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
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.
posted by Craig Cox | 10:21 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home