We’re hearing chirps from all directions that Gilbert Public Schools has already planned furlough days for the 2015-2016 school year, starting with the contract days when teachers usually set up classrooms, go to meetings and get ready to Meet the Parents before school begins. On those days, students are not in school yet. Newly promoted Scalawag Jason Martin, the elementary enforcer, has said if teachers don’t show up to work in their classrooms two weeks before school starts [without pay, before their contracts begin], “The other teachers won’t trust them.” Don’t believe it? We’ll put the video online.
The furloughs don’t have to be two consecutive weeks; they can be a day here, three days there. Expect GPS to sneak in furloughs on any days (or half days) that students are not in school. The Higley school district has already scheduled some half days as furlough days; more info appears below. Furloughs would further Superintendent Christina 7-0 Kishimoto’s schemes for making an override election inevitable by making sure conditions deteriorate before November 3rd. Good old 7-0 Kishimoto seems to favor unarticulated threats, putting the stupid stipend threats Dave Allison made to shame.*
The record of 3-2 votes by the GPS Governing Board illustrates dire straits confronting the district, which have prompted some hinky schemes by the superintendency. A lousy across-the-board pay raise rewards the least deserving employees. A $2,500.00 ransom is held over the head of any employee who resigns without fulfilling a lousy GPS contract, penalizing support staff and loyal teachers (especially bus drivers) far more than the least deserving employees. Since GPS already knows they’ve got problems explaining these things while keeping a straight face, the board and the superintendency say they’ll revisit the offensive language and provisions in the contracts NEXT year. Brilliant. [dripping sarcasm]
The two week furlough that Superintendent 7-0 Kishimoto can enact with no warning and no alternative for employees will cause them to lose money they thought they would earn. Those GPS employment contracts were written by The Trust’s pet lawyers; they’re one-sided and that’s just too bad for folks who actually work for a living. That’s not sarcastic; that’s the real deal and it was quite intentional. Do you doubt for a minute that the GPS superintendency didn’t know Good Old Jeff Gadd would *find* an extra $3.6 Million dollars shortly after the Governing Board approved the awful across-the-board pay raise that shafts the loyal GPS employees and enriches those on the top of the dog pile?
We saw Christina 7-0 Kishimoto say [in public!] that the furlough provision is no biggie; she claimed it was already in GPS contracts. We immediately did a fact-check, but we couldn’t find a furlough provision in GPS employment contracts (and we’ve amassed a pile of them through public records requests). Nope, this is brand new.
Now that the board has given Christina 7-0 Kishimoto the power to furlough employees, you KNOW it will happen. What good is having power if you don’t use it? Of course, we’ll be delighted if 7-0 Kishimoto abandons furloughs now that the nasty scheme has become public knowledge. This group of carpetbaggers in the superintendency should be embarrassed when what they say when they think the microphone is turned off goes viral, or when their false testimony under oath in a secret court hearing becomes public knowledge. Nope, they just don’t care. [Mental image: Alan Cumming as Boris Grishenko in Golden Eye: “Yes. I am invincible!” Ka-BOOM!]
Here’s another scenario GPS board members may not remember: the “Resign or Be Fired” threat GPS administrators use to intimidate employees. Now, some dude or dudette in Human Resources can issue the infamous GPS threat AND CHARGE YOU $2500.00 WHEN YOU RESIGN! If you don’t pay up promptly, GPS can take you to court, where you will pay costs, GPS lawyers’ fees and anything else they can throw in the mix. That provision also is in GPS contracts. Who in the world stays up at night thinking of such heinous stuff?
GPS has used this nastiness in the past, which is how Westie came to know about it. [Thanks, birdies!] It appears this despicable “choice” is still being offered, according to line items showing “job abandonment” in HR reports to the board.
“Resign or be fired. Otherwise, we’ll ban you from GPS property. Then, if you try to show up for work, we’ll say you’re trespassing and have you arrested. When you don’t show up for work, we’ll call it “job abandonment.”
You would think that members of the public and members of the governing board would get honest answers from GPS cabinet members and other folks who make presentations. You would be wrong. Take for example, Superintendent Christina Kishimoto’s assertion that furloughs were in prior GPS contracts. We’ve heard about that comment being made by others in the GPS hierarchy, too. It’s like Adolph Hitler’s propaganda technique about the use of a lie so “colossal” that no one would believe that someone “could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously.” That’s straight out of Mein Kampf.
Joseph Goebbels changed The Big Lie slightly, which seems to be the version applicable to the GPS top dogs. Just substitute “Gilbert Public Schools” for the word “English” in the passage below:
The essential English leadership secret does not depend on particular intelligence. Rather, it depends on a remarkably stupid thick-headedness. The English follow the principle that when one lies, one should lie big, and stick to it. They keep up their lies, even at the risk of looking ridiculous.
Consider how the dynamic duo of Slimebucket Suzanne Zentner and Sleazy Steve Smith tried to dupe teachers about when contracts were required to be turned in to HR. They said 15 days many times. GPS isn’t the only school district trying that stupid trick. It’s like they believe teachers can’t read what’s actually in their contracts, where lying about what the law requires would create a serious problem for the top dogs and their legal lap dogs. When it comes to entities advised by the Arizona School Boards Association, you often see repetition of stupid stuff that would make Joseph Goebbels proud. Those are the folks who regularly make Jill Humpherys swoon in admiration of their audacity. [facepalm]
The Higley school district has their own version of GPS’s Slimebucket Suzanne, who goes by the name Sheila Sorenson, Executive Director of Human Resources. When asked by Higley Board President Venessa Whitener about whether teachers had fifteen days or fifteen business days to return their contracts, Slimebucket Sheila responded emphatically “Fifteen days.” Hey, Slimebucket Sheila: you do know that Ms. Whitener has been a teacher in Arizona for a long time, and she knew the answer before she asked you the question, right? It was incredibly stupid to do what you did on camera … about as stupid as Christina Kishimoto stating in public (recorded on video) that furloughs were not new provisions in GPS contracts.
We hear the Higley Unified School District is furloughing employees on the last day of this school year. You know, making it difficult if not impossible for teachers to efficiently clear out of classrooms, turn in keys and pack materials out of the way of campus custodial workers tasked with summer projects. Higley also approved AND SCHEDULED furlough days for the 2015-2016 school year. The eduspeak arrogance of Higley’s top administrators is on full display at page 27 of this board packet. Surreal, but a lot like Whack-a-Mole.
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Big Fat Asterisk: Dave Allison famously gave employees a 2% stipend instead of a raise — he conditioned keeping the stipend on voters passing the 2012 override. The override failed. We wonder if the GPS Carpetbagger Administration even knows that bit of history.
The term carpetbagger came to be associated with opportunism and exploitation by outsiders. The term is still used today to refer to an outsider perceived as using manipulation or fraud to obtain an objective.