Disabled Minor Student Blamed for Being Molested

This has been working on me for a couple of days now, since I first saw it. I have calmed down now, but I was livid when I first read it.

A California school was the site of a staff member molesting a 17 year old disabled student, on school property. I have a big problem with this story, because this person is a minor child, but also with the actions of the school board in this case. The article details how the school district, in this case Santa Ana Unified School District, had the first instinct to cover it up and pretend it didn’t happen. The student’s mental capacity was said to be that of a seven year old.

The criminal former school employee was arrested and pleaded guilty.

I’ll let Raw Story pick up the details from here.

Now, a year after the aide’s guilty plea, the parents of the student have brought a civil suit against Gonzales for causing mental and physical trauma to their daughter and also against the school district for negligence. As a result, the district’s lawyers are fighting back — hard.

In a filing with the Orange County Superior Court, the attorneys claim that the wheelchair-bound girl “chose to encounter the known risk” of being alone with Gonzalez, that she “consented to” him lifting up her shirt, and that her injuries were the result of her having “failed to use due and reasonable care for her own safety and protection.”

They also charge her parents with having “negligently, carelessly and recklessly supervised, monitored, controlled and instructed the minor plaintiff so as to legally cause and contribute to her injuries and damages, if any.”

It goes on to detail that the school district lawyers also made a motion to have the parents to pay the legal fees of the district.

In light of intractable problems in this country’s schools, this serves as an example of all the wrong things happening. Parents had complained as far back as 2005 about Gonzalez, and the district ignored their pleas. Virginia schools have had their problems (TC Williams, Roanoke, etc.) but I can’t believe this is the way this was handled by a supposedly professional group of people in this district.

Shameful.

Cumberland County Appropriates Only Half-Year Budget

In order to preserve some operating funds for the next six months, Cumberland County Board of Supervisors on June 29, 2009, appropriated only half the years budget. The gap was $3,742,341, and various ways to close the gap were being discussed.

The county appropriated half of the budget approved in the first half of this calendar year, as if there would be funds that would meet the budgeted amount of $28,430,087. $14,215,043.50 was appropriated on the 29th.

Jill Mathews, Assistant Administrator for Finance, said, “I think it is going to be difficult but I think it is manageable.”

Mathews had been tasked with the job of reducing expenditures in order to close the budget gap. She explained what some of those are at the meeting. The proceeds from selling the Community Center complex to another county entity (IDA) would bring $2m into the county coffers, and will now close in FY 2009-2010 instead of having closed in FY 2008-2009. All of the carry-over funds from the schools, the Social Services agency, general funds will be used to close the gap partly.

Reductions in budgeted salaries due to turnover, salaries for part-time employees and interns in various departments would also contribute to closing the gap, for a total of $47,500.

Mathews remarked that with various cuts and changes, the budget deficit could shrink to $700,000. Piedmont Regional Jail could potentially need less of a contribution from the county, and that would total $30,000. A discussion of the money from other counties in connection with Cobbs Creek Reservoir revealed that the $819,000 received would not likely be matched in fiscal 09-2010.

“There was $819,000 included in payments from partners in the reservoir project,” said Ms. Matthews during the meeting with Supervisors. “As we will be proceeding with that project with other partners potentially in the future that is not going to likely be revenue that we will see in the (20)09-(20)10 fiscal year.”

The payment of $500,000 (not sure if this is income or outlay) will be recorded in FY 2009-2010, in connection with Permit Part B from DEQ for the landfill supposedly being built in the county.

Several Supervisors mentioned that it would be great to hear from the School Board to find out what cuts are being made in its budget for the coming year. A letter had been sent sometime in the past about delineating those cuts, without an answer from the School Board. It was discussed that the Supervisors would like to know which policies had been put in place to deal with the budget shortfall. A letter was to be sent to the School Board again, asking for a joint meeting of the two boards. (The joint meeting will take place on July 20, 2009, a Monday at 6PM in the Cumberland Middle School Media Center.)

Constitutional Officers then spoke at the meeting, detailing their thoughts on the budget problems. Treasurer Lee Pfeiffer Jr. remarked that the rollovers of funds could not be re-appropriated, and they would be gone forever. He said that he appreciated the work done by the Supervisors, but he wishes they would look at the long-term, instead of only how to get through this fiscal year.

Anita French, Commissioner of Revenue, remarked that she has not gotten any preliminary information about the re-assessment this year, and that her office has been working hard to post Personal Property Tax payments. She said that the information has been being given to the Supervisors at the earliest possible moment for them to do budget work with.

This brings me to my comments on all this. The county several years ago started borrowing money, and they forgot to stop. Now, with the horrible economy and State cutbacks in the budget, they are forced into emergency situations that will hurt the county.

Cobbs Creek Reservoir has a terrible reputation after Powhatan and Henrico Counties dropped out of the program, after commenting that Cumberland was charging too much for the service of storing and releasing water. The landfill was never a popular idea in the county, and now we will be paying the price for slow permitting from the DEQ, and possibly some hesitation from the company, which is a new company that swallowed the contracted company in a merger late last year.

Since the assessment is ongoing, one has to wonder what tax rate the county will have, either in the name of development, or in the name of saving the status quo.

No administrative personnel salaries were reported as being cut or eliminated.

Cumberland Supervisor Chair Bill Osl Batting .000

A recent newspaper article in this area remarked that Bill Osl had done everything but kneel down and beg Farmville to rejoin the Commonwealth Regional Council (CRC), an organization purportedly involved in helping localities with planning and economic development issues.

Farmville had declined to renew their membership in the organization in April of this year, after a year of ‘trial’ membership to see if it was still worth the money that the town had contributed to them. Buckingham County had also declined to renew, leaving the organization short of its operating budget for this year.

The CRC is the invention of Mr. Osl, who forced the previous group out of existence by subverting its mission from within. Jack Houghton was the chair of the Piedmont Planning District, until he was fired in the interest of a different organization, the CRC, take it’s place. Sources have told me over the years that they could not figure out what the CRC had been doing, especially with the amount of money that was contributed to their organization. Rumors of the President of the CRC (Danny Fore, nephew of the Prince Edward County Board Chair) taking expensive trips overseas, and other suspicious activities, were abundant.

Dr Edward I. Gordon, a Town of Farmville Councilor, remarked when this was being discussed by the council, that the CRC had never done anything to help the town, so he couldn’t see any reason to continue to pay the money to the CRC.

Ever since the Town of Farmville dropped out, Mr. Osl has been back several times, pleading his case with the Town Council, to no avail.

A few weeks ago, the Richmond Times Dispatch had an article about the counties involved in developing Cobb Creek Reservoir in Cumberland County. The counties, Henrico and Powhatan, declined to continue to participate in this project. The reservoir would have stored water during high river levels, and released water for downstream partners during drought conditions.

These counties all said that the price Cumberland County was asking for the water was considerably more than they want to pay, and the payment was in a strange form as well. Powhatan County Board of Supervisors Chair Robert R. Cosby stated, “We don’t have that kind of money. Cumberland just wanted more than we could afford.”

“They were trying to make it an economic benefit of having it in Cumberland County”, Cosby said.

Cumberland County had requested annual payment, which Henrico and Powhatan Counties balked at, in lieu of taxes to cover various planning activities, staffing positions in the Sheriff’s Department and general government, training and equipment. This would be on top of capital costs based on their projected use of the facility.

“It’s over,” said Cosby said of Powhatan’s involvement.

For our next failure, we have rumors of the operator of the proposed landfill in Cumberland County taking a look at the economic viability of the project. Sources tell me that Republic Waste, which bought Allied Waste and Waste Management late last year, may pay the penalties involved in saying no to this project. The original contract was with Allied Waste, and all manner of things were promised to the citizens of Cumberland County in return for their right to do business hauling garbage and storing it forever in Cumberland County.

There is an interesting timeline on all this of course, in terms of projected revenue from a landfill being spoken for to fund projects large and small in the county. In December of 2006, a meeting of the Board of Supervisors was held, at which the decision for guaranteeing the loans needed to build new schools was made.

At that meeting, after some embarrassing public number-crunching, the Supervisors agreed that the contract for the new schools should be signed, based on future revenue projections of taxes on equipment at the not-as-yet-approved landfill. The Supervisors also agreed, that in a ‘worst case scenario’, $.05 on the taxes (property) of the county would be enough to cover what they needed for debt service.

Throughout the next year and a half, that $.05 figure changed many times, ending with the last known public comment being that of Bill Osl to a reporter concerning the opening of the schools last August.

The county will pay the debt service on the school with money generated by a landfill planned for Cumberland. Some leaders say they would not have been able to build the school without landing the landfill.

“It would have been impossible,” said William Osl, chairman of the county’s Board of Supervisors. “We would have had to have a 50 percent-plus property-tax increase to pay the debt service. Remember, that would be on a community with a $15,000 per-capita income and 15 percent of its people below the poverty level.”

Source: RTD article (archive) by Jamie C. Ruff, 2008.

Between those two dates, Bill Osl and sometimes his number one mate Cliff White, tossed out figures in a scare campaign just in time for the 2007 local elections. I had written a letter to the Editor of the Farmville Herald which was published, asking which figures were right. This is from October, 2007:

Towards the end of the meeting, there was a discussion about what would happen if the landfill did not materialize for some reason. The figure of five cents ($.05) increase in the property tax was discussed, and it was agreed before they took a vote on the construction contract that this would be an acceptable level of increase, and one that would cover the needs of the debt service on the school financing.

The reason I bring this up now is that Mr. Osl, Mr. White, and their supporters have recently taken to throwing figures around in newspaper accounts and public appearances that do not match the above scenario. Both Mr. Osl and Mr. White have been quoted as saying that a $.24 increase in the property taxes would need to be instituted in order to balance the books in case the landfill did not locate in Cumberland County. At least one of their supporters, in a letter to the editor, claimed that property taxes would need to be raised by 50% to accomplish these payments on the debt. At the current rate of $.59, that would be an additional (slightly more than) $.29 added to the property tax rate, for a total of $.88.

These claims are irresponsible and harmful to the true needs of our county, and sound a lot like a fear campaign to me. If their goals of improving our county and providing for its citizens are to be believed, then these tactics do not serve those goals. If the ideas are sound, and the deliberations are sincere, why would fear be needed to accomplish these goals?

I hope that all citizens will contact their supervisors and find out what the true figures are. The only thing worse than the county being in substantial debt, is to be mislead and taken down a path of fear, misinformation and feeling like we have been taken advantage of.

I have only one question now for the Supervisors in Cumberland County.

Were you lying then, or are you lying now? We should be told since we will be paying the bill for your actions in these matters.

WaPo: Claims by McAuliffe, Others About Prison Bed Prediction/3rd Grade Test Scores Untrue

The Washington Post, in an article written by Maria Glod and Rosalind S. Helderman, and published this morning (6-4-09), details the false claims made by Terry McAuliffe, Brian Moran, and others concerning the possibility of a link between 3rd grade reading scores and predictions for prison bed planning purposes.

There seem to be many culprits here, and the article talks about the perpetuation of a myth that has gone on for many years, to the point of urban legend status. Grover ‘Russ’ Whitehurst, a former head of the U.S. Education Department’s research arm, is sometimes cited as a source of the claim. He is quoted in the article as saying that he heard and repeated the non-fact around 6 years ago.

Recently, everyone from Hillary Clinton to Colin Powell, even the organizers of the Alexandria Literacy Festival have used the bogus claim. Another person, Robley Jones, lobbyist for the Virginia Education Association, said in the article it could possibly have come from him. Jones said he remembers saying something very much like this at a recent conference discussion on education attended by McAuliffe.

Empty desks line the dimly lit elementary classroom. A map of the United States hangs on the wall. As quiet music plays, the camera pulls back and prison bars close over the sobering scene.

“Imagine if your entire future was determined by what you did in the third grade,” says Virginia gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe in a television advertisement promoting his plan to expand preschool. “Did you know we use the failure rates of third-graders to help predict how many prison spots Virginia will need in 15 years?”

You didn’t know? Could be because it’s not true — at least not in Virginia.

The startling claim has been cited by McAuliffe and one of his rivals, Brian Moran, as they seek the Democratic nomination for governor. It is an appealing bit of political rhetoric, providing a cinematic illustration of the benefits of expanding preschool: Society will reap long-term savings by spending money early on education.

Brian Moran made a similar claim in a radio interview last month. In my opinion, he should have known better, as should his campaign. One instance by Moran isn’t quite the same as a television commercial and accompanying literature on the issue of education.

All three Democratic candidates for Governor (and almost everyone else) agrees that children who get a poor start in school are more susceptible to academic problems and social ills. All three have called for increases in early childhood education.

Since the ad began airing in Richmond, Norfolk and Roanoke, McAuliffe’s campaign has said third-grade scores aren’t part of the official formula Virginia uses to plot prison construction. But the campaign says the ad was designed as a tangible and understandable way to bring home the idea that quality preschool is a smart investment.

“We feel comfortable using third-grade reading scores as a way of communicating, in shorthand, the importance of education in predictions of long-term social behavior, including predictions about crime rates, which are then used to determine the number of prison beds that we are constructing,” said McAuliffe communications director Delacey Skinner.

Pure, 100%, unadulterated spin, something the McAuliffe campaign is good at.

Pandering to an idea is always a bad practice. It just looks like you are putting forth information because after all, who doesn’t like schools for the kids? The subject is an important one, but real solutions and real statistics are what will convince people something needs to be done.

So the McAuliffe campaign, in trying to make a point, used the ‘shorthand’ that now turns out to be not true. What else has been exaggerated and might be untrue?

Is this what ‘shorthand’ means to Terry McAuliffe?

People are Strange

All it took was for me to go to one Board of Supervisors’ meeting and start recording the proceedings. Although it is legal, it is rarely seen in this neighborhood. For one thing, not very many people know it is permitted.

Not too long after the video and audio recorders stopped, perhaps even the next day, interesting search terms and page views started appearing on the statistics list here at the blog.

Evidently, quite a few people around here are quite fond of ‘Googling’ themselves and their departments. Cumberland and Prince Edward counties,about which I write political coverage, have shown up either in search terms or from their place of work, whether it is the Courthouse or the school system as a result of an emailed link sent to another employee.

I don’t really write on things about which I am not passionate. For one thing, I have poor motivation to write usually. When something comes along like education policy or landfill/water issues, I pay attention and try to educate both myself and my readers.

Most of my time around here, sadly, has been spent trying to keep track of the School Board, the Board of Supervisors, and all the related entities in this county. Over the past few years, I have gathered evidence that shows how the county government was not noticing the public for meetings. The county was also claiming that the only public notice for meetings that are ‘continued’ (their term, not mine)  is the one given if you happen to be at that current meeting. In other words, they announce it at the end of a meeting and then give no public notice other than that.

I couldn’t get the Assistant Administrator to post a notice, even though the minimum notice would have been to post it on a bulletin board outside her office. If you remember from an earlier article of mine, she refused to answer my questions about  whether she was in charge and, if she was, wasn’t it her job to post a notice?

As far as my neighbors and good friends in the county to the south, the news doesn’t look too good there either. The rush to build a water treatment plant and pipeline to provide water by using wells that were drilled without permits on land that might or might not belong to Hampden Sydney College… well, it’s just too ridiculous to fathom. Also on the list of imponderables is the fact that they would be selling water to nearby towns (one with its own water system). No sales to county residents that would be footing the bill for the system, unless you count a claimed ‘customer’ who is a private development that lost money as an investment for the county, is nearly insolvent itself, and whose property (a golf course beyond Highway 460) already has water. You try to figure that one out!

The other water in question is, of course, from Sandy Creek Reservoir. The preliminary engineering report showed that the water is of such bad quality that when/if pipes are built to carry that water to treatment, they can never be again used for a better quality raw water. If anything ever happened to the source in Sandy Creek Reservoir or the water was found to be unsuitable at some point, then an entirely new pipeline would need to be laid.

So, as you can see, there are plenty of problems all over the place. It’s hard to believe anyone can claim that things around here are boring. If anyone ever just tried to follow the money in either of these two counties, it would be a full-time job.

I predict Cumberland County will now offer to pay debt service on the new schools  to save teachers they wouldn’t be losing anyway if the administrators had followed their own policies and used alternative energy features in the construction AND if the Superintendent would be honest with this community about the reasons for the threats to take teaching positions when the K-12 budget process and contemporary anecdotal evidence shows that this budget was meant to cut administration and their support positions.

HJ634: A Bad Bill Going Nowhere

Cumberland High School, ca 1936, demolished in 2007

Recently, Delegate David Poisson (D-Sterling) sent me an unsolicited treatise on his new bill, HJ634. The bill is cosponsored by Frank Hargrove (R-Hanover). There is so much wrong with this, I hardly know where to start.

HJ634 effectively

Amends Section 7 of Article VIII to state that the General Assembly may provide by general law or special act that responsibility for supervision of schools may be exercised by a local governing body and the locality’s chief administrative officer rather than a school board.

There are several reasons this is a bad idea.

First, this requires a Constitutional amendment. Virginia should stop wasting its time on Constitutional amendments that do not further the modern administration of our government (see Marshall/Newman). That this even requires one should tell you a lot about the system we have currently in our Commonwealth. Even the General Assembly has to give itself permission to do certain things.

Another problem is that at least in my county, I do not trust the decisions of the Board of Supervisors, and would not trust them to make decisions about the schools. Recently, I was at a Board of Supervisors meeting where the Superintendent of Schools gave a presentation that was fundamentally flawed.

The Superintendent claimed that since the budget was being cut, that meant instructional positions would need to be cut. This, he said, was something that was unavoidable. He also told the BOS that he “…begged to differ…” with the Commonwealth’s budget and the assertion that no instructional positions would need to be cut.

The Chair, after having re-elected himself just earlier in the meeting, took all this in as if it were the gospel. He urged the Superintendent to keep him appraised of the situation.

Obviously, some of the minutiae of the budget for education is a little dry, and is hard to understand. Let’s just say that what the head of the schools said was flat out wrong. I know it for a fact. The Chair of the Board of Supervisors wouldn’t know if it was true or not. He was not elected on his knowledge of the schools and how they work. On the contrary, he was elected to sell us a dump, but I digress.

Over the next week, I will be reporting on the situation with the local school budget, and how the local government is stumbling along with their fingers in the air, trying to determine the way the wind blows.

This is an example of one county, one School Division. Multiply that by the counties, towns and cities in Virginia, over 100 of them. Our county only recently voted to elect a school board (2007). They inherited a mess. Let’s give the School Boards the due they deserve, and stop threatening to take away decentralized administration of the counties’ affairs.

Next: Delegate Poisson’s self-described ‘OPED’ about his cosponsored bill. I will also discuss how this might affect eminent domain in Virginia.

School Board Member Refuses to Answer Questions

Old Cumberland High School, ca 1936

George Reid, the representative from my district here in Cumberland County, has refused since June 12 of this year to answer simple questions about the operation of the schools.

When contacted, he told me then, and in an email, that we should talk to James Thornton, Superintendent of Schools. I told him that he had it backwards, that he worked for me, and Jim Thornton works for him and the rest of the board members. This did not move Mr. Reid to answer my questions, so here we are in public.

Mr. Reid was told that if he didn’t or couldn’t answer the questions, we would both go over his head in the school board, and take our case public. He doesn’t know how to retrieve email from his spam filter, so I doubt he will get the email I am going to send with the link to this article.

If I ever do get any answers from Mr. Reid, I will ask him about that policy that ensures alternative energy and energy-saving devices will be integrated into any future construction of school buildings. Not to mention the LEED standard. $33m + for new schools, no alternative energy features. I am still shaking my head.

We will pay for this, more than we needed to, for the next 30 years in this community.