The superintendent's salary skyrocketed, but this was justified by the fact that Gil eliminated the positions of many district administrators who had been overseeing the schools. This was exactly what the school board wanted. In fact, the school board had brought Libia Gil down from Seattle to establish just this sort of top-down management-without-accountability.
The insurance figures I found for CVESD looked bad, but I wanted to be fair. I thought I should look at a similar district for comparison.
So I looked at Cajon Valley Union School District. I was shocked to see that Cajon Valley went from a pretty reasonable $402,611 in 2001-02, to (hang on to your hat) more than $14 MILLION in 2004-05!!!
I know that CVESD is corrupt. But what does this information tell me about Cajon Valley?
What is going on in Cajon Valley???
How could school districts save millions on insurance premiums and payouts? By obeying the law!
Obeying the law would have the added advantage of eliminating one of the basic reasons that schools are failing in their job of educating children. School board members, school administrators and teachers devote vast amounts of taxpayer money and teacher union dollars to protecting the power of the corrupt. This money, and the huge amount of time and energy that these individuals devote to protecting their personal power, should be spent on educating children.
The three members of CVESD's ruling clique, Patrick Judd, Pamela Smith and Larry Cunningham, seem to be incapable of acting in their own best interest, much less the best interest of children and taxpayers. These three have led the district into multiple and continuing violations of law. And the other two board members, Cheryl Cox and Bertha Lopez, are shamefully silent about it.
Saturday, August 16, 2014
Mario Koran gets to the heart of the punitive culture at poor schools
Voice of San Diego's Mario Koran wrote yesterday in Oops: San Diego Unified Might Have Just Unwittingly Validated ‘Vergara’ that blacks and Latinos at poor schools in San Diego are disproportionately suspended and expelled.
This jibes with my experience. I remember how the teacher clique leaders at Castle Park Elementary used to go nuts because Superintendent Libby Gil wouldn't let them suspend students. I, on the other hand, thought that this was the best policy Libia Gil ever instituted. It may have been the only good policy that Gil ever instituted.
One day our special education teacher ran into the lounge, speechless with fury at the principal. The teacher leaned against a wall, fuming, as her loyal brigade of teacher followers fluttered around her asking questions.
It turned out that one of her students had run away from school. Apparently, he just couldn't bear it any more.
She was mad at the kid for leaving, but she was even madder that the principal was going to let him come back.
Ironic, right? She didn't want the kid in her class, but she didn't want him to leave--at least, not voluntarily. She was basically saying, "He can't quit! He has to be fired!"
But here's my larger point: it's not necessarily the least experienced teachers at poor schools who are most responsible for the suspensions and expulsions. There seems to be a culture among many veteran teachers that holds that teachers don't have to do their jobs for students who do not meet all their requirements.
In general, kids are given more chances to measure up if the teacher holds them in high regard. They are allowed more mistakes.
Kids who are disliked by a teacher are behind the figurative eight ball. There's very little chance that they will be able to become one of the fair-haired children, no matter how hard they try.
I taught a bilingual class at Castle Park Elementary, and year after year, my class was assigned to sit in the very back of the auditorium during assemblies. I asked the principal if we could rotate positions. It was starting to feel strange having the brown kids always in the last row. I told the principal that my kids had a greater need to be closer to the front because it was already hard for them to understand English, and it was even harder when they couldn't hear well. But the principal refused to make any changes in our assignment.
I campaigned long and hard to have my students mix with all-English classes for some small part of the day. Finally the other third-grade teachers allowed me to send a few kids to each of their classes for sharing time each morning. "But I don't want them to share, they should just listen," said Teacher A. It's possible that this did them more harm than good. I pointed out, during a grade-level meeting with the principal, that the Civil Rights Act forbids segregation and discrimination. Teacher A laughed out loud. Teacher B bellowed. And the principal let them get away with it. And when Rae Correira came from the district to try to solve the problem, Libby' Gil's right-hand man Richard Werlin transferred Rae to another position and the investigation was dropped. It's ironic that Libia Gil is now in charge of the federal Department of Education's bilingual department.
I think it would be worthwhile for districts to find out which teachers are initiating the suspension process most often, and then to see if those teachers share certain traits, such as being inexperienced.
I suspect that the culture of the school might also have something to do with it.
I know that at some schools teachers spend a lot of time talking about how awful their students are. Other teachers stay away from the lounge so they don’t have to listen to all the complaining by their colleagues about administrators who don’t suspend kids when the teachers demand it.
I think inexperienced teachers might behave very differently depending on the influence of the veteran teachers in their schools. Wouldn’t it be fascinating if it turned out that poor schools not only have the least experienced teachers, but they also have the crankiest veteran teachers? Maybe there’s a perfect storm at poor schools.
I hope you’ll follow up on this, Mario.
The Vergara decision is just a scratch on the surface of what is wrong in poor schools.
But maybe it will help raise the quality of education in poor schools.
COMMENTS FROM VOICE OF SAN DIEGO
Kathy S
"Vergara" or "We can call it structural inequity or we can call it institutional racism."
Fifty years after federal troops escorted nine black students through the doors of an all-white high school in Little Rock, Ark., in a landmark school integration struggle, America's public schools remain as unequal as they have ever been when measured in terms of disciplinary sanctions such as suspensions and expulsions, according to little-noticed data collected by the U.S. Department of Education for the 2004-2005 school year.
Academic researchers have been quietly collecting evidence of such race-based disciplinary disparities for more than 25 years. Yet the phenomenon remains largely obscured from public view by the popular emphasis on "zero tolerance" crackdowns, which are supposed to deliver equally harsh punishments based on a student's infraction, not skin color.
........Race , Class and Gender......
Socioeconomic factors are certainly at play, researchers believe.
"Studies of school suspension have consistently documented disproportionality by socioeconomic status. Students who receive free school lunch are at increased risk for school suspension," according to "The Color of Discipline," a 2000 study by Skiba and other researchers in Indiana and Nebraska. Another study concluded that "students whose fathers did not have a full-time job were significantly more likely to be suspended than students whose fathers were employed full time."
But those studies and others have repeatedly found that racial factors are even more important.
"Poor home environment does carry over into the school environment," said Skiba, who is widely regarded as the nation's foremost authority on school discipline and race. ......."But middle-class and upper-class black students are also being disciplined more often than their white peers. Skin color in itself is a part of this function."....
Maura Larkins
Excellent point, Kathy S. Here's a thought that is chilling, but I have a hunch that it might be true: maybe the cranky veteran teachers who habitually suspend kids of color in poor schools are actually LESS racist than the veteran teachers who have skedaddled to middle and upper class schools. In other words, maybe the horrible situation that we have now, a system that consigns thousand of kids every year to lifelong economic failure, is actually not the worst possible situation. Maybe those cranky teachers just need a little support and guidance to help them cope with difficult students.
I really hope that Mario will keep an eye on how schools handle this issue in the future.
This jibes with my experience. I remember how the teacher clique leaders at Castle Park Elementary used to go nuts because Superintendent Libby Gil wouldn't let them suspend students. I, on the other hand, thought that this was the best policy Libia Gil ever instituted. It may have been the only good policy that Gil ever instituted.
One day our special education teacher ran into the lounge, speechless with fury at the principal. The teacher leaned against a wall, fuming, as her loyal brigade of teacher followers fluttered around her asking questions.
It turned out that one of her students had run away from school. Apparently, he just couldn't bear it any more.
She was mad at the kid for leaving, but she was even madder that the principal was going to let him come back.
Ironic, right? She didn't want the kid in her class, but she didn't want him to leave--at least, not voluntarily. She was basically saying, "He can't quit! He has to be fired!"
But here's my larger point: it's not necessarily the least experienced teachers at poor schools who are most responsible for the suspensions and expulsions. There seems to be a culture among many veteran teachers that holds that teachers don't have to do their jobs for students who do not meet all their requirements.
In general, kids are given more chances to measure up if the teacher holds them in high regard. They are allowed more mistakes.
Kids who are disliked by a teacher are behind the figurative eight ball. There's very little chance that they will be able to become one of the fair-haired children, no matter how hard they try.
I taught a bilingual class at Castle Park Elementary, and year after year, my class was assigned to sit in the very back of the auditorium during assemblies. I asked the principal if we could rotate positions. It was starting to feel strange having the brown kids always in the last row. I told the principal that my kids had a greater need to be closer to the front because it was already hard for them to understand English, and it was even harder when they couldn't hear well. But the principal refused to make any changes in our assignment.
I campaigned long and hard to have my students mix with all-English classes for some small part of the day. Finally the other third-grade teachers allowed me to send a few kids to each of their classes for sharing time each morning. "But I don't want them to share, they should just listen," said Teacher A. It's possible that this did them more harm than good. I pointed out, during a grade-level meeting with the principal, that the Civil Rights Act forbids segregation and discrimination. Teacher A laughed out loud. Teacher B bellowed. And the principal let them get away with it. And when Rae Correira came from the district to try to solve the problem, Libby' Gil's right-hand man Richard Werlin transferred Rae to another position and the investigation was dropped. It's ironic that Libia Gil is now in charge of the federal Department of Education's bilingual department.
I think it would be worthwhile for districts to find out which teachers are initiating the suspension process most often, and then to see if those teachers share certain traits, such as being inexperienced.
I suspect that the culture of the school might also have something to do with it.
I know that at some schools teachers spend a lot of time talking about how awful their students are. Other teachers stay away from the lounge so they don’t have to listen to all the complaining by their colleagues about administrators who don’t suspend kids when the teachers demand it.
I think inexperienced teachers might behave very differently depending on the influence of the veteran teachers in their schools. Wouldn’t it be fascinating if it turned out that poor schools not only have the least experienced teachers, but they also have the crankiest veteran teachers? Maybe there’s a perfect storm at poor schools.
I hope you’ll follow up on this, Mario.
The Vergara decision is just a scratch on the surface of what is wrong in poor schools.
But maybe it will help raise the quality of education in poor schools.
COMMENTS FROM VOICE OF SAN DIEGO
Kathy S
"Vergara" or "We can call it structural inequity or we can call it institutional racism."
Fifty years after federal troops escorted nine black students through the doors of an all-white high school in Little Rock, Ark., in a landmark school integration struggle, America's public schools remain as unequal as they have ever been when measured in terms of disciplinary sanctions such as suspensions and expulsions, according to little-noticed data collected by the U.S. Department of Education for the 2004-2005 school year.
Academic researchers have been quietly collecting evidence of such race-based disciplinary disparities for more than 25 years. Yet the phenomenon remains largely obscured from public view by the popular emphasis on "zero tolerance" crackdowns, which are supposed to deliver equally harsh punishments based on a student's infraction, not skin color.
........Race , Class and Gender......
Socioeconomic factors are certainly at play, researchers believe.
"Studies of school suspension have consistently documented disproportionality by socioeconomic status. Students who receive free school lunch are at increased risk for school suspension," according to "The Color of Discipline," a 2000 study by Skiba and other researchers in Indiana and Nebraska. Another study concluded that "students whose fathers did not have a full-time job were significantly more likely to be suspended than students whose fathers were employed full time."
But those studies and others have repeatedly found that racial factors are even more important.
"Poor home environment does carry over into the school environment," said Skiba, who is widely regarded as the nation's foremost authority on school discipline and race. ......."But middle-class and upper-class black students are also being disciplined more often than their white peers. Skin color in itself is a part of this function."....
Maura Larkins
Excellent point, Kathy S. Here's a thought that is chilling, but I have a hunch that it might be true: maybe the cranky veteran teachers who habitually suspend kids of color in poor schools are actually LESS racist than the veteran teachers who have skedaddled to middle and upper class schools. In other words, maybe the horrible situation that we have now, a system that consigns thousand of kids every year to lifelong economic failure, is actually not the worst possible situation. Maybe those cranky teachers just need a little support and guidance to help them cope with difficult students.
I really hope that Mario will keep an eye on how schools handle this issue in the future.
@Maura Larkins I don't think structural
inequity or institutional racism is a "cranky veteran teacher"
thing....
Of course, you're right. At
heart, structural inequity goes much deeper than crankiness.
Where exactly does it come
from? It comes from the human instinct to advance ourselves by putting
our neighbors at a disadvantage. And it is maintained by the human
instinct to resist change. Once a group of people gets themselves into a
privileged position, they resist giving up that position. At that point,
it isn't necessarily racism that protects the system. It's the fear of
change.
Some very nice people work hard to
maintain structural inequity. That's the beauty of the system, from the
point of view of those who think they benefit from it.The people who enforce it
don’t even think they’re doing anything wrong.
Of course, I question whether people
are really acting in their own best interest when they grab an obscenely large
slice of the pie while their neighbors get crumbs. Everyone would be
safer if our society didn’t generate legions of citizens who have nothing to
lose.
My point is this: very few teachers
in the classroom actually intend to dispense structural injustice.
The system has left these teachers
with inadequate resources to deal with children who have been set up to fail by
poverty and past and present inequality.
It’s not accidental that these
teachers have inadequate resources.Society intends this to be the case. If we
wanted good schools for all kids, we would have them.
So what I’m saying is that at the
level of the classroom, the institutional racism is applied to individual
children by teachers who are socialized into a culture of crankiness.
They don’t sit around the teacher
lounge saying racist things.They rant about specific kids who did specific
things.
The teachers have no idea that they
are failing to give the kids the chances that they deserve.The teachers really
believe they are doing the right thing.
Teachers tend to give white and Asian children more chances because they believe that those kids are more likely to succeed. This belief becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy because the teachers undermine the black and brown students by too-readily consigning them to failure.
Learning is all about making mistakes and then improving. Good teaching means deftly guiding a child from ignorance to knowledge. Instead, lazy teachers just excuse themselves from their obligations by deciding that there's no point in helping some children.
Of course, many white children are also undermined by the rigidity and laziness of their teachers.
It isn't just about race.
The teachers themselves are not receiving adequate training and supervision.
After all, who do you think is supervising them? Teachers just like themselves who probably got promoted for reasons other than teaching excellence.
Teachers tend to give white and Asian children more chances because they believe that those kids are more likely to succeed. This belief becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy because the teachers undermine the black and brown students by too-readily consigning them to failure.
Learning is all about making mistakes and then improving. Good teaching means deftly guiding a child from ignorance to knowledge. Instead, lazy teachers just excuse themselves from their obligations by deciding that there's no point in helping some children.
Of course, many white children are also undermined by the rigidity and laziness of their teachers.
It isn't just about race.
The teachers themselves are not receiving adequate training and supervision.
After all, who do you think is supervising them? Teachers just like themselves who probably got promoted for reasons other than teaching excellence.
Tuesday, June 12, 2007
Why did Chula Vista mayor Cheryl Cox foment fear at Castle Park Elementary?
After she was falsely accused, Maura Larkins, teacher at Castle Park Elementary, voluntarily spent hundreds of dollars to get a fitness for duty examination by a psychiatrist. The doctor faxed his report to CVESD.
Why did Cheryl Cox and the CVESD board and their attorneys Daniel Shinoff and Kelly Angell continue to foment hysteria at Castle Park Elementary even after receiving this doctor's letter in August 2001?
Answer: They wanted to smear Maura Larkins in order to prevent her from revealing their violations of law. Was this smart? It would have been smarter to retract the false accusations and apologize. Instead, they stopped Maura Larkins pay (in violation of the contract) and refused to grant her the hearing to which she was entitled (also in violation of the contract).
Robin Donlan (who became famous in 2004 as one of the San Diego Union-Tribune's "Castle Park Five," then in 2007 for claiming that she had no idea how her school teacher husband suddenly came to possess 7 million dollars) also worked hard, along with her personal friend, Chula Vista Educators' President Gina Boyd, and Beverly Tucker of the California Teachers Association, to smear Larkins.
But it appears that there was another reason for Cheryl Cox's support of violations of law and the contract: she wanted to get rid of Superintendent Libia Gil.
In May 2002 Cox was willing to violate yet one more law against Maura Larkins, Labor Code 1102.5, in order to get rid of Libia Gil. Cox and Bertha Lopez went along with the BIG THREE, PATRICK JUDD, PAMELA SMITH, AND LARRY CUNNINGHAM, and voted to dismiss Maura Larkins less than two months after Larkins filed suit against the district.
Cox and Lopez got something in return: Libia Gil's resignation.
Clearly, these people felt so certain that they were above the law, that they were not afraid to flagrantly violate it.
Why did Cheryl Cox and the CVESD board and their attorneys Daniel Shinoff and Kelly Angell continue to foment hysteria at Castle Park Elementary even after receiving this doctor's letter in August 2001?
Answer: They wanted to smear Maura Larkins in order to prevent her from revealing their violations of law. Was this smart? It would have been smarter to retract the false accusations and apologize. Instead, they stopped Maura Larkins pay (in violation of the contract) and refused to grant her the hearing to which she was entitled (also in violation of the contract).
Robin Donlan (who became famous in 2004 as one of the San Diego Union-Tribune's "Castle Park Five," then in 2007 for claiming that she had no idea how her school teacher husband suddenly came to possess 7 million dollars) also worked hard, along with her personal friend, Chula Vista Educators' President Gina Boyd, and Beverly Tucker of the California Teachers Association, to smear Larkins.
But it appears that there was another reason for Cheryl Cox's support of violations of law and the contract: she wanted to get rid of Superintendent Libia Gil.
In May 2002 Cox was willing to violate yet one more law against Maura Larkins, Labor Code 1102.5, in order to get rid of Libia Gil. Cox and Bertha Lopez went along with the BIG THREE, PATRICK JUDD, PAMELA SMITH, AND LARRY CUNNINGHAM, and voted to dismiss Maura Larkins less than two months after Larkins filed suit against the district.
Cox and Lopez got something in return: Libia Gil's resignation.
Clearly, these people felt so certain that they were above the law, that they were not afraid to flagrantly violate it.
Saturday, December 01, 2007
Alex Cortes takes the stand
In the Coziahr trial on Thursday, November 29, 2007, the Chula Vista Elementary School District proved that the Lowell Billings-Tom Cruz administration is working hard to continue the illegal practices of their immediate predecessors.
It seems they want to usurp the primary claim to fame of the Libia Gil-Richard Werlin administration: brazen violations of the law. And the Parham & Rajcic law firm remains stalwartly supportive of this type of behavior.
This shouldn't be a surprise, since the board is basically the same: Judd, Smith, Lopez, Cunningham, and a replacement for Cheryl Cox (David Bejarano) who fits the CVESD board member mold perfectly.
As I predicted, there is virtually no paper trial in the Coziahr case, except documents that are missing. In my case, Gina Boyd claimed she either lost or threw away important records. Richard Werlin never explained why he produced no notes. But in the Coziahr case, the explanation for missing documents is very clear: principal Alex Cortes says he threw his notes away.
Danielle Coziahr was buried under a monstrous pyramid of incompetence, dishonesty and illegality. To some extent, I feel that Alex Cortes was also buried under that pyramid. Listening to the testimony, I became convinced that Cortes must have been instructed by Lowell Billings and Tom Cruz to find at least one of his eight probationary teachers to offer up for non-reelection. I suspect that Cortes received many pats on the back for offering up two teachers for non-reelection.
The manner in which Cortes avoided Mrs. Coziahr from the first day of school seemed to me an indication that he picked her on the first day, when she had her son with her. After that he didn't want to see her as a human being, so he never treated her like a human being. He didn't pay any attention to her teaching. It was of no importance to him that she was a leader in language arts according to the other teachers. He accused her of being inadequate in language arts, and stuck to his decision come hell or high water. He also moved kids with problems into her class, and moved high-functioning students out.
Of course the class was harmed by this. This was a class that should have been given to the most experienced teacher, not the least experienced. But kids aren't very high on the CVESD list of priorities, apparently.
When Mrs. Coziahr got pregnant halfway through the year, her fate was sealed. The district doesn't approve of maternity leave. Of course, they would prefer that the parents of the students get maternity leave, since improved maternal health and mother-child bonding will help the kids develop better. But logical consistency is not a trait of decision-makers at CVESD.
Shame on Lowell Billings, Tom Cruz, and Chula Vista Educators presidents Gina Boyd, Jim Groth and Peggie Myers. These individuals have re-created the worst abuses of the Libia Gil-Richard Werlin years, acting as lap dogs for corrupt board members Pamela Smith, Bertha Lopez, Patrick Judd, Larry Cunningham, and Cheryl Cox/ David Bejarano.
The law exists for a good reason. Things would be a lot better if these powerful individuals had more respect for the law and less attachment to their own arbitrary power.
It seems they want to usurp the primary claim to fame of the Libia Gil-Richard Werlin administration: brazen violations of the law. And the Parham & Rajcic law firm remains stalwartly supportive of this type of behavior.
This shouldn't be a surprise, since the board is basically the same: Judd, Smith, Lopez, Cunningham, and a replacement for Cheryl Cox (David Bejarano) who fits the CVESD board member mold perfectly.
As I predicted, there is virtually no paper trial in the Coziahr case, except documents that are missing. In my case, Gina Boyd claimed she either lost or threw away important records. Richard Werlin never explained why he produced no notes. But in the Coziahr case, the explanation for missing documents is very clear: principal Alex Cortes says he threw his notes away.
Danielle Coziahr was buried under a monstrous pyramid of incompetence, dishonesty and illegality. To some extent, I feel that Alex Cortes was also buried under that pyramid. Listening to the testimony, I became convinced that Cortes must have been instructed by Lowell Billings and Tom Cruz to find at least one of his eight probationary teachers to offer up for non-reelection. I suspect that Cortes received many pats on the back for offering up two teachers for non-reelection.
The manner in which Cortes avoided Mrs. Coziahr from the first day of school seemed to me an indication that he picked her on the first day, when she had her son with her. After that he didn't want to see her as a human being, so he never treated her like a human being. He didn't pay any attention to her teaching. It was of no importance to him that she was a leader in language arts according to the other teachers. He accused her of being inadequate in language arts, and stuck to his decision come hell or high water. He also moved kids with problems into her class, and moved high-functioning students out.
Of course the class was harmed by this. This was a class that should have been given to the most experienced teacher, not the least experienced. But kids aren't very high on the CVESD list of priorities, apparently.
When Mrs. Coziahr got pregnant halfway through the year, her fate was sealed. The district doesn't approve of maternity leave. Of course, they would prefer that the parents of the students get maternity leave, since improved maternal health and mother-child bonding will help the kids develop better. But logical consistency is not a trait of decision-makers at CVESD.
Shame on Lowell Billings, Tom Cruz, and Chula Vista Educators presidents Gina Boyd, Jim Groth and Peggie Myers. These individuals have re-created the worst abuses of the Libia Gil-Richard Werlin years, acting as lap dogs for corrupt board members Pamela Smith, Bertha Lopez, Patrick Judd, Larry Cunningham, and Cheryl Cox/ David Bejarano.
The law exists for a good reason. Things would be a lot better if these powerful individuals had more respect for the law and less attachment to their own arbitrary power.
Friday, December 07, 2012
Were CVESD and Chula Vista Educators negligent in Kinloch child molestation case?
See also "California Teachers Association protects child molesting teacher."
See all posts regarding CVESD teacher John Kinloch.
Updated Jan. 12, 2013
It seems that CVESD and California Teachers Association were more interested in protecting powerful teachers than in conducting serious investigations of extremely urgent allegations. When a teacher was accused of being likely to "come to school and shoot everybody," the district never did an investigation, and the teachers union never insisted on an investigation.
I recall listening to former Chula Vista Educators grievance chair Frank Luzzaro a few years ago complaining that the district had placed a male teacher on administrative leave due to unproven allegations of child abuse.
John Raymond Kinloch might been that teacher--unless perhaps there were TWO suspected child molesters at CVESD at the same time!
(I've been trying to remember exactly what year it was that Frank Luzzaro called me in response to a letter I sent him. I am certain that it was after my 2003 OAH hearing. At first I though that it was around 2003 or 2004, but then I remembered that I had my website going at the time of the call. That would make it more likely that the call was in 2005.)
The District Attorney's office says a child at Feaster was molested in 2004 or 2005. It seems the District Attorney and I are zeroing in on the same time period. Obviously, the school district knows exactly when the teacher was placed on administrative leave, and it knows if the teacher was John Raymond Kinloch.
CVESD HAS LONG HAD A CULTURE OF SECRECY AND CRONYISM
Superintendent Lowell Billings, Asst. Supt. for Human Resources Richard Werlin, and Asst. Supt. Dennis Doyle were in charge when the critical events occurred in the Kinloch case and in other cases in CVESD covered-up wrongful actions and falsified and concealed various documents.
Asst. Supt. Maria Guasp and Superintendent Libia Gil seemed to rubber-stamp whatever the three men decided on. Libia Gil chose covering-up events rather than investigating serious allegations.
Rick Werlin claimed to have "lost" all his notes about a teacher who was accused of being likely to come to school and "shoot everybody." CVESD's lawyer, Dan Shinoff, says he lost about half of the documents he collected at Castle Park Elementary. He lost a few pages here and a few pages there from a single set of about 87 documents. Here are some of the documents that were produced. Those missing pages about a possible mass shooting at Castle Park Elementary would be very interesting to see!
Chula Vista Educators, particularly Jim Groth, who is now on the Board of Directors of CTA, also seemed to support district decisions, especially when the goal was to conceal crimes by teachers who were favored by the administration. (Of course, it was different when one of Jim's pals got in trouble. CVE paid $17,000 in legal fees to contest a district decision to dock Frank Luzzaro one day's pay.)
A 1998 San Diego Reader story revealed Kinloch's connection to an English child pornographer, and Kinloch's admitted attraction to young boys.
An important part of this picture is the fact that California Teachers Association is quite reliable in protecting child molesters such as Albert Truitt.
Obviously, Mr. Kinloch was not fired. CVESD and CVE have a bad habit of protecting the guilty. Perhaps CVESD and CVE don't like effective investigations because facts might interfere with their political goals.
See "California Teachers Association protects child molesting teacher."
DEPOSITIONS PROVED THE TRUTH
At the same time that it flubbed the Kinloch investigation, CVESD administrators, with the approval of CVE's Jim Groth and other CVE officials, flat-out refused to investigate anonymous allegations against another teacher. Depositions later proved that the allegations against the "dangerous" teacher were false, but that teacher had already been fired. Depositions also proved that teachers who made the anonymous accusations were covering up their own crimes!
THE CASTLE PARK FIVE
The district then realized too late that the accusers, who called themselves "The Castle Park Family," had become out of control. The "Castle Park Five" were prominent members of the Family. The Family felt that it, not the administration, should be in charge. They can't be blamed for thinking this since they had successfully demanded that CTA and the district help them by violating longstanding policies as well as the law, to defend Family members in court. The district spent $100,000s of taxpayer dollars on lawyers to conceal the truth.
Coincidentally, both Frank Luzzaro and his wife work for the Reader, which had profiled John Raymond Kinloch in 1998 as a child pornographer. I have noticed that the Reader avoids delving into problems at CVESD. I have provided information directly to Frank Luzzaro and the Reader, but neither has expressed any interest.
Longtime CVESD board member Pamela Smith
Longtime CVESD board member Larry Cunningham
The school board in 2004 consisted of Pamela Smith, Larry Cunningham, Cheryl Cox, Patrick Judd (who was successfully sued for sexual harassment by a female principal) and Bertha Lopez. All five of these individuals supported the hiring and firing tactics of the administrators named above.
Arraignment for suspect in child porn and molestation case
CBS8.com
Dec 06, 2012
CHULA VISTA (CNS) - A South Bay elementary school teacher accused of molesting a student and possessing child pornography to get boys to expose themselves online is scheduled to be arraigned Friday.
John Raymond Kinloch, a first-grade teacher at Wolf Canyon Elementary in Chula Vista, was initially arrested last Friday after agents with the San Diego Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force served a search warrant at his home. He was released on bail that evening.
Authorities began looking into the online activities of Kinloch based on tips received by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, said San Diego police sex-crimes Lt. Anastasia Smith.
The investigation allegedly showed that the 41-year-old Kinloch, while posing as a girl on a website called "MeetMe," had persuaded boys to disrobe during live one-on-one webcam interactions, according to Smith.
Kinloch, a San Ysidro resident, was re-arrested Wednesday on suspicion of 11 counts of committing lewd and lascivious acts on a child under age 14 after the alleged victim came forward, according to San Diego police.
The accusations involve sexual contact that allegedly occurred several years ago, when Kinloch was teaching at Feaster Charter School in Chula Vista, Smith said.
The defendant was being held in lieu of $1.15 million bail pending arraignment.
Teacher facing porn charges arrested in molestation
Pauline Repard
UTSD
Dec. 6, 2012
CHULA VISTA — A Chula Vista elementary school teacher arrested last week on suspicion of child pornography is facing new charges alleging he molested a student several years ago, authorities said Thursday.
John Raymond Kinloch, 41, was jailed Wednesday on 11 counts of lewd and lascivious acts on a child under the age of 14, and one count of an attempted lewd and lascivious act on a child age 14 or 15.
His bail is set at $1.1 million, jail records show.
“This is a case many years delayed in reporting,” said San Diego police Lt. Anastasia Smith. “It appears this victim was previously a student of his.”
She said the student attended Feaster Charter School. Kinloch taught there from 2000 to 2009, then transferred to Wolf Canyon Elementary School, where he was teaching first grade, school district officials said.
Kinloch has been placed on administrative leave, district spokesman Anthony Millican said.
“This new case raises the question of whether there are other students involved,” Millican said Thursday.
Kinloch was investigated by the Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force for allegedly posing online as a girl and soliciting young boys to send him pictures of themselves naked, Smith said. The task force is a joint effort by federal, state and local law enforcement agencies.
Federal authorities arrested Kinloch on Friday on suspicion of possessing child pornography, using a minor in an obscene manner and luring a minor for a sexual offense. He was booked into jail, then released on bail. Authorities said earlier in the week that no Chula Vista students were involved in the pornography.
On Wednesday, a former student reported being molested, and Kinloch was arrested about 9 p.m. as he was leaving his South Bay home.
“Our hearts go out to the child,” Chula Vista Superintendent Francisco Escobedo said Thursday in a statement. “The allegations raised in the charges against Kinloch are appalling. For a teacher to betray a child in this manner is very upsetting. We are very dismayed by this.”
School district officials were upset that a federal background check on Kinloch when he was hired failed to turn up his connection to a 1998 child pornography case in England.
Millican said the San Diego Reader published a story in June 1998 that said Kinloch, then a San Diego State University student, went to England to testify in the criminal trial of a college student accused in trafficking in child pornography. That student’s files contained information that led investigators to Kinloch, and he was offered immunity by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in San Diego to testify, the Reader reported. He testified during the trial that he was attracted to young boys, the Reader said.
The district is investigating how the past case was not flagged during Kinloch’s background check and plans to work with the state’s Teachers Credentialing Commission on how to improve the process.
Photo: December 13, 2006 , Chula Vista,- Second grade teacher John Kinloch at the Feaster Edison Charter School in Chula Vista. — John Gibbinsng Commission on how to improve the process.
Teacher accused of child porn, molesting a student in court: John Kinloch pleads not guilty 10 News 12/07/2012
CHULA VISTA, Calif. - A South Bay elementary school teacher accused of repeatedly molesting a former student and possessing child pornography to get boys to expose themselves online pleaded not guilty Friday to 20 charges, including 18 counts of child molest.
John Raymond Kinloch, 41, was ordered held on $1.9 million bail.
Kinloch, a first-grade teacher at Wolf Canyon Elementary in Chula Vista, initially was arrested last Friday after agents with the San Diego Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force served a search warrant at his home. He was released on bail that evening.
Authorities began looking into the online activities of Kinloch based on tips received by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, San Diego police sex crimes Lt. Anastasia Smith said...
The accusations involve sexual contact that allegedly occurred when Kinloch was teaching at Feaster Charter School in Chula Vista, Smith said.
Deputy District Attorney Enrique Camarena told reporters that the first alleged molestation happened around 2004 or 2005, when the student was about 8 or 9 years old.
Camarena said the alleged victim, a boy, had a close relationship with Kinloch, both inside and outside the school.
Some of the molestations occurred on school grounds, the prosecutor alleged.
Besides the child molest charges, Kinloch is charged with one count of attempted child molest of a person 14 or 15 years old and one count of possession of child pornography. The named victim is not the subject of the child pornography charge, Camarena said.
Kinloch faces 43 years and six months in prison if convicted.
"When a teacher commits a crime, especially of this nature on school grounds that is about the most extreme violation we can have," Camarena said.
Defense attorney Dan Greene told South Bay Judge Katherine Bacal that Kinloch had no prior record and had a master's degree, without being specific...
The attorney said community members have come forward to praise Kinloch as a great person and educator...
[Maura Larkins comment: I've noticed that people often say that teachers and parents know who the good teachers are. In fact, they don't. Effective evaluations are needed, but many principals don't bother doing observations, and simply rely on school politics to decide who's good and who's bad.] 10News reporter Michael Chen asked, "If he's attracted to young boys, why did he petition to be a teacher?"
Greene answered, "I can't [answer] that for you right now ... It's unfair to rush to judgment before going through due process."
School district officials said they were upset that a federal background check on Kinloch failed to turn up his connection to a child pornography case in England in 1998.
District spokesman Anthony Millican said the San Diego Reader published a story in June 1998 that said Kinloch, then a San Diego State student, testified in the trial of a fellow college student accused in child pornography trafficking.
Kinloch was granted immunity and testified that he was attracted to young boys, the Reader reported...
God, Gays, and Casey Gwinn
'On Monday of this week in the San Diego Schools, at Pershing Middle School, where my daughter attends, I had to go and file a sexual harassment complaint against children who were harassing my daughter, ... Ky PlaskonSeptember 2, 1999
See all posts regarding CVESD teacher John Kinloch.
Updated Jan. 12, 2013
It seems that CVESD and California Teachers Association were more interested in protecting powerful teachers than in conducting serious investigations of extremely urgent allegations. When a teacher was accused of being likely to "come to school and shoot everybody," the district never did an investigation, and the teachers union never insisted on an investigation.
I recall listening to former Chula Vista Educators grievance chair Frank Luzzaro a few years ago complaining that the district had placed a male teacher on administrative leave due to unproven allegations of child abuse.
John Raymond Kinloch might been that teacher--unless perhaps there were TWO suspected child molesters at CVESD at the same time!
(I've been trying to remember exactly what year it was that Frank Luzzaro called me in response to a letter I sent him. I am certain that it was after my 2003 OAH hearing. At first I though that it was around 2003 or 2004, but then I remembered that I had my website going at the time of the call. That would make it more likely that the call was in 2005.)
The District Attorney's office says a child at Feaster was molested in 2004 or 2005. It seems the District Attorney and I are zeroing in on the same time period. Obviously, the school district knows exactly when the teacher was placed on administrative leave, and it knows if the teacher was John Raymond Kinloch.
CVESD HAS LONG HAD A CULTURE OF SECRECY AND CRONYISM
Superintendent Lowell Billings, Asst. Supt. for Human Resources Richard Werlin, and Asst. Supt. Dennis Doyle were in charge when the critical events occurred in the Kinloch case and in other cases in CVESD covered-up wrongful actions and falsified and concealed various documents.
Asst. Supt. Maria Guasp and Superintendent Libia Gil seemed to rubber-stamp whatever the three men decided on. Libia Gil chose covering-up events rather than investigating serious allegations.
Rick Werlin claimed to have "lost" all his notes about a teacher who was accused of being likely to come to school and "shoot everybody." CVESD's lawyer, Dan Shinoff, says he lost about half of the documents he collected at Castle Park Elementary. He lost a few pages here and a few pages there from a single set of about 87 documents. Here are some of the documents that were produced. Those missing pages about a possible mass shooting at Castle Park Elementary would be very interesting to see!
Chula Vista Educators, particularly Jim Groth, who is now on the Board of Directors of CTA, also seemed to support district decisions, especially when the goal was to conceal crimes by teachers who were favored by the administration. (Of course, it was different when one of Jim's pals got in trouble. CVE paid $17,000 in legal fees to contest a district decision to dock Frank Luzzaro one day's pay.)
A 1998 San Diego Reader story revealed Kinloch's connection to an English child pornographer, and Kinloch's admitted attraction to young boys.
An important part of this picture is the fact that California Teachers Association is quite reliable in protecting child molesters such as Albert Truitt.
Obviously, Mr. Kinloch was not fired. CVESD and CVE have a bad habit of protecting the guilty. Perhaps CVESD and CVE don't like effective investigations because facts might interfere with their political goals.
See "California Teachers Association protects child molesting teacher."
DEPOSITIONS PROVED THE TRUTH
At the same time that it flubbed the Kinloch investigation, CVESD administrators, with the approval of CVE's Jim Groth and other CVE officials, flat-out refused to investigate anonymous allegations against another teacher. Depositions later proved that the allegations against the "dangerous" teacher were false, but that teacher had already been fired. Depositions also proved that teachers who made the anonymous accusations were covering up their own crimes!
THE CASTLE PARK FIVE
The district then realized too late that the accusers, who called themselves "The Castle Park Family," had become out of control. The "Castle Park Five" were prominent members of the Family. The Family felt that it, not the administration, should be in charge. They can't be blamed for thinking this since they had successfully demanded that CTA and the district help them by violating longstanding policies as well as the law, to defend Family members in court. The district spent $100,000s of taxpayer dollars on lawyers to conceal the truth.
Coincidentally, both Frank Luzzaro and his wife work for the Reader, which had profiled John Raymond Kinloch in 1998 as a child pornographer. I have noticed that the Reader avoids delving into problems at CVESD. I have provided information directly to Frank Luzzaro and the Reader, but neither has expressed any interest.
The school board in 2004 consisted of Pamela Smith, Larry Cunningham, Cheryl Cox, Patrick Judd (who was successfully sued for sexual harassment by a female principal) and Bertha Lopez. All five of these individuals supported the hiring and firing tactics of the administrators named above.
Arraignment for suspect in child porn and molestation case
CBS8.com
Dec 06, 2012
CHULA VISTA (CNS) - A South Bay elementary school teacher accused of molesting a student and possessing child pornography to get boys to expose themselves online is scheduled to be arraigned Friday.
John Raymond Kinloch, a first-grade teacher at Wolf Canyon Elementary in Chula Vista, was initially arrested last Friday after agents with the San Diego Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force served a search warrant at his home. He was released on bail that evening.
Authorities began looking into the online activities of Kinloch based on tips received by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, said San Diego police sex-crimes Lt. Anastasia Smith.
The investigation allegedly showed that the 41-year-old Kinloch, while posing as a girl on a website called "MeetMe," had persuaded boys to disrobe during live one-on-one webcam interactions, according to Smith.
Kinloch, a San Ysidro resident, was re-arrested Wednesday on suspicion of 11 counts of committing lewd and lascivious acts on a child under age 14 after the alleged victim came forward, according to San Diego police.
The accusations involve sexual contact that allegedly occurred several years ago, when Kinloch was teaching at Feaster Charter School in Chula Vista, Smith said.
The defendant was being held in lieu of $1.15 million bail pending arraignment.
Teacher facing porn charges arrested in molestation
Pauline Repard
UTSD
Dec. 6, 2012
CHULA VISTA — A Chula Vista elementary school teacher arrested last week on suspicion of child pornography is facing new charges alleging he molested a student several years ago, authorities said Thursday.
John Raymond Kinloch, 41, was jailed Wednesday on 11 counts of lewd and lascivious acts on a child under the age of 14, and one count of an attempted lewd and lascivious act on a child age 14 or 15.
His bail is set at $1.1 million, jail records show.
“This is a case many years delayed in reporting,” said San Diego police Lt. Anastasia Smith. “It appears this victim was previously a student of his.”
She said the student attended Feaster Charter School. Kinloch taught there from 2000 to 2009, then transferred to Wolf Canyon Elementary School, where he was teaching first grade, school district officials said.
Kinloch has been placed on administrative leave, district spokesman Anthony Millican said.
“This new case raises the question of whether there are other students involved,” Millican said Thursday.
Kinloch was investigated by the Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force for allegedly posing online as a girl and soliciting young boys to send him pictures of themselves naked, Smith said. The task force is a joint effort by federal, state and local law enforcement agencies.
Federal authorities arrested Kinloch on Friday on suspicion of possessing child pornography, using a minor in an obscene manner and luring a minor for a sexual offense. He was booked into jail, then released on bail. Authorities said earlier in the week that no Chula Vista students were involved in the pornography.
On Wednesday, a former student reported being molested, and Kinloch was arrested about 9 p.m. as he was leaving his South Bay home.
“Our hearts go out to the child,” Chula Vista Superintendent Francisco Escobedo said Thursday in a statement. “The allegations raised in the charges against Kinloch are appalling. For a teacher to betray a child in this manner is very upsetting. We are very dismayed by this.”
School district officials were upset that a federal background check on Kinloch when he was hired failed to turn up his connection to a 1998 child pornography case in England.
Millican said the San Diego Reader published a story in June 1998 that said Kinloch, then a San Diego State University student, went to England to testify in the criminal trial of a college student accused in trafficking in child pornography. That student’s files contained information that led investigators to Kinloch, and he was offered immunity by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in San Diego to testify, the Reader reported. He testified during the trial that he was attracted to young boys, the Reader said.
The district is investigating how the past case was not flagged during Kinloch’s background check and plans to work with the state’s Teachers Credentialing Commission on how to improve the process.
Photo: December 13, 2006 , Chula Vista,- Second grade teacher John Kinloch at the Feaster Edison Charter School in Chula Vista. — John Gibbinsng Commission on how to improve the process.
Teacher accused of child porn, molesting a student in court: John Kinloch pleads not guilty 10 News 12/07/2012
CHULA VISTA, Calif. - A South Bay elementary school teacher accused of repeatedly molesting a former student and possessing child pornography to get boys to expose themselves online pleaded not guilty Friday to 20 charges, including 18 counts of child molest.
John Raymond Kinloch, 41, was ordered held on $1.9 million bail.
Kinloch, a first-grade teacher at Wolf Canyon Elementary in Chula Vista, initially was arrested last Friday after agents with the San Diego Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force served a search warrant at his home. He was released on bail that evening.
Authorities began looking into the online activities of Kinloch based on tips received by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, San Diego police sex crimes Lt. Anastasia Smith said...
The accusations involve sexual contact that allegedly occurred when Kinloch was teaching at Feaster Charter School in Chula Vista, Smith said.
Deputy District Attorney Enrique Camarena told reporters that the first alleged molestation happened around 2004 or 2005, when the student was about 8 or 9 years old.
Camarena said the alleged victim, a boy, had a close relationship with Kinloch, both inside and outside the school.
Some of the molestations occurred on school grounds, the prosecutor alleged.
Besides the child molest charges, Kinloch is charged with one count of attempted child molest of a person 14 or 15 years old and one count of possession of child pornography. The named victim is not the subject of the child pornography charge, Camarena said.
Kinloch faces 43 years and six months in prison if convicted.
"When a teacher commits a crime, especially of this nature on school grounds that is about the most extreme violation we can have," Camarena said.
Defense attorney Dan Greene told South Bay Judge Katherine Bacal that Kinloch had no prior record and had a master's degree, without being specific...
The attorney said community members have come forward to praise Kinloch as a great person and educator...
[Maura Larkins comment: I've noticed that people often say that teachers and parents know who the good teachers are. In fact, they don't. Effective evaluations are needed, but many principals don't bother doing observations, and simply rely on school politics to decide who's good and who's bad.] 10News reporter Michael Chen asked, "If he's attracted to young boys, why did he petition to be a teacher?"
Greene answered, "I can't [answer] that for you right now ... It's unfair to rush to judgment before going through due process."
School district officials said they were upset that a federal background check on Kinloch failed to turn up his connection to a child pornography case in England in 1998.
District spokesman Anthony Millican said the San Diego Reader published a story in June 1998 that said Kinloch, then a San Diego State student, testified in the trial of a fellow college student accused in child pornography trafficking.
Kinloch was granted immunity and testified that he was attracted to young boys, the Reader reported...
God, Gays, and Casey Gwinn
'On Monday of this week in the San Diego Schools, at Pershing Middle School, where my daughter attends, I had to go and file a sexual harassment complaint against children who were harassing my daughter, ... Ky PlaskonSeptember 2, 1999
Sunday, July 05, 2009
Libia Gil and Lowell Billings need to take the advice given by David Frost to Richard Nixon
I just watched the movie Frost v. Nixon, which suggests that Richard Nixon owed an apology to the American people.
Many Americans were outraged that Nixon was pardoned by President Gerald Ford and was never prosecuted for any crime. But isn't that how our justice system works? Isn't it true that powerful insiders in government, schools, corporations and non-profits can commit illegal acts and it just isn't considered illegal because, as Nixon said, "if the president does it, it's not illegal"?
David Frost told Richard Nixon that the American people needed to hear him say that he did more than make mistakes, that his actions were wrong, perhaps criminal, and that he did abuse power.
I believe that many other people in power ought to admit the same thing. Chula Vista Elementary School District administrators Libia Gil, Lowell Billings and Richard Werlin as well as CTA leaders Beverly Tucker, Tim O'Neill, Gina Boyd, Jim Groth and Peg Myers ought to say, "We put Castle Park Elementary through needless agony, a spiral of self destructive obstruction of justice that harmed hundreds of students, and forced the taxpayers to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to cover up our mistakes."
Also, these individuals should make amends by helping to change the attitude of teachers toward the law. Our children learn from many of their teachers that the rule of law is something that is to be applied by the strong to the weak, but it is grossly inappropriate for the weak to demand that the law be applied to their superiors.
Many Americans were outraged that Nixon was pardoned by President Gerald Ford and was never prosecuted for any crime. But isn't that how our justice system works? Isn't it true that powerful insiders in government, schools, corporations and non-profits can commit illegal acts and it just isn't considered illegal because, as Nixon said, "if the president does it, it's not illegal"?
David Frost told Richard Nixon that the American people needed to hear him say that he did more than make mistakes, that his actions were wrong, perhaps criminal, and that he did abuse power.
I believe that many other people in power ought to admit the same thing. Chula Vista Elementary School District administrators Libia Gil, Lowell Billings and Richard Werlin as well as CTA leaders Beverly Tucker, Tim O'Neill, Gina Boyd, Jim Groth and Peg Myers ought to say, "We put Castle Park Elementary through needless agony, a spiral of self destructive obstruction of justice that harmed hundreds of students, and forced the taxpayers to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to cover up our mistakes."
Also, these individuals should make amends by helping to change the attitude of teachers toward the law. Our children learn from many of their teachers that the rule of law is something that is to be applied by the strong to the weak, but it is grossly inappropriate for the weak to demand that the law be applied to their superiors.
Wednesday, January 21, 2015
Sound familiar? Completely false allegations made in an effort to banish woman from California school
At an elementary school in Irvine, California, two attorneys (parents of a boy at the school) tried to put an innocent woman in jail, and ended up in jail themselves. See first story below.
Sadly, not all false allegations are so clearly exposed.
School districts are hotbeds of abuse and hostility among adults.
Chula Vista Elementary School District wanted to get rid of me when I refused to be silent about rampant wrongdoing. "You must forget the past," said Assistant Superintendent Rick Werlin.
Werlin demanded again and again that I return to work without any investigation having been done regarding my allegations. He spoke on behalf of Superintendent Libia Gil and a school board that consisted of Cheryl Cox, Pam Smith, Bertha Lopez--yes, the Bertha Lopez who pled guilty to corruption charges, Patrick Judd--yes, the one found liable in court for shocking sexual harassment of an employee, and Larry Cunningham. In a bid to protect abusive teachers, CTA leaders, including Jim Groth, refused to require that the district obey the law and the contract.
Many school district employees function as "honor brigades" to silence discussion of problems. See second story below.
How Two California Parents Ended Up in Jail Over After-School Spat
...A Mysterious Call to Police Over an ‘Erratic Driver’
The campaign began, at least in its modern form, 10 years ago in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, when the Organization of Islamic Cooperation — a mini-United Nations comprising the world’s 56 countries with large Muslim populations, plus the Palestinian Authority — tasked then-Secretary General Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu with combating Islamophobia and projecting the “true values of Islam.” During the past decade, a loose honor brigade has sprung up, in part funded and supported by the OIC through annual conferences, reports and communiques. It’s made up of politicians, diplomats, writers, academics, bloggers and activists.
Sadly, not all false allegations are so clearly exposed.
School districts are hotbeds of abuse and hostility among adults.
Chula Vista Elementary School District wanted to get rid of me when I refused to be silent about rampant wrongdoing. "You must forget the past," said Assistant Superintendent Rick Werlin.
Werlin demanded again and again that I return to work without any investigation having been done regarding my allegations. He spoke on behalf of Superintendent Libia Gil and a school board that consisted of Cheryl Cox, Pam Smith, Bertha Lopez--yes, the Bertha Lopez who pled guilty to corruption charges, Patrick Judd--yes, the one found liable in court for shocking sexual harassment of an employee, and Larry Cunningham. In a bid to protect abusive teachers, CTA leaders, including Jim Groth, refused to require that the district obey the law and the contract.
Many school district employees function as "honor brigades" to silence discussion of problems. See second story below.
How Two California Parents Ended Up in Jail Over After-School Spat
...A Mysterious Call to Police Over an ‘Erratic Driver’
A year went by as Peters and the Easters battled in court. Then, on Feb.
16, 2011, the Irvine Police Department received a call around 1:15 p.m.
on a school day, reporting an erratic driver at the Plaza Vista School.
The person on the phone said his name was “Vijay Chandrasekhar,” and he
was concerned about the welfare of his child, who he said attended the
school.
A man tells the dispatcher, “I’m concerned one of the parent volunteers
there may be under the influence or using drugs... I just had to go over
to the school and I saw a car driving very erratically.”
The caller gave a description of the car, a white PT Cruiser, and said
the volunteer’s first name was “Kelli.” Officer Charles Shaver with the
Irvine PD was dispatched to the school and found the car in the parking
lot.
“The caller that indicated the erratic driving also said there was a
potential that the driver put drugs or pills behind her seat,” Shaver
said, “So, I went to the driver’s side and looked in the window... There
was a large bag of marijuana that was protruding out of the seat
pocket, behind the driver’s seat.”
‘Please Put the Drugs Away ... They’re Not Mine’
Officer Shaver went into the school to find the PT Cruiser’s owner, and discovered it belonged to Kelli Peters.
Peters said when the officer first came in, she panicked, thinking
something had happened to her husband. But it then became clear the
officer was inquiring about her.
“And he said, ‘Somebody said, after they saw you driving erratically,
that you put drugs in the backseat of your car,’ and I was like,
‘there’s no way… they’re lying to you,'" Peters said.
Shaver said Peters began crying hysterically as the police searched her car and pulled out a large bag of marijuana, a bag of Percocet and a bag of Vicodin. She begged police to believe that the drugs didn’t belong to her.
"They put it up on top of the police car for everybody to see, which was
really hard, because I kept thinking ‘my daughter’s getting out any
minute.’ ... And I’m just thinking the whole world is looking at this
right now … no one’s ever going to get this image out of their head,”
Peters said. “I said, ‘Please put the drugs away. You’re going to find
out they’re not mine and you’re going ruin my life anyway.’”
Peters was further questioned and given a sobriety test, which she
passed. When Officer Shaver asked if there was anyone she knew who would
go after her, Peters told him, “Jill Easter.”
Police searched Peters’ home and conducted DNA tests on her and her
family. The results showed zero evidence of the Peters family’s DNA on
the drugs found in Kelli Peters’ car.
She was not charged with drug possession and police opened an
investigation into the drug planting. They traced the call made to the
Irvine Police Department to a hotel business center in Newport Beach,
California, about 11 miles from Irvine. They watched the hotel
surveillance cameras from the date and time the call came in and saw
Kent Easter walking into the hotel. Kent worked for a law firm located
next door to the hotel where the call was placed.
Police also discovered that drugs found in Peters’ car showed the
Easters’ DNA on them. Cell phone records, prosecutors said, also showed
that the Easters’ phones pinged a tower near Peters’ home the night
before the drugs were planted...
Story #2:
Meet the honor brigade, an organized campaign to silence debate on Islam
Asra Q. Nomani
Washington Post
Jan. 16, 2015
“You have shamed the community,” a fellow Muslim in Morgantown, W.Va., said to me as we sat in a Panera Bread in 2004. “Stop writing.”
Then 38, I had just written an essay for The Washington Post’s Outlook section arguing that women should be allowed to pray in the main halls of mosques, rather than in segregated spaces, as most mosques in America are arranged. An American Muslim born in India, I grew up in a tolerant but conservative family. In my hometown mosque, I had disobeyed the rules and prayed in the men’s area, about 20 feet behind the men gathered for Ramadan prayers.
Later, an all-male tribunal tried to ban me. An elder suggested having men surround me at the mosque so that I would be “scared off.” Now the man across the table was telling me to shut up.
“I won’t stop writing,” I said. It
was the first time a fellow Muslim had pressed me to refrain from
criticizing the way our faith was practiced. But in the past decade,
such attempts at censorship have become more common. This is largely
because of the rising power and influence of the “ghairat brigade,” an
honor corps that tries to silence debate on extremist ideology in order
to protect the image of Islam. It meets even sound critiques with
hideous, disproportionate responses.Story #2:
Meet the honor brigade, an organized campaign to silence debate on Islam
Asra Q. Nomani
Washington Post
Jan. 16, 2015
“You have shamed the community,” a fellow Muslim in Morgantown, W.Va., said to me as we sat in a Panera Bread in 2004. “Stop writing.”
Then 38, I had just written an essay for The Washington Post’s Outlook section arguing that women should be allowed to pray in the main halls of mosques, rather than in segregated spaces, as most mosques in America are arranged. An American Muslim born in India, I grew up in a tolerant but conservative family. In my hometown mosque, I had disobeyed the rules and prayed in the men’s area, about 20 feet behind the men gathered for Ramadan prayers.
Later, an all-male tribunal tried to ban me. An elder suggested having men surround me at the mosque so that I would be “scared off.” Now the man across the table was telling me to shut up.
The campaign began, at least in its modern form, 10 years ago in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, when the Organization of Islamic Cooperation — a mini-United Nations comprising the world’s 56 countries with large Muslim populations, plus the Palestinian Authority — tasked then-Secretary General Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu with combating Islamophobia and projecting the “true values of Islam.” During the past decade, a loose honor brigade has sprung up, in part funded and supported by the OIC through annual conferences, reports and communiques. It’s made up of politicians, diplomats, writers, academics, bloggers and activists.
In 2007, as part of this playbook, the OIC launched the Islamophobia Observatory,
a watchdog group based in Jiddah, Saudi Arabia...
Asra Q. Nomani, a former Wall Street Journal reporter, is the author of “Standing Alone: An American Woman’s Struggle for the Soul of Islam.”
Asra Q. Nomani, a former Wall Street Journal reporter, is the author of “Standing Alone: An American Woman’s Struggle for the Soul of Islam.”
Wednesday, September 02, 2009
Sunday, June 21, 2015
It was probably a good decision to move all 24 teachers at West Valley Elementary to other schools
This story is updated HERE.
Maura Larkins: In my experience some schools have serious problems behind the scenes that are caused by teachers who appear to be sweet and caring. Often these teachers have won "teacher of the year" awards. I taught at two such schools in the 90s/early 00s: Harborside and Castle Park in Chula Vista Elementary School District.
All the teachers at Harborside Elementary were transferred out a few years later.
The same thing should have been done at Castle Park Elementary, but instead Superintendent Libia Gil, and Assistant Superintendents Richard Werlin, Dennis Doyle, Lowell Billings and Maria Guasp allowed themselves to be led by the nose by the teachers who controlled the school. The school had 11 principals in 11 years. Finally a few teachers, dubbed the "Castle Park Five", were transferred out in 2004.
|
Sunday, December 23, 2012
Castle Park Elementary, scene of multiple fiascoes, finally gets some help
I'm happy that the Castle Park area in Chula Vista has been chosen for $60 million in grants. Castle Park Elementary, where I attended as a child and as a teacher, desperately needs assistance after having been managed poorly by the CVESD board and administration. Before the current principal arrived, the school had 11 principals in 11 years, during which time there was a crime wave among the ruling clique of teachers and a $20,000 embezzlement by the PTA president who was hand-picked by those teachers.
Perhaps Maria Guasp, board member of South Bay Community Services, chose Castle Park Elementary because she feels somewhat guilty for her role in damaging the school when she was an Assistant Superintendent at CVESD, promoting Libia Gil's discredited agenda.
Unfortunately, sticking on band-aids won't fix the basic problem: the underlying culture of the district. Long-term board members Pamela Smith and Larry Cunningham have maintained a culture of carelessness, making decisions reflexively and refusing to engage in serious assessment of problems.
Larry Cunningham and Pam Smith covered up illegal actions at Castle Park Elementary
Then the CVESD board and administrators depend on the lawyers at Stutz Artiano Shinoff & Holtz to silence critics. Stutz law firm managed to find a judge, Judith Hayes, who doesn't mind violating the constitution to help CVESD silence me. Even after I won in the California Court of Appeal, CVESD's lawyers and Judge Judith Hayes are still trying to quash legitimate criticism. Here's a recent court transcript.
GRANT AIDS SOUTH BAY STUDENTS
Nonprofit one of 7 nationwide to receive federal Promise Neighborhood funding to revitalize schools, area
Caroline Dipping
Union-Tribune San Diego
Dec. 22, 2012
$60M--Total in grants and matching funds for programs to help South Bay students improve.
Selected from more than 200 applicants nationwide, South Bay Community Services has been awarded a grant of nearly $30 million to improve schools in Chula Vista’s Castle Park neighborhood and revitalize the area.
U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan announced in Washington, D.C., on Friday that the nonprofit organization was one of seven winners to receive a 2012 Promise Neighborhood implementation grant.
South Bay Community Services will receive $4.9 million to fund the first year of the five-year $27.8 million grant for cradle-to-career programs that improve schools and inspire students, provide health services for families and fight crime in the neighborhood. The Castle Park area has some of the lowest test scores in Chula Vista and a median household income of $41,000 — 30 percent lower than the countywide median.
Not to be outdone, 28 local government agencies, nonprofit organizations and businesses, including Manpower, United Way and Parker Foundation, have signed on to provide more than $33 million in matching funds, for a total investment of more than $60 million. The grant will also create about 100 jobs the first year alone, according to South Bay Community Services.
“The community really came together and worked so hard to get this grant,” said Kathryn Lembo, president and CEO of South Bay Community Services. “What makes it so special is knowing how much the schools, parents, and kids are going to benefit.
“This will give our young people an incredible opportunity to be healthier and more successful in school and in life.”
The target is the area served by Castle Park Elementary School. Funds will also be used to create improvements at Castle Park Middle School and Castle Park High School designed to inspire all students to stay in school and aspire to a college and career track, Lembo said.
“It’s a great thing because it means they are going to be able to fund a lot of extra academic intervention and academic assistance,” said Manuel Rubio, spokesman for Sweetwater Union High School District. “It’s the holistic approach of educating the student, but assessing what their family’s needs are, too. It has the potential to make a pretty significant impact.”
South Bay Community Services will lead the project. It was chosen in part because of its 41-year history providing bilingual, culturally competent social service, education and community development programs for youth and families.
Last December, the agency received a $500,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Education to develop a plan to revitalize.
Nancy Kerwin, executive director of Chula Vista Elementary School District’s Student, Family and Community Services, said the grant will create an “infusion of services and support, from newborns to high school youth.”
“At Castle Park Elementary, we will see more in-class tutoring for students, an enhanced wellness program for students, and bullying prevention activities,” she said.
The other recipients of the 2012 Implementation Grants are the Boston Promise Initiative, East Lubbock Promise Neighborhood, Five Promises for Two Generations in Washington, D.C., Indianola Promise Community in Mississippi, Los Angeles Promise Neighborhood, and Mission Promise Neighborhood in San Francisco.
The Promise Neighborhoods program was created in 2010 to give at-risk children wraparound community services to help them close the achievement gap between them and their more affluent peers. To date, the program has awarded nearly $100 million to more than 50 communities representing more than 700 schools.
Perhaps Maria Guasp, board member of South Bay Community Services, chose Castle Park Elementary because she feels somewhat guilty for her role in damaging the school when she was an Assistant Superintendent at CVESD, promoting Libia Gil's discredited agenda.
Unfortunately, sticking on band-aids won't fix the basic problem: the underlying culture of the district. Long-term board members Pamela Smith and Larry Cunningham have maintained a culture of carelessness, making decisions reflexively and refusing to engage in serious assessment of problems.
Larry Cunningham and Pam Smith covered up illegal actions at Castle Park Elementary
Then the CVESD board and administrators depend on the lawyers at Stutz Artiano Shinoff & Holtz to silence critics. Stutz law firm managed to find a judge, Judith Hayes, who doesn't mind violating the constitution to help CVESD silence me. Even after I won in the California Court of Appeal, CVESD's lawyers and Judge Judith Hayes are still trying to quash legitimate criticism. Here's a recent court transcript.
GRANT AIDS SOUTH BAY STUDENTS
Nonprofit one of 7 nationwide to receive federal Promise Neighborhood funding to revitalize schools, area
Caroline Dipping
Union-Tribune San Diego
Dec. 22, 2012
$60M--Total in grants and matching funds for programs to help South Bay students improve.
Selected from more than 200 applicants nationwide, South Bay Community Services has been awarded a grant of nearly $30 million to improve schools in Chula Vista’s Castle Park neighborhood and revitalize the area.
U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan announced in Washington, D.C., on Friday that the nonprofit organization was one of seven winners to receive a 2012 Promise Neighborhood implementation grant.
South Bay Community Services will receive $4.9 million to fund the first year of the five-year $27.8 million grant for cradle-to-career programs that improve schools and inspire students, provide health services for families and fight crime in the neighborhood. The Castle Park area has some of the lowest test scores in Chula Vista and a median household income of $41,000 — 30 percent lower than the countywide median.
Not to be outdone, 28 local government agencies, nonprofit organizations and businesses, including Manpower, United Way and Parker Foundation, have signed on to provide more than $33 million in matching funds, for a total investment of more than $60 million. The grant will also create about 100 jobs the first year alone, according to South Bay Community Services.
“The community really came together and worked so hard to get this grant,” said Kathryn Lembo, president and CEO of South Bay Community Services. “What makes it so special is knowing how much the schools, parents, and kids are going to benefit.
“This will give our young people an incredible opportunity to be healthier and more successful in school and in life.”
The target is the area served by Castle Park Elementary School. Funds will also be used to create improvements at Castle Park Middle School and Castle Park High School designed to inspire all students to stay in school and aspire to a college and career track, Lembo said.
“It’s a great thing because it means they are going to be able to fund a lot of extra academic intervention and academic assistance,” said Manuel Rubio, spokesman for Sweetwater Union High School District. “It’s the holistic approach of educating the student, but assessing what their family’s needs are, too. It has the potential to make a pretty significant impact.”
South Bay Community Services will lead the project. It was chosen in part because of its 41-year history providing bilingual, culturally competent social service, education and community development programs for youth and families.
Last December, the agency received a $500,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Education to develop a plan to revitalize.
Nancy Kerwin, executive director of Chula Vista Elementary School District’s Student, Family and Community Services, said the grant will create an “infusion of services and support, from newborns to high school youth.”
“At Castle Park Elementary, we will see more in-class tutoring for students, an enhanced wellness program for students, and bullying prevention activities,” she said.
The other recipients of the 2012 Implementation Grants are the Boston Promise Initiative, East Lubbock Promise Neighborhood, Five Promises for Two Generations in Washington, D.C., Indianola Promise Community in Mississippi, Los Angeles Promise Neighborhood, and Mission Promise Neighborhood in San Francisco.
The Promise Neighborhoods program was created in 2010 to give at-risk children wraparound community services to help them close the achievement gap between them and their more affluent peers. To date, the program has awarded nearly $100 million to more than 50 communities representing more than 700 schools.
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