Arrogance and Education Policy will topple Malloy’s re-election chances

With the Governor coming to Milford tonight, I'd like to share an article published in Dec. 2013 speaking to the Arrogant Education policy in our state and how it ties back to the Milford School District:

Yesterday’s drama surrounding a Letter of Complaint from school superintendents across Connecticut about Stefan Pryor, Governor Malloy’s Commissioner of Education, serves as a case study about the arrogance that surrounds Governor Malloy and his corporate education reform policies.

The truth is that a number of school superintendents, representing rich towns and poor towns, small districts and large are fed up with the dysfunctional bureaucracy of the education reformers and out-of-state consultants that Stefan Pryor has brought into the State Department of Education.  The professional staff in the agency have been pushed aside and replaced by staff that lacks the experience or ability to fulfill the duties inherent in the functioning of the State Department of Education.

Although there has been growing talk among Connecticut’s local education leaders about the need for a vote of no-confidence in Commissioner Pryor and his leadership team, a decision was made to start with a Letter of Complaint outlining the problems that school superintendents are facing when dealing with Pryor and his out-of-state, inexperienced operatives.

A seven page letter was developed and reviewed.  Local schools superintendents from around the state were given the opportunity to weigh in on the document and a meeting of the Board of Directors and Executive Committee of the CT Association of School Superintendents (CAPSS) was scheduled to finalize the Letter of Complaint to Pryor.

But yesterday when the anti-Pryor story was revealed and the Letter of Complaint was summarized here on the Wait, What? blog, Joe Cirasuolo, the executive director of CAPSS and the organization’s board of directors panicked, turned tail, threw their membership under the bus and claimed that not only was there no problems with the implementation of the corporate reform initiative, but that Connecticut’s superintendents were overwhelming supportive of Pryor and his team.

Then, in a carefully orchestrated dance, Commissioner Pryor released a statement thanking CAPSS for its endorsement.

The whole episode is a sad reminder about just how out of touch some governmental leaders are from the people they have sworn to represent.

The situation is also an extremely disturbing indication of just how thin skinned the Malloy operation has become and how Malloy and his team are more concerned about appearance than substance.

Rather than accept responsibility for the problems surrounding one of Malloy’s leading policy initiatives they, once again, put politics ahead of policy and political pandering ahead of the truth.

It would have been simple enough to finalize the Letter of Complaint, send it off and ensure that the public understood that there were major issues and problems surrounding the implementation of Malloy’s education reform legislation.

Instead, executive director Cirasuolo, the CAPSS leadership and Commissioner Pryor tried to duck the truth, cover-up the facts and pretend that despite being public servants they had no responsibility to provide the transparency that comes with public service.

Truth be told, the most telling phrase of all was uttered by Milford superintendent Elizabeth Feser, president of the board of directors of the Connecticut Association of Public School Superintendents (CAPSS), who said that she was “disappointed that the internal document was leaked.”

Disappointed that the internal document was leaked?

A discussion by public officials about a major public policy issue and the official response is we didn’t want anyone to know?

Superintendents are public officials, paid with taxpayer funds.  Superintendent Feser, for example, pulls down well in excess of $225,000 to $250,000 in salary and benefits.

The Connecticut Association of Public School Superintendents is primarily funded by taxpayer funds sent via a dues system that charges local school boards money so their local superintendent can participate in the association.

The superintendents manage the largest portion of local government expenditures in every community in Connecticut.

All the communication related to the Letter of Complaint to Pryor was sent through publicly funded email accounts.

The Letter of Complaint was addressing concerns about the policies and actions of Commissioner Stefan Pryor, a public official.

And the leadership of CAPSS has the audacity to say this was a private matter?

The more you know, the more shocking the whole story becomes.

You can read about some of the details at Wait, What?: News Flash: Connecticut school superintendents take unprecedented action against Commissioner Pryor and CT Association of Public School Superintendents (CAPSS) does an about-face; sells out its members and CT school districts, students, parents, teachers and taxpayers, as well as at the CT Mirror Group of superintendents says CT school department in ‘disarray’ and the Hartford Courant “School Chiefs Voice Support For Pryor After Critical Document Is Leaked.”

What is abundantly clear is that the problems at the State Department of Education are very real and have been well documented.

For example, while the state’s fiscal year began on July 1, 2013 Commissioner Stefan Pryor still hadn’t processed all of the financial grants for the Alliance Districts nearly 150 days into the school year.

The General Assembly had authorized the funds for Connecticut’s 30 poorest school districts.  Governor Malloy had signed that budget into law.  Connecticut taxpayers were paying their taxes to fund the budget.  The school districts had submitted their applications on time (June 2013) and were supposed to have new programs up and running at the start of the school year (September 2013).

Yet despite a $1 million dollar contract with an out-of-state company called MassInsight, a contract that provided the staffing for the State Department of Education’s Alliance District operation, the money was stuck and held-back while the State Department’s outside consultants reviewed, modified, re-reviewed, re-modified and simply messed around while towns went without the money they needed, deserved and were promised.

And that same dysfunctional story applies all across Pryor’s operation.

As the Letter of Complaint explained, the failures surrounding Pryor’s operation includes;

(1)    The inability of the CSDE to issue many communications in a timely fashion, (2) Dissemination of information that subsequently has to be revised and/or corrected, (3) The implementation of programs that have to be significantly revised after initial implementation, (4) The setting of unreasonable deadlines that reflect an incomplete planning of reform related initiatives, (5) The cleavage between many of the staff whom the Commissioner inherited and the staff whom he has hired, (6) Insulting and inaccurate presentations made by CSDE contractors, (7) Procedures that are insulting to local district staff.

The letter also highlighted other problems with Pryor’s operation such as;

(A) A greater emphasis on pushing his agenda than on listening to the concerns of local district leaders, (B) Lack of an understanding as to how the major components of the reform effort integrate into a singular coherent effort, (C) Too great a willingness to accommodate the Governor’s political agenda, (D) Unresponsiveness to communications from local district leaders, (E) Lack of sufficient respect for the achievements of public education in CT before he became Commissioner, (F) Insufficient willingness to champion public education to the Governor, the legislature and the general public.

You can read the whole letter here:  Letter of Complaint

But as noted above, the letter was never sent and at the end of the day, what stood in its place was a statement from Commissioner Pryor’s public relations office that read;

“We are highly grateful for the CAPSS Board’s unanimous statement of support. CAPSS and Connecticut’s superintendents are pivotal partners and we very much appreciate this affirming vote. The process of strengthening public education can, at times, be complex and challenging, but this work is vital for the success of our students and our state.  We will continue to collaborate closely with superintendents, principals, teachers, parents, and other stakeholders in order to review, revise, enhance, and advance our collective efforts.”

One might even suppose that from Pryor’s standpoint it was a victorious day.

No letter of complaint, no criticism, only accolades.

And the only “cost” was keeping the public in the dark about the truth.

But the public deserves the truth.

And they particularly deserve to know how the CAPSS leadership, executive director Cirasuolo and the Pryor operation worked to keep the public from knowing what really was going on.

So to that end, I’m sending over the following Freedom of Information Request and will report back on what is provided;

Pursuant to the Connecticut Freedom of Information Act I am requesting any and all emails, email attachments, memos or other documents that were sent, received or created on 12/12/2013 and mention the Connecticut Association of School Superintendents, CAPSS executive director Joe Cirasuolo, any member of the CAPSS Board of Directors or its lobbyist or is related in any way to the draft Letter of Complaint that received media coverage.

In addition to any information within the agency, I want to remind you that Commissioner Pryor and his top aides have inappropriately used their private email accounts to conduct state business in the past.  As the Freedom of Information Commission has ruled, those types of emails are also within the public domain and must be released when requested.

Therefore I am requesting that you provide copies of any emails related to these issues that were sent to or from Commissioner Pryor’s Gmail account or to or from any other private account used by State Department of Education staff.

As always, thank you for your attention to this request.

Jonathan Pelto