The Huntsville City Schools Broad Civil Rights War~ Update

Civil War Stories and Diaries

 Let's recap.

In a 3-2 vote, the The Huntsville City School Board of misEducation fired the previous Superintendent, Dr. Anne Roy Moore, replacing her with retired Colonel Casey Wardynski, fondly refereed to as The Polish Hammer by the dumbest human being ever allowed to have a talk radio show. But I digress.

According to comments at al.com Wardinsky is doing the job he was hired to do. Keep the public schools segregated and go around the tenure laws.

Casey you have to break the mold and prove you're not afraid of minorities, democrats, liberals, aclu types and the entire entitlement crowd! Do that, and you'll be doing the job you were hired to do! Oh yeah, not to mention striking down all racial transfers. And that includes allowing not allowing whites to racially transfer either. If you don't like where your child goes to school, move to where they can be zoned into a school of your preference, that's what I had to do!

Remember my post, How to tell if your school district is infected by the Broad Virus? Casey Wardinksy is a Broad Fellow.

The Broad Superintendents Academy was started in 2002 by entrepreneur and philanthropist
Eli Broad to transform urban school districts into effective public enterprises. The Academy is a program of The Broad Center for the Management of School Systems.

The Academy identifies and prepares prominent leaders—executives who have experience successfully leading large organizations and a passion for public service—then places them in urban school districts to dramatically improve the quality of education for America’s students.

The Academy is run like an executive training program. Participants attend extended weekend sessions over the course of 10 months, while continuing to work in their current jobs.

Are Davis Hills Middle School teacher Jo Ann Thompson, Grissom High School Football coach Keith Henderson, and Hampton Cove Elementary School Principal Fillis McGhee, the first casualties of the Broad Civil Rights War? I report. You decide.

Principals are treated like pawns by the superintendent, relocated, rewarded and punished at will.

A rash of Astroturf groups appear claiming to represent “the community” or “parents” and all advocate for the exact same corporate ed reforms that your superintendent supports — merit pay, standardized testing, charter schools, alternative credentialing for teachers. Of course, none of these are genuine grassroots community organizations.

Culture of fear of reprisal develops in which teachers, principals, staff, even parents feel afraid to speak up against the policies of the district or the superintendent.

Ballooning of the central office at the same time superintendent makes painful cuts to schools and classrooms.

Superintendent attempts to sidestep labor laws and union contracts.

Superintendent lays off teachers for questionable reasons.

Your school board starts to show signs of Stockholm Syndrome. They vote in lockstep with the superintendent. Apparently lobotomized by periodic “school board retreat/Broad training” sessions headed by someone from Broad, your school board stops listening to parents and starts to treat them as the enemy. (If you still have a school board, that is — Broad ideally prefers no pesky democratically elected representatives to get in the way of their supts and agendas.)

Davis Hills Middle School teacher Jo Ann Thompson is a victim of the Huntsville City Schools calendar. About nine years ago, someone had the big bright idea to build a "fall break" into the school calendar instead of instituting a year round school year, so the affluent could take a vacation,creating an unnecessary hardship for parents and teachers. Per LiA blogger countrycat

When this fall break business first started,
I had just stopped working full-time.
And I remember thinking at the time "What the heck will families with two parents working full-time (or more!) or single parent families do?"

Previously, my husband and I would trade off vacation days during spring break and school holidays - or send our daughter to some local camp or museum program for half days.

BUT, that worked because we both had relatively flexible work arrangements that included generous vacation time (I got 3 weeks and he had FOUR!) and we could afford the day camps.

Lots of people work full-time without vacation benefits or even sick leave. I have no idea how they cobble together child care arrangements for short breaks like this. I really feel for them.

Public School teachers and public school parents have the same problem. . If Huntsville City Schools had year round school, or, if all schools in the state had the same start date tax payers wouldn't have this problem scheduling vacations,  child care, etc.

This is an example of political parental involvement. The politically involved parents are the ones that pushed the Fall Break agenda, AFTER they fought a recommendation that all Alabama public schools have the same start date and end date. I guess they were against it because AEA was for it.

I'm surprised school board member David Blair voted to fire Hampton Middle School Principal Fillis McGhee based on allegations of falsifying documents in light of the fact during his previous tenure on the board he moved from the district he was elected to represent and lied about it. Looks like Fillis McGhee is a victim of Fall break too.

District 2 suffered low voter turnout for the runoff, with just 14 percent of the 29,737 registered voters in the district casting a ballot.
By 2 p.m., more than halfway through the 7 a.m. until 7 p.m. voting period, just 150 people had voted at the polling place at Covenant Presbyterian Church.
"I expected it to be slow, but not this slow," said Nick Leone, inspector at that precinct. "I'd anticipated about 500 voters."
Leone said he believes area schools' fall break played a part in the low voter turnout.
"The timing was bad," Leone said. "You have fall break, and a lot of people just aren't that interested."

If anyone believes the firing of Fillis McGhee is about falsifying documents, I have some swamp land in Alaska for you to buy. Lest we forget the Hampton Cove school was built and opened without a clearance from the DOJ  because  it just skipped the mind of the school board attorney.  Snark  In exchange for this little faux pax the School board agreed the school would be 20% African American.

He pointed to Hampton Cove Middle, another new school in a white neighborhood. There the school board agreed to aim for a student body that is 20 percent black. The black transfer students will bus in from north Huntsville.

FACT,The Huntsville City School system is under a federal court order to desegregate the school system.

In 1970, a federal judge ordered the official end of a dual school system in Huntsville. The order said no school in Huntsville should appear intended for students of a certain race. Yet, in 2003, 10 city schools are more than 90 percent black.

FACT, this is how the majority members of the present HCS board feel about desegregation.

David Blair says the court order is holding back progress, preventing city schools from experimenting with a system in which students choose a school based on what they want to study instead of where they live.

"I would love to see us challenge the desegregation order," said board member Jennie Robinson, who represents south Huntsville.

The Justice Department, which monitors compliance with the court order, recently refused approval for a second southeast high school. At Grissom, the only nearby high school, less than 4 percent of students are black.

The Justice Department's action limits growth near the Tennessee River, Robinson said. Plus, she said the court order ignores that there are more than two races here. Last year, Huntsville had almost 600 Hispanic students and almost 600 Asians. Most Asian students attended Grissom or its feeder schools.

She also said some studies show children learn better from teachers of the same race.

Board member Topper Birney said the city school board could better operate without federal approval for every new building.

Resegregation is a new word for a new circumstance.

"I don't see a problem with the demographics so long as they are the result of the unfettered exercising of freedom of choice," said Mo Brooks, a member of the Madison County Commission. "I don't think it's a case of east or south or west Huntsville excluding minorities so much as it's a case of minorities wanting to live in close proximity to their centers of influence, those being Oakwood College and Alabama A&M University."

Stay in your zone is code for stay in your place

HUNTSVILLE, AL -- A leader in the Madison County Republican Party has written a letter to federal officials stating that disparities between white and black students in Huntsville's school system exist because "life is unfair."
"If there is unfairness, it is because life itself is unfair. The unfairness is not manmade," said Hugh McInnish, at-large member of the county's Republican Executive Committee.

This is war.  Let us march on until victory is won.

New Huntsville City Schools Chief is Judge, Jury and Executioner

I return from my vacation to find the new School Chief, Dr. Casey Wardynski re enacting General Sherman's march to the Sea, firing teachers and Principals left and right, armed with S. 310, the Students First Act, sponsored by Sen. Trip Pittman and Rep. Chad Fincher. Don't let the name Student's First fool you.

The Students First Act would allow school leaders to operate schools efficiently and effectively. Citizens demand elected and appointed school leaders be accountable to the public so they must have the authority required to operate schools to meet student needs.

Translation, school boards can fire and hire tenured teachers without going through that pesky old Teachers Union (AEA).

Make no mistake: AEA wants to preserve the status quo and is targeting the very heart of Students First in an effort to remove “deference” from the employer decision. S.310 provides a full due process hearing before any termination decision can be made by a school board. The superintendent has the burden to prove that an employee should be terminated for cause. After the decision, a hearing officer would consider an appeal and give deference, or weight, to the school board’s decision which is based on the evidence presented at the hearing. In other words, the hearing officer can not substitute judgment or disregard the employer’s decision, but determines whether or not the school board’s decision is justified and proper.

Which brings us to the dismissal of the Davis Hills Middle School teacher Jo Anne Thompson, and Hampton Cove Elementary School Principal, Fillis McGhee.

Thompson, who according to my sources, is not only a fine person but is an effective language arts teacher at Davis Hills Middle School, was fired for, get this, taking time off during the first week of school to attend the Baptist Church national convention with her pastor husband as she's done for the past NINE years.

Wardynski previously told The Times that Thompson had gone on her trip despite being denied permission by both him and new Davis Hills principal Kirus Johnson. Thompson allegedly told Wardynski she had already purchased her airline tickets and that she'd been allowed to take the time off for the convention for the last nine years.

The allegations against Fillis McGhee are more serious.

The school board voted unanimously to cancel the contract of Fillis McGhee, who was accused of nepotism and fraud by Wardynski. Wardynski said that McGhee had used her position to secure a job for her sister and had falsified documents to get her 2-year-old niece in the system's pre-K program.
Wardynski also said McGhee falsified professional learning plans for several of her teachers, including forging the teachers' signatures on some of the documents. The principal also allegedly charged parents for an after-school tutoring program and had them make the checks out directly to herself.

Note I said the allegations against McGhee are more serious. Under the old law the school district would have to prove the allegations are true. Under the new law, allegations are enough to get you fired.

My sources confirm there is a special interest faction associated with Hampton Cove Elementary who do not want an African American leader at the predominately white school because she was approving too many majority to minority transfers.

Both Thompson and McGhee are fighting their dismissal and this will be the first test of S.310.

According to this comment at al.com Wardinksy is doing what he was hired to do.

Casey you have to break the mold and prove you're not afraid of minorities, democrats, liberals, aclu types and the entire entitlement crowd! Do that, and you'll be doing the job you were hired to do! Oh yeah, not to mention striking down all racial transfers. And that includes allowing not allowing whites to racially transfer either. If you don't like where your child goes to school, move to where they can be zoned into a school of your preference, that's what I had to do!

So now we know why Wardinsky was hired, and what he was hired to do.