Much has been made of how Massachusetts voters were angered not just by ObamaCare, but by the secrecy with which it has been hammered out. Well, when it comes to secrecy, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid are pikers compared with the Cobb school board.
You'll recall that last summer the MDJ reported that the board had met and voted 55 times in secret in the prior two years in violation of the state's sunshine laws. And you'll recall that Superintendent Fred Sanderson admitted to a special Cobb grand jury that he had withheld pertinent information from his board regarding his promotion of principal Dr. Lawrence Bynum, who as it turns out was the subject at the time of an ongoing sexual harassment investigation.
Those are just a couple of the high spots ("low" spots, actually), in the board's arrogance toward those who put them in office. But they were among the reasons why the final grand jury of 2009, headed by foreman Tommy Perkins Jr. of west Cobb, handed up a scathing admonishment of the school board this month for "operating in a manner that severely limits the open and public debate of school policy decisions prior to vote and implementation."
The jury sure got that right.
Sanderson admitted following his earlier session with the special grand jury, after he was caught by the MDJ withholding information in the Bynum case, that his failure to communicate the facts to the board and public then had been "a lesson learned."
Well if he learned it, it was a lesson quickly forgotten.
A SPECIAL SUBCOMMITTEE of the grand jury hauled in Sanderson to answer questions Dec. 1, as well as then-Chairman John Abraham, then-vice Chair Lynnda Crowder-Eagle and board attorney Glenn Brock. Incredibly, none of them said anything about it afterward to the public or to the rest of the board, although there have been two board meetings since then at which they could have done so. Brock didn't even mention it during his "legal update" at the meetings.
That conspiracy of silence prompted board member Alison Bartlett to fire off an angry e-mail on Wednesday after she found out about the inquest.
"The integrity of the school system and credible governance of this board depends on an immediate explanation as to why all board members were not promptly notified of the grand jury inquiry," she wrote.
It's unknown as yet whether such an explanation will be forthcoming. But it's likely that Crowder-Eagle will shield Sanderson from having to answer any questions on the matter. And it's likely the majority of the board would not ask him any tough questions about it even were the matter ever to come up. Sanderson's forte is dealing just with favored members of the board in a "You scratch my back, I'll scratch yours" arrangement. If he tried that approach in corporate America, he'd be canned.
More importantly, what will the board's response be to the jury's recommendations and admonishments? Will they simply be ignored, or possibly addressed with a few cosmetic, non-substantive changes?
When contacted by the MDJ about the grand jury report this week, Sanderson answered that, "We appreciate the grand jury's input ..." Yeah, right. That's like saying, "I want to thank the IRS for auditing me." This is just more deception and deceit at the highest levels of the Cobb school system. A system where the bigger your paycheck, the less accountability is expected of you. If you are the board attorney and admit that "mistakes were made" by turning a blind eye to the state's sunshine laws and letting the board vote repeatedly in secret, for example, you get rewarded with a lucrative contract. But the axe sure falls fast if you are a teacher or bus driver and are accused of wrongdoing.
HOWEVER, THE GRAND JURY PROBE is not the only important topic this school board has dodged. It looked at the minutes and videos of board meetings, and like the MDJ has pointed out repeatedly, it picked up on the fact that the board seems determined to discuss everything at its meetings except what should be most important - academics. The board has rarely had any substantive public-session discussion of such topics as:
* "Race to the Top," President Obama's signature education program;
* the growing unrest in the ranks of the system's bus drivers;
* Glenn Brock's secretly obtained (and thus illegal) contract for the system's legal services;
* the status of the system's request to FEMA regarding Clarkdale Elementary, which was ruined by the September floods;
* the strategic plan for the system, which was hijacked by the central office and is being criticized for its "status quo" goals, if you can even call them that;
* state school Superintendent Kathy Cox's controversial math curriculum and whether to keep it or junk it, like Fulton County has done;
* the merits of the block schedule vs. the traditional schedule.
And then there's new Chairwoman Crowder-Eagle's less-than-lofty vision for the system. She had barely gotten her chair warm before announcing the board was going to head for the hills on a retreat to discuss - are you ready? - "team-building," which is hardly the most pressing issue facing the system, especially with a budgetary apocalypse possibly just around the corner. Yet based on her tight-lipped approach to the grand jury inquest, it would seem that Crowder-Eagle stands in desperate need of a tutorial on teamwork.
Speaking of teamwork, the public is a key part of the Cobb schools "team" - yet despite paying its admission fee through the nose via taxes, it is being deliberately excluded from the huddle by this secretive and arrogant board and superintendent.
A GRAND JURY is considered to be the conscience of a community. Its reports are usually taken seriously, and that should definitely be the case this time. This grand jury suggested the system be put on a very short leash, recommending that future grand juries review the system four times a year. We think that is excellent advice. Although it is not binding on future grand juries, we hope they take it.
But even so, the governance issues facing this system - a board that takes its orders from the superintendent, rather than the other way around; and which deliberately shuts the door on those who should be its biggest boosters (parents and taxpayers) - are so serious and so ingrained that it likely will take a wholesale change of faces on the board and in the central office to achieve the needed improvement.
It's unclear as yet as to whether Obama, Pelosi and Reid have learned anything from Massachusetts. But it's not too late for the Cobb school board to start.
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"*state school Superintendent Kathy Cox's controversial math curriculum and whether to keep it or junk it, like Fulton County has done"
While I'll be the first to tell you that math 123 needs to go, Fulton hasn't junked the curriculum, but rather the materials and strategies they were using to carry out the curriculum (ie a program called Investigations in the elementary schools). The state has called for an "inquiry approach" to teaching math vs direct, explicit instruction. Unfortunately all of our hands are tied and we are required to teach the curriculum until it is formally ousted by the State Dept. of Ed. To my knowledge, that hasn't happened, but I sure hope it does!