Rick Redding was an original founder of this website.
I was way more right than I knew at the time. Imagine that.
Hardly doing the happy dance, though, because it’s a disgrace for a public official to live such a lavish lifestyle while dozens of the schools he’s supposed to oversee suffer on a daily basis from lack of oversight and lack of caring.
You’ll recall that this guy defended Berman’s ethical problems (that would be illegal for any other public official – not school employees, though) while Berman’s minions accused me of making a mountain out of a molehill – thankfully, some planned legislation could fix that problem in the next legislation session.
This is Kentucky. We’re destined to have constant corruption in our educational system.
12 responses so far ↓
1 Gilbert Albans // Nov 9, 2009 at 3:01 pm
I have to disagree, We do NOT HAVE TO TOLERATE corruption, but the public has tolerated thsi behavior from all levels of government for so long that it seems almost ingrained into Kentucky politics…
Maybe a actual grass roots movement to GET EVERY elected official removed / indicted / unelected should take place?
2 jake // Nov 9, 2009 at 3:06 pm
Two words: pipe dream
3 Blowin' in the wind // Nov 9, 2009 at 3:11 pm
I notice there were no names listed on the meal charges–most organizations i have worked for require names. I think you would find it very interesting–people from ‘major” school districts? Haven’t noticed any; also I believe a certain female u of l professor should be listed on many of them.
4 Novena // Nov 9, 2009 at 3:36 pm
“No AYP for Absent Shellie”
Berman misses a lot more days than those Louisville kids who are counted against AYP (Average Yearly Progress) in the asinine NCLB scorecard. And the kids might really be ill or too tired and hungry most of the time (while Shellie shuttles around Cape Town, etc., in gleeful bliss on the public dole). Wonder if he has shared stories with Mark Sanford of South Carolina. Been to Argentina lately, Shellie?
5 Steve Magruder (I, not D or R) // Nov 9, 2009 at 3:48 pm
Gilbert, come back down to Earth.
Anyway, how about just simply starting a letter-writing campaign to our _elected_ school board and ask them this simple question: “Why do you folks insist on continually hiring arrogant, corrupt individuals for the position of Superintendent?”
6 EdenSprings // Nov 9, 2009 at 4:09 pm
Better yet, ask it at the next Board meeting and make sure the media’s there with cameras rolling…
7 citizen // Nov 9, 2009 at 4:29 pm
That would be tonight, 7:00 PM at VanHoose Education Center. The next one will be in two weeks. Berman makes it a point to say the travel was not paid for by JCPS, but does his contract state that he can take 40 paid leave days? Sweet! Snooker, snooker says the school board who approved that contract!
Jake, can you get and post his contract?
8 jake // Nov 9, 2009 at 4:41 pm
Think I’ve already got it/published it previously. But I could be mistaken. I’ll poke around to see.
9 Ken Wilson // Nov 9, 2009 at 7:59 pm
What you are seeing here is not a Kentucky phenomenon; it is an education phenomenon. I was a high school teacher in Rochester NY for 35 years. I was a good one: I won awards… I still have old students contact me and tell me how they value what I taught them…
But I never got on the career ladder – the one that leads farther and farther from the classroom and upward and onward in pay and perks. There are many people who enter teaching with the intention of touching down a couple of years in the classroom, then moving on to department head, dean, principal, and then to Central Office, where you never have to see kids at all.
Once you get there, the vision of education becomes skewed and self-serving. Education becomes a third-world country to be used and exploited, its students statistics.
In such a world-view, taking money and pleasure is easy. You feel you’re in a business, not in a service. Textbook companies, test suppliers, grant makers, education professors become the people you deal with. They become the ‘real world.’
Teachers – real ones, good ones, lost ones, deserving ones, potentially great ones, ones with a few great ideas – seldom figure in this world. And of course, it is teachers – and students themselves – who know more and could help more. But the circle-jerk of educrats listens only to itself.
When I was teaching, I helped develop a program for kids who wanted to go into teaching. Central Office stepped in. The University of Rochester stepped in. The Ford Foundation stepped in. A local labor organization stepped in. Our group got flown to Houston twice. We stayed at nice hotels, ate great meals on an expense account. It was fun.
But it didn’t accomplish much. When I came back, I finally said to my department head, a woman I really respected, that I felt like a ho, and I wouldn’t do it any more . She really couldn’t understand. She went on junkets all the time, and felt entitled.
Berman lives in that world. I’m sure the complaints he hears now fall on deaf ears, the way complaints about the bankers who screwed the country fall on their deaf ears.
It ain’t Kentucky this time, folks. It’s corporate culture.
10 Blowin' in the wind // Nov 10, 2009 at 8:09 am
Rumor has it that Dr. Berman asked three other Kentucky superintendents to write letters supporting him to the board of education members. Wonder what they said, what board thought. Can you get copies, Jake?
11 jake // Nov 10, 2009 at 8:16 am
He also asked principals and teachers to do the same. (Think we reported that)
I can tell you what they said: He’s a genius, it’s a-okay for him to sit on the board of VHS while steering JCPS business its way, it’s fine for him to miss every single graduation in the district for a family vacation (with Natalie Stiglitz, not his actual family), it’s fine for him to ignore every teacher in the district.
12 whatintheworld // Nov 10, 2009 at 8:36 pm
According to Mr. Berman, “He’s declined his allotted raise in recognition of the economic downturn, which was much more than all of the expenses at fancy restaurants on his credit card.” I am confused. Didn’t he receive the same one percent raise that every other JCPS employee received this year? whatintheworld!
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