Showing posts with label Bob Parks. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Bob Parks. Show all posts

Wednesday, May 19, 2010

When do Jennifer Gottlieb apologists admit she's part of the problem, not part of the solution? She's squandered ANOTHER chance to do the right thing!

Two current popular South Florida blog posts on the absolutely insane and despicable unethical behavior taking place at the Broward School Board under Chair Jennifer Gottlieb bear special mention today, largely because each draws attention in their own unique way to the criminally dysfunctional education system in Broward County, one that seems more like a giant bank robbery caper to transfer taxpayers dollars into the pockets, purses and wallets of family and friends with connections, than it is a functioning "educational system" for producing well-informed and well-rounded students who have a ghost of a chance of competing in an international economy.

As is always the case, no matter where you go, the smart ambitious kids who are curious, pay close attention and have parents who make a minimum of effort, will probably do okay, despite the self-evident middling mediocrity of the school system they find themselves in, but what about the mediocre-to-average kids?

The very kids whose consistently poor performances help make the high-achievers performance so very much easier than it might've been 20-30 years ago, regardless of how many kids may actually be in an AP class.

You know, like when I was in high school in North Miami Beach in the late '70's, and just about everyone in my four AP classes was getting the hell out of Florida for college as soon as possible: Princeton, UVA, Colorado, Northwestern, Michigan, Georgia Tech... and Indiana.

The basic stupidity and general sense of clueless-ness of kids I run into all around southern Broward County, despite all the advantages of technology they've been given, is perfectly shocking -and scary as hell.

Especially compared to the high standards I'm used to in Northern Virginia, where even the dumb kids there would be considered prized scholars here.

I've written many negative things about Jennifer Gottlieb in this space before, all of which were true, though she has her team of loyal apologists who hit the popular blogs after an article has appeared, trying their best to clean-up her mess and point fingers in other directions.
Trust me, I'm far from the only person in Broward who has noticed this phenomena.

Frankly, I've often shook my head over why Gottlieb continues to get what can only be described as fawning media attention, esp. on TV, despite what everyone with decent eyesight can clearly see for themselves: Her house is on fire but she and her pals want to select which firefighters get to put the fire out!
And we're paying for it in more ways than one.

To repeat a perennial comment here, one whispered in what passes for polite society hereabouts, to what extent is this true because the education beat here is one completely dominated by female reporters?
Are female reporters reluctant to draw blood of female office holders?
I personally think the accumulated evidence suggests that is, in fact, the case, but that's a topic for another time...

I should mention that despite the largely positive media coverage Gottlieb receives, she is not that popular with many well-informed and concerned citizens in Broward County who are closely following what's going on, and that's particularly true among the crowd in Hollywood and Hallandale Beach who have contributed to her campaign and have voted for her in the past, but who have now reached their saturation point with the flimsy excuses and finger-pointing.

Today, after some related comments, I only need to get out of the way and let Buddy Nevins and Bob Norman paint the picture of a woman proving the Peter Principle right before us.

Sticking with the subject of the Gottlieb's for a minute, over the past week, I've come to wonder if others see the same similarities in legitimate questions about Elena Kagan's lack of a judicial background that I do, most of which could also be accurately applied to former State Rep. and Hollywood commissioner Ken Gottlieb, Jennifer's husband, who is running for Broward County judge.

Most of the well-informed people I know in Broward would describe him as a very smart,
enthusiastic and zealous advocate for issues he championed, which are among the reasons that they gave me for why they had voted for him for REPRESENTATIVE and then State Senate in 2008.

(I voted for Tim Ryan in the 2008 State Senate primary, someone I'd like to see as Broward States Attorney or the Broward Ethics IG.)

But where is the evidence that Gottlieb can,
suddenly, become impartial and completely import a judicial temperament, completely ignoring his own personal feelings and many years of publicly taking sides on important public policy issues?
Personally, I haven't seen it.

That doesn't make him a bad guy, of course, just someone perhaps not
suited to be a judge, and who'd better help the community in another capacity altogether.

And just a reminder, Jennifer Gottlieb is an At-Large member of the Broward School Board, which means that you can vote for or against her regardless of where you live in Broward County.
Personally, I'm NOT in favor of dual-elected couples.

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Some helpful information from http://www.browardsoe.org/electioncandidates.aspx?eid=89

School Board, Dist. 1 Ann Murray Filed
School Board, Dist. 1 Gary Plancher Filed
School Board, Dist. 2 Patricia Good Filed
School Board, Dist. 2 Kevin Tynan Filed
School Board, Dist. 4 Shelly Solomon Heller Withdrew
School Board, Dist. 4 Jaemi Levine Filed
School Board, Dist. 4 Penny McArthur Madden Filed
School Board, Dist. 4 Donald Samuels Filed
School Board, Dist. 4 David "Dave" Thomas Filed
School Board, Dist. 4 Stewart "Stew" Jackson Webster Filed
School Board, Dist. 6 Phyllis C. Hope Filed
School Board, Dist. 6 Laurie Rich Levinson Filed
School Board, Dist. 7 Robert D. Parks Filed
School Board, Dist. 7 Nora Rupert Filed
School Board, Dist. 8 Jennifer Leonard Gottlieb Filed

County Court Judge, Grp. 20
Kenneth "Ken" Gottlieb Qualified
County Court Judge, Grp. 20 Mark W. Rickard Withdrew
County Court Judge, Grp. 20 Steven A. Schaet Qualified

Two stories below

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Broward Beat
Broke School System Never Considered Selling Naming Right; Instead They Name Track For Parks
By Buddy Nevins
May 18, 2010

The School Board today voted to name a track at Coconut Creek High for member Bob Parks after admitting that nobody even bothered to consider selling the naming rights.

“Was the school going to use this as a revenue producing facility?” asked member Stephanie Kraft. “Right now with our financial situation being what it is, I’m reluctant to give up (any) money.”

“We never considered it,” said David Jones, the Coconut Creek principal. “…We hadn’t thought about the money.”

Read the rest of the post at:
http://www.browardbeat.com/coconut-creek-well-protest-parks-name-on-track/


BrowardPalmBeach NewTimes

Dysfunction Junction: The Broward School Board Story
By Bob Norman
Wednesday, May. 19 2010 @ 9:29AM


The Broward School Board sold our children's future out to their lobbyist and construction-company friends, overspent hundreds of millions of dollars, and dug the district $2 billion in debt.


The board remains under federal investigation. One former member, Beverly Gallagher, is heading to prison after taking bribes from undercover FBI agents posing as construction lobbyists. The financial debacle they've created is now affecting employees, who are being laid off, and children, who are losing electives like art, music, and PE.


So are the board members on their knees begging for forgiveness? No, they're naming stadiums after themselves.


Read the rest of the post at:

http://blogs.browardpalmbeach.com/pulp/2010/05/broward_county_school_board_dysfunction.php

Monday, April 19, 2010

Broward School Board prepares for their TV close-up tonight; Does Bob Parks have a good side?; Wither CBS4 News?

Above, the Broward County School Board paid ad that
ran in last weekend's Herald but which did NOT appear
on the Herald's website online ad directory, just like
the ad for last Monday night's meeting at Deerfield Beach
Middle School on school security never appeared, hence
my reliance on this so-so snapshot I took.

I've been sitting on this for an entire week now, waiting
to see
something -anything- in the Herald or
Sun-
Sentinel
about the meeting Monday night, but since
they don't seem inclined on mentioning it, here's the deal.


The Broward School Board is going to finally do what they

should've done last year upon the creation of the so-called
Integrity ethics committee, their feeble attempt to allay
the very real and legitimate
fears and concerns of Broward
taxpayers and parents that
the whole school system is
in free-fall -which has proven to largely be an
insulting
PR fiasco of
an effort if you ask me;
have you seen their
laughably bad website at
http://browardschoolsintegrity.org/
?-
and take my oft-given free advice here over
the past
few months.

They are going to air the problems on the School Board
TV station that taxpayers have already paid for, BECON,
starting tonight.

That Integrity website hasn't added anything in ages
and is a perfect example of the mess that rests with
James Notter & Company: the perfect marriage
of myopia and incompetency
.

See also:

Back To The Future At The School Board: Parks Wants Marko To Stay
By Buddy Nevins
http://www.browardbeat.com/back-to-the-future-at-the-school-board-parks-wants-marko-to-stay/

And pay attention to what Karnack says in their reader
comment!

Speaking of using TV to illuminate the inner
workings
of dysfunctional and ineffectual government that
squanders
millions, despite the fact that many Miami TV
stations
used the LIVE feed of
The Florida Channel
http://www.wfsu.org/tfc/
to show Gov. Charlie Crist's
veto of S.B. 6 this past week,
have you ever seen any of
them actually air a single story
on efforts in Tallahassee
to cut their funding and make it
harder for the public to
keep an eye on things up there?

Didn't think so.
Neither have I.


That's how it goes in Miami these days with the present

cast of media characters, excepting the 'exceptional few.'
They leave all the heavy-lifting to others and then swoop in
afterwards to do the all-too-predictable human interest
angle stories we've all seen a million times before.

It explains so much of what goes on in South Florida, and

why people here are so thoroughly dis-satisfied with current
news media
coverage of local, regional and state news, both
print and electronic.

And as I've mentioned a time or two here, that includes
WIOD Radio, too, which is lazy in the extreme and seems
dead-set on reporting old news all day, word-for-word,
from 10 a.m. -6 p.m., despite what new updates I've heard
and seen elsewhere.

It's like they are stuck in a worm-hole, destined to repeat
themselves over-and-over, constantly getting it wrong.
But they don't have Captain Picard or Data to figure
a way out of their dilemma, so the pattern continues,
day-after-day.

The lack of a rhyme or reason to local media is the very
rhyme itself.


Speaking of a bad sense of foreboding about the future
of local news coverage, guess who NEVER mentioned
during their 11 p.m. newscast, the day of Crist's veto,
that President Obama was at Cape Kennedy making
an extremely important speech on NASA's future,
before coming to Miami and spending time Estefans?

I ask because all their Obama coverage was on his trip
here, not his controversial policy pronouncements.

Well, to answer my own question, it was CBS4 News.

They didn't mention it once.

I taped their newscast and double-checked the next morning.
Nope, they didn't.

I'll have more to say about Channel 4 News in a day or two.

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FloridaThinks.com
Budget Cuts Limit TV Eye on Legislature, Mission to Inform
Posted on April 18, 2010, 11:01 pm.

By John Kennedy, Associate Editor


Amid a legislative session marked by leaders touting transparency, the Florida Channel, the eyes and ears on Tallahassee for many Floridians, is on the chopping block — again.
The broadcasting service, which covers everything from gavel-to-gavel floor sessions to obscure committee hearings, faces as much as a 10 percent cut in its almost $3 million budget – the third straight year of reductions that have already eliminated one-quarter of its staff.
Read the rest of the post at:
http://floridathinks.com/florida-issues/florida-issues/budget-cuts-limit-tv-eye-on-legislature-mission-to-inform/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+FloridaThinks+%28FloridaThinks%3A+The+Forum+for+Civil+Debate%29