Posts Tagged Fullerton School District
A Little Posturing for a Parcel Tax in Fullerton?
Posted by Chris Thompson in Fullerton School Board, Watch Your Wallet on February 25, 2010
This video is from the South Pasadena School District. Fullerton School District Superintendent Mitch Hovey felt that this was a good enough example of how a school district could “send a message to Sacramento” to present it at the FSD School Board meeting the other night. Enjoy the manipulation of children by the same mindless fools who put our current legislature in office. You should have seen the FSD employees and most of the board members smiling and bopping their heads to the music.
Incidentally, South Pasadena passed a $120/year parcel tax last year.
The Pam Keller Recap
Posted by Joe Sipowicz in Fullerton BooHoo, Pam Keller on February 5, 2010
Let a smile be your umbrella.
Some man/woman calling him/herself 4th SD Observer started giving me and this blog a rasher o’ crap on a Pam Keller post yesterday; you know, we’re conspiratorialist wackos, yadda, yadda, yadda. This technique is common in blog circles: you try to color your political opponents as paranoid, nutsy, weird, tin foil-hatted, cross-dressing Nazis – whatever. And of course their objective is not only to marginalize you, but to divert attention from your point.
In response I was inspired to do a Pam Keller recap.
And just so my “true colors” are not seen to be in anyway unclear, here they are: Pam Keller is a hypocritical, shallow, self-serving, irresponsible public servant (and employee) whose manifest conflicts of interest make her unable to serve her constituents honestly, and who seems to be incapable of demanding accountability on the part of herself or her underlings.
There! I feel ever so much better! A veritable catharsis.
Now let’s take a peek at some of the Keller record; and I’ll keep it short(er) by just looking at stuff that has been written about her on what “admin” likes to call “our humble blog.”
Here are some items for your consideration:
1. When she ran for office in 2006 Keller promised that Fullerton residents would dictate the direction of development in town. And yet within two years Keller had voted to approve the gargantuan, staff/developer driven Amerige Court and Jefferson Commons monstrosities that involved huge get-rich-quick entitlements for their sponsors and that would stick the rest of us with the environmental impacts. Only the recession intervened.
2. When she ran for office for in 2006 Keller promised not to take money from developers. Instead she solicited developer’s contributions to her Collaborative, revenue that supported her employment. And the developers were proposing the Jefferson Commons and Amerige Court projects. Hypocrisy? Much?
3. In August of 2007, not even in office a year, Keller joined the now infamous Steve Sheldon (Jefferson Commons) $1000 per person drinkies-boat-ride-dinner fundraiser for Sharon Quirk. Also on board were the Pelican/Laing hucksters greasing the axles of their Amerige Court investment. Did Pam pay her way, or was it a gift from an importuning developer? Too easy. No prize for answering correctly.
4. Even though St. Jude’s Medical Center is a member and contributor to the Fullerton Collaborative of which Keller is the Executive director, Keller, as a city councilmember voted in December 2007 to approve their development entitlements for its massive project west of Harbor Boulevard. Conflict? Much?
5. In August and September of 2008 Keller supported keeping the public in the dark about the fact that she and her council colleagues were negotiating a retroactive pension spike for City employees. She publicly castigated Shawn Nelson for disclosing the fact that the topic was being deliberately concealed from the public.
6. In October 2008 Keller spent over $1200 in public funds for bills run up at a fancy hotel while attending a League of Cities conference in Long Beach – about 25 miles from her house.
7. In June 2009 Keller enlisted members of the OCCCO to publicly promote the fraudulent Redevelopment expansion. They sure owed her a favor since her Collaborative had funneled over $25,000 their way in 2007 for “community organizing.”
8. In June/July 2009 Keller voted for the bogus Redevelopment expansion with its evident failure to indicate any blight. The findings were a lie. Of course the expansion area had been redrawn to exclude a property Keller owns so she could vote on it. How’s that for fancy footwork?
9. Also in June 2009 Keller supported the relocation of a McDonald’s franchise about 150 feet to the corner across the street from Fullerton High – to tune of 6 million bucks. The childhood obesity issue was embarrassing since one of the Collaborative’s mission is to fight it, not facilitate it. Keller only backtracked when it became clear that the jig was up. Later that summer she proclaimed herself a “fiscal conservative.”
10. In July Keller proposed a City of Fullerton blog – without any bloggers, of course. In other words a City propaganda vehicle that would disseminate filtered information and necessarily involve city employees in censoring the unpleasantries often associated with participatory democracy on the internet.
11. In August and September 2009 our investigation into the Fullerton Collaborative and its doings discovered that the vast majority of Fullerton Collaborative expenses went to pay for Keller herself; that her hapless fellow boardmembers were woefully ignorant of her both her fund raising sources and her activities; and furthermore, that since she was considered an FSD teacher and public employee, she got to maintain her benefits thereof, but was cut loose from any District supervision to pursue her dream of philanthropy and self-promotion.
We connected the dots for you.
12. In October 2009 as a city council person she voted to postpone debt payments to the City from…her employer, the Fullerton School District. Sharing smiles with her boss who was sitting in the front row.
13. In December she voted to approve the fiasco-in-the-making Richman housing project scam – another staff/developer driven monstrosity (see #1, above) that even fails to address Fullerton’s most pressing housing needs (if you happen to be persuaded by such SCAG priorities).
14. In January 2010 it became apparent that for $50,000+ you can’t even hire an Executive Director that will take the time to update her organization’s on-line calendar events. Move along folks, nothing to see here!
15. In February 2010 we learned that even though Keller is a treated as teacher (for her own benefit) not only is she freed from the drudgery of the classroom, but she has apparently failed to account for her time away from FSD on political junkets, etc., as all teachers are required to do. Of course this means the accrual of unused sick/personal day time. It turns out that some real teachers resent it. How odd. Naturally FSD is clueless. Naughty!
Oh, well. That’s enough for now. No doubt more dubious Keller behavior will surface in the coming months, and as it does we will surely share it with you; and just as surely Keller’s Posse of Political Whatevers will make looking the other way into a full time job.
Keller Ditches School, Gets Paid. Nobody Notices.
Posted by Travis Kiger in Fullerton School Board, Pam Keller on February 3, 2010
As a salaried teacher, Pam Keller is required to turn in a form to her boss whenever she is absent from work at the Fullerton School District. But unlike every other teacher, Pam has no boss and doesn’t answer to anybody, even the Superintendent.
Since we know that Pam was out for a dozen-or-so days over the last few years attending various civic events relating to her councilperson duties, we decided to ask the school district to produce those absence forms that Pam turned in.
Work is for suckers
The response from Assistant Superintendent Mark Douglas was nothing but a big pile of mush. He claims that the district looked for the forms, although he never acknowledges that he couldn’t find them. But he didn’t send them to us, so it’s reasonable to assume that Pam never turned them in.
Notice how Douglas tries to pass the buck along to the Fullerton Collaborative, as if a private organization is responsible for enforcing the school district’s rules on it’s own teachers. He never bothers to explain how Pam’s 60% employment is relevant or why Pam’s relationship with the Collaborative would give her a special exemption from the rules.
So now we know that Pam did not use her sick/personal days while she was out. She got paid even though she wasn’t at work and her sick time continues to accrue indefinitely. Teachers have been known to build up an entire year of sick time before they quit, leaving taxpayers on the hook for salary, pension and benefits for days never worked.
Some day, long after the Collaborative’s relationship with the school district is gone, Pam Keller will retire as a teacher. She will cash out all of those unused sick days at the expense of the taxpayer. We end up paying twice for all of her silly junkets, and the celebration of unaccountability continues.
Teachers’ Pension Fund $42 Billion in the Hole
Posted by Travis Kiger in Fullerton School Board, Watch Your Wallet on January 28, 2010
Last month we warned you that CalSTRS (California teachers’ pension fund) was in a bad spot and they were hoping that nobody would notice.
Yesterday CalSTRS announced that investment losses have left the fund with a $42.6 billion dollar shortfall.
oops
Even more worrisome: the fund will be completely wiped out shortly after today’s young teachers enter retirement. To counteract that problem, the fund will need to start sucking in major contribution increases almost immediately.
Naturally the pension system wants to resolve the situation by sending more Sacramento lobbyists to persuade legislators to “take action”. And by “take action” they mean increase contributions to the fund. Since a majority of teachers’ pension contributions come from taxpayers… Well you know what that means.
Say What’s An Executive Director Do, Anyway?
Posted by Mr. Peabody in Boohooism, Dead heads, Fullerton BooHoo, Pam Keller, Setting The Bar Low on January 17, 2010
Update: Ten days ago I posted this piece about the Fullerton Collaborative’s empty on-line calendar. I opined that maybe it was the executive director’s job to keep it updated, and archly suggested that maybe there wouldn’t be that much on it anyway. We received the usual irrelevant and hardly coherent comment-blather from Collaborative member Minard Duncan informing us all about the wonderful work Keller does.
Well, the calendar is still empty for all of 2010! Apparently Minard didn’t bother to let Keller know that the on-line public has no immediate information about what the Collaborative is up to; or, if he did, Keller decided that she was too busy to catch us up on what she’s planning for 2010. C’mon, Pam. You can’t be that busy!
The Fullerton Collaborative’s website calendar page declares ever so earnestly:
There are so many ways to get involved in our community. During the next few months there will be many fundraisers and community events to benefit local non-profit organizations and educational institutions.
And yet a perusal of the monthly calendars shows nothing. Blank. A completely clean slate, clean for all of 2010, in fact. Check it out if don’t believe me.
Now maybe I’m sort of funny this way, but I figure if you’ve got an executive director whom you are paying over $50K (for a part-time job) that individual ought to be able to at least take a few moments out of her busy day to fill in some of the blanks on the calendar. I mean, that’s Pam Keller’s job isn’t it?
I just got tired of doing it. Nobody ever reads that calendar, anyway...
Of course if Keller actually does get around to filling out the calendar, then fellow collaborators and even the public may find out how little fifty-thou buys you nowadays, executive director-wise.
As this blog noticed last year, Keller is not a Collaborative employee, but a Fullerton School District employee contracted to work for the Collaborative - where her job entails raising money from members and donors to pay the FSD for her dubious services. Sweet gig. No boss, no oversight, not even much paperwork.
Maybe in 2010 she can get around to filling in the Collaborative calendar.
A Parallel Universe: No Laptops For These Kids
Posted by thedivinemissk in Fullerton School Board, Watch Your Wallet on January 14, 2010
The school is situated in a leafy glen, smack in the middle of a sophisticated and cosmopolitan city in the Southeast United States. We’re here because kid #2 is testing into its upper school. Nervous? Well, we should be, but we know that her K-8 years in Fullerton have prepared her well. She’s had diligent teachers, a solid home environment and the helpful staff at the Richman Boys And Girls Club who’ve been instrumental in taking her and some lucky teenagers through a nationally recognized leadership program. The only thing she hasn’t had, was a laptop. Her school, Beechwood, has never embraced the program or the belief that they were necessary for success.
The private school here is the stuff you dream of: tetherballs in the lower schools situated in the middle of forest surrounded by tall trees. The sixty-five acre campus is awash with nature. Most students have attended since Pre-K and will graduate with their high school diploma. The teachers are vibrant. Many went to Ivy League colleges, and some have doctorates. They come here because they can teach subjects in depth, while enjoying the support of parents and the enthusiasm of children and teens.
Yet, for all its bells and whistles –which are considerable, the school does not allow students to bring laptops on campus. Why? Because everything is provided for them at school. The computer lab looks similar to the ones found at the public high schools in Fullerton, as do the classrooms and library. But, while the computer is heavily used, they also put a lot of stock into writing with paper and pencil –the kind of writing that catches kids off guard, makes them think on their feet without the luxury of googling for facts, that challenges to formulate a story, idea, argument –and support it all on their own. Tiring? You betcha. That’s the point.
So, if a top tier school that has 19 AP courses, whose students apply to an average of 13 colleges, are admitted into the best colleges and universities, and has garnered over $4 million in Merit Scholarships doesn’t support personal laptops in school, why should we?
Granted, a lot of the students could probably well afford it. Most of them might have them at home. But one thing we noticed was that the students were actively engaged with the instructor. In other words, they were being taught how to learn, to interact, to figure things out. They were listening to the ideas of the other students. They weren’t on their laptops, googling, facebooking, or IM’ing.
The Fullerton School District would be far better off taking those precious resources and investing heavily in leadership skills, the humanities, and social skills that will help the students function in times of adversity. Adversity? Of course. As much as parents want to plan their children’s lives, the only certainty in life is that no matter how well you’re doing, bad things and unfortunate times take place. Plans change constantly, and the more we prepare our children for it, the better they will fare. Nothing should be etched in stone except for your love.
FFFF makes no secret of its opposition to the laptop program. But, we’re not Luddites. The fight against it has been led by Travis, who makes his living in the field using and refining internet technology. What is so appalling about the program is the presumption that laptops are the key to a portal that leads to instant success. It’s simply not true.
We also know that not all kids are college bound, and worse, many enroll without knowing why they are there. Paranoia gives rise to the worst kind of snobbishness –the type that warns children if they don’t follow a beaten path, they will fail in life. This paranoia drives parents to go in debt using high interest credit cards to buy laptops in the hope that the magic of Google will take up permanent residence in their child’s brain. This snobbery drives kids crazy, it depresses them, can even extinguish their deepest desires.
One friend of mine, a social networking theorist with many advanced degrees (and clients to boot) has said that the students who are going to do the best over the next 20 years are the ones who make their living by touching something. That is, healing, building, fixing, growing, organizing, and making things. With this in mind, the school district would be far better off giving each kid a tool kit, a community project, and a detailed lesson in financial management.
What we know is the most interesting and fulfilled adults are often the ones who have overcome great adversity and started off with little. What do they have? Passion, vision, timing. And most of all, persistence and the willingness to work hard and take risks.
This top private school has spent considerable time developing an ethics program. They care very deeply about the character of each student. They place students into very good colleges, including the Ivy Leagues. Many have gone on and will continue to do so to write books, found non profit organizations, lead corporations and be innovators in established and new fields. If they have done all of this without requiring laptops for every students, then we shouldn’t see them as a classroom necessity either.
Minard Duncan and the Doctrine of Unaccountability
Posted by Mr. Peabody in Boohooism, Dead heads, FJC, Fullerton BooHoo, Fullerton City Council, Fullerton School Board, NOCCCD, Pam Keller, Setting The Bar Low on January 13, 2010
Minard is pleased with himself.
A few days ago on this post about Pam Keller’s blank Collaborative calendar, we received a visit from FSD trustee Minard Duncan. As is usual, Minard’s visit was vacuous and inane. Just about what you’d expect from an educrat. Minard admitted his comments were just made to “rile” us up.
But what was really interesting was when Minard dropped this spud on the Friends, unwittingly revealing a mindset that reveals all the things wrong with Fullerton’s elected representatives:
School board members do not have any power as individuals. It takes three board members out of a five member board agreeing on an issue to have authority. We are the boss of the district superintendent and no one else but not as individuals only as a collective board.
See, Minard indicates that authority (power) is only to be exercised by a majority, and, moreover, through the conduit of a Superintendent - thus effectively removing the “elected” from actually having to do much of anything except hire a single underling and ratify his decisions. And of course the consequence of Minard-think is that the responsibility and accountability attendant upon elected office is conveniently dissipated through delegation to a host of protected bureaucrats who are never held accountable either.
But whoever thought that the absence of a majority meant that a boardmember was somehow robbed of any of the authority vested in him by the electorate? While it takes a board majority to act affirmatively on a specific issue, the authority of an elected is indivisible. Minard is not just a third of a potential majority, nor does he represent only a theoretical one fifth of the property tax payers and parents – although he doesn’t seem to grasp this idea.
It is each boardmember’s responsibility to concern himself with everything that goes on in his district and to take responsibility for it.
Minard-think leads to the complete dereliction of responsibility that seems to obtain not only at the FSD, but also at Fullerton City Hall, too, where electeds delegate responsibility right along with the authority they invest in their City Manager. And of course as any honest council watcher knows, the Council, through laziness and/or inclination, is completely in thrall to the Chief Bureaucrat who is supposed to be working for them. It’s rather like the Stockholm Syndrome.
And you know what? A lot of electeds and their bureaucratic masters sure seem to like it that way.
Fullerton’s $100,000 Pension Club – Educrat Edition
Posted by Travis Kiger in Fullerton School Board on January 9, 2010
With the CalSTRS retirement system circling the drain and preparing to ask taxpayers for a bailout, it’s probably a good time to remind you who will be reaping the generous rewards from these unsustainable commitments made by gullible school boards under union pressure. The OC Register recently released the CalSTRS database obtained through a public records request.
We couldn’t help but notice that FFFF favorite Cameron McCune topped the list with a pension amount that is more than double the rest. McCune was the administrator who strapped Fullerton with the unconstitutional school laptop program that forced parents buy $1,500 Apple laptops for their children and is still subjecting kids to unsafe Internet access.
| Fullerton School District | ||
| Name | Annual retirement benefit | OC Register |
| CAMERON M MCCUNE | $243,905.16 | Details |
| ANTHONY H ANDERSON | $141,939.60 | Details |
| LINDA A CAILLET | $122,659.68 | Details |
| PATRICK BACKUS | $117,350.76 | Details |
| GLENDA L THOMPSON | $111,865.80 | Details |
| RONALD S COOPER | $111,326.64 | Details |
| OLGA B DENTON | $109,938.48 | Details |
| EDYS M MCINTOSH | $108,843.12 | Details |
| SUSAN A FENDELL | $105,805.68 | Details |
| KATHLEEN DAMERON | $103,374.00 | Details |
| JUDY M LIEB | $100,611.36 | Details |
| Fullerton Joint Union High School District | ||
| Name | Annual retirement benefit | OC Register |
| CHARLES F MARUCA | $128,653.80 | Details |
| RONALD M GROSS | $125,631.48 | Details |
| DONALD J MORRISON | $123,493.80 | Details |
| KARLA TAYLOR | $122,561.76 | Details |
| VERNON A STEWART | $115,305.96 | Details |
| LINELLA K SELWAY | $110,569.56 | Details |
| MERTON R CLARK | $105,579.12 | Details |
| JAMES E SUTTON | $103,621.20 | Details |
| RONALD N ANDERSON | $102,524.64 | Details |
| IRIS C CHOLEWA | $101,569.20 | Details |
| JOHN K PIRKLE | $100,829.04 | Details |
| GEORGE E WEST | $100,393.20 | Details |
| MARY G KLEIN | $100,132.32 | Details |
It is unlikely that any of these retirees were strictly teachers. Most if not all of them were superintendents, principals and other administrators who were able to eke their way out of the classroom and on to even bigger bucks.
Pam Keller: Funneling Grant Money Into Liberal Activism for Fun and Profit
Posted by The Fullerton Shadow in Fullerton BooHoo, Fullerton City Council, Fullerton School Board, Hidden Government Agencies, Pam Keller, Redevelopment, Setting The Bar Low on January 5, 2010
We’ve burned quite a few pixels explaining how Pam Keller’s is using her non-profit, The Fullerton Collaborative, as a vehicle to peddle influence, fund political activists, and profit Keller herself through excessively convoluted financial relationships.
But some of our loyal Friends still don’t get it.
That’s admittedly understandable, since the entire contraption is remarkably complicated. But to help everyone wrap his or her cerebral cortex around the many conflicts of interest, we present this valuable flow chart to demonstrate where The Fullerton Collaborative’s money comes from and where it goes. Naturally the nexus of the whole tangled web is Pam Keller. And that’s the big problem.
Click for an eye-opening experience...
Enjoy following the arrows. After perusing this chart there really is no excuse for not being concerned about the manifest conflicts of interests on the part of our City Council woman Pam Keller.
Unless, of course, you are part of the web.
Capistrano Teacher Protests Foreshadow Fullerton Fight
Posted by Travis Kiger in Fullerton School Board on December 18, 2009
All eyes were on the Capistrano Unified School District this week as the CUEA (teachers’ union) deployed armies of its members to protest a 10% pay cut. The union rented school buses to bring in over 1,000 protesters to the board meeting, which was halted at least once due to outbursts from the pro-union crowd.
But protests were escalated to new levels of intimidation as union members went so far as to march around the private home of trustee member Mike Winsten and his four children on Monday.
Teachers march on the home of CUSD Trustee Mike Winsten
A few days ago we announced that a similar pay cut proposal will be coming to Fullerton Unified School District.
Is this how the union will react in Fullerton? Busloads of unionized teachers sent to create an appearance of public support? FETA union demonstrators surrounding the homes of board members? Will children be used as metaphorical human shields to squeeze more money from taxpayers?
And most importantly, will the board have the guts to stand behind the cuts?
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