A divided Board of Education met Wednesday night in a special meeting to discuss the search for a permanent school chief. Cerebral board member Howard Gardner expressed his concern with the leadership of chair Dennis Bradley. “Mr. Chair, just before we begin the business of the meeting, I just want to air my great disappointment with what’s been going with the board–half of the board–with your leadership. I must say that your behavior (and that of the other boycotting members) has tarnished the reputation of this board more than anything that (Maria Pereira) had said or done.”
Bradley and two other board members had called for a boycott of board meetings until Pereira resigns. But in the last week they reversed themselves in favor of attending selective special meetings. Interim school chief Fran Rabinowitz is calling it quits at the end of the year because she cannot deal with Pereira. CT Post reporter Cedar Attanasio has more.
A fractured Board of Education met Wednesday, and its members spoke without yelling and even agreed on some practical matters related to governance of the school system.
That relative harmony might have surprised some, given that the board has been divided into two camps over the past few months, with meetings degenerating into shouting matches, a boycott, and even–according to some–borderline trespassing.
The special board meeting Wednesday included just two agenda items, which had been agreed upon ahead of time: scheduling the ongoing superintendent search and a report regarding the impact of changes in summer school fees and scheduling.
Full story here.
Please tell me where you will find someone qualified to take the supt job. Anyone doing their due diligence on the BOE will see what a bunch of malcontents they are.
The question for a candidate, can you deal with these people and hope to get things done.
On September 8th the Board met to discuss the proposed contract with the search firm we had selected. Only Bradley, McSpirit, Walker, Gardner and myself were present.
Bradley arrived with the incorrect agenda and called the meeting to order to discuss pending litigation. He had the wrong agenda although he called the Special Meeting. We corrected him and explained the meeting was to discuss and approve the contract with the search firm.
Although we had been sent an electronic version of the proposed contract in advance of the meeting so that we could review it in order to be prepared for the discussion, Bradley arrived without the contract, a copy of our RFP, nor a copy of the Ray & Associated Bid.
We made some edits and it was approved unanimously. Tony Pires and the attorney committed to take care of the revisions immediately, forward them to Ray & Associates for their approval, and send us the revised contract signed by the search firm so Bradley could sign it.
On September 12, 2016, Bradley and all the BOE members received an email from Pires indicating the attached revised contract was signed by the search firm and it now needed to be signed by the Board.
At the beginning of the meeting I made a Point of Information and requested that before we go any further a copy of the contract that was ultimately signed by Bradley be distributed to all members for the discussion on the agenda.
Tony Pires said he did not have copies of the signed contract because although he emailed Bradley and the full board; Bradley never responded, therefore the contract was still not signed 30 days later.
The members of the public were appalled. Per the Board’s own timeline the contract was to be signed by September 12, 2016. Bradley’s failure to sign the contract meant the search firm had not been officially engaged which had put the search thirty days behind schedule.
The Board was supposed to meet with the search firm no later than October 7th to establish the criteria for the search, community forums were supposed be completed by early November, etc. We were already on a very tight timeframe and the boycott lead by Bradley, with participants Larcheveque and Negron, has placed our search for a permanent superintendent in jeopardy.
Bradley claimed he had expressed he was having issues with his BOE email and shared that publicly although he had never made any such assertion. In fact, he has repeatedly responded to emails sent to his BOE email.
I asked Mr. Pires if he had a copy of the signed contract we could sign now. He did and handed it to Bradley. Here is the BOE Chair who is an attorney; he did not read one word of the contract and simply signed it.
What you saw was a snippet of the exchange of this man’s incredibly irresponsible and unprofessional behavior trying to make excuses and implying there was “no issue” with his failure to sign the contract by September 12th as approved by the full board and placing the search 30 days behind schedule.
On October 7th, part-time city attorney Levin submitted a memo to the court claiming Ms. Segarra-Negron had not resigned yet but would be resigning by the end of the month unless counsel filed an appearance.
On October 12th, Paul Ganim filed an appearance on behalf of Annette Segarra-Negron. I wonder who is footing the bill? We know it is not Ms. Negron because she had four consecutive years of tax liens sold on her unpaid real estate taxes.
Are the taxpayers paying for Mayor Ganim’s brother to represent Annette Segarra-Negron? She is not entitled to representation funded by taxpayers.
Only in Bridgeport.
I thought Negron claimed she wasn’t political and it was all about the children. The mayor’s brother. No integrity whatsoever. Puppet boycotters dancing to their master puppeteer. Dance puppets, dance.
I have contacted the Connecticut Post via Twitter, Facebook and email about erroneous assertions in their story about Tuesday’s meeting at Geraldine Johnson. Their story states police “broke up” the meeting when in fact they came, found everybody there had a right to be there, then left. The meeting then went on to its conclusion a half-hour later. I have given video to the Post, wrote a recap and sent it to the editor. Still no retraction or correction. This is important because the majority of sheeple get their information from news snippets and sound bites. I miss the old days of journalistic integrity. At least I had something to wrap my fish with on Wednesday.