Tuesday, August 21, 2012

The emperors are naked

Sometimes they make it too easy for me. It's as if they want me to have material.

Last night's school committee meeting was one of those times. It was mostly quite dull, and the only thing that struck me was how little detail has been made public about our school turnaround plans. Then finally it happened. Watch for yourself, as first Mr. Fleming, and then Dr. Walsh, go off. Then we'll talk.





First, Mr. Fleming may well have been in Florida while this investigation was going on. Who knows. Maybe we tried to contact him. You'd think with that raise that he caterwauled about deserving, along with Dr. Walsh, that he'd know what's been going on in the schools regarding purchasing SINCE 2006!

The hypocrisy of Dr. Walsh is amazing. He doesn't sound upset to learn that we were violating public requisition laws on his watch. He sounds upset that someone, who today he describes as, "having more to do with his own inadequacies" is "throwing gasoline."

He went on to say, "I know what the former business manager who brought this up, what his status would have been if he had not left. He would have been shoved out the door, as far as I'm concerned." The not veiled implication is that the accuser is incompetent.

These are two of the same school committee members who heaped praise on Dr. Cameron (since utterly discredited by the DESE) in his 2010 evaluation. Can we trust them to judge competence? (Note that none of the criteria used to measure Cameron's performance involved student achievement. Unbelievable!)

Meanwhile, looking back, Walsh had this to say, when Sheehan gave his resignation in 2010:

The school committee minutes report the following:

Dr. Walsh thanked Mr. Sheehan for his service and noted that it has been a pleasure to work with him.

Dr. Walsh moved to accept Mr. Sheehan’s resignation effective January 1, 2011 so that the School Department can begin the process of hiring a Business Manager. Mr. Carr seconded the motion carried.

If he was so horrible, why did he note what a pleasure it was to work with him? Why didn't he move that the resignation be accepted effective immediately?

The Salem News quoted Walsh thusly:

"It has been a pleasure and will continue to be a pleasure, I'm sure, to be in Tim's company. He has worked extremely hard in his position."
That sounds a lot different than the story that Walsh is spinning today. What happened to everything in the schools having the overt or tacit approval of the school committee? Careful what you say, Dr. Walsh, your words can come back to bite you. Don't you own what went on in L'Heureux's department for at least four, and probably more, years?

I mean, was he just lying about Sheehan? Or is he the one throwing gas now? I can only conclude, yet again, that our emperors have no clothes.

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