Slap and tickle, here and there
The Office of Administrative Hearings found my request insufficient on the 23rd, so I got more advice and amended it, getting the amended one in just in time yesterday. The judge clearly didn't read it, but as I said to the OAH mediator, if he was able to read it without seeing what it said, it needed reworking anyway. And indeed I did need to tighten up some legal points just based on the comments of Connie Huang from Disability Rights California, which is why it took me into the afternoon to have it ready to resubmit. I'm very glad I waited to hear from her.
I also seem to have made some progress on hiring a lawyer for the tort claim, and the Due Process request documents the violations that strip the district people of their qualified immunity and let us into Section 1983 suits against the Superintendent, the four board members involved plus the one no longer on the board, and others, if that's where we need to go.
We've had lots of excitement in Chino Valley Unified the past week or so. The arbitrator keeps ruling against the board in its dispute with the Lewis Company, and they just agreed on a program of cuts - closing several schools, laying of 285 people, bumping K-3 class sizes and more.
Now something like this is unavoidable, because California being in the shape it is and clawing back a lot of money we were counting on, what are we going to use for money? But this thing was first published on the 3rd and then adopted on the 5th, with no one getting a chance to look over the numbers. And lots of people know that the Superintendent lies about everything. If he could put about $1.5 million worth of obvious lying into his $2.1 million estimate to run the school in the Preserve, in about 10 line items, and he was able to show that not consolidating the agriculture programs was going to cost about a million bucks, when the truth was more like a tenth of that, most of which could be raised in donations, then who is going to trust his numbers on $44 million in about 100 line items - rammed through in two days with no chance for anyone including the board members to actually look anything over? And how much more when even a cursory glance reveals a good deal of mushroom food lying right on the surface, which Lewis, the union reps, and others will smell soon enough!
So they ram this thing through in two days before anyone can look at it, and they should be surprised that people don't want to hear it? You can lie your way into what you want a lot easier for a while when you're willing to forfeit trust, but things do come up in which you need a lot of trust in your account - and then it's not so good when you come up empty. In fact, it's not as bad as it sounds, because the rush was that they need a plan before they can send pink slips, and you have to give some notice in those pink slips. But that takes too long to explain to the union leaders and the people losing their neighborhood schools when they've seen the board condoning and covering up for the Superintendent's lying all these years.
In church news, the pastor sent us all an email regarding evangelism, and I responded with some biblical basics. Some people were happy, and some weren't, and the elders were scheduled to talk about it in their monthly meeting this evening. How that works out will be known soon. When I get some news I'll give it.
I also seem to have made some progress on hiring a lawyer for the tort claim, and the Due Process request documents the violations that strip the district people of their qualified immunity and let us into Section 1983 suits against the Superintendent, the four board members involved plus the one no longer on the board, and others, if that's where we need to go.
We've had lots of excitement in Chino Valley Unified the past week or so. The arbitrator keeps ruling against the board in its dispute with the Lewis Company, and they just agreed on a program of cuts - closing several schools, laying of 285 people, bumping K-3 class sizes and more.
Now something like this is unavoidable, because California being in the shape it is and clawing back a lot of money we were counting on, what are we going to use for money? But this thing was first published on the 3rd and then adopted on the 5th, with no one getting a chance to look over the numbers. And lots of people know that the Superintendent lies about everything. If he could put about $1.5 million worth of obvious lying into his $2.1 million estimate to run the school in the Preserve, in about 10 line items, and he was able to show that not consolidating the agriculture programs was going to cost about a million bucks, when the truth was more like a tenth of that, most of which could be raised in donations, then who is going to trust his numbers on $44 million in about 100 line items - rammed through in two days with no chance for anyone including the board members to actually look anything over? And how much more when even a cursory glance reveals a good deal of mushroom food lying right on the surface, which Lewis, the union reps, and others will smell soon enough!
So they ram this thing through in two days before anyone can look at it, and they should be surprised that people don't want to hear it? You can lie your way into what you want a lot easier for a while when you're willing to forfeit trust, but things do come up in which you need a lot of trust in your account - and then it's not so good when you come up empty. In fact, it's not as bad as it sounds, because the rush was that they need a plan before they can send pink slips, and you have to give some notice in those pink slips. But that takes too long to explain to the union leaders and the people losing their neighborhood schools when they've seen the board condoning and covering up for the Superintendent's lying all these years.
In church news, the pastor sent us all an email regarding evangelism, and I responded with some biblical basics. Some people were happy, and some weren't, and the elders were scheduled to talk about it in their monthly meeting this evening. How that works out will be known soon. When I get some news I'll give it.
posted by Peter Attwood at 3/10/2009 02:18:00 AM
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