Comments on: Third campus in MDUSD rises up, voicing concerns about school leadership and slow district response

By: MDUSD Board Watcher

MDUSD Board Watcher — Tue, 08 May 2012 16:40:14 +0000

If these accusations are true, I think the boy and mother have a very strong legal case in their hands.

Is Rolen going to pull the same shenanigans with this one as he did with the last court case?

By: Doctor J

Doctor J — Tue, 08 May 2012 13:25:16 +0000

@TH#40 – Those are very serious accuasations. If true, and so far they are only accuasations, could result in criminal prosectuion and/or administrative credential discipline. More significantly, if there has been a pattern of this kind of conduct, MDUSD could be looking at consequences. I wonder what their “safety plan” says is the proper protocal ? As for Rose Lock, I understand she was at Sun Terrace yesterday, but the $64 question was she there during the first recess when this boy was injured and did she know about it herself and failed to act ? There could be major implications. It would be interesting to find out when Rose Lock was at the school — from when to when.

By: Theresa Harrington

Theresa Harrington — Tue, 08 May 2012 06:54:08 +0000

For more info about tonight’s meeting, please see the update on this blog post: http://www.ibabuzz.com/onassignment/2012/05/07/mdusd-board-meeting-and-budget-study-session-tonight/

By: Theresa Harrington

Theresa Harrington — Tue, 08 May 2012 05:29:29 +0000

Uh huh: Tonight, two Sun Terrace parents spoke at the board meeting.
One parent praised Jacobs for bringing grant money to the school.
The other parent showed up with her son’s arm in a sling, saying he had fractured his wrist at the first recess, but Jacobs would not allow him to go to the office and would not allow his teacher to call his mother. She didn’t find out about her son’s injury until he went to the after-school program and they reported it to her. She rushed him to emergency, where he received the sliing and some pain medication. Previously, all he had received was an ice pack.
After the mother spoke, I followed her out into the lobby to speak with her. Rose Lock followed, saying she wanted to speak to the mother after I had finished. Lock definitely appeared concerned and sympathetic toward the mother and the boy.
The mother said she called Jacobs and Jacobs told her she would follow-up with the substitute tomorrow. But, it appeared that Jacobs was more concerned about figuring out how many ice packs the boy had received than answering the obvious question: Why wasn’t the mother called and why was the boy forced to suffer in pain the rest of the school day with a fractured wrist?
The mother said she rushed to the school board meeting from the hospital because she wanted trustees to hear her story. Board president Sherry Whitmarsh asked Superintendent Steven Lawrence to follow up on this and he assured her he would.
The mother told me she hadn’t seen my blog in the Sunday paper, but she told me everyone at school was talking about it.
During closed session, the board unanimously agreed to release six certificated employees or come to negotiated agreements in lieu of dismissal, unless PAR coaches could attest to improvement. They did not name the employees.

By: Mdusd Employee

Mdusd Employee — Tue, 08 May 2012 04:22:18 +0000

Let’s be clear…..Nothing is going to change in MDUSD until Eberhart, Whitmarsh, and Mayo no longer control the board majority and Lawrence is gone.
Eberhart is universally disliked and distrusted by members of all the bargaining units and is considered to be a clown albeit a clown with a mean streak a mile wide. Whitmarsh is a useful idiot for Eberhart and Lawrence while Eberhart has bullied Mayo into submission over the years. At Dent Center there have been any number of people who have been subject of or witness to Eberhart’s frequent interference or bullying tactics. One senior administrator commented that it would be good if Gary had a real job and stayed out of district business. Lawrence has no leadership skills whatever and runs top down while continuously surprising staff with decisions no one had any input in. Add that one does not disagree with Lawrence lest you find yourself on his wrong side and you have a dysfunctional district office with no direction or vision. We see no relief, progress, or change at Dent and for the sites until Eberhart, Whitmarsh, and Lawrence are gone. Until the community and public realize who the real enemies are nothing will change. We can hope that the November elections bring us new leadership.

By: Uh huh

Uh huh — Tue, 08 May 2012 03:05:39 +0000

I am an employee at Sun Terrace and yes, We, as employees are affraid to speak up about Mrs Jacobs. I for one, have seen children getting injured only to see Mrs Jacobs scold the children as if (as she, Mrs Jacobs puts it) they are being “Bad”
Sun Terrace is a mess.Mrs Jacobs lies and tries to put things off on others and even when she is called out on a lie she will still try and put it on someone that isnt present.
The children run wild and when a staff member tries to correct the situation, Mrs Jacobs scolds the staff stating that she is specially trained for whatever that situation may be and that we, as teachers, support staff and so on, are not so it is none of our business. I am sorry, but if I see a child in a dangerous situation, I am sure as heck going to step in and take that child out of that situation. Mrs Jacobs makes it impossible for all of us to do our jobs to the best of our abilities. She is constantly speaking of how all of the “bad kids” came from Holbrook and how she has changed this and that only to expect a pat on the back as if she invented the wheel. Mrs Jacobs is also more concerned about the appearance of the school rather than kids performing at grade level and above. Why is it that she felt the need to purchase new (expensive & decorative) garbage cans for the whole school? Or how about moving where the children that get bussed to Sun Terrace getting dropped off down on the street as opposed to being dropped of in the bus lane on school grounds? That has become a safety issue as well but Mrs Jacobs again feels as if she has done the best thing for all involved. There are so many other things that I could bring up and honestly I have seen no action(other than Mrs Jacobs trying to do damage control) to rectify the situation at Sun Terrace. Our school used to be a fun place to be but no more and until Mrs Jacobs is gone, It is only going to get worse.

By: Jim

Jim — Tue, 08 May 2012 01:39:18 +0000

Dr. J #28 — I don’t think dividing the district into 5 voting areas would help at all. The fact is that MDUSD tries to serve student populations with very different needs at a +30,000-student scale, and there are precious few examples of success with that approach, ANYWHERE in the country, at ANY budget level (e.g. New Jersey, where some of the most miserable districts passed the $20k/student budget level years ago). There are just too many competing priorities in MDUSD, requiring too many different discrete skills, to see a high likelihood of success. Struggling students fail, gifted students lose interest (or move!), and the rest muddle through, remarkably unimpacted by classroom instruction. (I have learned firsthand how much a kid can learn about a subject with a library card and Wikipedia, even when the teacher thinks that 3-4 hours of Hollywood videos per week represents a valid pedagogical approach.)

I spent 13 years working with schools and districts across the country, and I can count on the fingers of one hand the large districts where I willingly would have sent my own children to school. The small, more homogenous districts often do fine, because the public can keep an eye on everything, and the student needs are more focused. (And admittedly, many of those small districts serve more affluent suburbs with all sorts of socio-economic advantages.) But the overwhelming evidence suggests that our large school districts are not successful serving diverse student populations — anywhere.

Big, publicly run monopolies are difficult to get right, and our school districts provide ample evidence of that, every year. That’s why most advanced industrialized countries do not even have anything like our “school districts” with their compulsory “feeder patterns”. When I tell people overseas that parents in the U.S. can be prosecuted for “sneaking” their children into another PUBLIC school system, they are as astonished as I’m sure the Abolitionists were after the Dred Scott decision in 1857, when they were informed that from then on, runaway slaves who’d reached the North would still have to be returned to the plantation they came from. That was an abomination, and someday our current system will strike average people as aberrant and unthinkable. But that will take some time.

By: MDUSD Board Watcher

MDUSD Board Watcher — Mon, 07 May 2012 23:54:03 +0000

Dr J.,

You forgot that they will blame all the “enemies of the kids of the MDUSD”. – a la Pauly Strange

By: Doctor J

Doctor J — Mon, 07 May 2012 23:40:15 +0000

When MDUSD changes the boundaries and eliminates all bussing, and there are no crossing guards for the busy streets, children’s attendance at school will drop dramatically, and MDUSD will lose ADA. What will MDUSD do ? What they have always done — raise administrator salaries, extend contracts, and blame Sacramento.

By: Anon

Anon — Mon, 07 May 2012 23:29:33 +0000

City of Concord may cut crossing guards, and then what ?