This is absolutely a disgrace. Overflowing with "exemplary" and nonsense.
Ed: "The superintendent is overworked and under-supported." Really?
Jaime: "The leadership award that she received at the conference of her peers is clear evidence of her prominence in the field."
Lizbeth: "With the hiring of John Guilfoil Public Relations, formal communication has improved...FY16 has been a year of challenge and growth. Commendable work has been done to improve outcomes, the fruits of which may not be evident immediately..."
Casatelli: "Culture diversity has been a difficult area, but greater attention to professional development and student-teacher interaction may help to bring about much needed changes to the school culture. We continue to make progress in this area."
Dugan: "I believe, as evidenced by the artifacts provided, the Superintendent is supporting cultural proficiency across the district."
Dolan: "I have witnessed this administrative team as a mayor and as a parent use this data to help students improve... [Professional Culture] significant and meaningful work has been done in this critical area...Through her incredible work ethic and passion she is a shining example to all staff and students!"
Driscoll: "Exemplary...Co-curricular successes: Drama, music, robotics, athletics, visual arts [and Taymore did what exactly here????]...Audit reports confirm timely and accurate practices and reporting? [say what?????] Efforts and success at keeping up with dissemination platforms while adhering to SC policy....Supt. works very hard to minimize distractions and stay focused....
Pages 92-140
http://melrosecityma.iqm2.com/Citizens/FileOpen.aspx?Type=1&ID=2655&Inline=True
Welcome to Robbieworld, where truth, honesty, and integrity were the very first casualties.
Honesty and truthfulness are not characteristics of this school committee - you should all be ashamed if yourselves!
And some people still wonder why the override failed 2 to 1 ?
This is a complete and total disgrace. Talk about a vote of no confidence. Puppets all of them. Hey Reading has a 7.5 million override on the table for schools. Guarantee it passes. You know why? Because they don't have this BS.
Margaret: "Efforts and success at keeping up with dissemination platforms while adhering to SC policy" WTF is that supposed to mean? Not even her precious angels floating around in her demented head would be able to make sense out of such officious silliness. And her "Executive Summary" is a festering pile of horsepucky, to quote Sherman Potter.
Chris got quite effusive in her expressions of praise, as usual, and she demonstrates not one iota of embarrassment that she has been there for well-nigh 15 years, praising the whole lot of increasingly incompetent and vile supers she's had a central role in hiring.
Jessica is now a primary excreter of copious verbal bilge, all rah-rah for her best bud Cyn-Cyn. She is clearly bucking for a job in the system, heaven forbid for everyone else if that happens. She's also clearly another self-proclaimed educational expert.
Robbie, the original self-designated educational expert, is as offensive as ever, and more so, infatuated with himself and his power, ignorant and arrogant about the facts of the matter. What OCR? Kick who Ginger?
Jaime is outright crazy, fits right in. Her prose epitomizes the bizarre disconnect with the reality of this administration (that literally any passerby would be able to see but apparently this bunch chooses not to). Whoever suggested making a bobblehead of her was spot on. All that crazy nodding at every utterance of anyone else on the committee or Cyndy is beyond bizarre. She really really REALLY wants them to like her and know that she is so with them in anything and everything they say!
No point in even legitimizing Ed's suck-up written stupidity. Once a con, always a con. Based on what he writes for this ridiculous exercise, we're all better off when he keeps his trap shut, as he does virtually all the time during meetings.
Perhaps the only interesting feature of this display of what's most essentially wrong in Melrose is that there were considerably fewer "Exemplary" markings in lieu of "Proficient" and even a couple "Needs Improvement" designations that previously would only have been aired by Mrs. K, who always nailed the truth right out there most articulately and is much missed. But not to worry that they were actually trying to do anything other than cover their sorry butts by making it look like they were taking it a little bit seriously (nope!). This whole thing continues to reek of the insincerity the committee embodies. It's all in the bag. The Emperor really has no clothes, but they didn't even try to notice. All the euphemisms referring to the "challenges" this past year reveal exactly how little any of them actually care about the enormous harm that they and their darling employee have caused to the school system and the community.
Is Melrose ever going to have grown-ups (who are sane, and heaven-forbid might even have some integrity and capability for independent thought) on this committee again?
Wow....Singing Angels nailed it! Great summary of the performance summaries on Taymore and so true! What dysfunctional group of people -how do they sleep at night knowing that they are perpetrating a failed system onto Melrose kids?
Attention
Jul 28, 2016 - 9:51AM
Announcement
It is with pleasure that I announce that there will be funding provided by the SC to fund the design and production of a Jaime McAllister-Grande bobblehead. Since this member spends so much time and expends so much effort nodding in response to any comment made by the superintendent or the chairperson, this series will require the use of a more robustly designed spring to prevent premature failure of the bobbing mechanism
Get Guilfoil PR firm right on that promotion of the new bond for taxpayer-sponsored triple-super-bouncy Official Melrose School Committee J M-G Bobbleheads, to be sold at the SC booth at this year's culturally proficient Victorian Fair, right along with I'm A Ginger Kick-Me Buttons that Brent will be hawking. Meanwhile the Middle and High School PTO booths will be exhibiting a Plantation Diorama, complete with miniature METCO students NOT sitting together. MAAV will be selling Red Raiders boxed wine with matching Red Cups and "Tommyhawks." Patti will be handing out laminated copies of the OCR Findings document and doing a demo on The French Manicure method. Cyndy will offer a DESE briefing on the 32 culturally appropriate ways to wear a Pashmina. Should be a fun time for all!
[:-D]
It is likely that Margaret Driscoll removed all negative "artifacts" from consideration as permitted now by the School Committee Norms. She has the sole power to determine what documents the school committee members will be able to view and consider, which has had devastating consequences for the city, preventing the committee members from doing any early damage control on civil rights violations, public records request violations, etc.
The SC chair (KT & CC were just as bad) can only get away with this kind of censorship as long as the rest of the committee yields its authority to her, which they do readily because they think it gets them off the hook for taking any responsibility whatsoever. By abdicating their legal authority they also are in violation of their sworn oaths to the citizens. It's shameful and it needs to stop. They are accountable whether they accept it or not. They do wear the disgrace of this administration because they are fully complicit, every one of them, in the illegal and contemptuous conduct.
The diorama and bobbing heads are pure perfect genius. This is one very sick setup, and it needs to go down!
These SC members have no shame. Their so-called evaluations are a complete joke. They and their employee need to be fired by the citizens!
Everyone should stop by their booth at the Victorian Fair and tell them how horrible they are. We'll see if Driscoll brings her gavel. I'm serious. The have cut out the ability for the public to meaningfully interact with them. We have to get the point across in other ways. They are hurtful to this town and its families and its children. They need to hear it.
I hear Driscoll has set a five minute limit at their tent for the Vic Fair.[:)s]
Yeah, and the SC will no doubt have spent our taxpayer money on more Orient Trading Company garbage to give out at the Fair, as Driscoll has been ordering this junk every year. Shameless disgusting lousy excuses masquerading as our responsible elected officials.
Instead - she should be handing out 10 minute speaking passes for public sessions at their meetings. Better yet - pass out placards which you can raise before you speak that say - "Please be polite to public speakers"! That would be a first for her!
The "lawyers behind this": Melrose City Solicitor Robert Van Campen. Ironically, he is also the City's liaison to the Massachusetts State Ethics Commission (as recommended by Mayor Robert Dolan to the Board of Aldermen).
"The mission of the State Ethics Commission is to foster integrity in public service in state, county and local government, to promote the public's trust and confidence in that service, and to prevent conflicts between private interests and public duties".
You can laugh now.
"Meanwhile the Middle and High School PTO booths will be exhibiting a Plantation Diorama, complete with miniature METCO students NOT sitting together. "
So spot on. So incredible. So hard to believe that this $hit flies in this burb. Maybe the diorama should have a NB bobblehead telling the kids to go back to the plantation, too, along with a MD creature pounding her gavel on the METCO kids directly (which she may as well have been doing thanks to her unconscionable actions on the SC, truth be told!). Do you suppose Orient Trading Company sells those? Just ask Margaret, because she and Kristin must know every item in that trashy catalog, having charged to the taxpayers many hundreds of dollars over the years to display and hand out that junk at the Fair.
"egads"........now there's a word you don't see very often, or ever any more!
The enormity of the hypocrisy from the local school board and officials is really staggering. Today apparently the school committee is having a "retreat" in which they are forming their "Smart Goals." Total bogus junk from what anyone with half a brain can see.
Their "agenda packet" has some materials that Driscoll has assigned them to study. In one of them is the following:
"Many school boards believe that their number one respon-
sibility is to hire a good superintendent and let him/her do
whatever needs to be done. They think that the superinten-
dent should set the vision and board should adopt it. Morally,
the board must determine the vision and values of the district
because they, not the “hired help” are ultimately responsible
to the community."
Yeah, exactly. But this chair and this board/mayor have epitomized exactly the opposite of what the author puts forward as a moral responsibility. There are even exact quotes that can be taken from any number of statements by the mayor and committee members about how they hire their expert, and their job is to back her/him. In effect they have behaved with zero attention to their "moral" and in fact legal (according to their sworn oaths) responsibility, as this ridiculous evaluation document (and all those from recent years) demonstrate so clearly.
When it comes to morals and ethics, they have the OCR Findings Document staring at them saying it all. They can look to the many inexcusable events of recent years--Kick a Ginger Day, etc.--for a plethora of evidence that demonstrates their colossal hypocrisy. So disturbing.
With yet another major revelation that the superintendent has been repeatedly violating FERPA (Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act) since her arrival here, the school committee looks even more foolish than the fools they are. What school committee hands out a positive rating to a superintendent who, within the current rating period, was twice found in violation of MA Public Records Laws (with a little help from Robbie Van Campen),was the subject of two Office of Civil Rights Investigations, has just admitted to violating FERPA laws during her entire tenure here, and then compounded her sins by falsely claiming to reporters that she "took immediate corrective action as soon as we became aware of it" when in fact she had not, with the private information of SPED students still available on the MPS schools website as we speak?
demented in their grossly inflated sense of themselves and their importance
criminally negligent is proven with their many failures in oversight as shown in numerous violation findings by federal and state authorities
They are ripe for even a minor-league attorney stepping up to file suit on any one of a number of avenues where they have obviously and willfully violated the laws. Children have been and are being hurt, as are staff. Plenty of evidence and lots of the legal work has already been accomplished with all these awful findings. It's just a matter of time, and we taxpayers will all be on the hook, not only for the damage already done but for what inevitably lies ahead. The pinheads "defending" this bunch to date won't stand a chance, as was the case with OCR. Read that one, or any of the OML cases, for that matter, or watch some of the hideous videos of meetings, and it's plainly evident what kind of willful negligence has been in play thanks to these malpracticing fools. Great system: purposely give bad advice and then get to rake it in "defending" you! Board of Bar Overseers, folks. Someone with some spare time and a backbone needs to file.
http://www2.forbes.com/leadership/15-body-language-blunders-successful-people-never-make
Watch any single school committee meeting and see for yourself what these hacks are all about, every single one of them a mockery of what a responsible, mature official should be. Instead, it's a lineup of the crazed and craven, juvenile, insecure, truth-challenged hacks. They are also, each and every one, humorless, unless you count the kind of "humor" that's only achieved at the cruel expense of others, the kind RD epitomizes, or the sickening fake giggles of MD or CC or JD made to bolster their folksiness, "one with the people" image. And then there's that bizarre head-bobber. Good grief! And now for the BOA.... Is this really the best that Melrose can produce as its "leaders"?
Still repulsed