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San Diego Unified Board of Education, San Diego Unified School District, San Diego Unified School District Superintendent Cindy Marten, SDUSD Trustee Richard Barrera
The first semester is winding down in the San Diego Unified School District (SDUSD) with little educational improvement and more blame and responsibility shifting to the State and Federal governments from incompetent Superintendent Cindy Marten and corrupt Trustee Tricky Dick Barrera while they do significantly less for Student education.
This Sunday Reads features an article from CNN that profiles the world class Miami-Dade County Public Schools Superintendent Alberto Carvalho who successfully reopened schools in October 2020 in a district with 467 schools, over 356,000 Students and over 18,000 Teachers In our Sunday Reads Synopsis and Commentary we compare the this exemplary Miami-Dade Superintendent with the SDUSD horrible excuse for a Superintendent Cindy Marten.
We have selected the full article for our readers but District Deeds strongly urges our readers to click on the article title and read the full article for themselves on CNN.
BE WELL…TAKE COVID 19 PRECAUTIONS…
How Miami-Dade Opened all its Public Schools — and Kept Them Open
By: Mon January 11, 2021
QUOTES FROM ARTICLE:
Alberto Carvalho has been able to do what hundreds of his fellow superintendents have not: fully open his district’s schools in the pandemic.
The head of Miami-Dade County Public Schools said he’s been able to rely on the advice of scientific experts and follow through on a plan that has worked and gained trust.
“We’ve been well-informed by public health and medical experts. We convened a task force of experts, in pediatric medicine, in immunology,” he told CNN, adding that one of the experts is Dr. Vivek Murthy, whom President-elect Joe Biden has nominated for US Surgeon General.
Miami-Dade schools superintendent Alberto Carvalho says he took advice from medical experts on how to open safely.
“We’ve been in good hands … and that has translated into a set of protocols that has left very little room for doubting ourselves.”
Those protocols listed in the county website include: daily health checks before students leave home, the wearing of masks and more space around children on school buses and in classrooms and cafeteria.
Carvalho’s lack of doubt has helped win over many parents of the more than 350,000 students enrolled in his schools.
“When you communicate that to the parents, then there’s a sense of calm and trust that parents need prior to sending their students to school,” he said.
‘No substitute’
Miami-Dade is the fourth largest school district in the country and the largest to reopen fully in the fall.
Carvalho’s determination stems from his belief that there is no good replacement for in-person instruction.
“There is no substitute, regardless of how great the technology may be,” he said bluntly. “You cannot Zoom effectively into a full understanding, a full level of engagement for students.”
Carvalho also sees schools as an indispensable safe harbor for children — academically, physically and emotionally — even or perhaps especially in the middle of a pandemic.
“I am a staunch believer that if we want to keep schools open … if we want that normalcy and regularity to continue, if we want that protective umbrella for students, pedagogically speaking, academically speaking, in terms of their cognitive and emotional development — if we will want that to happen, then the schools can do all they can in terms of preventative measures in terms of mitigating strategies in terms of protocols.”
Carvalho says protocols to stop the spread of Covid are being followed more closely in schools than in the community at large.
He said the cases of coronavirus in his schools are lower than in the community at large. Miami-Dade alone has reported more than a fifth of all Covid-19 cases in Florida, according to Johns Hopkins University data. But Carvalho said schools had an advantage.
“Here in Miami-Dade, we see a greater adherence to protocols in schools — because it is a controlled, safe environment — than we see those same protocols being followed in their community in general, whether we’re talking about the bars and restaurants at the beach or social gatherings,” he said.
A mixed picture of openings and closings
New York City is seeing a similar outcome after it reopened its public elementary schools last month, despite an increasing coronavirus test positivity rate in the city as a whole.
The city has conducted about 100,000 Covid tests in schools, and found a positivity rate of 0.68%, far below the citywide rate of just under 9%, according to New York City data.
The evidence that schools are not hotbeds of virus spread led New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo to reverse a policy requiring schools to close if the community positivity rate hit 9% or higher.
“If their schools are below the level of positivity in the community then they can keep the schools open,” he said last week, returning more control to local school districts.
While there is no official national database tracking the spread of Covid within schools, independent analysis suggests that schools can safely reopen if proper mitigation strategies are followed.
It’s an issue on which even governors from political opposites can share similar views.
Last week Cuomo, a Democrat and frequent critic of President Donald Trump, said: “The safest place in New York City is, of course, our public schools.”
And last October, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican ally of the President, said: “Closing schools due to coronavirus is probably the biggest public health blunder in modern American history.”
But many school districts are not ready to reopen. Los Angeles, the second largest district behind New York City, remains fully online, as do San Francisco and Washington, DC.
On Monday, some Chicago students in pre-K and special education got to return to school for the first time since March. But the push to reopen schools was met with heavy resistance from the city’s teachers’ union, which argued that the city had not invested enough in measures to make in-person learning safe for staff and children.
That also appears to be the feeling among many Chicago parents. Students in kindergarten through 8th grade may go back to in-person learning next month, but so far less than one-third have signed up.
Carvalho greets students wearing masks in one of this elementary schools.
Biden said reopening public schools is one of his priorities for his first 100 days in office.
With Miami-Dade already having met that bar, Carvalho has his own next priority in mind: make sure teachers are among the first to be vaccinated.
“If our teachers are essential professionals, indispensable to our society, to our economy, then we ought to prioritize their status in terms of access to the vaccine,” the superintendent said.
DISTRICT DEEDS SYNOPSIS AND COMMENTARY:
An excellent article profiling the leadership of Miami-Dade County Public Schools (MDCPS) Superintendent Alberto Carvalho during the Covid 19 Pandemic!
Reading through the article it was clearly evident that the successful re-opening of MDCPS in October, 2020 was only possible due to an established, strong operational infrastructure built through the administrative experience and well-honed skills of Superintendent Carvalho and an engaged Board of Education.
The latest news from the SDUSD and Supt. Marten is that schools will remain closed indefinitely.
The BIG question is:
How was the MDCPS with 3 1/2 times MORE Students (356,086 Students) able to reopen for the 2020/21 school year while the SDUSD was not?
The answer:
When decisive action had to be taken to save the ongoing FULL education of ALL Students that were at risk when the Covid 19 disaster began, the bedrock of strong, established operations/financial leadership, transparency and accountability over a long period of time gave ALL Stakeholders the confidence to TRUST the MDCPS leadership re-opening decisions in a crisis.
In other words – Education Professionals doing their job and making decisive, well designed decisions day to day over a long period of time establishing TRUST enabled the school district community to protect the education of all Students in the best way possible in a crisis…something COMPLETELY IMPOSSIBLE under the ZERO TRUST environment of incompetent SDUSD Superintendent Cindy Marten and the corrupt Board of Education flunkies led by Trustee Richard “Tricky Dick” Barrera.
Here is the proof:
The Wikipedia profile of Superintendent Carvalho provides his educational leadership credentials:
Carvalho began his career in education as a physics, chemistry, and calculus teacher at Miami Jackson Senior High.[10] He later became an assistant principal at the school.[7] He also worked as principal, chief communications officer, a school district lobbyist, and assistant superintendent before being named superintendent to lead the Miami-Dade County Public School district in 2008.
At the time of his appointment, the district was reported to have been near bankruptcy. Carvalho worked to cut the budget by $2 billion, firing “massive numbers of administrators” but not one classroom teacher.[10] He has described his approach as “zero-based, moral-values-based” budgeting.[11]
Carvalho career path to becoming MDCPS Superintendent :
- High School Teacher
- High School Assistant Principal
- High School Principal
- MDCPS Chief Communications Officer
- MDCPS Government Lobbyist
- MDCPS Assistant Superintendent
The SDUSD website provides the profile of Marten:
Her 25 years as an educator include teaching elementary grades as a classroom teacher and later, serving as a school-wide literacy specialist in the Poway Unified School District.
After participating in a seven-year improvement effort at a struggling school in Poway, Marten chose to take her experience to one of the most challenging schools in San Diego Unified – Central Elementary in City Heights- where she served for 10 years as teacher, instructional leader and principal.
Marten career path to becoming SDUSD Superintendent :
- Elementary School Teacher
- School-wide Literacy Specialist
- Elementary School Principal
As opposed to the Supt. Carvalho $2 billion streamlining savings, Marten is infamous for financial mismanagement including annual multimillion dollar budget deficits, most notably a $124 million budget deficit in 2017.
Marten is grossly underqualified and totally overwhelmed with even the most basic levels of school district management.
Marten has continuously mismanaged budgets and, even after 7 years of dysfunctional Superintendent OJT (on the job training), cannot come within space rocket distance of the educational leadership credentials of Superintendent Carvalho.
Carvalhos’ well established, solid credentials in leadership produce excellent decisions and build confidence in those decisions by Stakeholders.
Confidence in decisions begats trust in leadership.
The plan by Mr. Carvalhos was straightforward and easily communicated:
- Make schools safe for all Students and Teachers by using all CDC guidelines and beyond.
- Seriously test, track and mitigate all Covid infections in schools.
- Enforce CDC guidelines in all district locations so that school is safer than staying home for those students
- Treat Teachers like essential workers
- Prioritize Teachers FIRST for vaccinations as Essential Workers as soon as those vaccinations are available.
Martens’ lackluster credentials and horrible decisions did just the opposite.
ALL SDUSD Stakeholders have been totally confused by SDUSD leadership Covid 19 propaganda intentionally created to avoid Marten/Tricky Dick/Trustee responsibility.
Every month for the last 10 months of delay, the SDUSD has flip flopped reopening decisions by the week!
They continued being totally untrustworthy.
As for the legacy of SDUSD mistrust, way back on November 20, 2014 in our post titled “SDUSD Principal Institute – “Collaborative Discussions” – or – Teaching Principals How to Manipulate and Lie…the Marten Way!” we provided the following graphic:
We call this the Marten Collaborative Discussion – Back Stabber “Lens”
Marten has not restricted this backstabbing to Principals.
Over the last 7 years, Marten, Tricky Dick and their SDUSD senior leadership cronies have backstabbed, betrayed and completely eroded the trust of Students, Families, Teachers, Administrators, Staff, Volunteers and Taxpayers in various ways including:
- Zero transparency
- Zero accountability
- Systemic racism and elimination/reduction of key SDUSD racial equity components
- Gross Financial mismanagement
- Gross Human Resource (HR) mismanagement including cronyism
- Gross Operational mismanagement
- English Language Learner (ELL) mismanagement
- Special Education (SPED) mismanagement
- Gifted and Talented Education (GATE) mismanagement
- Drastic School Choice reduction
- Drastic Busing reduction
- Graduation Rate manipulation
In this SDUSD culture of gross mismanagement and distrust, families who want their kids to attend school in person cannot do so because Teachers do not believe that Marten has the capacity to make schools safe from Covid 19 infections.
District Deeds does not blame the Teachers for being afraid with Marten and Tricky Dick in charge!
To cover up their gross incompetence and employee mistrust to reopen, Marten and Tricky Dick and their corrupt Board of Education searched everywhere to blame for not reopening SDUSD schools.
- They blamed the Federal government –
Channel 8 San Diego – June 16, 2020
San Diego Unified School District prepares for fall opening, asks for more federal funds
- They blamed the advice of medical professionals:
Times of San Diego – August 10, 2020
‘Months, Not Weeks’ Before Children Return to San Diego Unified Schools
- And, when all else failed, they blamed the California State government:
Channel 10 San Diego – January 6, 2021:
SDUSD Superintendent blasts Governor’s school reopening plan
One place they were afraid to look for blame…
The mirror.
Apparently they broke that when Marten was hired on 2/27/2013…which explains the past 7 years of SDUSD bad luck!
District Deeds has proven over that time that Marten Tricky Dick Barrera and the rest of the Board of Education Trustee flunkies have totally eroded trust in the SDUSD due to gross incompetence and corruption and that distrust has caused huge educational damage to hundreds of thousands of SDUSD Stakeholders.
Our position has been that just for those transgressions Marten should be immediately fired.
But we offer our Readers one last decision point before firing Marten.
It is about time ALL SDUSD Stakeholders look in their own mirror and honestly answer the following question:
Do you trust that SDUSD Superintendent Cindy Marten, Tricky Dick Barrera and the rest of the Board of Education Trustee flunkies have the capacity to really make SDUSD Schools safe from Covid 19 for ALL Students and District employees by the start of the 2nd semester in February, 2021?
If your answer is not “Yes, I trust them 100%!” then you must DEMAND that SDUSD Supt. Cindy Marten should be fired IMMEDIATELY and replaced by a highly qualified and credentialed Superintendent candidate.
Otherwise you deserve what you get…and for you and your family, we hope that what you get is NOT Coronavirus!
Now for our quote of the week…
“The moment the mirror does not recognize us anymore, the cards are no longer in our hands. In effect, we have failed to see to the bottom line of our life story and lost our identity. ”
―
#UNCONSCIONABLE
MARTENSGOTTAGO
#BARRERASGOTTAGO
#PAYNESGOTTAGO
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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 