By Antonio D. French
Filed Monday, March 13 at 9:11 AM
Last week we reported that the St. Louis Public School District had agreed to pay $75,000 to Dr. Arlene Ackerman for a part-time job related to the district's desegregation settlement agreement.
Ackerman is the former superintendent of the San Francisco Unified School District. As we reported, her departure from Frisco was controversial at best, nasty at worst.
As it turns out, people in San Francisco read PUB DEF and folks on both sides of the Ackerman controversy duked it out in the comments section of that post. Click here to go there.
"Your implication that she was dismissed over questions about her credit card use is entirely, 100% inaccurate," wrote a blogger named Caroline. She said the real story was that extreme leftists from the city's Green Party pushed her out.
She also took a few swipes at this website. "Your report is completely inaccurate, with just enough whiff of 'truthiness' to carry credibility with the uninformed," she wrote. "You need to do your homework next time and employ some scruples, ethics and concern for accuracy."
We responded by pointing out that there were no errors of fact in our report relating to Dr. Ackerman's time in San Francisco (although we, like the Post-Dispatch, did originally err in reporting that she was hired as an aid to Dr. Creg Williams, a mistake pointed out to us by board member Bill Purdy. We posted Purdy's message as an update to the original post as soon as we received it).
Several other comments came from others who identified themselves as San Francisco parents and political watchers. It all made for an interesting weekend debate.
If nothing else, it showed that San Franciscans have strong feelings about their schools and a lot of time on their hands on a Saturday.
8 Comments:
From sfmom22:
As I noted in one of our local political web sites (sfwall.net), my guess would be that basically what Ackerman is going to tell the good folks in St. Louis is that Separate and Unequal is the way to go. That is, the schools need not be integrated, but resources should be shifted so that the schools serving the more needy African American students get a disproportionate share. She will also emphasize the "Dream Schools" strategy of longer hours and drill-and-kill teaching to the test. Since it's too early to say for sure that this strategy has not worked in SF (though it certainly looks that way) she might as well do all the consultation gigs she can before it's too late.
11:21 AM, March 13, 2006
I took a swipe at that particular report because it conveyed misinformation to your readers (not at your website overall). Misinforming the readers is something a conscientious journalist simply does not defend.
And the responses to my original debunking of your post -- sniping that I didn't give my last name, observing that I and others have too much time on our hands, and accusing me of loving the mainstream media and being deceived by my "warm and fuzzy" feelings for Ackerman -- are pretty low-rent.
The fact remains. Ackerman was not pushed out of San Francisco because of questions over her credit-card charges. That's the story you told the readers, and it was inaccurate.
5:07 PM, March 13, 2006
Go away, Caroline.
8:39 PM, March 13, 2006
It sounds like people in Frisko just like to argue with each other. No wonder their superintendent left!
7:09 AM, March 14, 2006
as one of the "arguers", i would point out that it is a lot better to become informed and argue than to simply leave everything to someone else - that is usually when you wind up with a company town...
the budget for the school district is around $500 million per year...
our last superintendent turned out to be a crook...
this superintendent spent a good chunk of her time shouting, "he was a crook but i'm cleaning the place up" despite the fact that they both came through the same harvard graduate program and attended the same first broad prize awards dinner (where that august organization serenaded rod "teachers are terrorists" paige)...
it is indeed a small circle of "superstar" superintendents... we won't be selecting from THAT pool again...
when roja$ bailed out of san francisco and landed in dallas, we all wondered how that city could fall for his line...
he did not last long in dallas... it may have been that they heard that his previous place of employment was in the process of finding out what he had been doing behind closed doors - or maybe they just realized they made a mistake on their own...
no one is claiming that ackerman is a crook... but i would say she is an opportunist... this "mentoring" thing, where one rewards their friends with district money, well, it doesn't pass the smell test... she did the same thing here with lorraine monroe and her "dream schools", which are turning out to be nightmares, because she never sought buy-in from teachers...
ackerman was happy to take a 10% salary increase AND a new two way severance package in november 2004...
be very wary if she mentors your superintendent to seek such a severance package (ours is still being challenged in court by the law firm headed by our previous president of the board of supervisors who came in second for mayor - and who is a green, one of the targets of caroline's wrath)...
here was the incredible thing about that severance package (rammed through a lame duck school board 4-3 with the 4th vote having just lost for re-election):
it's one thing to say, "if we fire you, you get a severance package because you may be out of work while interviewing for your next job"...
most baseball managers have such packages...
but it is quite another to say that as part of your severance package YOU can say, "i quit" and you STILL get the money...
that would be like walking into steinbrenner's office and saying, "i can't take your crap any more and i quit - but you have to keep paying me"...
not likely...
so, what ackerman did is that she got the severance package in november 2004 (she had not had it the previous 4 years)and immediately began getting nasty with the newly elected board president (technically, she is an employee of the school board, so, she was arguing with her employer and very publicly)...
and i do mean nasty...
her greatest supporters would regularly show up at school board meetings and call the board president (and two other board members) "racists"...
they also encouraged school age kids to do the same thing... there are currently no african american board members, partly a result of much of the aa population moving to the suburbs, so that 15% has become about 7% in the city (although in the school district aa kids make up 14%)...
i personally sat next to a late arriving kid at a board meeting last april who was indoctrinated by one of the superintendent's supporters (who she had appointed to an advisory commission) with these words (catching the kid up on what had been going on before he arrived): "you see those two chinamen up there?... we've got to get rid of them... you've got to get your friends organized"...
("chinaman" is the equivalent n-word)...
the board president at the time (and also the current board president - it rotates yearly) are chinese americans... the board president at that time was and is a professor at san francisco state university...
it got uglier and uglier...
and this particular meeting was just five months after the severance package took effect... she was clearly laying the groundwork for incompatability...
but she waited until a few days AFTER she became vested for retirement benefits (our district will be paying her $50,000 a year for the rest of her life) before announcing (in september 2005) that she would be leaving in june of 2006...
the one unaligned school board member (elected to replace the lame duck commissioner in 2004 and currently the board president) tried to play peacemaker...
but the superintendent stopped coming to meetings... then a central staffer (they had been under a gag order during the superintendent's regime) told a commissioner (and former teacher) that the superintnedent had been running up some hefty travel expenses...
that served as the catalyst for a closed door session at which the new board president finally acknowledged that the situation was not working...
ackerman's attorney played the race card: "this would not be happening if she was not a black woman" and threatened to sue... i guess the settlement was that she is now entitled "superintendent emeritus" and still being paid (mostly accrued sick days and vacation days) until june...
they may have also agreed to get the private attorneys to drop the legal challenge to the severance package ($375,000)... we don't know...
the board of supervisors passed a resolution "asking" the superintendent not to take the money (and run) but she has made it clear she is taking it...
she won't be out of work... she has a job in the fall at columbia university (an enterprising reporter might wonder if that was an existing position she is filling or some newly endowed chair from eli broad)...
and she has that nice part time gig in your city... i guess at the same time she is collecting from us...
did i mention that our governor (arnold schwarzenegger) has reduced the amount of money that comes to each district and we are in the red enough that we have had to close and consolidate schools?...
it just doesn't feel right when she takes enough money with her that would have kept an additional school open...
other than that, she's great... brock
btw, you'll notice that caroline refutes none of the charges i make... how could she?... they are all true... bce
1:22 PM, March 15, 2006
As usual, my eyes started glazing over halfway through Brock's (always) lengthy post (the post privious to this).
In San Francisco, we're learning to just ignore the rantings of someone whose mental state is obviously questionable.
You might consider doing the same.
I hope Dr. Ackerman turns out to be a good investment for St. Louis. I believe she was for San Francisco.
7:16 PM, March 15, 2006
Although Brock is usually loquacious, he's extremely sharp and knowledgable. I'd advise you to seriously consider his cautions.
sfmom22
10:35 AM, March 16, 2006
This sez it all
http://www.examiner.com/Local-a49054~Ken_Garcia__School_board_reaps_the_political_seeds_it_has_sown.html
1:32 PM, March 16, 2006
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