Oh, are those the reasons?

For those who have followed the D11 recall effort against Sandy Shakes and Eric Christen, it is very apparent that the "reasons" for the effort as stated by the Chaos committee have changed continuously throughout the process. Most who are paying attention understand that this is simply a continuation of the 2005 elections and it is simply about getting power back into the hands of the liberal elite who have always run D11.

The email below came from a D11 resident who had asked Ann Oatman-Gardner, the lead hit man for Chaos, if Chaos would do the D11 taxpayers a $300,000 favor by calling off this recall. Here is Oatman-Gardner's reply:

From: Annodan@aol.com [mail to:Annodan@aol.com]
Sent: Sunday, September 24, 2006 12:54 PM
To: Subject: [Norton AntiSpam]
Re: Stop the recall
, thank you for sharing your concern about the recall and the expense. We also would prefer that the expense to the district be avoided. When we started this recall, we were horrified by the blatant waste of taxpayer dollars when they fired Dr. Thomas. All they would have had to do is give her an evaluation, hold her to some agreed upon outcomes and if she didn't produce those, they could have let her go without the pay out of her contract, but they were irresponsible enough to just fire her because of their personal agendas. Then they went ahead and voted to pay Eric Christen's attorney's fees even though the hiring of the attorney by Mr. Christen was due to his own paranoia about being reprimanded, something that did not stop him at all from serving as a board member, but which used $4,000 of the Districts money. He then went ahead last week and did the exact same thing he was reprimanded for, sending out his opinions on District letterhead. We don't think he has learned a thing, nor will change his behavior. Then they voted to pay out $250,000 (more than the cost of the recall election if done by mail) for a site based management consultant, even though Ms. Mann was willing to move in that direction but with more care and more oversite, starting with $50,000. We said when we started the recall that we were concerned about what they would do next and were not willing to wait to see what else they would waste and that has not changed. We even acknowledged at the beginning that the District would have had to pay anywhere from $80,000 to $100,000 for the election (if we had been on the November ballot, which we tried to get to) . Was that not a concern for you then? They themselves can still vote for the least cost election of $187,000 All Mail ballot at this Wednesday's board meeting or better yet, they could resign by 5 pm on Monday. Saving all the money, and since they only have a year left on their term they would not be missing much. Have you asked Mr. Christen and Ms. Shakes to resign or at least do the least cost election of $187,000? Unfortunately, your request to us comes too late. We have no authority to pull this back now that the 15,000 petitions signatures for each candidate have been certified by the clerk and recorder. It would have been difficult for the three of us to have made the request after 400 people spent hours gathering and over 19,000 people agreed we needed to do this. Good luck in taking the only avenue left, asking them to resign.
Annie

Let's look at the arguments that Annie makes to justify her wasting of D11 tax dollars.

When we started this recall, we were horrified by the blatant waste of taxpayer dollars when they fired Dr. Thomas.
The "waste of taxpayer dollars" of which Annie speaks is the Golden Parachute that was attached to Thomas's contract by Karen Teja and David Linebaugh, 2 ex-D11 Board members who negotiated Thomas's contract with her. This Golden Parachute was supported by some of the very members of Chaos who now criticize the fact that Thomas received this amount of money. Eric Christen did not vote for the huge giveaway; neither did Willie Breazell or I vote for this. We strongly opposed this contract. Sandy Shakes did vote for the contract, but she has openly admitted that she made a mistake in that regard. Mary Wierman, Karen Teja, and Dave Linebaugh are responsible for the Golden Parachute, yet Annie and her crowd have actually welcomed these people into Chaos. The Golden Parachute was a political stunt using D11 tax money. The good news is that although the original parachute was $750,000, we were able to trim away approximately $330,000. Thomas was reportedly "fuming" in her office after that Board vote. No one from Chaos raised any objections when the vote was taken by the old board to give Thomas her Golden Parachute.

All they would have had to do is give her an evaluation, hold her to some agreed upon outcomes and if she didn't produce those, they could have let her go without the pay out of her contract, but they were irresponsible enough to just fire her because of their personal agendas.

The following is from a statement made by Thomas at a Board meeting on March 8, 2005, in response to the possibility of receiving an evaluation with "outcomes," as Annie suggested:

Fourth, given the significant challenges identified above, I am very concerned that the Board has not taken the time to make sure that the necessary prerequisites to any productive and meaningful performance assessment process were in place before implementing the current process. To be sure, the Board and superintendent should enter into frequent informal dialogs about how things are proceeding in the district. And, the current process began as just such an informal process. However, members of the former Board who continue to serve on the current Board seem to have turned that informal process into a high-stakes, formal one, having decided as early as December that my performance was entirely or mostly unsatisfactory and worthy of something as drastic as a remediation plan. The evaluation summary that has been presented to me is reflective of the intent of those Board members to rate my performance as unsatisfactory very early on, notwithstanding the failure to lay a proper foundation for such a determination.

Thomas made it very clear that she was not willing to accept a remediation plan, which is simply a list of expected actions and outcomes. For those who continue to say that we waited "too long" to begin the evaluation process, even Thomas admitted that the effort to provide her feedback began in December. The following is an email sent by Sandy Shakes to John Gudvangen on December 3rd, 2005

John,

Craig and I had spoken about an informal 6 month discussion with Dr. Thomas prior to the board election of officers. Craig and I based our discussion upon past practices that the president and vice president would give feedback to the superintendent as far as performance. I am not trying to step on your turf or be"controlling". We owe it to the superintendent to give feedback on performance based upon the performance criteria. Dr. Thomas is aware of the evaluation format and the content. The performance evaluation was developed and used last year with Dr. Ridder before he left.

Of course, we would get input from current BOE members, Willie and Eric and contact David, Mary and Karen to see if they have specifics they would like to include before we meet with Dr. Thomas. The final evaluation is the input from the entire board. At the present time, I am certain that the only valid and constructive input will come from the board members that have served with Dr. Thomas for more that a few days.

I am sure you want the new board to have data and information so that our decisions are based on data over an entire year and not just the last 6 months of her contract. However, if you feel that Dr. Thomas should not have any feedback and she only hears from the board at her yearly review then that is something that the entire board may want to have some input on.

Sandy Shakes

Gudvangen's response to this email was given to the entire Board verbally. He said, "I will never allow Craig and Sandy to do this evaluation." As can be seen by the email, it was never suggested that the eval be done by only 2 people.

As to Thomas's claim that the BOE had laid no foundation to even give her an evaluation, she contradicts herself from a letter dated October 10, 2005, addressed to Sandy Shakes, in which she said:

Dear President Shakes,

On or about September 15, 2005, we discussed the format for the Superintendent's 2005-06 performance evaluation. At that time, I indicated that it was my understanding that School District 11 had adopted a consistent performance evaluation format for all employees - including the Superintendent - a copy of which has been provided to me by the District's Human Resources office.

...Accordingly, it seemed appropriate that the Board of Education and I use the already-developed format, a copy of which is enclosed.

Despite Thomas's public claims, Thomas agreed to an evaluation format back in September 2005.

Thomas had demanded that every board action concerning her evaluation be done in public, even though her contract called for an evaluation to be conducted in a private Executive Session. There is no doubt that Thomas made these demands to turn her evaluation into a political circus. The following is an email sent out by Thomas and Chaos supporter Lois Fornander, one of the D11 elitists who oppose the education of poor and minority children. Gudvangen and Thomas asked Fornander to send this email to supporters before the meeting was even made publicly known:

Thomas had no intention of allowing the BOE to conduct an orderly evaluation process.

An important point to note with regards to the Thomas contract is that it does not allow for performance, or lack of performance, to be a reason for her to be terminated for "cause." This egregious contract was designed to protect Thomas regardless of her lack of competence, and Annie knows that. The only area where performance could be a factor, based on the contract, was in the area of bonus pay. (Note to other Boards: never allow an ex-attorney CEO to negotiate a contract for him/herself with his/her old employer who happens to be the law firm that should be representing you).

On September 27th, Willie Breazell publicly stated that he was the Board member who pushed to give Thomas her Golden Parachute without a fight. Christen and Shakes did not push for this capitulation, so Breazell pointed out that Chaos had targeted the wrong people in its recall effort. Some of us would have been willing to fire Thomas without giving her the money, and Breazell was probably correct in assuming that Thomas would sue the District and end up costing the taxpayers even more than $400,000. This was about money for her, not kids.

Then they went ahead and voted to pay Eric Christen's attorney's fees even though the hiring of the attorney by Mr. Christen was due to his own paranoia about being reprimanded, something that did not stop him at all from serving as a board member, but which used $4,000 of the Districts money.

Christen properly asked the Board to reimburse him for defending himself against something that Shakes admits was a political stunt. Christen followed Board procedures. Karen Teja, however, received reimbursement for her personal legal expenses without asking Board permission. Annie and her cronies never complained about that. Below are 2 of Teja's legal billings, for which she charged the taxpayers of D11:

The April bill was for the important purpose of finding out if Christen was allowed to say things at Board meetings that Teja might find objectionable. The June bill was for Teja to fight the possibility of the Board voting to allow District funds to be used to help poor and minority children. Teja did not use D11 law firm HRO because she "did not trust them," or so she told Shakes.

When called on this abuse of D11 funds, Teja publicly stated that she followed policy by asking then superintendent Norm Ridder for permission to fund a private attorney. Unfortunately for Teja, no such policy exists, as confirmed in an email exchange between myself and D11 policy representative Deb Key:

----- Original Message ----- From: KEY, DEB To: RIDDER, NORMAN ; 'craigcox@adelphia.net' Cc: David Linebaugh (E-mail) ; Eric Christen (E-mail) ; Karen Teja (E-mail) ; Mary Wierman (E-mail) ; Sandra Shakes (E-mail) ; Sandy Shakes (E-mail) ; Willie Breazell (E-mail) ; GUSTAFSON, GLENN ; NALESKI, ELAINE ; BISHOP, TERRY ; THURMAN, MARY E. ; PATTON, SANDRA ; GIDDENS, GWENDOLYN B. Sent: Friday, April 29, 2005 8:27 AM

Subject: Information requested

Director Cox, Request: The policy that Teja referred to last night where it states that Board members ask the superintendent for permission to use someone other than HRO. Response: The BOE policy that deals with Board Members seeking approval to contact attorneys is BDG. For your reference I have attached policy BDG. Deb Key

-----Original Message-----From: Craig Cox [mailto:craigcox@adelphia.net]

Sent: Friday, April 29, 2005 12:14 PMTo: KEY, DEBSubject:

Re: Information requested
Deb,

Thanks. I am familiar with BDG, and it does not say anything close to what Teja pretended, but that is not your problem. Thanks.

Craig

From: KEY, DEB

Craig, you are correct. Thanks for not shooting the messenger. Deb

If this use of D11 funds to reimburse BOE members is a recallable offense, Annie and her minions missed more than 1 opportunity to hold Teja accountable.

Then they voted to pay out $250,000 (more than the cost of the recall election if done by mail) for a site based management consultant,

This claim is true, but rather silly. The D11 Board that includes Hasling, Mann, and Gudvangen, voted to pay more than $800,000 for consultants to assist the District with its construction projects. These contracts extend for as many years as does the site based consultant. Further, Annie's liberal friends Teja, Wierman, and Lyman Kaiser, all contributors to the Chaos effort, voted for an open-ended contract with Jim Shipley & Associates to implement CQI. The following is the CQI budget for one year:

In one year, D11 spent nearly $1 million for the implementation of CQI. As this budget document shows, the cost of the consultant alone (Jim Shipley & Associates) was $350,000 for one year. The consulting costs were even higher when CQI was initially adopted prior to 2003. Again, if Annie was really worried about fiscal accountability, she missed a big one. All this to teach teachers how to hold their students accountable for their work.

The fact of the matter is that D11 spends millions of dollars each year on contracts. The reason that the site based contract is even an issue is because Annie and her liberal allies on the Board oppose site based budgeting. They prefer to have the school money controlled by a large and bulky administration rather than the school staffs.

Is this really a recallable crime? All 7 current Board members ran on the promise of a site based management model for the District. This money is being spent in a manner that will directly affect the performance of our schools in a positive manner. Annie, of course, does not care about the performance of our schools.

Annie no longer tries to defend the lackluster performance of Thomas in her email. That is a good thing. That performance is worth exploring closer, as are the evaluations that each of the Board members gave Thomas.

The Righteous one

Ever since the recall effort began against Sandy Shakes and Eric Christen, recall backers have been calling for Shakes and Christen to resign their seats. On Monday, September 25th, Christen offered to do just that. He asked Superintendent Terry Bishop to act as an intermediary to talk to John Gudvangen on his behalf. Through Bishop, Christen offered to resign his seat in exchange for Gudvangen publicly backing the appointment of one of the losing candidates from the 2005 election. Even though these candidates lost and were outspent by 5 times, each of them still received more votes than any other candidate in D11 history with the exception of the 3 winning candidates in 2005. The recallers have said all along that they did not object to Christen's ideas, but they did object to his delivery.

Gudvangen refused to accept any compromise with Christen. He wanted an unconditional resignation so that he could appoint a fellow liberal ideologue to the Board. When Christen made his offer public, Gudvangen panicked. He called a press conference where he handed out a prepared statement. He then became angry at reporters who tried to ask him questions about why he refused to agree to Christen's offer.

At the September 27th Board meeting, Gudvangen launched into a lecture about back-room political dealings. Even though Christen wanted the whole offer of resignation to be done in public, Gudvangen tried to make it into some behind-the-scenes secret deal. He actually stated that he would NEVER be involved in any behind the scene wheeling and dealing.

Below is a short timeline of events after Gudvangen's election:

John doesn't condone back room deal brokering?

Let's revisit recent history:

November 1, 2005, the slate of Gudvangen, Hasling and Mann wins the D-11 board seats.

November 2 and 3, 2005, discussion begins among the directors-elect about board officerships.

November 4, 2005 - Sharon Thomas attends the Education Trust conference in Washington DC. She spends approximately 6 hours on the phone between 8 am and 6 pm with Maryellen McNally.

November 5, 2005 - John Elliott hosts a party at his house celebrating the passage of the bond. John Gudvangen, Sandra Mann, Tami Hasling, Karen Teja and Mary Wierman gather upstairs to discuss board officerships. Maryellen McNally communicates to Sandy Shakes that "we got them elected and they'll do what we tell them". Gudvangen, when he wasn't in the family room playing his accordian, was expressing his disgust at Teja and Wierman for lamenting Shakes not being supported as President, citing his experience and collaborative nature as rationale for choosing him.

November 7, 2005 - Meeting arranged by Sharon Thomas at Tracy Cooper's house. John Gudvangen picks up lunch prepared by Sodexho, paid for by taxpayers, for meeting with Sandra Mann, Tami Hasling, John Gudvangen, Sandy Shakes meet with Tracy Cooper, again, discussing board officerships.

November 20, 2005 - "Bloody Sunday". Meeting held at the temporary office of "Friends of D-11" on East Bijou. In attendance were one unknown woman, Maryellen McNally, John Gudvangen, Tami Hasling,Lois Fornander, John Morris (head of Democratic Party), Janice Hahn, Sandra Mann and Sandy Shakes. It is at this meeting that McNally tells Shakes she is to fly right or face the wrath. It is at this meeting that the final officer positions deal brokering is finalized.

Are we to assume that John has a separate set of standards regarding his own back room deal brokering than he wishes to hold Director Christen to?

However you slice it, you're looking at a real, live hypocrite when you cast you gaze upon this man.

During the November 5th meeting, although Gudvangen had not been sworn into office yet, he was still an "elected official." He was working a behind-the-scenes deal with 2 sitting Board members, Karen Teja and Mary Wierman.

On November 7th, he again was working a behind-the-scenes deal with a the superintendent, and he even picked up meals for this clandestine meeting that were paid for by the D11 taxpayers. Tracy Cooper, who hosted this secret meeting, was on the D11 payroll at the time as a "purple packet" employee. She was directly hired by superintendent Thomas, and neither has informed the public as to Cooper's duties on the public dole.

On November 20th, Gudvangen was involved in an ambush attack against Sandy Shakes. This is yet another behind-the-scenes meeting that Gudvangen will not explain.

Since his election, Gudvangen has spent countless hours on the phone and in meetings with Thomas and Hasling and school district attorneys. While all of these meetings and phone calls cost the taxpayers thousands of public dollars, Gudvangen has never taken the time to explain to the public or his Board colleagues what he talked about or accomplished during these secret meetings.

While the public continues to suffer through endless Gudvangen "righteousness" sermons at Board meetings, his conduct has been anything other than righteous.

Could you imagine if our side did this?

The campaign for the D11 school board in 2005 was the most expensive campaign ever. The 3 union candidates, John Gudvangen, Tami Hasling, and Sandra Mann, made it the most brutal and dishonest campaign as well. As is typical of the local media, very little information was provided to the public about this gutter-style politics.

Anyone can imagine that if any supporter of Eric Christen or Willie Breazell or Sandy Shakes or myself would have ever threatened any citizen or business over how they should vote, this would be front page news. However, when a very vocal supporter of the 3 union purchased candidates threatened a local business, the community barely took notice.

Elizabeth (Liz) Palmer is a local liberal who is a staunch supporter of the status quo. Palmer is another "activist" who believes that learning can only be accomplished by white students and that there is no hope for improving the lot of minorities or poor students. Palmer is a member of a local group called Alliance for Quality Public Schools. Their mission is simple enough - prevent any type of reform or improvement from occurring in D11. The Alliance is also strongly opposed to allowing parents to have a say in their children's education. While the Alliance opposes school choice and vouchers, its members remained strangely silent when it was discovered that D11 had provided vouchers to its own employees while refusing to do so for other parents.

During the 2005 campaign, Palmer was obviously a supporter of the anti-reform slate of Gudvangen, Hasling, and Mann. One morning Palmer noticed campaign signs on the property of the North End Diner, an established diner on North Hancock near Fillmore. Palmer flew into a fury because those campaign signs happened to belong to the 2005 slate of Carla Albers, Reggie Perry, and Bob Lathen. The owners of the North End Diner had not consulted with Palmer and her group of thugs to ask permission to support someone other than the union slate. As a result, Palmer fired off the following letter to the owners of the diner:

Notice that Palmer claims to be a supporter of "locally controlled education." It is interesting that Palmer has never complained that the biggest donor to her candidates' campaigns was the Washington D.C. based Progressive Majority, a group dedicated to purchasing elections for left-wing candidates across the country. The other huge donor was, of course, the Washington D. C. based National Education Association. Both of these groups are staunchly opposed to parental control of the public schools, so Palmer's premise in her threatening letter is somewhat odd.

Palmer has also been actively involved in the recall effort against Shakes and Christen. Palmer's attitude and tactics illustrate the type of people who really control public schools. They are deeply offended by the fact that anyone would dare run for school board without their blessing. They are deeply offended when school board members refuse to take their marching orders from them. As illustrated by Palmer's threatening letter, they are also offended when respected members of the community dare to hold beliefs that do not fall in line with their narrow ideology.

The North End Diner is a fantastic eating establishment, and the Houston family who owns the diner stood their ground against these threats. The Houstons obviously care deeply about the state of their local schools, and that is why they supported the slate of candidates who also cared deeply about their schools.

The Integrity Gap

Shortly after Sharon Thomas was hired, I had lunch with her at the downtown Old Chicago's. The lunch meeting was for us to get to know each other better. During the interview process before she was hired, Thomas never once mentioned anything about improving student learning in the District, so this lunch was important for me to see if she had any goals in that regard.

Thomas did not provide me with any goals or desires as the new superintendent. I, however, did provide her with my goals as a Board member. I was straight forward with Thomas about my view on our Board member/superintendent relationship and responsibilities. I pointed out to Thomas that I understood that we probably would not agree on many issues. I had obviously not voted for her, so that was no surprise. What I wanted Thomas to understand about me was that integrity was one of my most important issues when dealing with others. I told her that it was more important to me that we be totally up front and honest with each other about our views on issues, even if we disagreed, than to pretend that we were going to do something that we had no intention of doing.

During that very summer, I was involved with a committee that was formed to deal with the issue of tutoring. Tutoring was an issue because D11 did not (and does not) have trained staff to deal with students with tough reading problems, including dyslexia. Karen Teja had lied about helping parents with tutoring needs, so I picked up the ball. (Teja was running for state school board, so she told parents that her political ambitions took priority over their needs at the time). There was no consistency in D11 from school to school as far as the handling of tutors. Some schools would allow tutors into the buildings free of charge, while others would prohibit tutors from being in the buildings at all during the school day.

The biggest and most outrageous issue, which was covered by the Gazette, is that the District was paying for tutoring for certain people who happened to be affiliated with the District while denying the right of other parents to even have tutors in the schools, even if the parents were paying for those tutors (Gazette, 20 January 2005).

The purpose of the committee that met over the summer, which was made up of district parents and myself, was to develop policy that would ensure consistency across the District. The goal was to allow tutors in each building as needed. The specific goal of this committee was not to address the issue of unfair and unethical favors for Board members and staff. A compromise was pretty much reached after many meetings, and Thomas was briefed by staff and myself.

At the September 1, 2005 Board meeting, Thomas completely fabricated the content of the tutoring committee meetings, and she misrepresented the requests of the parents. This brought an angry reply from one of the parents, who was speaking on behalf of the others who had worked hard over the summer on that committee.





















The first act that Thomas performed as the new D11 CEO was to lie to parents, the Board, and the community about an extremely vital issue to the future of those students. Sadly, Teja was the driving force behind Thomas's unwillingness to do anything for these underserved students. It was all about scoring political points for Teja. Most of these parents were on the "wrong side" of the political aisle for Teja. Only if they were staunch liberals would their kids be worthy of free tutoring services.

In a subsequent letter to the parents, Thomas promised that she would continue to address the tutoring issue. Right until the day that she shamelessly left D11, she did nothing to address the tutoring issue. On more than one occasion, Thomas and John Gudvangen feigned indignation over the fact that anyone would question Thomas's integrity. On more than one occasion, Thomas proved to the community that she really had very little integrity to question.

Nothin' but money

D11 CFO Glenn Gustafson revealed on September 19th that the cost of the recall election that has been called by "Create the Chaos" will now possibly exceed $300,000! Gustafson said that the cost, which Chaos has always told the public would be under $100,000, will be at least $187,000 and as high as $313,000. This is all for an election about two Board members who have already said that they will not be seeking reelection in 2007 anyway. This drain on the classroom funding is all for an election that will be held less than one year prior to another school board election in which another $200,000 will likely have to be spent by D11.

One of the stated reasons for this recall was because ex-superintendent Sharon Thomas was given $411,000 of D11's classroom funds when she was fired for not doing her job. Ironically, Karen Teja, who was a driving force behind the recall, was the main force behind placing the Golden Parachute into Thomas's contract in the first place. Also involved in that egregious contract were ex-D11 Board members Lynn Peterson and Mary Ellen McNally. The same people who cost the D11 taxpayer over $400,000 to remove an ineffective superintendent, will now force the District to pull over $300,000 from the classroom funds to cover the cost of an election that will have to occur again in less than one year. All of this over a personal grudge that McNally has for Sandy Shakes. All of this because Shakes refused to bow to threats from McNally, who informed Shakes that Thomas would be left alone by Shakes "or else."

The taxpayers of D11 have been lied to over and over by Chaos. They have been lied to about the reasons for recalling Shakes and Eric Christen, and they have been lied to about the cost that McNally and her liberal followers will cost to the classrooms of D11.

The Squeaky Ideologue gets the Cash

From July 1st, 2005 through the end of January, 2006, the administration of Sharon Thomas spent over $3 million in temporary employee (or Purple Packet) hires. Under Thomas, there were absolutely no controls at all on who could be hired by an administrator. No purple packet tracking was done to see if there was even a need for these employees. District administrators had free reign when it came to handing out public funds to these temporary employees. No one evaluated the work of these temporaries, and no one performed background checks.

After I broke this story of waste and abuse to the Gazette, I received numerous phone calls from D11 employees who thanked me for finally exposing what they knew to be a system where administrators could pass out public funds to friends without having to account for how that money was being spent. The biggest beneficiaries, of course, were friends of the administrators at the top.

Tracy Cooper was a D11 PR person under Ken Burnley. As a liberal activist, she was very close to Sharon Thomas. Thomas hired her as a temporary employee and gave her the job of making Thomas "look good" to the public. Cooper's specific role was to help Thomas draft responses to anything that I or Eric Christen said during Board meetings. Most of Thomas's belligerent remarks during Board meetings were drafted by Cooper. Cooper was paid thousands of D11 tax dollars to be a personal aid for Thomas, even though D11 already has a full time PR person. Cooper also wrote scripts for John Gudvangen and Tami Hasling. Hasling had (and has) the embarrassing habit of reading from her scripts even when the topic has already changed. There was only so much that Cooper could do.

Cooper has been very active in the current recall effort. She has carried petitions and gathered signatures for the recall. Cooper is very angry that she has been cut off from the public dole, and she wants revenge. She also wants to have Thomas reinstated as the superintendent so that she can begin to make money off of D11 once again.

Bob Moore was once the Chief Financial Officer for D11. He worked under Burnley as well. As soon as Thomas was hired as superintendent, she brought Moore back to D11 from Michigan and she put him on the payroll as a temporary employee. D11 employees note that Thomas and Moore were very close when they both worked for D11 under Burnley, so Thomas created a job for Moore. He was supposedly assigned to work with the local military community to foster a smooth transition with the Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) issue. The qualification that Thomas actually gave for bringing her long time close friend back to Colorado was that he had 2 years of Coast Guard experience and could therefore relate to the military. Many people wonder if 2 years of Coast Guard experience from 30 years ago could match up against the wealth of Army and Air Force experience that could be found right here in Colorado Springs, an Army and Air Force town. The Board never received any feedback from the efforts of Moore, who was paid nearly $10,000 for less than one month's work.

Shortly after the community discovered that Thomas had brought back a friend from Detroit to work a local issue, the Board members received a letter from a District employee about Moore. The letter informed us that the real reason for Thomas hiring Moore had nothing to do with BRAC. The reason, according to the employee, was that Moore needed more time on a public payroll to meet requirements of the Public Employee Retirement system (PERA). According to the employee, Thomas invented a slot for her friend but did not actually require any work. The job and the pay were simply to push Moore into a higher retirement bracket.

John Kerr was yet another Burnley underling who was invited back by Thomas to work for D11. Kerr was brought back to work with the Boundary Committee. Being an ideologue like Thomas, Kerr signed recall petitions against Sandy Shakes and Eric Christen. Staff members say that Kerr is very bitter over the removal of Thomas since she brought him back and placed him on the public payroll.

While the public was informed by the Gazette that Christen used some of his Board allocated funds to have lunch with other Board members and constituents over the past year, the Gazette failed to inform the public that Thomas used public funds and resources to cater lunches for her small group of handlers. It was common for Thomas to order District meals to be delivered to the home of Tracy Cooper as Cooper and her liberal colleagues held strategy sessions on how to disrupt D11 Board meetings. Cooper did not pay for these meals, of course, as they were paid for by the taxpayers.

As ex Board member Karen Teja will tell you, it really pays to be a liberal in D11 with your hand deep in the public's pocket.

Show me the Money!

The alleged reason for the recall campaign against Eric Christen and Sandy Shakes was that they fired Sharon Thomas. The Thomas supporters (all 3 of them) claim, on one hand, that Thomas was a superior leader who should have never been fired. On the other hand, they have to admit that Thomas literally did nothing in her year with the District, but that the Board "never gave her a chance."

One of Thomas's supposed strengths when she applied for the job of D11 CEO was that she had worked in and around D11 for years and that she could hit the ground running. She and her supporters claimed that she would have a very short learning curve because she already knew the needs of the District. Thomas left her supporters hanging, however, when she never got around to developing any type of plan for D11, even after months on the job. Her supporters were left trying to say that Thomas should have been given a year to learn the District first before she was required to perform her job. In the education arena, there is a position called "student teacher." A student teacher does not get an executive contract with a Golden Parachute attached. If Thomas was declaring herself to be in a student or probationary status, then she should have agreed to allow her contract to reflect that. Instead, she gave herself a contract that gave no benefit to the District, but great benefit to herself.

Once Thomas was on the job, it became obvious (to those who did not already know this), that she had a very hard time trying to determine what was important and what was not. Although Thomas claimed that she invented a "Comprehensive Academic achievement Plan" for the District, she simply borrowed one that was produced the prior year and she retitled it. This "plan" was neither comprehensive, nor was it a plan. It was a compilation of state requirements based on schools not meeting their Annual Yearly Progress goals. Thomas did not produce or direct this plan; in fact, she made no effort to even talk about a plan until January 11th, 2006. The Board asked her to delay her presentation of this plan to the public that night because we had never heard anything about it. Rather than allow Thomas to present the plan at the end of the January 11th meeting as the Board had discussed, John Gudvangen adjourned the Board meeting before she had the chance to present. He and his cronies then blamed the 4 of us non-union Board members for not allowing Thomas to present her plan to save the District.

























These agenda items came from the Division Head meetings conducted by Sharon Thomas. These are the meetings between the Superintendent and her top level leaders. These pages only deal with the items that Thomas listed as "critical." Keeping in mind that this is a school district that has some of its schools about to be taken over by the state due to lack of performance, notice some of the "critical" items on this agenda. #2 is interesting and will be discussed below. #4 dealt with emails; #5 with snow days (it was still September); #9 dealt with making principals deputy registrars (what?); #16 dealt with the 31 August Board meeting again. These were considered "critical" by Thomas.

The issue with the 31 August 2005 Board meeting dealt with a confrontation in the hallway between Sandy Shakes and Eric Christen. Christen had been talking to CFO Glenn Gustafson when Shakes came over and touched Christen on the shoulder. John Gudvangen witnessed the "touching" and he ran into the Board room and yelled to Thomas that Christen was attacking Shakes in the hallway. Gudvangen, who was a candidate for the BOE at the time, then notified every press outlet in Colorado Springs that Christen had attacked Shakes in the hallway after a Board meeting. Unfortunately for Gudvangen, there are security cameras in the hallway of the D11 Admin building. The video clearly showed that Christen had attacked nobody, and that he had actually been trying to walk away from Gustafson when Shakes merely touched his shoulder. There was no attack by Christen, and Gudvangen clearly lied to the Superintendent and to the press. Shari Chaney from the Gazette even viewed the video of the incident but chose not to run a story about candidate Gudvangen's false reporting of the incident. One can only imagine the headlines had Christen even so much as touched any other Board member that evening. Despite the video evidence, Thomas continued to try to make the non-event into some sort of "incident" that she could blame on Christen.


























The agendas for the September 19 2005 Division Head meetings show, again, that Thomas never quite understood the definition of "critical" as it related to a school district. Item #1a dealt with food service and comparing the D11 food service to those in California; 1d dealt with the new reprimand policy that was invented after the BOE reprimanded Christen (Thomas and Gudvangen had a huge and unhealthy obsession with Christen); 1h worried about correcting Board candidates on the stump (interestingly, Thomas never once corrected the misinformation being thrown around by the 3 union candidates but she did challenge the accuracy of some of the accurate statements made by the pro-parent slate); 1j dealt with National Hispanic Heritage Month - nice, but was it really critical?; #2 again dealt with Board candidates. When one looks at all of the Division Head agendas and the Cabinet agendas during Thomas's tenor,what is striking is the total lack of focus on anything dealing with the academic situation in D11. This Superintendent was paid $170,000 per year, she was handed $420,000 more by Teja, Wierman, and Linebaugh, and she could not bring herself to talk to her staff about the one topic that should be most important to a school district - the academic performance.

One of the many frustrations that staff members expressed about Thomas is that she had a hard time being where she said she would be. Her Outlook calendar was often full of scheduled appointments, but based on her cell phone records, Thomas was often on her phone rather than in her meetings. Thomas had a habit of calling staff members in the middle of the night to discuss random topics, and she would show up for work late in the morning, claiming that she was not a morning person. Instead of taking sick days when she would not arrive at her office, Thomas would call in and claim that she was working from home, a luxury not afforded to most teachers in the District. Thomas even informed the District that she would be heading out of town for several days, and would therefore not be at work. Her husband called on one of those days to speak to her, and was embarrassed to be told that she was "out of town." Thomas's favorite phone calls went to Gudvangen, Hasling, or her old employer HRO. Unfortunately for the District, each of her calls to HRO would cost the tax payers more than $225 per hour. The Thomas cell phone records from December 1, 2005 through March 3, 2006, show that Thomas spent 42 hours on the phone with Gudvangen and Hasling (and zero hours with other Board members); Thomas also spent more than 11 billable hours on the phone with HRO during this 3 month period. As part of her contract, D11 paid to allow Thomas to keep her attorney registration. The thought was that since she was an attorney, she would be able to make decisions on her own that would save the taxpayers money. Instead, she used her connections to HRO to call them for every small issue, allowing them to bill the district almost on a daily basis. Rather than save attorney fees with Thomas, the District ended up paying more for these fees due to her total dependence on HRO input.

The following is a list of conflicts between where Thomas said she was and what she was actually doing at the time (talking on the phone). I sent this to the Board as we were developing our evaluations of her performance.

Outlook Schedule vs Phone Calls

As we complete the final superintendent evaluation, we need to be clear on what our employee spends her time doing. There are a lot of events scheduled on her daily Outlook calendar. Although I did not receive copies of her cell phone records from the beginning of the school year, I do have them from December forward. A comparison of cell phone records to meetings or events listed on her schedule shows a lot of phone calling during scheduled events. Some highlights are below:

Date Event Scheduled time (minutes) Minutes on cell phone

6 Dec ESP Meeting 60 30
7 Dec Col Spg Execs 120 49
7 Dec Wasson Holiday meal 120 57
7 Dec Joint Initiatives Brd 90 35
8 Dec Principals mtg 210 107
8 Dec Visit Denver Hayes 120 34
9 Dec Pikes Pk Supe mtg 240 37
12 Dec Teacher sound brd 90 19
14 Dec Bkft w/Naughton 90 29
15 Dec Supe staff mtg 540 61
16 Dec Supe staff retreat 240 83
20 Dec Bkft Trailblazer 45 27
21 Dec Col Spg Exec 120 28
21 Dec Dan Daly reception 180 60
5 Jan Elementary Prin mtg 60 49
10 Jan HS principals 60 37
11 Jan Col Spg Exec 120 67
12 Jan Prin Mtg 210 61
13 Jan Pike Pk Supe 240 95
13 Jan Rotary 90 25
19 Jan Parent sound brd 90 34
25 Jan HRO Rich Young 90 60
26 Jan EDC lunch 90 24
26 Jan Meet at East MS 105 27
27 Jan Meet at TESLA 120 72
31 Jan Meet Marlys Berg 120 21
1 Feb Col Spg Exec 120 44
1 Feb Site visit 60 33
1 Feb Meet volunteers 60 15
2 Feb CASE conference (39 calls)
2 Feb Pike celebration 150 53
3 Feb CASE (52 calls)
3 Feb Mock trial 180 33
7 Feb Rotary 60 16
7 Feb Martinez 90 15
8 Feb Col Spg Exec 120 86
8 Feb Rotary 90 86
9 Feb Visit Emerson Edison 120 33
9 Feb Visit Doherty 90 27
10 Feb Pike Pk Supe 240 105
10 Feb Rotary 60 13
14 Feb Visit Columbia 120 25
17 Feb Interview 30 18
21 Feb AR mtg 60 34
22 Feb Col Spg Exec 120 55
22 Feb Doherty Awards 90 15

The formatting does not work well on the blog, but the numbers to the right show the number of minutes that Thomas was to be at each event and the number on the far right indicates how many minutes she was actually on the phone during that time frame.

Hard to imagine that she was conducting the stated business while talking on the phone so long.

Thomas's short reign in D11 was not designed by her handlers to improve the District; it was designed for her to dig deep into the taxpayers' pockets. (And she did have handlers. Thomas was required to report to Mary Ellen McNally, with a strong dose of Lyman Kaiser, et al), before making any decisions. The goal was always to oppose the Board.

This abuse of the taxpayer dollars would not stop at Thomas. Friends were also rewarded for their service to Thomas. And they were rewarded well.

The Past Repeats itself

The era of Superintendent Ken Burnley was not an era that was remembered fondly by most employees and residents of D11. This was an era of chronyism, nepotism, low standards, and much secrecy on the part of the administration. Some of the Board members who were in office during his tenor included Lyman Kaiser, Bruce Doyle, Mary Wierman, Karen Teja, and Lynn Peterson. It was a well known fact that each of these Board members believed that they worked for the Superintendent. They were totally unaware that it was the job of the Board to represent the interests of the public and to supervise the Superintendent. Needless to say, things were not well in D11 during this time period.

Those who remember the Burnley years were somewhat stunned, then, to learn that someone from the Burnley era was to be brought back to D11 as the new Superintendent beginning in July 2005. As news spread that Sharon Thomas was to be the new D11 CEO, flashbacks to an unhappy time began to flood the District. No one honestly believed that Thomas was the leader that D11 needed to move the District to a new level of performance. In fact, employees saw this as a huge step backwards. Why Thomas, and why now?

The above article was published in a Minnesota newspaper after Thomas left Little Falls to take the reigns of D11. Thomas was given free rent at a beautiful old home in Little Falls. As the article points out, this high paid Superintendent showed no respect whatsoever for the property. She allowed her dogs to soil the carpet and she made no effort to either clean the house or to have the house cleaned prior to her departure. She informed staff that she was expecting her husband Ben Gliden to take care of hiring someone to clean the house. Gliden, of course, lived in Colorado Springs while Thomas worked in Minnesota. This is the woman who was expected to care about the 30,000 students of D11.

Thomas brought back to Colorado Springs a seedy reputation among those employees who remember her from her days as principal at Rogers Elementary. She was known to bring alcohol into the elementary school for parties after the students departed for the day. Staff members also claim that she brought a male stripper to the school for a staff member's party. This was not exactly what many D11 staff were looking for in a leader for their District, but this is the person being brought in by Karen Teja, Mary Wierman, and Dave Linebaugh. Teja assured Sandy Shakes that Thomas was a competent administrator who knew the District and could "hit the ground running." Thomas was hired on a 4-3 vote of the Board.

Not only had Thomas been an employee of D11, but she had also been the District's lead counsel as an employee of Holmes, Robert, and Owens (HRO). HRO is currently the District's lead attorney. While counsel for HRO, Thomas had many dealings with ex-board members. Mary Ellen McNally and Lynn Peterson were key in having the $750,000 Golden Parachute attached to Thomas' contract. Peterson bragged that she was involved in placing the same type of rider onto the contract of Ken Burnley. Coincidently, Thomas was the HRO attorney who helped the D11 Board place this parachute onto Burnley's contract. Wierman had begged Thomas not to demand a $170,000 base salary, but Thomas would not budge, nor would she budge on her Golden Parachute. Wierman, of course, did not have the courage to do the right thing, and under threat from her handlers (McNally and Peterson), she buckled and voted to take almost $1 million out of the classroom to hand to Thomas.

According to Teja, Thomas was not hired to improve D11. In fact, she was hired to take the fall should anyone but union purchased candidates be elected in November 2005. The plan was for Thomas to fight the Board at every turn and to literally do nothing that the Board asked of her. The plan was simply for Thomas to get herself fired so that she would be able to walk away with $750,000 and so that the community would forever be angry at "conservative" Board members. The goal, of course, was to keep the public from realizing that the $750,000 was removed from the general fund as soon as Thomas was hired, and her contract was designed to automatically renew each year, keeping the money away from the classroom. Fortunately, the Board was able to remove $330,000 from the contract before Thomas took the remainder of her unearned winnings away from the D11 taxpayers.

Many people, including myself, had serious reservations about allowing HRO to negotiate on behalf of the District while the Thomas contract was being put together. Since Thomas was an ex-HRO employee and since she was a colleague of those attorneys who were supposedly looking after the best interests of the District, this was a very questionable situation. To make matters worse, Board members Karen Teja and Dave Linebaugh were selected to be the 2 Board members who would protect D11 during these contract negotiations. Anyone who knows Linebaugh, of course, knows that he would never stand up for anyone or anything. As expected, he allowed Teja to work directly with Thomas to add the outrageous Golden Parachute onto the contract. Linebaugh obeyed his orders to keep this secret between himself, Teja, Thomas, and HRO.

Those of us on the Board had a reasonable expectation that our attorney would keep us apprised of any major points of the contract. HRO chose not to highlight the $750,000 figure and to gloss over the fact that the contract renewed itself each year. In a brief titled "Highlights of Superintendent's Contract for Sharon Thomas," HRO did not even list the terms of the contract until point number 5 of 7 points. They explained it as follows:

The initial contract term is a three year term expiring June 30, 2008. The contract contains a mechanism for automatic extension of the contract each year. The contract may be earlier terminated unilaterally by the Superintendent (with 60 days notice required to avoid a penalty), due to death or disability, upon mutual agreement, or unilaterally by the District with cause (as expressly defined in the agreement), or unilaterally by the District with cause (as expressly defined in the agreement) or without cause. In the case of a unilateral termination without cause, the Superintendent is entitled to receive a payout of the base salary and certain benefits, including the base benefits and the retirement incentive compensation, for the balance of the remainder of the contract term. The contract requires that the District establish a reserve to fund such payments.

When most of us read this explanation, we assumed that the first 2 sentences went together. It appeared to me that the contract lasted until 2008 because it automatically extended each year. This explanation does not clearly explain that the contract ADDS a 3rd year after the completion of each school year, meaning that, unless the Board took action to stop the addition of the 3rd year, the contract would go on forever. HRO also allowed the contract to be written in such a manner that it would be impossible to show "cause." Merely not doing her job and not showing up for work would not be enough to fire Thomas for cause. The contract was written so that Thomas could litigate any attempt by the Board to fire her for cause, no matter how egregious the cause. In other words, the contract was written to cost D11 a lot of public money, period.

For those employees who did not know Thomas, their first impression of her was not particularly positive. At an all-staff meeting at Doherty High School in August 2005, Thomas stated to the entire staff that the meeting was "more fun than a 4-eyed titty banger." This is not what one would call a particularly classy start.

So what did Thomas actually accomplish in her one year back in D11, or better yet, what damage did she cause?

Who are these people?

The following post was entered on a blog called Masooma (http://masooma.blogspot.com). The author is the secretary to the Colorado Springs Education Association, the union that represents D11 teachers:

Thursday, August 11, 2005
AR Training, School meeting AND NTO (just added)
Tuesday we had Association Representative (AR) training at Sky Sox Stadium. It was a room with a nice view. Marti Hauser explained some legal benefits and rights of CEA members, Ron Brady and David Duvall explained some of the financial problems for public education and what is being done about it. We talked a lot about the upcoming school board race and met "our" candidates: (hint, hint - tell everyone who lives in D-11 to vote for these people) Sandra Mann, John Gudvangen and Tami Hasling.

Who are Gudvangen, Hasling, and Mann? What was their message when they ran for the D11 Board, and from whom did they receive their support?

As is apparent in the Masooma blog, these three did not want the public to know that they were chosen by the union. At the meeting mentioned above, Ron Brady, head of the CEA, educated the 3 candidates on how the election would work. He pointed out that the union and its liberal allies would use 527's to provide a message that the public would like. This message included such popular ideas as reducing wasteful administrative spending, adopting a site based management approach for the district, demanding strong accountability, and bringing "civility" to the Board. The instruction to the candidates was that although the union would never support any of those ideas, nor would it allow the candidates to support any of them, the 527's provided deniability. The candidates could always say that they had no control over the 527's, and therefore, they really did not support any of the ideas espoused by the 527's. After spending over $1 million to fool the public, the trio of stealth union puppets won in a squeaker against a campaign that spent only 1/5 of that $1 million. The sad reality is that the losing candidates DID actually support all of the ideas that were falsely attributed to the union puppets.

By law, candidates can have no coordination with 527's during campaigns. Although the 3 union candidates claimed no coordination with their 527's, the following mailer from RISE, the most vicious of the 527's, tells a different story. The images are grainy, but it is clear that these pictures include the candidates and their families. While one can assume that each of the candidates might have had an individual photo online somewhere for the 527 to use for its mailers, there were no photos of the candidates' families online. The candidates clearly violated campaign law by providing family photos for the 527 mail pieces.

The 3 union candidates clearly were not sincere in their pledge to bring "civility" to D11 as the 527's with whom they coordinated directed the most vicious campaign ever seen in D11 against 3 truly respectable (and accomplished) candidates.

Interestingly, John Gudvangen did not run on his past experience as a school board member from Harrison District #2. This is not surprising since residents of D2 will report that Gudvangen never brought a single idea to D2 in his 8 years on that Board. While D2 struggled with the honor of being the lowest performing school district in Colorado Springs, Gudvangen could not bring himself to find one policy or practice that needed to change in D2. Unfortunately, Gudvangen has Lyman Kaiser as one of his handlers, and he also subscribes to the theory that minority students are not as able as white students to learn to read or perform math tasks. D2, in his view, was doing the best it could considering its student population. Gudvangen's only other claim to fame is that he sat on the board of the Colorado Association of School Boards. In other words, John likes to sit on boards. Actually doing anything is a bridge too far.

Hasling was a registered Democrat who changed to "unaffiliated" to try to attract Republican voters. She was a body builder and one of the lead plaintiffs who sued the state legislator for daring to create a law that would give parents control over their children's education. Hasling, like her mentor and personal handler Karen Teja, is vehemently anti-parent. Hasling filed a false statement for the official file that was used to reprimand Eric Christen. She falsely claimed that Christen hit her in the hallway during a past board meeting. Hasling had to admit to the Gazette that it was actually she who struck Christen during that meeting. Hasling also told a local business owner that Christen had kidnapped his nephew from his sister because he did not want his nephew to be near a black man with whom Christen's sister had a relationship. In reality, when Christen's sister died suddenly and unexpectedly, Christen and his wife had been trying to adopt his nephew to provide him a home. These types of lies come from the current D11 Board Vice President.

Much has been made of the criminal history of Eric Christen, but not much has been found or is true. Sandra Mann almost did not run for the D11 Board due to her history in Colorado Springs and Pueblo, yet the press has shown no interest in her past (most likely because Mann was and is a fellow member of the press - free pass for one of their own). Mann readily admits that she only won due to her name recognition. She admits that she has almost no knowledge of the issues in D11 and has never followed the happenings in the District very closely.

All 3 of the winning candidates were selected for their ability to follow instructions. All 3 have been assigned handlers and have their every comment scripted prior to Board meetings. Mann has recently been scolded for voting with the reform board members, and Mary Ellen McNally used the recent recall petitions to warn Mann that she (McNally) had the power to remove Mann if Mann did not stay in line.

The candidacies of Gudvangen, Hasling, and Mann were financed by liberal groups from across the country. The Progressive Majority from Washington D.C. takes credit for their victory on its website. The Gay & Lesbian fund, as well as Planned Parenthood, also spent thousands of dollars to elect the trio. Although the 3 unionites called themselves "constructive conservatives" on their mail pieces, they were supported by some of the most hard core leftist groups in the country. The following is from the Progressive Majority website at www.progressivemajority.org:

It's a great time to be a progressive - Americans are demanding new leadership, and we've got the winning agenda.In Colorado Springs, Tami Hasling and John Gudvangen's wins on November 1st cemented a progressive majority on the District 11 School Board. This region is home to James Dobson's Focus on the Family and conservatives have tried to use the District 11 School Board to move public money to fund private schools.In this race, Progressive Majority was part of a large coalition to elect these progressive candidates and confront the well-funded right wing. Tami and John's victories not only block the conservatives' strategy, it gives progressives a foothold in a seemingly conservative region where we can now move forward on strengthening our public schools and communities.

Notice that the site admits that this campaign was funded by a large coalition of left wing groups intent on thwarting the will of an unsuspecting conservative city. This information has never made its way into your local papers.

So who are the 3 Board members who were elected in 2005? They are left wing ideologues who are intent on keeping the public schools out of the hands of the parents who fund them. They are liberals who are directed and funded by left wing groups from across the country, and their focus is clearly on Colorado Springs.

The Damage they Did

The above statements were made at a D11 work session in January, 2004, just 2 months after the swearing-in of the 4 Board members who were elected in November 2003. The presentation was made by then Deputy Superintendent of IT Terry Bishop. This is the reason that 4 of us swept into office in 2003. Who was it that allowed D11 to get to this point?

Lyman Kaiser served on the D11 Board for 12 years. He and Bruce Doyle took turns swapping jobs as President of the Board and Vice President. They were extreme micromanagers who believed that their belief system was the only belief system that the parents and students of D11 should ever need to survive. Sadly, both of these men truly believed, and still believe to this day, that only white middle class or wealthy students are able to learn and achieve at an average or higher level. They never felt the need to hold the district accountable for performance because in their minds, there was no use in pushing harder. After all, with a growing minority population, they and their colleagues felt that test scores would never improve. Why hold employees to a standard that was not possible to achieve? To this day, Kaiser argues before the Board that minority students are simply unable to achieve at a rate similar to white students. This man ran D11 for 12 years.

Kaiser and Doyle are directly responsible for the flat test scores mentioned above, yet both are actively involved in undermining the current Board and the D11 administration. Kaiser literally belongs to almost every Board sub-committee that exists. He is known for talking endlessly about meaningless (and usually non-factual) data. His ability to filibuster meetings has led to many citizens leaving committees out of frustration. Kaiser's objective is to thwart any effort by the 2003 Board members to improve anything in this district. His personal animosity and political agenda takes priority over the welfare of the students in D11. He has no children in school so he has no regard for other people's children.


The above chart is the legacy of Lyman Kaiser. The man who is responsible for this type of performance continues to fight reform today. Rather than walk away in shame, he continues to insist that black and Hispanic students are incapable of improving their lot in a public school.

Kaiser did not cause this damage on his own. Assisting him on the Board were people such as Delia Busby, who literally slept through Board discussions (an impact of Kaiser's endless and meaningless discussion). Busby also walked out of the boardroom for many votes, and she used meeting time to catch up on her reading of the Gazette. Karen Teja and Mary Wierman are 2 more ex-board members who helped in leading D11 to mediocrity. Wierman served for 12 years and broke a promise to the public that she would honor term limits, which would have sent her packing at 8 years. Wierman had no stomach for pressure, so she would often have to leave meetings if anything controversial arose. With this timid demeanor, you can be sure that she never made the effort to hold anyone accountable. It was easier for her to agree that poor kids could not learn anyway, so why risk an asthma attack by asking employees to do their jobs. Wierman was one of the primary forces behind the spending of thousands of D11 dollars each year on pre-board meeting dinners. These pre-meeting feeding frenzies cost the D11 taxpayers more than $10,000 per year.

Karen Teja was one of the most self-serving Board members that D11 has had to suffer through in years. She used the Board position strictly for personal and political gain, although losing by over 100,000 votes in the state Board of Education race was not much of a gain. Teja sued her own District as a sitting Board member and often used D11 tax dollars to finance her private Boulder attorney. Teja is vehemently anti-parent and would not think of allowing anyone other than liberal Board members or employees to receive vouchers for their children's education.

The Board that we replaced was a dysfunctional collection of weak minded individuals who would do nothing other than what they were told to do by union bosses and District administrators. This list of underwhelming Board members includes Mary Ellen McNally, Lynn Peterson, Norvelle Simpson, and David Linebaugh. Each of these people spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to buy out not only superintendents, but also other district employees. During Kaiser, Linebaugh, Wierman, and Teja's reign, the Board bought out an employee who had sexually assaulted a subordinate and they paid this employee over $250,000. McNally, who is leading the recall effort against Eric Christen and Sandy Shakes for firing Sharon Thomas, was responsible for 3 changes of superintendents during her 4-year tenure on the Board. Her buyouts cost the D11 taxpayer hundreds of thousands of dollars and, in percentage of total budget at the time, was more than the Thomas buyout.

It is easy to understand why the D11 voters voted for change in 2003, and it is easy to understand why the 3 Board members who were elected in 2005 had to borrow the same campaign platform that was successful in 2003. The question is, are these 3 true reformers or merely union puppets?