New Woodburn Community School

GLARING LACK OF DIRECTION, LACK OF LEADERSHIP

It’s worth repeating:

There is a crying need for a large community push for better conditions in the schools for the students, and for the teachers: i.e., smaller class sizes, bigger and better classrooms and facilities, and more and better resources…and more teacher and community control of those resources, which means a never ending school board election campaign for what should amount to an essentially parent/teacher & service worker/community run school board, as opposed to the current administrator/superintendent run school board that has proven to be so contemptuous, so incapable, and so wrong.

American Federation of Teachers President Sam Brunnet comments in his letter to the DP earlier this month:

Read the rest of this entry »

THE BOE IS AN IGNORANT BULLY – NO ONE IS SURPRISED

The Monongalia County Board of Education (BOE) has demonstrated time and again that it is doing everything possible to prevent one of its employees, high school counselor Tom Bloom, from readily serving as an elected public official, county commissioner.

The BOE has blocked Bloom from taking “unpaid half days” leave to miss a mere 90 minutes of work per week – 60 minutes per week if Bloom works through lunch, which he has said he is willing to do. This is the scummy and indefensible level at which the BOE operates in its rotten and destructive attempt to prevent Tom Bloom from attending the weekly County Commission meeting, where Bloom serves as one of three elected County Commissioners. Those 60 minutes per week away from the high school could easily be made up by flex time, but the BOE has disallowed Bloom’s use of flex time too.

The Monongalia County Board of Education is that asinine. And long has been.

That the Monongalia County BOE is a repugnant joke is to put things too lightly.

The BOE either doesn’t realize or doesn’t care that this obstinate opposition to Commissioner Bloom is a public relations disaster for them. They are acting like vengeful bullies, and these bullies are being unmasked very publicly by their own iron-gloved hands.

The absolute contempt by the BOE that is being shown to the public, and to one of the public’s important election decisions, is impressive, though customary.

Anyone with a brain, and with some semblance of sanity, can understand the unusual and great benefit to high school students of having a school counselor (or teacher or other mentor) who is also an elected official. An elected official daily on the schoolgrounds in continuous contact with students brings a lot of extra experience and knowledge and even eventual networking opportunities to thousands of young people who are growing into their various roles in the community and country.

In relentlessly acting against Tom Bloom, the BOE is acting against the County Commission, against the public, and against its own students. The BOE is cutting off the students’ noses to spite its popular employee who has the great merit of being elected to public office. Such BOE bullying shows absolute disregard, callousness, and ignorance toward the public and toward the high school students’ well-being, though the BOE constantly cries the opposite.

When did the BOE ever raise a public objection to candidate Tom Bloom as he ran for office, with the expressed intention of working as high school counselor and serving as public official if elected? Commissioner Bloom did not sneak up on the BOE. Instead, the two-faced BOE is constantly sneaking around on the public, not least in still refusing to podcast or televise its regular public meetings.

And what has happened to even the pretense of the BOE’s willingness both to work well with various public bodies and to bring the larger community into the schools for the benefit of its students? The BOE has repeatedly shown that it cannot be taken at its word. Its actions speak much louder. Pretty BOE words matched by odious BOE deeds. The BOE sneaks around as much as possible, and when sneaking around out of sight is not possible, the BOE swiftly jumps to bullying to push around Tom Bloom and many others.

Though hugely unfortunate, all of this BOE bullying against Tom Bloom is good to see so prominently displayed, because it shows the manner in which the BOE typically bullies its employees and other constituents and interests, otherwise often far more removed from the public eye. This is why the BOE regular meetings should be publicly podcast online or broadcast on TV. So many more of these BOE bullying maneuvers and actions would be made visible, the airing of which can help give rise to change to stop the ignorant, wrong, and destructive BOE behavior. Read the rest of this entry »

CRITIQUES ITSELF

Today, the Dominion Post goes again into hysterics over County Commissioner Tom Bloom, in its editorial, “Maybe, he’s just a late Bloomer.” The DP editorialists detach from their five senses, which surely most people can see, the line of attack is so bonkers. It’s self critiquing that way. A lot of DP editorials are ridiculous or petty or petulant or wrong but these editorials against County Commissioner Tom Bloom take that dreck and ineptitude to another level. The editorials go from pathetic and comical to paranoid and unhinged. It’s pitiful and malignant, sick and sad, and amazingly ridiculous. The Dominion Post. Go figure.

Commissioner Tom Bloom must be doing something right, if the DP is constantly losing its marbles over his slightest acts. We may expect to see in a future editorial something along these lines:

“Commissioner Bloom coughed and sneezed after the Pledge of Allegiance. Holy Moly! It’s an outrage! How dare he! We would never do such a thing. Far be it from us to sneeze after the Pledge of Allegiance! The county taxpayers deserve better! No sneezing!”

In actual news, yesterday, the County Sheriff answered in the affirmative to the question posed by County Commissioner Tom Bloom: “Do you believe there was any intent to mislead the Office of School Finance or the West Virginia Department of Education by any Commissioner or representative of the Monongalia County School system”?

“Yes,” the Sheriff answered, in his fact-finding report, a governmental “intent to deceive.” But the Dominion Post has no editorial about the Sheriff’s report or about any official “intent to deceive.” Quite the opposite. Instead, the Dominion Post finds the very next day to be a good time to go nuts in attacking County Commissioner Tom Bloom as an official who is “wilt[ing]” early in his tenure as a County Commissioner, an attack against the county official who asked the question and who is primarily responsible for getting any light shed at all via law enforcement fact-finding on an official “intent to deceive.”

Stupidly, the Dominion Post editorial states:

“No one is ready to call on Bloom to admit he is unable to fulfill his duties as commissioner, yet.”

It appears that Commissioner Tom Bloom is fulfilling his duties only too well. Much too well for the comfort of the Dominion Post.

Commissioner Tom Bloom dared to inquire about possible official improprieties. The Sheriff’s report answers Commissioner Bloom’s question in the affirmative. The Dominion Post goes nuts attacking Commissioner Bloom.

We should have to pay good money for the kind of comedy writing that Bloom compels out of the Dominion Post. The Dominion Post editorialists appear sick with a lot of sociopathic ideas, but the resultant writing froths and churns, borderline maniacally, in a farce heightened by its own cluelessness. The editorial is inadvertently self-damning, self-critiquing. So we may as well let it rot in peace. Read the rest of this entry »

THE MOST MISERABLE STATE

The report on the well-being of West Virginians is terrible again this year. The state ranks dead last.

The coal and power generation industry (most recently Longview / GenPower and others) have been exploiting and impoverishing West Virginians for many decades. Many billions of potential coal and energy tax dollars simply walk away. And all the while, the coal industry sings ad nauseum: “Coal is West Virginia!” and adds: “Be Proud.”

What else can the coal industry sing? “Coal is killing you!” “Go ahead and despair.” “Your losses are our profits!” Coal and power generation and poverty and deadly pollution go hand-in-hand. Coal and poverty are practically synonymous – thus the need for the constant coal propaganda: “Coal is West Virginia!” Do they realize what they are singing? Coal proclaims itself king of the dead last – in well-being – the state of West Virginia. Be proud, Coal. No one knows how to better strip down a state than you.

Meanwhile the Longview / GenPower plant is ripping off Monongalia County of about half the tax dollars it would have to pay, if it had not been exempted from those payments by the Monongalia County Commission, and presumably the Board of Education, a few years ago. That’s multi-millions in county funds every few years.

It’s not as if West Virginia can afford the coal and power generation industries to not pay their fair share – not that these industries have ever remotely come close to paying their fair share. These parasitic and lethal industries are a big part of the reason that West Virginia is as dirt poor and desperate as it is compared to the rest of the country, and for that matter compared to the rest of the industrialized world:

As reported by 24/7 Wall Street, again this year West Virginia is dead last in well-being: Read the rest of this entry »

THE SUFFOCATING AND PITIFUL SECOND WORST CLASS SIZE OF MONONGALIA COUNTY SCHOOLS

Last month on WAJR, Superintendent Devono claimed that he had no idea what “innuendo” WV American Federation of Teachers President Judy Hale was inferring by pointing out that Monongalia County has the second worst student-teacher ratio of all the counties in West Virginia. Of course, Superintendent Devono is being dishonest. He knows what the innuendo is in President Hale’s remarks. Everyone with even a minimal knowledge of issues in education knows what to infer by Hale’s remarks, which is why she did not need to elaborate. It is obvious and widely known that high student-teacher ratios are odious and anti-educational, creating difficult conditions for teachers and students, for teaching and learning.

It is also obvious that in WVU’s home county, Monongalia, which is easily one of the counties in West Virginia with the most advantages, economic, social, and cultural, it is pathetic and disgraceful that the county school system run by Superintendent Devono has the second worst student-teacher ratio in the state – making everyone’s learning and working conditions that much harder. And Mon Schools administrators and board members pretend to wonder why the teachers organizations constantly object to the lousy job the administration and board is doing.

It is Monongalia County Schools’ callous and evidently uncaring administration that is also responsible for the new windowless, closet-sized spaces in the brand spanking new Eastwood Elementary that will serve as specialist teaching rooms. The unfortunate children and teachers will be put away there in these new “green” school bunkers, schooled without daylight and working all day long in windowless closets. Great job, Superintendent and Board of Education. You really win the prize. Read the rest of this entry »

THREE YEARS ON, WAJR STILL HAS NO CLUE WHERE EASTWOOD ELEMENTARY IS LOCATED IN RELATION TO THE MILEGROUND ROUNDABOUT

This morning, WAJR broadcast incorrect information about the distance between the forthcoming Mileground roundabout and the location of the new Eastwood Elementary. The roundabout will not be “a few hundred yards from Eastwood Elementary.” See the WV Division of Highways (DOH) map section below.

Eastwood Principal DeAnn Hartshorn recently announced on behalf of Mon Schools that the first day of class for students at Eastwood Elementary is scheduled to be April 3rd – a mere seven weeks before the last day of school this year. This is a very risky and stupid plan in the teeth of the ongoing major highways construction. (Meanwhile, Mon Schools is planning to begin moving in school materials in March.) Read the rest of this entry »

NO SERVICE, NO EXPLANATION, NO SENSE

Yet again, Mon Schools’ central office administration fails to provide regular bus service to bring students to school. Two buses not running again today. Bus service is not an optional feature of public school life. It is very reasonably mandated by the state. Yet the Mon Schools administration not only cannot get the buses to run on time, it cannot get some of them to run at all. School parents were greeted by this obnoxious announcement this morning:

Monongalia County Schools: General announcement:

Bus 245 will NOT be running today 3-1-13 Blacksville area

Bus 229 will NOT be running today 3-1-13 Morgantown area