Thursday, October 22, 2015

Since facts still matter... Important facts & context NOT revealed in Sun-Sentinel's account of Broward County School Board hiring Leo Bobadilla from Houston to head its "troubled $800 million bond program." Charlotte Greenbarg, Buddy Nevins & Ericka Mellon help me connect some dots on the 'bigger picture' and what it reveals is NOT positive about Broward School Board members' public accountability. Surprise!

Since facts still matter... Important facts & context NOT revealed in Sun-Sentinel's account of Broward County School Board hiring Leo Bobadilla from Houston to head its "troubled $800 million bond program." Charlotte Greenbarg, Buddy Nevins & Ericka Mellon help me connect some dots on the 'bigger picture' and what it reveals is NOT positive about Broward School Board members' public accountability. Surprise!




South Florida Sun-Sentinel
District hires $185K executive - School board vote brings aboard head of embattled bond program in Texas
By Brittany Shammas, Staff writer
October 21, 2015

The Broward County School Board voted Tuesday to hire the leader of an embattled Houston school district bond program to oversee its own troubled $800 million bond program, which is being used renovate aging schools.

Leo Bobadilla, chief operating officer at the Houston Independent School District, will earn $185,707 as Broward's chief facilities officer. He'll be responsible for overseeing the construction and design of new facilities, as well as maintaining, repairing and renovating existing facilities

Read the rest of the article at:

 Broward Beat
Slammed In Last Job Because Of Bad Audits, Now Hired By Broward Schools
By Buddy Nevins
October 18, 2015

The Houston school executive chosen to manage Broward’s school construction was slammed for running a program that overpaid contractors and allowed lawful spending caps to be circumvented.

Leo Bobadilla, chief operating officer of the Houston school system, is due to be hired on Superintendent Robert Runcie’s recommendation on Tuesday.

Read the rest of the article at:
http://www.browardbeat.com/slammed-in-last-job-because-of-bad-audits-now-hired-by-broward-schools/

 Do I even need to point out that this week, per the above matter, we saw YET ANOTHER 
embarrassing vote on the Broward School Board by SE Broward's member, Ann Murray, who showed all over again that facts and context never really matter to her as long as she and the other School Board insiders can keep common sense accountability and reform from coming into play before even more kids and parents abandon the Broward public schools? 
Apparently so.

But if you were hiring someone for an important position of public trust, wouldn't you want to know as many salient and relevant facts as possible about their past experience, good and bad? 
Probably so.
The problem is that Ann Murray doesn't.

This is hardly surprising, given Murray's consistently unimpressive track record on behalf of the public and public education, which I have cited 44 times in the past 7 years on my blog, most recently, back in June:
Broward County residents increasingly dismayed by brazenness of Broward County 
Schools Supt. Robert W. Runcie & Broward School Board's Ann Murray and Rosalind 
Osgood's actions re bond $$ transparency & oversight

Supt. Robert W. Runcie wants Leo Bobadilla? 
Okay, that's good enough for Murray to say yes.
Just like the guys from Chicago that Runcie also said he needed to hire to fix things for him who never quite worked out. 

At times like this, it's very hard to recall that Supt. Runcie works for her and us, not the other way around.
And I remind you that I was a Runcie supporter initially, but at some point you have to admit that it's not working out the way you hoped.

Below, a relevant fact about this matter from my friend Charlotte Greenbarg, longtime Hollywood and Broward civic activist and education reformer, now making a big difference over in Lutz, in Hillsborough County.
(Yes, Lutz. Which, admittedly, I had never heard of before Charlotte moved there, since it sounded more like an App than a real place in Florida.)

Makes you wonder why the fact that the Houston audit was apparently going to be released the next day wasn't mentioned in the Sun-Sentinel article, no?
Really, the Broward School Board couldn't even wait 48 hours?

FYI: The abc13.com link below has a video about the story, too.


--------

This is the article from the Houston Chronicle. The Broward School Board didn’t think it was important to wait for the audit. Wonder why? 
They hired the Houston person the day BEFORE the audit was released.

Charlotte Greenbarg, President
IVBE, Inc.
Lutz, FL




 
TED OBERG INVESTIGATES
Audit: HISD's inflation claims as cause for $211M shortfall are false
A just-released audit contradicts claims by HISD officials that "rising inflation and construction costs" were to blame for a $211 million budget shortfall.

By Ted Oberg and Trent Seibert
Wednesday, October 21, 2015 06:46PM

HOUSTON (KTRK) --

 An audit released Wednesday contradicts claims made last month by Houston Independent School District officials that "rising inflation and construction costs" were to blame for a $211 million shortfall in the school district's failure to complete all school projects promised to the community.
Read the rest of the article at:

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