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Government by the Worst People – Part 2

INTRODUCTION

On Tuesday, July 25, 2017, the San Diego Unified School District (SDUSD) calls to a close the 2016/17 version of the Marten, Barrera, Beiser, Evans, McQuary, Payne Kakistocracy.  Their horrible operational, financial and human resource decisions have produced a “Worst Leadership” school year in the history of the SDUSD

This meeting has the capacity to be much worse than the Board meeting on September 29, 2015 when Trustees Mike McQuary and Richard Barrera presented a Proclamation to honor former Trustee Marne Foster on the same night they approved an investigation into criminal charges by the District Attorney that forced her to resign.

Here are the 5 episodes of “FINAL 2016/17 BOARD MEETING DISASTER DUMP” where we describe how Superintendent Cindy Marten and Trustees Richard Barrera, Kevin Beiser, John Lee Evans, Mike McQuary and Sharon Whitehurst-Payne historically dump at least 5 disasters on all Stakeholders.

And then Marten and her Crony Board will run away and hide until September, hoping we all forget.

7/25/17 Board Meeting Disaster Dump

 

#1: College Access Inequity for Students South of 8

 

#2: Rapid Email Deletions to Hide Corruption

 

#3: School Calendar Jammed Down SDUSD Stakeholders Throats

 

#4: Filthy Schools for All

 

#5: New SDUSD Choice/Busing Motto = “A Quality Charter School in Every Neighborhood”

 

Disaster Dump #2:  Rapid Email Deletions to Hide Corruption

Section G –OPERATIONAL MATTERS RESERVED FOR THE BOARD, Item 3 – Review of District Practices Pertaining to Public Records Storage and Production with Recommendations to Improve Transparency, Cost Efficiency and Security

Most of our readers are familiar with our story about how San Diego Unified School District Superintendent Cindy Marten Implementation of Email Deletion “Policy” Without Trustee Approval Broke 5 Board Governance Policies.

Our readers are also aware about how, after District Deeds broke the email deletion story, local San Diego Media jumped on the story and actually awarded the SDUSD the “Wall Award” for Not Valuing “Openness and Transparency” .

Based on Section G, Item 3, it appears as though Marten is still as committed as possible to conceal her misdeeds by deleting email documents as soon as possible.

In a poorly designed, ridiculous PowerPoint titled: Review of Public Records Requests Policies and Procedures, Marten must have told her staff to throw as much garbage against the document as possible to see how much of it would actually stick so she could reduce the deletion time period from unlimited to only 1 year.

We won’t belabor our readers with a point by point destruction of Marten’s obfuscation and self-preservation strategies to hoodwink all SDUSD Stakeholders in the presentation.

Only three points are required to destroy her kakistocratic email deletion presentation…Comparison, Cost, and Collaboration

1. Comparison

In this slide from her Powerpoint Presentation, Marten attempts to justify a 1 year deletion policy by comparing it to other public organizations.  To destroy this ridiculous slide we just added some notes:

Another “red herring” in the SDUSD Presentation on page 5 displayed a recommendation by the California School Board Association (CSBA), an organization that is dedicated to reducing litigation against school districts and boards, that is even more ridiculous:  The  CSBA instructed school districts to set a policy of “retaining emails “saved to an electronic file on the district’s computer and retained for at least 180 days.”

On the districts “computer”?!?  Singular?!?

WOW–we wonder what the CSBA thinks of storing email files on that interweb machine thingy!

For a REAL recommendations we went to an article on a meeting between the SDUSD and the San Diego Society of Professional Journalists, the organization that gave the SDUSD the Wall Award Booby Prize, titled SD SPJ Calls for Better SD Unified Email Policy:

San Diego SPJ has researched email retention policies in other large California school districts and learned that the policy San Diego Unified is proposing is outside the norm. The Los Angeles, Long Beach, Fresno and Elk Grove unified school districts all retain emails for at least two years, per their policies. – SDSPJ

So it is clear that despite Supt. Marten being given examples of other similar School Districts (in size, LA Unified is #1, SDUSD is #2 and Long Beach is #3), Marten is proposing 1 year for deleting emails to cover up any and all incriminating emails as soon as possible.

2. Cost

So based on this 1 year proposal, it must be that the COST is too high…Right?

WRONG!

On page 21 in the SDUSD PowerPoint, someone in the SDUSD predicted that it would cost:

“$6,000,000 – 11,000,000* – Expected server refresh costs (The actual cost will depend on how long the Board determines to retain emails on central servers)

*The District is pursuing several strategies to streamline processes including significant efforts to offload data to the cloud when appropriate.  These are long-term approaches with expected continued migration to the cloud over time.  However, the “cloud” is not free for the District.”

A similar PowerPoint Document from LA Unified from January 2015, over two years ago, described the LAUSD Microsoft 365 Email System that provides the following:

  •  Microsoft 365 is a “cloud”-based email service with unlimited archiving and
    retention storage capacity.
  • The cost is $4.13 per mailbox annually for the archive and eDiscovery
    systems.
  • The mailbox service is free.

Let’s see…

San Diego Unified: $6,000,000 – 11,000,000

LAUSD Microsoft 365 Email System: $4.13 per mailbox…$161,070…for 39,000 employees…3 times the current number of employees…for UNLIMITED storage!!! 

By now the cost of a similar cloud based storage solution is probably around $2.00 annually or less.

Marten must have laid off the wrong IT Techs!!!

3. Collaboration

So where DID Marten seek out advice as to the best email retention policy?

We already identified two sources:

  1. The outdated and simplistic recommendation by the California School Boards Association…which would work for 1 “computer”.
  2. THe “collaboration” with the SD SPJ which recommended 2 years of email archives that Marten ignored.

Besides the ridiculous CSBA quote, District Deeds reviewed the SDUSD Email Deletion Presentation to the Board and found that there is not one single word or phrase that mentions any collaboration with any SDUSD Stakeholder individual, group, union, cluster (Hoover, Morse, Scripps Ranch, etc) , committee (DAC, DELAC, CAC, etc) or Board Member.

It is not as if there are no examples of collaboration to make this decision.

The LA Unified School District (LAUSD) initiated a collaborative effort in 2014 that included 13-member Email Retention Task Force with representatives from the district, UTLA, AALA and CSEA. The task force recommended a campaign called “The Move to 2” increasing their previous 1 year retention to a 2 year retention of emails.  See the LAUSD page below:

RECAP

The Marten Kakistocracy obviously made no real attempt to create a believable case for her email deletion proposal.  Marten is counting her Board of Education enabler cronies to just pass it as usual.

Marten ignored meaningful COMPARISON with other similar entities and chose the ridiculous CSBA “computer” storage option as the centerpiece of her recommendation.

Marten made no attempt to identify up to date cloud based options to drastically reduce COST while drastically increasing email storage capacity in her recommendation and instead used “on premise” hardware with a high labor cost for site maintainence as the COST estimate benchmark.

Marten showed no proof that she COLLABORATED with any SDUSD Stakeholders on her recommendation and, in fact, IGNORED the public recommendation of the SD SPJ that actually tried to HELP the SDUSD make the best decision.

The only reasonable conclusion that can be determined by Stakeholders for Marten to completely disregard any effective and valid Comparison, Cost and Collaboration processes and protocols for the email retention initiative is to ensure that she could quickly recommend, get approved and deploy “Rapid Email Deletions to Hide Corruption” within the SDUSD.

“Transparency and Access to Public Information”?!?

What a joke…just another Marten and Board of Education propaganda lie to SDUSD Stakeholders.

As usual.

EDITOR NOTE: “Follow” District Deeds so you won’t miss the Episode 3!!!

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NOTE TO ALL SCHOOL SITE STAKEHOLDERS BEING FORCED TO REPLACE THEIR PRINCIPAL IN THE  2017/18 SCHOOL YEAR:

District Deeds Recommends the following past blog posts exposing the fake SDUSD Principal Selection Process:

_______________________________________________________

IF

  • Your family has been injured by the San Diego Unified School District, go to the District Deeds Complaint Forms page to find instructions to fight for your Civil Rights!
  • YOU ARE TIRED OF THE COVER UPS AND LIES BY SUPT. CINDY MARTEN… 

Please Click the Link Below and sign the Petition Today and READ the COMMENTS to Support the REMOVAL of Marten by SDUSD Stakeholders! 

FIRE San Diego Unified School District Superintendent Cindy Marten Immediately!

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