No good deed ...
PUSD would be in dire straights without the financial help of the Pasadena Education Foundation
By Bob Harrison 06/24/2010
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Mr. Harrison proclaims:
"Ms. Romney makes numerous accusations but fails to provide any factual specifics to her charges.
Of course, in all the years that she has been making this charge she has never produced one single true example that verifies this accusation.
Again, she provides no examples of the board putting the interest of any nonprofit over the interest of our students and the charge is rather insulting."
... and then he states:
"This is one time in her op-ed piece that an example is used to illustrate her point."
The last statement qualifies the previous three as not true. Then Mr. Harrison assesses:
"This sounds like more of a personal grudge than a board matter."
So I wonder, why would any advocate for efficient child education ever consider the prospective misuse of their tax dollars as NOT being fodder for a personal grudge? It seems to me that, if more Pasadena parents actually treated such tax-revenue waste as alleged by Ms. Romney as a "personal grudge" matter, then those public and private bureaucrats who are in a position to commit such transgressions may think twice before they don't.
And finally, the author of this appropriately-described hit piece takes a personal aim to shame:
"Currently, PEF is asking those who support education to donate $120 to their Save our Libraries Fund (the amount that property owners would have been taxed if Measure CC had passed). The money will be used to restore library services. My wife and I have sent our check, but now we are going to send another in the name of Mary Dee Romney because I am guessing she is not sending one. I suggest you do the same."
Since Mr. Harrison is quite apparently a privately invested participant of the PEF, any donation he ostensibly makes to the PEF in someone else's name is still just a gift to himself. Him making that self-gratifying donation is still -- because she just doesn't trust the organization -- NOT Ms. Romney making any similar-such endorsement donation.
It's all still politics, as this particular article relates.
DanD
Installment #1
PUSD's PEF'er board members Harrison, Honowitz and Selinske have just had another opportunity to learn that their lip service to "sunshine" doesn't protect from "sunburn" when the sun actually shines.
Posted to this list a couple of weeks ago was the Pasadena Weekly (6/10/10) guest opinion where I showed PUSD dysfunction was caused by pressure from the PEF (Pasadena Educational Foundation) to keep unaccountable poverty grants rolling in for "community partner" affiliates - and divided loyalties from elected board members politically dependent upon a culture bred through the PEF organization.
http://www.pasadenaweekly.com/cms/story/...
______________________________
The current issue of the Pasadena Weekly (6/24/10) now features the blow-back to the above article I wrote, and Board President Harrison unintentionally confirms my point.
See below.
http://www.pasadenaweekly.com/cms/story/...
Mr. Harrison refuses to Brown-act PEF meetings even though it is well-known that programmatic, organizational and personnel decisions are hashed-out and decided secretly in advance of going to the full Board of Education.
Mr. Harrison has reason for maintaining secrecy.
While touting his service as president of the Pasadena Educational Foundation in 2003-04
(Attachment #1, PEF Annual Report), purchase order lists from this same period show Mr. Harrison availed himself - through his Green Street Restaurant - to the PEF program "Food for Thought" by billing the district thousands of dollars for Green Street meals (food) ordered by district administration and paid with district funds. (Attachment #2, Purchase Order List, 2003)
Later purchase orders show, even after Mr. Harrison was elected to the Board of Education in April 2007, that his Green Street Restaurant was the beneficiary of "blanket purchase orders" for ongoing deliveries of meals, arranged with various administrative departments at Hudson Avenue and paid by district funds - where established dollar limits were exceeded and required change orders. (Attachment #3, Purchase Order List, 2007)
I took all of the above information to the podium in 2007. At the time interim superintendent Darrell Taylor, having no political connections to the PEF establishment, immediately issued a directive by internal memo prohibiting staff to authorize further purchase orders with the businesses of each of newly-elected board members - Bob Harrison and Tom Selinske.
However, because PEF decisions continue to be made behind closed doors, any ongoing business relationships between PUSD board members and the district, through the PEF, still are unknown.
Installment #2
Another article from the same 6/24/10 Pasadena Weekly - "Buying into Trouble" - reveals PEF'er Board of Education member Mr. Honowitz, once again, apparently thinking the truth is of no interest to the rest of us.
http://www.pasadenaweekly.com/cms/story/...
Having himself been the source for so clumsily revealing his wife's involvement (Ellen Pais) in the Community Schools Project, a fact contained in the material he, himself, presented
(Attachment #4, Power Point), Mr. Honowitz now wants us to forget we ever saw it.
Diversions from the truth delivered in Mr. Honowitz' denials - and yet another "planning grant" application authorized June 15th - would have us believe Mr. Honowitz' proposal was "shot down" in March.
Tellingly, the last meeting in March dealing with this matter was the Facilities Subcommittee meeting of March 10th, during which - according to official notes published from the meeting - Mr. Selinske authorized "Mr. Honowitz to take the lead" in his own wife's program. (Attachment #5, Meeting Notes)
If the "Mr. and Mrs. Honowitz" community schools proposal was indeed "shot down," perhaps the decision to do so was made in a private PEF meeting or, perhaps it's just more diversion . . .
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What is important to note is that parents and staff recently spent five months developing a ten-year strategic plan, presented during the 4/27/10 Board meeting. The clear message from the committee was that if the plan is to be successfully implemented, the Board must be accountable.
Not surprisingly, Mr. Honowitz' response involved yet more lobbying for "community schools" and virtuous admonitions to *staff* to embrace a value culture of "good character" as recommended by the committee.
Later one Board member put it this way: "Culture is defined by moment-to-moment behaviors."
Clearly, there are individuals on the Board of Education who are oblivious to the stink-pot spoils system that has defined their "moment-to-moment behaviors" for years.
This must change or we're in for another 40 years of the same, and that would be a shame.
Mary Dee Romney
I generally like Bob. I see him most mornings at coffee. Sadly he is an example of a person whose relationship "volunteering" and with the PEF, had a professional gain.
Mr. Harrison has a interest in Green Street. While he was active with the PEF and on their board the PUSD was purchasing tens of thousands of dollars a year in Dianne Salads (mostly stale, I noted) for committee meetings. Mary Dee Romney actually found this while looking into the over one HUNDRED thousand dollars the PUSD administration was spending on feeding itself at meetings. She got this practice of buying from PEF members stopped. This article is revenge, but sheds no light either into Mr. Harrison's history with the PEF or the real workings of the PEF and how board members and volunteers there have had and may continue to have SELF DEALING TRANSACTIONS with the PUSD.
Bob- you should be ashamed of yourself for this shameful attack piece.