Blunder of the Year? On Jay Mathews Op Ed in the Washington Post

MaryEllen Elia, former Superintendent of HCPS credit TBO

On February 1st, Mr. Mathews' op ed,  Blunder of the year? Hillsborough County, Fla., board fires acclaimed superintendent was published in Washington Post's local education section. Mr. Mathews, who disclosed he has met, interviewed, and admired Ms. Elia, delivered a sharp, critical essay including conjecture on hidden motivations the Hillsborough county school board may have had to fire her. He only mentions the clearly stated official reasons the board voted to terminate Ms. Elia's contract in the following manner:

"The board members said racial disparities and services for special education students needed to be addressed and that Elia should have worked more closely with community members. One board member complained that she had not involved the board enough in a recent teacher-appreciation video."

"School board members often resent superintendents who have been successful and in office a long time. Elia’s 10-year tenure is unusual. Top school leaders often relieve tension by accepting other job offers. But Elia was not a career superintendent. She was a teacher at heart, emotionally invested in the children of her district, so why move?"

In order to put perspective on Ms. Elia's departure from her job let me post some detail that is also rather oddly reported by Mr. Mathews.  If you  Google 'MaryEllen Elia salary' the first result you'll see is this:

1. "Superintendent MaryEllen Elia's contract was terminated Tuesday in a 4-3 vote by the school board. The total payout to Elia will be $1.1 million, which includes her $280,000 annual salary for the next two and a half years. Her last day is March 5. She will then use her vacation time until June.Jan 20, 2015" 

The reason I'm saying his reporting is odd to me is because he takes this contract termination and states that the school board was fiscally irresponsible in terminating her as well. I believe when I explain some details about the school board's actions, readers might just say " res ipsa loquitur (Latin for "the thing itself speaks")  and the actions of the Hillsborough county school board might make more sense.

I'm just going to expand on two points Mr. Mathews combines into a sentence in order to make things more apparent.  "The board members said racial disparities and services for special education students needed to be addressed..."

Marilyn Williams, Former HCPS educator, credit WTSP news

First, Mr. Mathews fails to provide detail on what is meant by racial disparities.  This very important detail is that Hillsborough County Public Schools, of which,  Ms. Elia has been Superintendent for 10 years, is the subject of an Office of Civil Rights Complaint you can read about here and here. The complaint details extensive and statistically significant disparities in the way students of color in general and African American male students in particular are disciplined, thereby demonstrating that HCPS is depriving a disproportionately large number of these students of an education.  This complaint points to troubling discrepancies in the policies HCPS established under Ms. Elia's direction. They give evidence of complete lack of understanding of the needs of minority students in her school district. The complaint alludes to violations of the Civil Rights Act of 1965.   When this detail is included in Mr. Mathews essay, it clarifies the school board's position.

The nature of this civil rights complaint makes Ms. Elia's award for  2015 Florida Superintendent of the Year disturbing, particularly as Florida is also the state where Kiera Wilmot,  an African American honor student,  was arrested, expelled from school, and charged with felonies because she prepped for a science fair by mixing a little toilet bowl cleaner and aluminum foil in a soda bottle. Florida has privatized prisons, and when the purpose of prisons becomes generating a profit, the implications of a school district that has such disparities in disciplinary policies should deeply concern us all.

HCPS Student Discipline Statistics credit WTSP news

Florida is also the State where George Zimmerman pursued and killed Trayvon Martin against police orders and did not answer for it. Florida is where  Michael Dunn, the man who shot and killed 17-year-old Jordan Davis, thought it was okay to walk over to a car in a public place and shoot at unarmed Black teens in it because he didn't like their music.  Florida has some very frightening standards where African American youth are concerned.

Let me also expand on the second detail Mr. Mathews mentions. When he says "services for special education students need to be addressed"  the missing detail is that what is happening is special education students are dying in Hillsborough county public schools. You can read about the deaths, and the human and fiscal price paid for the negligence involved by the school district on Ms. Elia's watch here.  In fact all the special education students who have died during Ms. Elia's watch were also either African American or Hispanic. The deaths escalated because HCPS, under Ms. Elia's leadership, failed to make policy changes that could have averted further harm to students.  A student who was not a special needs student but had a medical emergency and died has paid the price for HCPS's lack of vigorous action to insure the safety of their students in general, and special needs students in particular. The latest lawsuit, by the parents of the late Keith Coty, can be read about both on this blog and here . HCPS has been fiscally impacted from wrongful death settlements as well. This detail adds context to the board decision on the urgency to seek a contract termination settlement.  These sorts of details are very critical to an op ed in the venerable Washington Post. So I'm disappointed the details weren't in this one.

screen shoot of the Dept of ED OCR website credit WTSP news

MaryEllen Elia, fired Superintent of Hillsborough County Public Schools in Florida is a finalist for National Superintendent of the Year. She received her 2015 Florida Superintendent of the Year award from Hillsborough County  two days after being fired as if none of what went wrong in her school district during her 10 year tenure mattered.  I am trying to understand how this can happen. The details of Ms. Elia's stewardship belie the conjecture in Mr. Mathews' essay that "school boards tend to resent successful superintendents." The school board is attempting to take actions to rectify the damage done to hundreds of children, a demand made on them by the angry parents of the community they serve and the OCR of the US. Department of Education. I was surprised the Washington Post's fact checking team didn't catch these missing details, even in an opinion piece, before allowing an essay to disparage an entire school board.

The disparity between the selection criteria for National Superintendent of the Year and the reality of the state of Hillsborough County Publics Schools under Ms. Elia's watch is extremely unsettling. Mr. Mathews did not make this clear in his essay and that is hurtful to special needs families following the deaths of HCPS special needs students across America. The lives of our children matter, and when we put them in the hands of our schools we expect our children to be safe.

I am also a woman of color and and activist for intersected populations, so the board's own statistics about how HCPS is disciplining African American male students is sending alarm bells to me and my fellow activists. We can only hope that the independent task force and the Department of Education's Office of Civil rights can turn things around for HCPS students of color.

Now that I have provided details that Mr. Mathews' essay did not, I believe the actions of the state of Florida and the  Hillsborough County are not clear at all and we all need to understand why Ms. Elia is in the running for National Superintendent of the Year.

But the actions of the Hillsborough County School Board are clear, and we all now understand why Ms. Elia's contract might have been terminated. Details are everything.

 Res ipsa loquitur.


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For an explanation of what the school to prison pipeline means, and how race based disparities in discipline resulting in expelling black male students from schools are a large link in this pipeline, see the infographic below.

Are our children being pushed into prison infographic  credit PBS

The Silence of the Voice of Justice

“Throughout history, it has been the inaction of those who could have acted; the indifference of those who should have known better; the silence of the voice of justice when it mattered most; that has made it possible for evil to triumph.”  

Haile Selassie

January 25th is the anniversary of the death of a 7 year old girl named Isabella Herrera. Isabella died on a Hillsborough County school bus. There is raw bus footage that shows what happened in graphic detail. Isabella is one of a series of students who have died while in the care of the Hillsborough County Public School system. 

Image of young Isabella Herrera in a black
and red formal dress in her wheelchair
credit The Tampa Tribune

Each of these children deserves to be remembered. They deserve to matter. I included their photographs so everyone reading this can understand that these young lives did not deserve to end so quickly and so horribly. All their deaths happened while they were in the care of the public school system. And all their deaths could have been prevented.

 Isabella Herrera age 7,  was a girl who wished to ride the bus like every other student. She wanted that independence. Quoting WTSP 10News Tampa:

"Isabella's mother says she suffered from a neuromuscular disorder that impacted her walking and head control. Otherwise, Lisa says, she was a normal kid who wanted to ride the school bus.
"She felt good about it; she felt independent. She felt great. I trusted them to bring her home safe every day," says Lisa."

" January 25, Isabella boarded the school bus at Sessums Elementary at 2:07 p.m. Her parents say the school bus driver and aid failed to slightly tilt Isabella's wheel chair so her head would be stabilized, as her Individual Education Plan or IEP requires.
Lisa says during the three months Isabella rode the school bus, she had to remind bus drivers and aids about her daughter's needs.
"They are supposed to be trained for each child's needs, each child on the bus- know their disability, know what to do," Lisa says.
The school bus video shows Isabella's head bobbing forward and backwards about a dozen times over a span of 17 minutes. At 2:24 p.m., the school bus aid calls out "Isabella- Isabella.""

Isabella had gone into respiratory arrest.  Despite Mrs. Herrera's efforts and calling 911, Isabella died.

Keith Coty was ill and taken from his first
grade class at Seminole Heights Elementary a year ago
 and later died. credit ANDY JONES/STAFF The
Tampa Tribune

This is the late Keith Coty. Just over a year ago, Keith had a medical emergency in school.  No CPR was performed. Again school officials delayed in calling 911.  Per The Tampa tribune:

"Here’s what attorneys say happened on Jan. 16, 2014: the Coty boy complained of a severe headache to his teacher. He was sent to the back of the classroom to lay down and started vomiting. The school nurse was called to the room and a voice mail was left for the boy’s mother to come pick him up."

"By the time Teets arrived, the boy’s lips were blue and he was unresponsive. The 911 call was placed by an employee in the front office, 34 minutes after Keith first complained about his headache. An emergency medical crew arrived and administered CPR, raising a pulse."

"The boy was brought to the emergency room at Saint Joseph’s Hospital, where doctors learned he had suffered a brain hemorrhage. They performed emergency surgery, but the boy had been without oxygen for too long. He died the next day after being taken off life support."

This is the late Jennifer Caballero, a vibrant, 11 year old student. She went missing during her school day and was later found dead.  Per

Jennifer Caballero, was found dead in a retention
pond. She was 11.  credit Tampa Bay Times

the Tampa Bay Times: " Jennifer Caballero hid under the bleachers, away from her classmates and six teacher's aides, away from the other 140 or so students also in the gym."

"A teacher saw Jennifer — an 11-year-old girl with Down syndrome — and took her back to rejoin her class of about 20."

"But sometime within the next half hour on Monday afternoon, Jennifer walked out of the Rodgers Middle School gym and onto a grassy field."

"Six hours later, deputies found her dead in a retention pond on school grounds."

"On Tuesday, a key question remained: How did she escape the notice of six teacher's aides — especially when someone knew she had already tried to hide once?"

What was Jennifer hiding from? No one asks this question. The presumption, as my colleague Kassiane Sibley recently pointed out, that neurodivergent people of all ages are  human dowsing rods magically attracted to water unfortunately eliminates any investigation of why she felt unsafe to the degree that she hid under the bleachers and did not wish to participate in gym class. So the presumption that Jennifer's behavior was not her own attempt to seek safety from something or someone, and simply happened because she was disabled negates any chance we might learn what upsetting triggers were in her school setting. 

This is the late Kadeem Jesse Shillingford. Jesse was a sophomore at a Hillsborough County public charter school for

image of  the late Jesse Shillingford smiling in a school photo
he drowned at a school sponsored event credit myfox Tampa Bay

students with disabilities. He drowned at a back to school pool party in view of lifeguards, teachers, parent volunteers, and students, about 140 people in all. Per the Tampa Bay Times: 

 "City recreation officials once took at face value the number of people that organizerss said would attend pool parties at the Family Recreation Center. But now, said City Manager Gerald Seeber, the city is careful to follow-up, making sure of the head count, so it can bring in extra lifeguards if necessary."

"That's the main policy change imposed in the aftermath of the September 2012 drowning of Kadeem Jesse Shillingford in the city pool. It's an effort "to do our best to ensure that a tragedy like that never happens again,'' Seeber said."

"The 15-year-old mildly autistic student at Pepin Academy lay on the bottom of the pool for five minutes before anyone noticed him during the night-time back-to-school party. Security cameras showed the youngster, who could not swim, going down the slide in the deep end and struggling in the water before sinking. Another child finally spotted him. He spent four days on life support before dying."
     
 The Hillsborough County School Board doesn't count Jesse's death as part of the series of student deaths within their jurisdiction, because the school involved was a charter school and the incident occurred at an after school hours event. So Jesse's death "doesn't count?" A Charter school is a public school and this was a school sponsored event. That means the school is within the jurisdiction and part of the county school system. 

In both the deaths of Isabella Herrera and Keith Coty, school staff notified parents instead of  immediately calling 911. The parents arrived, saw their children and only then was 911 called. So my question is, why do Hillsborough county public school staff not call 911 at the immediate onset of a medical emergency?

The most disturbing thing about these deaths is not just that they keep happening. It is headlines like this: 

"Fired superintendent Elia honored by Hillsborough commissioners"

Just click on the headline to read the story. So in the wake of all these deaths the superintendent is fired by the school board, then honored by the county commissioners. 

I don't understand this county. 

Keith Coty's parents' attorney,  Steven Maher, who happens to have also represented the Herrera family, is suing the county school system. The plaintiffs claim the district is discriminating against all 200,000-plus Hillsborough County students. 

I don't understand the silence of disability rights organizations about these deaths. I don't know why organizations whose mission is to advocate for students in general and students with disabilities in particular, were not up in arms about the policies and practices that resulted in these deaths. No amount of financial settlement can erase the loss of a child. No firing can eliminate the pattern of harm apparent here, particularly when the person fired is awarded by the county just after being fired. Most importantly, none of these young people had to die. Someone should care, not because there might be financial benefit but because these deaths are wrong and the lack of accountability for them is unjust.  

Something is very wrong in the Hillsborough County Public School system. 

What does the toll in innocent lives have to be to break the silence of the voice of justice?


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In Memory of Isabella Herrera, Keith Coty, Jennifer Caballero, and Kadeem Jesse Shillingford.