Piling on C-BISD07/07/2007 10:05:47 AMI'm with JD on this one. Government bureacracies at all levels are corrupt. I am referring this time to the extra million dollars the C-BISD administration found laying around that could be used to install artificial turf at the football stadium.
I happen to know for a fact that many of the classrooms at a particular elementary school have classroom computers for student instruction that are unusable. They are there for show when the bureaucrats visit the school. The computers might as well be cardboard boxes like they use for display at the furniture store. One teacher's computers didn't work four years ago when she arrived on campus and the same computers still sit there untouched. I heard a couple of teachers told the principal to either make the computers work or remove them. Heh.
Oh, they also had money for new computer desks on which to put the broken computers. They should have went ahead and ordered the cardboard display computers to go with the desks.
Even buying at retail computers are cheap, especially when compared with the price of artificial turf. On a school purchase contract computers are even cheaper. Ridiculously cheap. For twenty five grand every classroom at a certain elementary school could have two new computers with flat screens. For a million bucks the district's entire technology infrastructure could have been updated with money left over to pay someone who actually knows how to operate it.
I heard C-BISD hired a new administration person in charge of academic computing--you know, kids using the computers for curriculum-based instruction. Seems like putting the cart before the horse to me. The money used to pay the new person's salary could have better been used to buy a few computers that actually work. Probably two elementary schools could have all new computers with her annual salary. After a couple of years of buying equipment maybe such a position would make sense but hiring a director of academic computing at this point is like putting up a cardboard cut-out to go with the cardboard display computers. Once again a perfect example of how administration sucks up money that needs to go directly to the classoom.
The teacher's classroom computers work for the most part but might as well be cardboard boxes as well because teacher's are severely limited in using them due to C-BISD's computer guy's inability to operate them in an enterprise environment. Two years ago when the brains in power decided all email has to be backed up to meet federal regulations, they scrapped the email system they were using and changed to Outlook because they could not figure how to back up their current email system. Of course in the process all the email data in everyone's previous email box was lost. The teachers showed up to work one Monday with a new email system and no email. If this were to happen in corporate America more than one person would lose his job. Also, changing to Outlook without some significant spam countermeasures in place is not very wise, as they soon found out.
Supposedly, the majority of last year's technology budget was spent buying and implementing an anti-spam product. After this huge investment and some of the most laughable memo's I've ever seen on how the teacher's are supposed to use it, and then on how teacher's are too stupid to use it effectively, it pretty much didn't work and external email along with internet access was severely limited in an effort to control the problem. C-BISD chooses to eschew the single biggest technological advancement in the history of mankind because they can't figure out how to deal with spam and wont hire someone who does. It's much easier and cheaper to blame it on the stupid teachers and disconnect the internet.
Instead of fixing the leaky roof and faulty electrical at a certain elementary school that regularly has no drinking water due to outages at the water well pump, the administration hired a new high-level administrator, bought computer furniture for computers that are not used, bought a new Suburban for administrators to ride to and from conferences, bought a new Suburban for the school cop, and paid a million dollars for artificial turf.
I doubt that anyone is in fear for their jobs over at the administration building at C-BISD.
I'll let JD sum it all up:
[This] goes on in every elected board/congress all over the United States of America, and it is a major part of what is going wrong with this country. Our elected representatives are so full of themselves, so full of shit, so afraid that they will piss somebody off, so afraid that they will not be re-elected, so afraid that they will not get that big bonus or contract that they can not and will not do the right thing for the people that voted them in.
1. jdallen07/07/2007 10:00:16 PM
Thanks,man. The Facts is supposed to run, some time at their discretion, a slightly, er, uh, modified version of one of my posts on that crap. At least, they called me and asked if it was me.
That usually means they are at least thinking about printing it.
The funny thing is, I know one of those guys, coached a little league baseball team with him. I can not understand why he is not in those admin guys faces. That's what I hear about some of the other board members, too.
You think maybe they just give up after their first few weeks or months on the board, knowing that they can not win?
2. Don07/08/2007 09:30:50 AM
I think this is the reason Ron Paul has so much appeal. He has no problem telling people NO!
3. Deep Throat07/08/2007 01:00:35 PM
It's pretty much like you stated in your previous articles. The board members only see and hear what those admin gals present to them. Unlike surrounding districts, there seems to be an unwritten rule in CBISD discouraging employees from contacting board members. There is, however, a written rule that threatens dismissal for inappropriate material posted to the internet, even if the district's computers were not used. In other words, if you complain about us on some blog, you're fired.
