Castle Park High School loses girls sports case; when will Randy Ward hire lawyers who advise schools to follow the law?

A judge has ruled against Castle Park High School regarding the equality of girls' sports facilities (see story from SDUT below).

Shame on San Diego County Office of Education-Joint Powers Authority and its member school districts for helping schools to ignore the law and, even worse, to engage in retaliation against those who complain about violations of law.

Instead of wasting tax dollars in endless litigation, SDCOE lawyer Daniel Shinoff should have settled this case and many other cases. Even worse is Shinoff's systematic removal of good school employees by helping the school district retaliate against those who complained. The Castle Park High case in Sweetwater Union High School District (see story below) is all too familiar.

The firing of the Castle Park High coach is reminiscent of
1) the Coach James "Ted" Carter case;
2) the Mary Anne Weegar case (also in Sweetwater Union High School District);
3) the Rodger Harnett case.

In another example of unlawful retaliation, SDCOE recently sued this blogger for serving a deposition subpoena on Risk Management Executive Director Diane Crosier.

It's time for SDCOE Superintendent Randy Ward to hire lawyers who will guide schools toward compliance with the law, instead of lawyers who try to help schools get away with wrongdoing. But most importantly, the retaliation has to stop. A judge recently told Mr. Ward that he should conduct investigations of wrongdoing instead of firing whistle-blowers.



Judge rules school shows bias in sports
By Brent Schrotenboer
San Diego Union-Tribune
April 2, 2009

SOUTH BAY — A federal judge has ruled that Castle Park High School has allowed “significant gender-based disparity” in sports at the expense of female athletes.

In a summary judgment this week, U.S. District Court Judge M. James Lorenz ruled that Castle Park is not in compliance with Title IX, the 37-year-old federal law that forbids sex discrimination in any education program or activity receiving federal funds...

The remaining claims will go forward in court, including one that the district retaliated against the plaintiffs by firing their coach after they complained of discrimination.

The plaintiffs showed that while female enrollment at Castle Park was 45 percent to 50 percent since 1998, female participation in athletics was 33 percent to 41 percent during those years...

Over the past 11 years in the county, the Ramona school district, Mesa College and the Grossmont Union High School District have faced similar legal complaints involving Title IX and subpar softball facilities.

South county SDCOE board members oppose secrecy in suspect dealings

We're lucky to have Jerry Rindone on the San Diego County Office of Education board.
It may not be a coincidence that the only trustee at SDCOE who sees a problem with the recently-exposed shenanigans in the Risk Management department is one of the new board members. Jerry Rindone is concerned about administrator Dan Puplava's having a side business with the same financial institutions that he manages on behalf of SDCOE. The state attorney general says this is prohibited.

Longtime board members John Witt, Sharon Jones, and Susan Hartley have been studiously looking the other way for years, ignoring my public records requests and refusing to investigate complaints about Risk Management executive director Diane Crosier.

I had hoped that Superintendent Randolph Ward would clean things up when he arrived, but it appears that he (literally!) bought into the Risk Management schemes within weeks after he was hired in 2006.

I'd like to think the other new trustee, Mark Anderson, is still contemplating the situation. Perhaps he'll have the courage to speak out against the cronyism in the SDCOE Risk Management department.





Employee-broker issue divides school trustees
Superintendent also was client
By Jeff McDonald
San Diego Union-Tribune
March 23, 2009


Background: The manager of the San Diego County Office of Education deferred compensation program ran a side business that sold investments to teachers and administrators served by the program.

One trustee of the San Diego County Board of Education [Jerry Rindone of Chula Vista] is so concerned about a manager's side business selling financial securities to educators that he requested a review of the situation by the superintendent.

...According to the state Attorney General's Office, public school employees – including those in the county education office – are prohibited from acting as commissioned sales agents for vendors of the educator retirement accounts...

County Superintendent of Schools Randolph Ward, who bought an annuity from [Dan] Puplava weeks after being hired in 2006, did not respond to requests for an interview.

At issue is the deferred-compensation program run by the Fringe Benefits Consortium...Over the years, Puplava and a group of independent financial advisers hosted hundreds of workshops to tell school employees about the program...The newspaper obtained one statement that showed Puplava earned more than $355,000 in commissions in 2006...

Board President Sharon Jones said she and her colleagues are “always concerned” about conflict-of-interest allegations but noted that there is no law against running a personal business while working for a public agency...

[Maura Larkins' note: Sharon Jones seems to be concerned about allegations, but not about wrongdoing. She wants SDCOE to keep its secrets. Jones is my representative on the board, and has ignored all my requests for help obtaining public records. The only board member who has ever been responsive to my requests was Nick Aguilar, the previous south county representative. It's interesting that Aguilar's replacement, Jerry Rindone, is the only board member currently concerned about SDCOE's relationship with insurance companies.]

Trustee John Witt declined to discuss the issue;





Trustee Mark Anderson did not return two messages left at his home.





Trustee Susan Hartley said the county schools office looked into Puplava's dealings and found nothing amiss.

[Maura Larkins' note: Maybe you should have someone from the outside investigate, Ms. Hartley.]

Tom Curtis, a retired university administrator from La Mesa with no ties to the county Board of Education...was so angry after reading the newspaper report that he called the headquarters to complain...

[The SDUT first broke this story last week; Voice of San Diego recently wrote about SDCOE lawyer Daniel Shinoff and his relationship with SDCOE's Risk Management department.]

Voice of San Diego breaks story of relationship of Stutz lawyers Daniel Shinoff and Jeffery Morris to Diane Crosier of SDCOE-JPA

Photo by Sam Hodgson, Voice of San Diego

What's up with attorneys Dan Shinoff and Diane Crosier at the San Diego County Office of Education JPA? Some interesting shenanigans, it appears. Why has SDCOE Superintendent Randolph "Randy" Ward covered up these problems by refusing to release (to this blogger) public records of billings of Shinoff's firm, Stutz Artiano Shinoff & Holtz?

The Schoolhouse Lawyer Who Helped Hire His Overseer
VOICE OF SAN DIEGO
by Emily Alpert
March 2, 2009

Lawyers from a firm that has received millions of dollars in business from a public agency that handles lawsuits for school districts have, at least twice in recent years, helped it screen potential employees who later oversaw outside attorneys' work.

The Risk Management Joint Powers Authority, a public agency composed of dozens of local school districts and run through the San Diego County Office of Education, has paid the law firm of Stutz, Artiano, Shinoff & Holtz nearly $7 million between July 2002 and July 2008 to handle lawsuits brought against school districts.

Two shareholders in the firm, Daniel Shinoff and Jeffery Morris, have helped screen job applicants for the agency by sitting on the first of two interview panels that candidates undergo before being hired. Such interviewers don't make the final hiring decisions, but they narrow the hiring pool by asking predetermined questions provided by the human resources department and ranking candidates based on their responses.

Including the attorneys in the interview process means that in at least two instances, an employee has owed his or her job, in part, to one of the firms that he or she is hired to monitor.

The practice is among a bevy of complaints lodged in a lawsuit by a former authority employee, Rodger Hartnett, who alleges that the Stutz Artiano firm received a disproportionate share of work "based on personal relationships" in the office rather than merit. Harnett, who was interviewed for his job by a panel that included Shinoff, claims in his wrongful termination suit against the County Office of Education that he was fired because of his complaints about Stutz Artiano...


(Links in the text were added by Maura Larkins.)

Grade tampering at Preuss School is minor dishonesty compared to SDCOE

Academic honesty policies are a joke compared to deep corruption at top of education system.

San Diego Union Tribune Columnist Gerry Braun wrote on December 16, 2007, "It's only appropriate, then, to award a big "F/U" to whoever is responsible for the unconscionable failure of ethics at the Preuss charter school...Frankly, I'm not optimistic that justice will be served...Victoria Munoz Richart transformed her bumbling tenure as president of MiraCosta College into a pot of gold, a $1.6 million severance package."

San Diego County Office of Education-Joint Powers Authority deserves an F/U for its dishonesty policy. The SDCOE-JPA is administered by Superintendent Randolph Ward and his assistant superintendent Lora Duzyk. They have seen fit to keep Diane Crosier as director of the JPA, even though they have long known that Crosier keeps unethical lawyers on her approved lists of lawyers. Crosier helps her insurance broker Keenan and Associates make money by short-circuiting the justice system to help school districts get away with wrongdoing.

Compared to this, the big brouhaha of changed grades at UCSD's Preuss School seems like child's play to me.

The real scandal in schools is not the grades that are given, but the fact that so few students get a good education. With insurance companies, bogus repackaged education program businesses, and conservative religious leaders on the right, teachers unions on the left, and politicians on the right and left jockeying for personal power, the entire system is at a complete standstill.

Former "Principal of the Year" Doris Alvarez is apparently the unethical administrator in the Preuss grade scandal, but I don't think she's any less ethical than many other popular principals.

One of the straightest paths to popularity in school administration is to be a people pleaser, especially to people higher up than you. Personal politics is one of the driving forces in education.

The cure? A lot more openness and honesty. Especially when required by a court of law, SDCOE-JPA lawyers need to start revealing the truth about what's happening in schools. Instead, they hide behind the stone wall set up by SDCOE, insurance companies, and school districts. Sadly, this stone wall is respected by the California state courts, whose judges, particularly in the court of appeal, think schools should not have to answer to the law.

This arbitrary power is the enemy of a meritocracy, and is one of the reasons that schools are not meritocracies, but rather political arenas where far too many teachers, administrators, and board members spend their time jockeying for money and personal power instead of honestly dealing with problems.

San Diego County's school system needs to get rid of Diane Crosier and her stable of lawyers and school superintendents who ignore the law.