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Thread: The LCSD: Transparency Concerns

  1. #1
    Member mark blazejewski's Avatar
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    The LCSD: Transparency Concerns

    The Lancaster Central School District has faced many challenges during this school year.

    I hold that one challenge was handled with exemplary skill.

    I view with ambivalence the disposition of a second challenge.

    On the third challenge, I believe that the District broke faith with the voting residents who entrusted to the elected board and appointed administrators, their desires for the District to function as a transparent entity.

    To its great credit, the District confronted the challenge of the Pryzkuta tragedy with solemn grace and true dignity. The District’s tribute exemplified all that is good within the Lancaster community.

    With challenge one nobly met, and here acknowledged, the LCSD community, having mourned and bonded in heartfelt sorrow, must now pivot, and coalesce in an embrace of the words in Ecclesiastes 3: “To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven,” and move forward with the peoples’ unaddressed concerns and business.

    To wit, I still hold great reservations concerning a second challenge which confronted the District this school year.

    On the issue of “Bullying,” I found the District to have been evasive in its explanations, and rather detached and indifferent in its applied attitude toward the plight of at least two aggrieved students.

    In my opinion, the District appeared to have marginalized the students’ pleadings to such an extent, that its approach seemed to be subtly suggestive of discreditation.

    Regarding a third challenge, I have been, and remain, very troubled by the District’s apparent lack of transparency which attended a recent purported impropriety involving a teacher at Lancaster High School.

    The narrative of the issue, based on some facts, and a great deal of speculation, as I understand it, takes this sequence:

    (1) A teacher at Lancaster High School was absent from his duties at Lancaster High School starting April 16.

    (2) It was observed on April 20, that the personal effects of that teacher were removed from his classroom.

    (3) Starting April 20, rampant rumors began to circulate throughout the district that the teacher was dismissed for an alleged impropriety.

    (4) On or about April 26, the Superintendent, initially, did not specifically address questions posed by Buffalo News reporter Jane Radlich concerning (1)-(3) above.

    (5) However, “later Thursday (April 26),” the District did post a statement from the Superintendent, regarding a “matter concerning one of our teachers.”


    Lancaster High School
    Please Note:

    There is much speculation at this point regarding a matter concerning one of our teachers. We have a strong track record of being open and communicating on reported situations after we have completed a thorough investigation and worked with the appropriate authorities. In fact, we regularly communicate and cooperate with law enforcement. As everyone is aware, we need to be mindful of our legal obligations.

    At this time, we can confirm that there is no criminal investigation being conducted by the police regarding a teacher in our district.

    If and when it is legally allowed and appropriate to provide additional information, we will of course do so promptly.

    Michael J. Vallely, Ph.D.
    Superintendent of Schools
    Lancaster Central School District
    (6) To the best of my knowledge, the District has offered no update to that posting, and in fact, subsequently engaged “The Bee” reporter Allan Rizzo in a further game of “hot-potato.”

    In the May 2, 2018 edition, Rizzo wrote:

    “When contacted for more detail about a matter concerning a teacher at Lancaster High School — publicly discussed in a message posted to the high school’s website — multiple district officials, including Cesar Marchioli, principal at LHS; Patricia Burgio, the district’s director of communications; and Superintendent Michael Vallely, declined to comment.

    Marchioli pointed to the district’s offices, while Burgio, recently back from an extended medical leave, pointed to Vallely’s office.”
    That remains the narrative, as I continue to understand it.

    Absent any District denial of any such “matter,’ and if only items (1)– (3) of the narrative described above are true, it is obvious that the District has applied Section 3020 a of the New York State Education Law.

    As such, in my opinion, the Board of Education, during the period ending April 23, performed its duties with skill and with care, in that the Board fully met its confidentiality, investigatory, and finding(s) obligations under 3020 a, 1., and 2.

    During that time, it was important for the BOE to function as a deliberative body, exercising strict confidentiality; to fairly and fully assess all the available evidence; and in executive session, render a determination as to whether probable cause existed in anticipation of a possible suspension, in accordance with Section 3020 a.

    Apparently, such probable cause was found, and the teacher was seemingly placed on suspension or administrative leave, effective April 16.

    However, the Lancaster District necessarily functions under the collective laws of New York State, including the public disclosure provisions of the Public Officers Law.

    The legislative declaration of the FOIL closes with these words:

    “The people's right to know the process of governmental decision-making and to review the documents and statistics leading to determinations is basic to our society. Access to such information should not be thwarted by shrouding it with the cloak of secrecy or confidentiality. The legislature therefore declares that government is the public's business and that the public, individually and collectively and represented by a free press, should have access to the records of government in accordance with the provisions of this article.”
    When the referenced rumors compelled Jane Radlich to query the District as to whether a teacher at the Lancaster Senior High School had been placed on suspension, in my opinion, there existed no compelling reason for the District to have misleadingly departed from the intent and spirit of the set legislative scheme, as provided for under the New York State Public Officers Law.

    Article 7, subsection 106, imposes upon the Board, within the limits of privilege, the requirement to disclose, within one week to the public record, the disposition of those executive session deliberations.

    Therefore, if the District had honored Article 7 in its intended entirety, the disclosable substance of those executive session(s) deliberations necessarily lived in the public record at the time of the Radlich inquiry.

    To the best of my knowledge, Ms. Radlich was not advised of the existence of such a record, or the substance of that record.

    Absent a formal FOIL request from Ms. Radlich, the LCSD was within its rights not to volunteer information.

    However, what troubles me is the rather obvious appearance which suggested that the District chose to deliberately divert Ms. Radlich’s attention to the posted statement, which did not in any way address the general findings and attendant action(s) of any such executive session.

    If the District was correct in its strict legal application, it failed to meet the spirit of the FOIL’s intended transparent value.

    In my opinion, to deliberately stress misleading information to the exclusion of direct disclosure, is to apply the jargon of the deceptive elite, not the refreshing language of open, representative government.

    Transparency is straight talk, it is not shading a sentence.

    Once the bond of truth is strained, overall confidence is reduced, and all information becomes suspect.

    Over the past year, I have been entirely frustrated with the disrespect that the District has apparently shown for the transparent needs of its constituents.

    IMHO, the remedy to further promote transparency is not to discredit a critical messenger, but to augment openness.

    The clever wording must end to restore broad public confidence in the Lancaster “model.”

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    Mark you have demonstrated a nice clear rendition of the topic(s) in the aforementioned post. With clarity, I find it compelling and disturbing at best. The district needs to be mindful to the resourceful parents whose children attend the Lancaster School District. They will dig and find out the answers to your compelling narrative.

    Sadly, the past election has now eliminated the only voice for those unrepresented. The liberal driven voters deserve what they have voted in and shame on those who complain that did not vote.

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    Member Breezy's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by shortstuff View Post
    Mark you have demonstrated a nice clear rendition of the topic(s) in the aforementioned post. With clarity, I find it compelling and disturbing at best. The district needs to be mindful to the resourceful parents whose children attend the Lancaster School District. They will dig and find out the answers to your compelling narrative.

    Sadly, the past election has now eliminated the only voice for those unrepresented. The liberal driven voters deserve what they have voted in and shame on those who complain that did not vote.
    Yawn.



  4. #4
    Member mark blazejewski's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by shortstuff View Post
    Mark you have demonstrated a nice clear rendition of the topic(s) in the aforementioned post. With clarity, I find it compelling and disturbing at best. The district needs to be mindful to the resourceful parents whose children attend the Lancaster School District. They will dig and find out the answers to your compelling narrative.

    Sadly, the past election has now eliminated the only voice for those unrepresented. The liberal driven voters deserve what they have voted in and shame on those who complain that did not vote.
    Shortstuff,

    My primary concern resides with the District posting. Those comments were both deflective and deceptive.

    The transparency issue attending the LCSD post would be analogous to a hypothetical circumstance in 1963, if a reporter had asked an attending doctor at Parkland Hospital if President Kennedy was dead, and the doctor had responded "At this time, the Dallas police have no suspect in custody."

    Many can see through these slippery, foggy semantics. Way too clever by half.

  5. #5
    Member Breezy's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by shortstuff View Post
    Mark you have demonstrated a nice clear rendition of the topic(s) in the aforementioned post. With clarity, I find it compelling and disturbing at best. The district needs to be mindful to the resourceful parents whose children attend the Lancaster School District. They will dig and find out the answers to your compelling narrative.

    Sadly, the past election has now eliminated the only voice for those unrepresented. The liberal driven voters deserve what they have voted in and shame on those who complain that did not vote.
    When you strip away all the five, ten and twenty dollar words in this thread, all you have left is pretty much chump change.

    Note to insomniacs: You could fall to sleep after reading the first two or three paragraphs.

    And to think this was written AFTER the school board election.

    Probably buyers remorse from yet another losing candidacy.

    Just saying.


  6. #6
    Member mark blazejewski's Avatar
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    The problem with the lack of transparency, is that state of being does not firmly assuage public concerns and address public questions. To the contrary, it reduces confidence in the institution, and raises even more speculations, suspicions, and questions.

    If Section 3020a, 1. and 2., has been applied, from the standpoint of both NYS Education Law and the FOIL, the District's official posting of April 26, 2016, is very troubling.

    However, perhaps Section 3020a will not be fully applied, and in anticipation of a hearing, the teacher has submitted, or perhaps will submit, a negotiated resignation.

    In consideration of the time and costs attendant to a 3020a, I can well appreciate the wisdom of such a "settlement," but, the public may be curious of possible conditions that have, or will, put the District on the proverbial financial hook.

    IMHO, a comment from the District acknowledging the "settlement," with legitimate privacy consideration observed, would tend to reduce perceptions that the "matter" has been "swept under the rug."
    Last edited by mark blazejewski; May 23rd, 2018 at 10:48 AM.

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