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SDUSD Coronavirus Education Mirage List

The final DISGRACEFUL total of 54 lost instructional days (25 days of delay and 29 days of no accountability/substandard education)  has now been officially recorded as the WORST YEAR OF EDUCATION IN HISTORY for the San Diego Unified School District (SDUSD). 

This grim milestone was accompanied by two other dubious historical performances:

Worst Superintendent in SDUSD History:  Cynthia (Cindy) Minette Marten

Worst BOE Trustee in SDUSD History:  Richard “Tricky Dick” Barrera

To earn this ignominious achievement, the dysfunctional Marten/Barrera duo denied more than 100,000 Students, over 13,000 employees and hundreds of thousands of San Diego Taxpayers the educational services and support that are at the core of their elected and appointed responsibilities.

The 54 lost instructional days out of the legally and contractually required 180 days of the official SDUSD Instructional Calendar represents THIRTY PERCENT (30%) EDUCATION LOSS!

Even disgraced former Trustee Marne Foster did not achieve this level of damage through her unlawful and unsavory actions as a Board of Education (BOE) Trustee.

There has been LOTS of propaganda spewed by Marten, Barrera and the multi-million dollar SDUSD propaganda department regarding their Sandimic “strategies” but the following FACTS expose ALL of their lies and misdeeds:

  • ZERO planning input or involvement allowed from Parent, Guardian, Student or Community Stakeholders.
  • ALL Parent, Guardian, Student and Community Stakeholders are to blame for any failures
  • No District, State or Federal Testing to measure amount of educational erosion
  • No uniform, published, enforced Teacher performance standards – According to SDUSD/SDEA MOU , no disciplinary action can be taken during this Sandimic.
  • No Class Scheduling standards…decisions left up to individual School/Teacher
  • No meaningful Student grading – grades can only go up.
  • No Student or Teacher attendance standards
  • No verified/audited/published financial plan for thousands of frantically distributed Chromebook Laptops and Hotspots to Students including associated financial risk.
  • No verified/audited/published Computer/Internet access reports for ALL Students by standard socioeconomic category.
  • No verified/audited/published class logon or participation reports for ALL Students by standard socioeconomic category.
  • No verified/audited/published plan or attempt to make up lost instructional days.

The SDUSD SANDIMIC!!!

PDF Link to List: Coronavirus Education Mirage List 5-10-20

Unfortunately, although the 2019/2020 school year has come to an end, the horrible legacy of this educational and moral betrayal by Marten and Barrera is far-reaching, especially to the poorest and most underprivileged SDUSD Students and Families.

Marten, Barrera and their cronies should be ashamed.

As an ongoing feature especially for the Coronavirus Pandemic, we will begin to show the progress, or total lack thereof, of the SDUSD leadership via relevant LOCAL news articles by LOCAL Reporters (if available) that focus on the SDUSD Sandimic.

Below is an interesting article and other information we received and discovered this past week regarding the Coronavirus impact to K-12 education…

BE WELL…TAKE COVID 19 PRECAUTIONS!

Grand Ledge School Board Votes to Remove Superintendent After Comments About George Floyd

Article PDF: Grand Ledge School Board Votes to Remove Superintendent After Comments About George Floyd

Quotes from Article:

GRAND LEDGE – The Grand Ledge Board of Education voted unanimously to terminate Superintendent Brian Metcalf’s employment Friday evening after listening to more than seven hours of public comment during a special meeting.

The meeting came less than a week after Superintendent Brian Metcalf  made comments regarding George Floyd’s death in Minneapolis.

Metcalf wrote on Facebook earlier this week comments that placed blame with Floyd, at least in part, for his own killing. The comments sparked outrage and calls for his resignation.

The Board of Education went into closed session just before 6 p.m., and returned about an hour later. The vote to move toward termination of his contract was unanimous. Metcalf will be placed on paid administrative leave until the termination is finalized.

The board will discuss appointment of an interim superintendent at its June 8 meeting.

And…

The meeting, held over Zoom, was attended by about 600 participants at one point, and the pressure from the public and district staff to remove Metcalf mounted during public comment.

Grand Ledge Education Association President Greg Almy gave the board a statement that said a vote of the school district’s nearly 300 teachers shows union members don’t have confidence in Metcalf’s ability to lead the district.

“It saddens GLEA that Dr. Metcalf chose to make comments about an important social issue in our country, not by simply supporting equality and celebrating diversity, but by questioning if good citizenship would have prevented Mr. Floyd from losing his life,” Almy said during the meeting. “As the leader of our school system, Dr. Metcalf’s ignorance has left our school district and community tarnished by making tone-deaf remarks about a socially charged topic.”

“As teachers we value making sure all of our students have an equal education and opportunity and because of what happened it created a situation where our students may not have that anymore,” Almy, a teacher at Wacousta Elementary, told the State Journal Friday.

Almy declined to provide a breakdown of the vote Friday morning, saying not all teachers had voted, but he said more than 80% had cast votes and six out of seven submitted a vote of no confidence in Metcalf, Almy said.

And…

Comments by community members, parents and former students were, at times, emotional as many former students and parents who are not white talked about the racism they’ve experienced in the school district. Many who spoke said the school district and the community are plagued by systemic racism.

Former student John Hawkins, who is black, said he’ll never forget the memories he made at Grand Ledge schools. Some were wonderful, he said, including breaking track records and accepting his diploma.

But Hawkins said he also remembers being subjected to racism in the school district, and those moments have stayed with him.

“I will never forget being called (N-word) by my fellow students in the halls on the way to class,” Hawkins said.

Grand Ledge parent Rachel Kuntzsch said her family has been “proud to be a Comet,” until Metcalf made his comments on Facebook.

Students are asked to “be respectful” in the student handbook, Kuntzsch said.

“Does that only apply to our students?” she asked.

Lisa Ashbay Singh, a Grand Ledge High School grad and parent of two biracial children who attend Grand Ledge schools, said countless current and former students have written online accounts of racism they’ve experienced as students. She urged the board to read them.

“This man clearly harbors deep-rooted racial bias that a class cannot fix,” she said.

And…

Metcalf was hired as superintendent in 2011, school district Communications Director John Ellsworth said, and hadn’t previously worked within the district. 

A copy of Metcalf’s contract reads “The Board shall be entitled to terminate the Administrator’s employment at any time during the term of this Contract when it determines that Administrator has engaged in acts of moral turpitude, misconduct, dishonesty, fraud, insubordination, incompetence, inefficiency…”

He earns approximately $220,000 a year, Ellsworth said.

District Deeds Synopsis:

At the end of this educationally disastrous 2019/2020 SDUSD school year District Deeds believes that this article regarding the removal of a Grand Ledge, Michigan Superintendent was extremely relevant based on multiple recent public statements and documents from SDUSD Stakeholder leaders.

In the Lansing Journal article, the author cites the relevant part of the Grand Ledge Superintendent that was violated by the Tweet:

A copy of Metcalf’s contract reads “The Board shall be entitled to terminate the Administrator’s employment at any time during the term of this Contract when it determines that Administrator has engaged in acts of moral turpitude, misconduct, dishonesty, fraud, insubordination, incompetence, inefficiency…”

District Deeds found current SDUSD Superintendent Cindy Marten’s contract that states:

Here are two pages that relate to Martens’ Termination:

Item 2c spells out the core of Martens’ cause for dismissal:

c. Actions by the SUPERINTENDENT during the term of this Employment Contract involving willful malfeasance or gross negligence in the performance of SUPERINTENDENT’s duties hereunder which could be materially and demonstrably injurious to the District. 

In our District Deeds article on Tuesday, June 9th titled NAACP San Diego Chapter: San Diego Unified School District Supt. Marten, Tricky Dick and Board “undermine any and all efforts to effectively address racial and gender problems in the district”

NAACP San Diego Chapter president Francine Maxwell says in the letter:

Trustee Barrera, the rest of the School Board and Superintendent Cindy Marten have done just about everything possible to undermine any and all efforts to effectively address racial and gender problems in the district . . . including dismantling a team of leaders who specialized in this very specific work.

Ms. Maxwell ALSO says:

Even worse, a list of more than two dozen outstanding educational leaders of color have departed from the San Diego Unified School District during Superintendent Marten’s tenure. These leaders continued to advocate for students of color and provide excellent work to their new communities—truly unacceptable losses for the San Diego Unified School District.

Ms. Maxwell then lists the following FIFTEEN  articles that highlight THE RESULTS of extensive “willful malfeasance or gross negligence” by Superintendent Cindy Marten during her 6 year tenure:

  • Four students were stabbed in a huge melee outside of Hoover High School during the 2017 summer school. Reports suggest that administrators at Hoover had knowledge of a brewing conflict days before the melee, but were ineffective in addressing it before it started. Three of the four families have retained lawyers and engaged in costly legal action against the district.

Consistent struggles at Lincoln High School, including:

On-going racial and gender problems throughout the District

These fifteen examples are just the tip of the Marten “willful malfeasance or gross negligence” iceberg.

Wilfull malfeasance spreads to the budget where Marten has produced huge annual deficits while creating massive employee turnover and an exodus of students away from the SDUSD.

Gross negligence to Stakeholders, especially families and communities is exhibited through Marten’s total resistance to State and Federal MANDATED community involvement is an article by an article in the Voice of San Diego titled “San Diego Unified Parents Deserve a Seat at the Table” by Tamara Hurley “a parent of two San Diego Unified graduates and a former parent representative on multiple school site councils, site governance teams, parent-teacher organization boards and district advisory committees.”

In that VOSD article, Ms. Hurley fully exposes Marten’s “Gross Negligence” in her duties:

“The district does not treat parents as true partners in their children’s education because it largely ignores them and leaves them out of meaningful decision-making.

In theory, parents have more robust engagement opportunities in their school site council, site governance team or English-learner advisory council. But in reality, these groups are often led by principals who have met separately with school staff to make decisions and merely present the results to the committees for rubber stamping.

There are districtwide opportunities for parent engagement in a number of advisory committees, several of which are mandated by federal or state law: the District Advisory Council for Compensatory Education Programs, the English Learner District Advisory Committee, the Community Advisory Committee for Students with Disabilities, the District Advisory Committee for Gifted and Talented Education, the Calendar Committee, etc. The district, however, routinely ignores recommendations from these committees, and instead puts forward “staff recommendations,” which the school board trustees approve with minimal, if any, discussion.

When a Local Control and Accountability Plan, or LCAP — a guiding document that links spending and metrics to a school districts goals — became mandated by state law in 2013, parent leaders were hopeful because “parent involvement” is one of eight indicators school districts must addressed. But the actions of San Diego Unified leaders have been disillusioning.

In fact, San Diego Unified and its leadership have actually withdrawn from more meaningful parent engagement over the ensuing years. The superintendent used to meet quarterly with the parent leaders of the districtwide advisory groups to engage in meaningful conversations, but that was discontinued. Now parent leaders are treated as the occasional “focus group” by a district staff member to provide “feedback” on decisions that are actually made out of public view. The district used to provide parents the opportunity to become involved in a districtwide LCAP planning team, but that was disbanded. Even presentations on the LCAP to advisory committees for feedback have been drastically reduced.

Similarly, the school board eliminated non-agenda public comment from the beginning of its meetings, forcing students and parents to wait hours until the end to allow them one to three minutes to address district leaders.

As a result of these and other actions, parents feel that San Diego Unified provides them little to no authentic engagement in decision-making. This is even more evident now.”

Ms. Hurley mentions the word “district” in various forms TWENTY FOUR TIMES!

Although VOSD presented this as an “Opinion” article, EVERYTHING exposed in the article is a FACT!

And EVERY reference to “district” in the VOSD Opinion is a direct reference to the actions (or lack thereof) of Superintendent Cindy Marten who virtually has ABSOLUTE Authority and Responsibility for every neglected community involvement fact raised in the article.

All of these obvious Superintendent Contract violations are topped off with the items we exposed in our article titled BOOBY PRIZE II !!! San Diego Unified School District Makes History – Sweeps Booby Prizes by “Winning” SD County Taxpayers Association “2017 Regional Golden Fleece” for Fleecing District Taxpayers!!!

In the article we provided even more graphic evidence including:

  • Lack of safety for SDUSD Students
  • Extremely poor Human Resource decisions and toxic work environment for employees
  • Continued reduction of consistent, effective legally mandated supports for the neediest students (ELL, financially disadvantaged, homeless)
  • Poor communication and lack of transparency with Board of Education and Stakeholders
  • Enrollment losses to Charter Schools due to poor site supports from Central Office
  • Distrust of current SDUSD leadership

So, adding it all up, how does SDUSD Marten match up against the Grand Ledge Superintendent who destroyed his career and is being fired for his Tweet and the horrible Grand Ledge School District educational climate?

All the SDUSD evidence that has been provided in this post is a FRACTION of the current toxic and mismanaged SDUSD and fully proves the performance of SDUSD Superintendent Cindy Marten is much, much WORSE!  The Sandimic educational disaster is just an extra dose of poison on top of the toxic SDUSD cake.

The Grand Ledge Public Schools felt it was important to protect its 10 schools with 5,328 Students, 296 Teachers and 341 Staff from horrible leadership and district learning culture exhibited by a tweet and is willing to FIRE their Superintendent after 9 years of service for that transgression.

We ask our readers…

Does ALL the proof provided in this post along and the educational damage created by SDUSD Superintendent Cindy Marten to the over 100,000 Students, 6,000 Teachers and 7,000 Staff over the last 6 years justify her immediate termination on grounds of “malfeasance or gross negligence in the performance of SUPERINTENDENT’s duties hereunder which could be materially and demonstrably injurious to the District.”

The FACTS say YES!

The REALITY says YES

District Deeds says YES!

What do YOU say?

Now for our Quote of the Week:

“Truth is what you see. Opinions are what you hear. Facts are what you know. Reality is what you experience.” ― Matshona Dhliwayo

#martensgottago

#barrerasgottago

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ESS Marten Sandimic Motto:  

Hardly Work, Act Blind, Lie Big, Make Excuses

#martensgottago

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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!

FIRE San Diego Unified School District Superintendent Cindy Marten Immediately!

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