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San Diego Unified School District, San Diego Unified School District Superintendent Cindy Marten
The San Diego Unified School District (SDUSD) has officially closed all schools for the next 3 weeks…March 16 – April 6 2020…with virtually NO DISASTER RECOVERY EDUCATIONAL PLAN by Elementary School Superintendent Cindy Marten (aka: CINDY-20) for the ongoing education of over 100,000 Students and thereby causing the 2020 SDUSD EDUCATIONAL SANDEMIC.
Given the educational leadership Sandemic created by CINDY-20 during the COVID-19 Coronavirus shutdown, District Deeds will try and fill a small part of the huge educational gap with articles, news and a special Page dedicated to tools, strategies and materials for families who are bearing the brunt of CINDY-20 inexperience and incompetence.
The link to the new page (Also listed on the top of the District Deeds blog) is:
San Diego Unified School District “CINDY-2020” Sandimic Educational Resources
Below is an interesting article and other information we received and discovered this past week regarding the impact to K-12 education…
BE WELL…TAKE PRECAUTIONS!
Millions Will Be Out of School for Weeks Due to Coronavirus. It May Not Be Long Enough
Quotes from Article:
As an unprecedented wave of schools were ordered to shut down in an attempt to slow the spread of the new coronavirus, new guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention suggests that many of the planned closures may not be long enough to effectively drive down transmission rates.
And some countries that have closed schools have not had more success in reducing spread than those that did not, the CDC said.
More than 21 million U.S. students have been affected so far by school closures related to the pandemic, which prompted President Donald Trump to declare a national emergency Friday.
Also as of Friday, leaders in 16 states had ordered all schools to close, joined by school systems in the District of Columbia, Miami-Dade, San Diego, and Los Angeles, the second-largest school system in the country.
And…
School leaders have been weighing big questions about interrupted learning, a lack of resources for online coursework, and the effects on students with disabilities and low-income families as they wrestled with whether to close. But in several states, governors made the decision for them.
As concern about the illness grew, domino after domino fell this week, leading to the largest mass closure of American schools in recent memory, overshadowing past shutdowns forced by hurricanes, the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, and even the 1918 Spanish flu epidemic, which was blunted by early, long-term closures.
But will this historic round of mass closures be effective?
The CDC guidance released Friday said that, in areas with “substantial community spread” of the coronavirus, closures need to last a minimum of four to eight weeks to serve as a “larger community mitigation strategy.” That’s much longer than many current closures, which are scheduled to last two or three weeks.
And…
That may mean some state and district leaders will choose to extend their shutdowns or to reevaluate as scheduled school reopenings approach as early as the beginning of April. Many states and districts have already extended their scheduled spring breaks to help blunt the duration of time that students would be out.
As person-to-person transmission of COVID-19, the illness caused by the coronavirus, grew in the United States in recent weeks, superintendents have pressed for federal direction on when to close schools and for how long. The U.S. Department of Education had deferred to previous guidance from the CDC, which recently had urged schools to “minimize disruption” caused by closures and to consider effects like a lack of child care for parents don’t have paid leave and can’t work from home and students who rely on free and discounted school meals.
And…
Steps to Take
In its new guidance, the CDC urges communication with families and consideration of health-care workers whose ability to care for patients may be hindered if their children are out of school.
“Clear rationale, decisionmaking and communication with all stakeholders is extremely important,” it says. “Families need to know who is making decisions, what those decisions are, and when school-based mitigation efforts are planned to start and end.”
The U.S. Department of Education addressed some of those concerns Thursday when it suggested it will consider limited waivers from some testing and accountability requirements in the Every Student Succeeds Act, the federal education law, in areas that are highly affected by COVID-19. And the U.S. Department of Agriculture has committed to providing waivers to some school meal requirements so that districts can offer “grab-and-go” lunches in communities where schools are closed.
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EDITOR NOTE: We liked the wide content of this Education Week article. Unfortunately most of the links provided are only available to subscribers. Readers can gain access to articles by registering on the Education Week website.
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District Deeds Synopsis:
This article brought up a number of issues that are relevant to SDUSD families.
The stoppage by a school district for a wide variety of circumstances including natural disasters (Weather, Earthquakes, etc.), health risks (pandemics, biohazards,etc.) and man made conditions (riot, protests, etc.) is an extremely complex challenge.
In the current situation, ANY school district being presented with a virus that threatens the health of all Students, Employees and visitors to a district facility has a huge task additionally ensuring educational equity to all Students if contemplating a closure.
The damage that could be caused by all of these forms of disasters demand extensive disaster recovery forethought and planning by experienced executives and technical support. Of the many huge companies worldwide that have budgets over $1 billion, any CEO that did not demand that the company have a well defined, executable disaster recovery plan would be fired on the spot.
The SDUSD has an annual budget of approximately $1.3 billion. A search on the SDUSD sandi.net website for “disaster recovery plan” came up with the following results:
As expected…our search for disaster recovery plan “yielded no results”!
Incompetent and inexperienced, SDUSD Elementary School Superintendent Cindy “CINDY-20” Marten has done virtually ZERO Disaster Recovery planning for the $332,404 annual salary she has risen to in the last 6 years.
In addition to no planning and no transparency, CINDY-20 has consistently lied to both the press and the SDUSD Stakeholders during this educational disaster Sandimic.
For example….
Channel 7 San Diego Thursday, 3/12/20: “‘Plans Are in Place’: SDUSD Superintendent Talks Schools and New Coronavirus”
Quote from article:
“The superintendent of the San Diego Unified School District assured parents and the public Thursday that “plans are in place” amid the new coronavirus pandemic now that it has reached San Diego County.”
Rating: 4 Cinocchio
This statement is a complete lie.
Exhinit 1: On Thursday afternoon, 3/12/20. NO ONE in any of the SDUSD school sites were aware of any “plan in place” to deal with the coronavirus pandemic. In fact, District Deeds has uncovered that multiple Principals who had students vomiting in class at their schools earlier in the week were compelled to send a variety of different robocall messages to families trying to assure them that it wasn’t the coronavirus. This was not part of any coronavirus “plan in place” distributed by CINDY-20 or her minions.
Exhibit 2: All Principal conference call late Friday morning, 3/13/20
There was an “All Principal Conference Call” with details of school closings and other matters relating to the shutdown. How could the statement “Plans are in place” on Thursday be true if NONE of the SDUSD principals or staff knew of the “plan” until Friday?
The answer is that the Thursday press conference statement that “Plans are in place by CINDY-20 was a COMPLETE LIE since plans can’t be in place if the Principals and staff know nothing about it.
Here is another example:
Voice of San Diego article, Friday, 3/13/20: “Everything We Know About School Closure Plans in San Diego”
Quote from article:
“I asked Superintendent Cindy Marten why they made the decision not to promote more online learning through sending home the devices. She said because the district doesn’t have enough laptops for everyone, some students would get left out. She thought it would create more inequity by giving some, instead of all students, devices.”
Rating: 3 Cinocchio
This statement is grossly misleading if not a complete lie.
First of all CINDY-20 does not distinguish between laptops and tablets. If you count only laptops she is parsing the truth at best, sowing a misleading lie at worst.
CINDY-20 also does not distinguish whether each Student needs a unique device. There are approximately 100,000 SDUSD Students. A large number of those Students are in multiple student families which drastically reduces the number of devices if you distribute one device for all students in the families. In addition, many families already have computing devices which reduces the need for SDUSD devices even further.
The truth is that CINDY-20 hasn’t a clue whether there are enough devices because she has no experience, no clue and no plan how to deploy technology in an emergency.
Voice of San Diego article, Friday, 3/13/20: “Everything We Know About School Closure Plans in San Diego”
Quote from article:
“Teachers across the district were furiously printing out work packets to send home with their students on Friday”
Rating: 1 Cinocchio
This statement is misleading if it is a perception of the writer, a 4 Cinnochio complete lie if it is from CINDY-20.
Is it possible that some teachers were “furiously printing out work packets” to give out to some students?
Possibly, but Teachers didn’t learn about the closures until the afternoon, AFTER the Principals meeting. Most of their classes were over by the time they learned of the school closures and additionally burdened from removing all their personal belongings from their classrooms by the end of day Friday.
Why would Teachers be distributing work packets given the following communication from her office to administrators on Friday:
“ we are not currently planning to replace or supplant core instruction with online learning but rather will provide supplemental activities that are designed to provide students and parents with opportunities to extend learning beyond the classroom…
Teachers do not need to provide students with lesson plans, just access to the materials.
Work is considered enrichment and will not be graded.”
Doing nothing is not a plan…at least not a credible plan from a $330,000 employee.
This is again an example of the “Plans are in place” lie by CINDY-20.
A key quote from the Education Week article also lays bare the absolute lack of direction and leadership by CINDY-20:
In its new guidance, the CDC urges communication with families and consideration of health-care workers whose ability to care for patients may be hindered if their children are out of school.
“Clear rationale, decisionmaking and communication with all stakeholders is extremely important,” it says. “Families need to know who is making decisions, what those decisions are, and when school-based mitigation efforts are planned to start and end.”
CINDY-20 has completely ignored this CDC guidance and provided absolutely zero “Clear rationale, decisionmaking and communication with all stakeholders”.
A disaster like the COVID-19 Pandemic is a horrible situation worldwide and demands strong, experienced leadership to try to minimize the horrible health results for humanity.
The CINDY-20 Sandimic is a self inflicted disaster within the SDUSD and demands strong, experienced leadership to try to minimize the horrible educational results for ALL Students.
Based on the facts and lies so far, it appears that Elementary School Superintendent Cindy Marten is not up to the task.
Marten should resign for the educational sake of ALL our Principals, Teachers, Staff, Students and Families.
Until she resigns the CINDY-20 Sandimic will just get worse.
Now for our Quote of the Week:
“The most serious failure of leadership is the failure to foresee” – Robert Greenleaf
Have a great week!!!
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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!
District Deeds 
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