Showing posts with label Charlotte Greenbarg. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Charlotte Greenbarg. Show all posts

Wednesday, April 18, 2018

So here we are, South Florida, now in 2018, asking the very same kinds of questions as 2014: Supt. Robert W. Runcie - What happened to the 💰💰💰? What happened to the #SchoolHardening at #Broward #Schools that taxpayers/parents were promised? Where ARE the actual #results? #SoFL


So here we are, South Florida, now in 2018, asking the very same kinds of questions as 2014: Supt. Robert W. Runcie - What happened to the 💰💰💰?
What happened to the at that taxpayers/parents were promised? Where ARE the actual ?
Continued inability of Schools & Supt. Runcie to take public criticism, respond appropriately;











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Friday, January 29, 2016

#OpenGov -Since facts still matter... Blocked, but not bowed. Or even the least bit dismayed, since being Blocked on Twitter by govt. officials continually engaged in unethical & unprofessional behavior is almost like being given a medal... @browardschools and Supt. @RobertwRuncie are still unable to take public criticism and respond appropriately. Don't hold your breath that will change!

#OpenGov -Since facts still matter... Blocked, but not bowed. Or even the least bit dismayed, since being Blocked on Twitter by govt. officials continually engaged in unethical & unprofessional behavior is almost like being given a medal... @browardschools and Supt. @RobertwRuncie are still unable to take public criticism and respond appropriately. Don't hold your breath that will change!
Above and below, July 13, 2010 photo by South Beach Hoosier, looking south at the Broward County Schools HQ, 600 S.E. Third Avenue, Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. © 2012 Hallandale Beach Blog, All Rights Reserved


















To quote myself about the following news I was, admittedly, somewhat surprised to receive this morning from Angela Greben at Stanford Law School...
"At times like this, it's very hard to recall that Supt. Runcie works for 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."

 http://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2012/09/broward-schools-supt-robert-w-runcies.html
Above, Supt. Robert Runcie after a public meeting of his Listening Tour at the City of Hollywood's  Fred Lippman Multi-Purpose Center, which was the second time I'd heard him speak in-person, having previously heard him in March at Hollywood Hills High School, also in Hollywood. May 14, 2012 photo by South Beach Hoosier. © 2012 Hallandale Beach Blog, All Rights Reserved. 


Tweets below are in sequential order:








In case you might've somehow missed those last three posts, the most recent of several dozen over the past 9 years, they are:

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!


JUNE 3, 2015
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; @Florida_Bulldog @Buddynevins
http://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2015/06/broward-county-residents-increasingly.html

MAY 13, 2013 
Spring 2013 Observations re Broward School Board: controversial District 1 member Ann Murray gets a challenge from someone who'll go right at her, Felicia Brunson -will a third viable candidate join them by 2014?; Broward School Auditor Patrick Reilly finds more appalling evidence of School system's waste of taxpayer dollars, and as usual, Broward civic activist and Audit Comm. member Charlotte Greenbarg is 100% correct in analyzing the situation and saying it's what we think, too -it's the usual toxic combination of insubordination, entitlement and longstanding incompetency
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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.


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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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Wednesday, June 3, 2015

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; @Florida_Bulldog @Buddynevins












Florida Bulldog
Broward School Board backs Runcie on keeping public off selection committee
By William Hladky, FloridaBulldog.org
May 26, 2015

In the face of public suspicion, a majority of the Broward School Board last week allowed Superintendent Robert Runcie’s move to exclude the public from sitting on a committee that will select companies to manage $800 million in voter-approved construction projects.

The suspicion: that Runcie and Derek Messier, his chief facilities officer, want to get around contracting reforms imposed after a scandal in order to control who gets the lucrative management
contracts.

The selection committee’s members will be school board employees only.
School officials have said the public will be able to observe the process, but will not participate.

 Read the rest of the article at:
http://www.floridabulldog.org/2015/05/broward-school-board-backs-runcie-on-keeping-public-off-selection-committee/

 In many parts of the country, both urban and rural, African-American School Board members often provide a powerful voice for needed reason and basic fairness within the larger community, and frequently, even provide a much-needed moral/ethical backbone and force-multiplier for people and groups who are routinely marginalized by parts of society.
And when they are the superintendents, well...

As we all know, though, in upside-down Broward County, it's Broward taxpayers and citizens in favor of reform and accountability who are consistently marginalized and not just taken advantage of, but played for suckers, by incompetent and corrupt elected officials and agencies. (Over-and-over again.)

But it looks like those particular facts, self-evident to me and so many of you receiving this email, are news to Broward School Board member Rosalind Osgood, someone whom I warned you all about many years ago when she first ran and I discussed her strange notions of conflicts of interest, sense of entitlement and Good Government.

This Florida Bulldog article from earlier this week makes it abundantly clear that Osgood -along with SE Broward's own ethical/moral burden and blemish, Ann Murray- wants to be a voice for keeping the public in the dark as much as possible about how hundreds of millions of dollars are dividied up.
Yes, the better to help her loyal corporate friends!

As this article makes clear, simply by reciting the simple facts and chronology, once again, Broward County's top educators are revealed to be both an outlier to any notions of Best Practices, and an acute embarrassment to the very citizenry they're supposed to represent and the children they are supposed to serve.

It's just as my friend Charlotte Greenbarg and I -and many others- predicted, and told anyone and everyone who'd listen in the months prior to the vote on the Broward School Board bond issue.
The Broward School Board and its smug, unctuous army of highly-paid and self-confident bureaucrats are like the scorpion in the fable of the scorpion and the frog.
They can't help themselves -it's who they are. Surprise!
Except it could not be clearer that it's Broward taxpayers who are being stung!

 Some predicates for the above:
MAY 13, 2013
Spring 2013 Observations re Broward School Board: controversial District 1 member Ann Murray gets a challenge from someone who'll go right at her, Felicia Brunson -will a third viable candidate join them by 2014?; Broward School Auditor Patrick Reilly finds more appalling evidence of School system's waste of taxpayer dollars, and as usual, Broward civic activist and Audit Comm. member Charlotte Greenbarg is 100% correct in analyzing the situation and saying it's what we think, too -it's the usual toxic combination of insubordination, entitlement and longstanding incompetency
http://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2013/05/spring-2013-observations-re-broward.html

NOVEMBER 13, 2012
More business-as-usual at Broward School Board is NOT good news for students, parents or taxpayers; Why the need by Broward Schools officials to impose omertà on school volunteers in Broward?; the very curious Hallandale High School roof situation reveals much about School Board's culture; Why is South Florida news media largely ignoring Broward Schools Diversity Comm. and their Audit Comm.?
http://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2012/11/more-business-as-usual-at-broward.html


Dave
Twitter: @hbbtruth, https://twitter.com/hbbtruth
https://twitter.com/hbbtruth/with_replies
http://www.hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/
http://www.youtube.com/user/HallandaleBeachBlog
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Wednesday, February 18, 2015

#RedLightCameras - Looks like City of Hollywood and Comm. Dick Blattner are going to go down swinging when it comes to their policies re red-light cameras, despite lack of evidence RLCs are making community any safer. Surprise! Just more of what we have come to expect from Comm. Blattner over the past few years, where he's been the voice of Conventional Wisdom, preserving the status quo, and constantly supporting the largest role possible for local government

#RedLightCameras - Looks like City of Hollywood and Comm. Dick Blattner are going to go down swinging when it comes to keeping their self-serving policies re their money-making red-light cameras, despite lack of evidence they are making it any safer. Surprise!
More of what we have come to expect from Comm. Blattner over the past few years, where he's been the voice of Conventional Wisdom and preserving the status quo, and constantly supporting the largest role possible for local government

My comments below on the subject of red-light cameras in South Florida are largely similar to an email I circulated last week to about 125 concerned people from South Florida up to Tallahassee and points in-between.
The article and column below are but the latest news regarding a contentious subject that I've been quite fair in reporting and blogging about over the past eight years, despite how grossly unfair RLC supporters in government have been with South Florida communities, including keeping police info about location and frequency of traffic accidents out of the hands of citizens who directly challenge their contention that it's been a "SAFETY" measure, not a money-making one.
Well, we've all seen for ourselves over the years how untrue that was when push comes to shove.

South Florida Sun-Sentinel
Hollywood keeping red-light cameras until court orders them removed
By Susannah Bryan Sun Sentinel
February 12, 2015 2:02 PM

 Officials here might have to pull the plug on their red-light camera program as soon as next week.
But not if City Hall gets its way. 

 Less than two weeks ago, the 4th District Court of Appeal in West Palm Beach declined to rehear an October ruling that found Hollywood could not delegate ticket-writing duties to third-party vendor American Traffic Solutions. 
The ruling applies not only to Hollywood, but statewide

Read the rest of the article at:

South Florida Sun-Sentinel
Michael Mayo, Columnist: Red-light cameras could prove costly for cities
February 15, 2015

 The epitaph of red-light cameras might read: Enforced the law by breaking the law.

 At least that's how the 4th District Court of Appeal in West Palm Beach sees the controversial program, ruling that some South Florida cities have illegally delegated their police authority to a private vendor in Arizona.

 Hollywood was the first to get rapped on the knuckles last fall. Earlier this month, it was Davie's turn. The 4th DCA also rejected Hollywood's bid to have a rehearing.

 As a result, all cities with red-light camera programs now find themselves on shaky legal and financial ground. 









Above is yet the latest instance where when push comes to shove, Hollywood Comm. Richard "Dick" Blattner shows that his primary concern continues NOT to be for Hollywood residents and Small Business owners, but the $$$ that red-light cameras generate.
This, even though we all know there are many places in Hollywood where accidents happen with some regularity where red-light cameras have never been located.

Why?
Because they want VOLUME. 

Just like the case in Hallandale Beach I have been describing here on the blog for so many years, wherein Mayor Joy Cooper and a succession of City Managers and commissioners wanted in Hallandale Beach, even when experienced consultants reporters showed they were not helping safety in HB.

If you never saw them the first time -before they were erased from the Channel 10 website- I can tell you that there were some very interesting and telling comments on Bob Norman's 2012 blog re red-light cameras worth checking-out, including some by my friends and fellow civic activists Csaba "Chuck" Kulin and Charlotte Greenbarg, as well as Sun-Sentinel columnist Michael Mayo re Hallandale Beach Mayor Joy Cooper's credibility.
Or, rather the lack of her credibility.

Studies: Red light cameras causing more accidents

(Why has HBPD employed speed traps near Bluesten Park for years on a road with little traffic, while ignoring north-bound speeders on US-1, esp. after they get the green light at the southern entrance/exit at Gulfstream Park, near the Aventura cityline? 
Why is the reality in our city that it's Aventura cops who are more likely be seen issuing speeding tickets in HB on US-1 in HB than HB's own cops? 
Even in front of the HB Police Dept. HQ on US-1!
Sad but true!)

For many years, like many of you, I gave Comm. Blattner the benefit of the doubt on issues, but in retrospect, when you actually look at what has taken place since he came back to City Hall and the Commission a second time, he has never really shown the sort of leadership on issues that his experience would lead you to expect, even if you disagree with him.

He is always the voice of Conventional Wisdom and preserving the status quo, constantly supporting the biggest role possible for local government, where Broward's cities routinely take advantage of its residents and their wallets with preciosu little outcry from local TV stations and news papers unless the info is spoon-fed to them.
But Blattner can STILL never admit when he's wrong on the facts or admit that he's underperformed in some capacity.

His time as head of the Broward MPO, to say nothing of the FLL airport exit ramp controversy that has so angered so many people in the area -which he STILL can't explain with a straight face -has been a giant wasted opportunity for south Broward residents and businesses.
But he thinks he's doing great.

I'll soon be reminding him on the blog how far off the mark he's been, and doing so with telling photographs that tell the lamentable tale.
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Monday, October 14, 2013

re Common Core - FL Dept. of Education's public meeting in Broward Wednesday re Gov. Scott's "Plan for Education Accountability" just got a whole lot more interesting -a pro-Common Core supporter and Jeb Bush "insider" just resigned; IVBE President Charlotte Greenbarg urges Gov. Scott to stay strong AGAINST Common Core; @JeremySWallace, @fineout

















But today.. former Jeb Bush Chief of Staff and Ed Board member Sally Bradshaw says, "No Más."








Hmm-m... this immediately makes that Broward meeting of theirs much-more interesting now.

"The Florida Department of Education will be taking public input on mathematics and 
language arts standards in Florida, in accordance with the request that accompanied 
Governor Rick Scott's recent executive order regarding a Plan for Education Accountability."

Wednesday, October 16  5:00 p.m. - 8:00 p.m. Eastern Time
Broward College - Davie Campus
Bailey Concert Hall - Building 4
3501 SW Davie Road
Davie

More information here:  http://flstandards.org/
Email comments on the standards to flstandards@fldoe.org

Based on how these sorts of things have gone around the country, my free and unsolicited advice to any of you attending this or future meetings is: Beware of politically-motivated "experts" saying things that aren't quite true Like the one depicted here:

Education Views blog
Common Core ‘specialist:’ National standards are necessary to combat birthers and Bill O’Reilly
Posted by Jimmy Kilpatrick on October 8, 2013 
http://www.educationviews.org/common-core-specialist-national-standards-are-necessary-to-combat-birthers-and-bill-oreilly/
By the way, Common Core standards are supposedly only for math and English. Why does a school district have a “Common Core science specialist”?
Now there's a question for Jeb Bush and his friends.
http://www.floridatrend.com/article/16270/floridas-think-tanks--heavy-hitters

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This afternoon, my friend and fellow Broward County civic activist Charlotte Greenbarg, president of the education reform group Independent Voices for Better Education, sent the following email to Florida Gov. Rick Scott, and gave me permission to post it here for your edification:



Dear Governor Scott,
Attached is IVBE's position paper on Common Core. We urge you to disengage Florida from this untested, intrusive and non-validated scheme.
The Brookings Institution/Brown Center's report cites the uselessness of Common Core.

 Sincerely,

 Charlotte Greenbarg
President, IVBE

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