Happy Holidays
We will be on break until after Jan 1. Hope everyone enjoys the time with their families.
posted by The Truth Will Set You Free @ 12/23/2006 04:49:00 PM
4 comments
Gwinnett County Public Schools (GCPS) Insider
This blog was created for the purpose of displaying the facts about the leadership of Gwinnett County School District. All of the information and documentation is genuine and has been provided to Atlanta's print media. It is time for the citizens of Gwinnett County to know the truth about their educational leaders and how their tax dollars are being wasted. It is time to clean out the sickness and corruption within GCPS.
Saturday, December 23, 2006
Previous Posts
- Information from the Teachers' Alliance of Gwinnet...
- Latest from the Society of the White Rose
- Board Meeting Review
- Show the School Board and the Media You Care About...
- Check This Out
- School Board Meeting Thursday
- Statement From ‘The White Rose’
- Update
- From the 'Society of the White Rose'
- REPOST:
4 Comments:
Here is more tidbits concerning how
JAWs operates:
By SCOTT PARKS / The Dallas Morning News
Monday, July 19, 2004
Superintendents get $2,000 consulting fees to hobnob with vendors
RANCHO MIRAGE, Calif. – The Resort, perched on a sandy hillside and surrounded by purple-hued mountains, sat baking under the desert sun last week.
Inside the luxury hotel on Frank Sinatra Drive, school superintendents from across the United States – including the Dallas-Fort Worth area – spent three days talking business with companies that want to sell their wares to school districts.
Textbook publishers, food-service vendors, computer manufacturers and many other companies all want to increase their share of the lucrative educational market. The school superintendents came to California's desert to help them.
In return, the superintendents got an all-expenses-paid trip and a $2,000 consulting fee.
In some states, the law requires superintendents to disclose their sources of income on publicly available questionnaires. Texas does not require financial disclosure for superintendents.
The Dallas Morning News has examined employment contracts for superintendents in 26 of the largest school districts in Texas. Twenty of them, including the contracts of Drs. Otto and Moses, contain language that allows outside employment. Dr. Griffin's contract also allows her to take outside employment, said John Tepper, president of the Carrollton-Farmers Branch school board.
Some contracts require superintendents to get school board approval before accepting consultancies. Others say the outside work cannot interfere with the superintendent's official duties.
Pots of money
Big dollars are at stake.
Most people view school districts as places that educate children. But they also can be viewed as big pots of taxpayer money with plenty of companies trying to get their share. The annual operating budget for Dallas ISD is $1 billion.
The U.S. Department of Education says the combined budgets for public school districts exceed $500 billion a year. Wal-Mart, the world's biggest retailer, is less than half that size. The gross domestic product of Argentina is less than $500 billion.
In addition to paying all expenses for superintendents to attend the conference, ERDI pays up to $400 to defray the expenses for a spouse, Mr. Kneale said. Each superintendent gets a flat $2,000 fee to attend. A "full participant" who attends both summer and winter meetings earns $4,000 a year in fees, he said.
* * *
Karen Mortensen, executive education consultant with Sagebrush Corp., said membership in ERDI is well worth the fee. She said Sagebrush, which sells software and school library products, pays $22,000 a year to attend two conferences.
"What we get is dedicated time with key school leaders from across the country," she said. "And we get to mingle with them and other reps in social settings. It would not be acceptable to be pushing product while I'm at ERDI. I would be building relationships."
2004 winter and summer participants
Education Research & Development Institute documents obtained by The Dallas Morning News list the following school leaders as participants in its 2004 winter and summer programs. * * *
Most of the list is omitted; however, guess who is on the list that received a $2,000 dollar attendance fee:
Doris Walker, Clover Park (Wash.) School District
Gene White, Washington Township (Ind.) Metropolitan School District
Robert G. Witten, Central Susquehanna Intermediate Unit 16 (Pa.)
Alvin Wilbanks, Gwinnett County (Ga.) School District
Clayton Wilcox, East Baton Rouge Parish (La.) Public Schools
Joseph Wise, Christina (Del.) School District
I wonder if JAWs included that on his tax return or did he turn the money in to GCPS finance??? He might have even gotten the school system to reimbursement him for the trip???
For the full article go to:
http://myshortpencil.blogspot.com/2004_07_01_myshortpencil_archive.html
What are your thoughts??
Message from the Teachers' Alliance of Gwinnett (TAG)
January 3, 2007
T.A.G. commenced operations January 1st. We began mailing out membership information/applications on December 29th and are halfway through our accumulated list of 102 addresses.
If you would like to request the packet, please send your mailing address via email to tagwhiterose@yahoo.com
or write care of...
Director
Teachers' Alliance of Gwinnett
P. O. Box 1126
Auburn, GA 30011
Teachers, parents, bus drivers, central office employees, small business owners, counselors, media specialists, assistant principals, college professors, community activists, etc. WE NEED AND WANT YOUR SUPPORT.
T.A.G. intends to become a force in returning professional, progressive and common sense leadership to our schools. We are a diverse coalition of concerned citizens utterly disgusted with the direction GCPS has taken in recent years. More importantly, we have many ideas to offer that can effectively fix several of the most severe problems. However, the school system prefers to pursue the status quo and pretend that all is well and that only a few "disgruntled" malcontents are kicking-up the dust. This couldn't be further from the truth.
What the current district leadership conveniently fails to understand or acknowledge is that the collective bunch of "malcontents" very likely consists of the majority of employees in GCPS - especially teachers. We can only guess about the respective numbers of parents and students upset with a leadership that doesn't care about their needs either (despite flowery rhetoric to the contrary).
There's no question that change is coming... only when and to what degree. T.A.G. suggests that the district leadership seriously considers opening an avenue for constructive dialogue rather than the usual tactics of disinformation, character assassination, threats, intimidation, and generally raising the war club.
While the leadership is seemingly preoccupied with which businesses and developers and with which politicians-who-own-businesses to favor with contracts backed by a billion dollars of SPLOST money, the real needs of students and teachers are NOT being met. There are serious concerns among the district's veteran teachers and instructional support staff as to whether students are, in fact, receiving a 'world class' education... or whether the focus has shifted from supporting students and teachers to top officials protecting and enhancing their jobs while consolidating power and control. It's also past time for the district leadership to explain why the present 'Total Quality Management' agenda being inflicted on many GCPS schools (but not yet all)is a better plan than a 'Site-based Management' strategy that allows teachers and parents to determine what's best for their neighborhood or local school.
This district is literally crying out for change. If you don't believe it, simply TALK TO TEACHERS and other school personnel. GCPS has descended into something akin to The Twilight Zone. Our kids deserve something better than the defective 'product' being manufactured by central office bureaucrats, without teacher in-put, under the guise of school improvement and increasing student achievement.
The school board refuses to perform their oversight duties properly. Their mysterious blindness and paralysis may also be connected to the SPLOST factor - too much money + too little accountability = irresponsible behavior.
Only a grassroots movement of concerned citizens will restore balance, order, and common sense to our school leadership. This is that opportunity. Please contact us today!
trips supplied by vendors are common in the business world. however, the "consulting fee" that this article mentions is questionable at best.
I LOVE what you are doing here. GET THIS CORRUPTION OUT OF OUR STATE!
GET 'EM!
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