SUSD's toxic environment is taking a toll: Teachers are exiting, parents are protesting and taxpayers worry that their money is being mismanaged ... to put it mildly.
To make matters worse, the school district's name is constantly in the news and being tied to allegations of a cover up of chronic corruption. And the Respect Our Scottsdale Students' (ROSS) Facebook page is beginning to look like a police blotter as its editors uncover reams of evidence incriminating individuals who are complicit in the erosion of ethics.
All of it is costing SUSD dearly.
Superintendent Birdwell's erratic behavior and sadistic management style have taken a personal price. It has cost her friends. And of the few who are left, most are referred to as her "Fake Friends." That's the people too petrified to either stand up to her or take a walk - because they fear losing their fat paychecks and fringe benefits.
There are those, however, who still hold out hope that the dark cloud parked over the school district will pass. Some with impaired judgment are even trying to save the superintendent from the inevitable ending to her tenure by creating distractions from the shock and awe of what's happening to SUSD.
Take, for instance, Businesses United for Scottsdale Schools (BUSS), the brainchild of School Board member Kim Hartmann.
Tomorrow BUSS is presenting an event called the "Coronado Success Initiative, a Summary of Year One Progress." One of the keynote speakers will be Dr. A. Denise Birdwell. The same esteemed Dr. Birdwell who is systematically destroying our school district's credibility.
Kudos to those who have been working diligently to turn around the performance of Coronado High School students - especially ASU's Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College and Scottsdale Charros. Chris Gilmore, the new principal, deserves a special shout out for how he has managed the educational makeover of the south Scottsdale high school. But it's the teachers who are the real heroes because they've had to adjust to significant changes and increased expectations.
The event will be well attended. Who, after all, doesn't support improving the academic performance of Coronado students. Attendees will hear that things are on track. But they will be reminded that the process to get Coronado students up to the learning level of their peers at other SUSD schools isn't a sprint, it's a marathon. So the community needs to be patient.
There's also plenty that people won't hear tomorrow.
Superintendent Birdwell's enemies list won't come up. Neither will the short-term memory loss she exhibited when interviewed during SUSD's internal investigation into when she knew Laura Smith, the former CFO, had a conflict of interest that forced Smith to resign. SUSD teachers' vote of "no confidence" in the superintendent won't be mentioned, either. And don't expect to hear anything about the attorney general's probe into possible improprieties in the Birdwell administration nor the effect the superintendent's political radioactivity is having on the community.
No, tomorrow will be a chance to escape reality for 90 minutes about what's being allowed to happen to our school district.
Coincidentally, there will be a rally today at 4 PM at Coronado High School, 7501 E. Virginia Ave. The ROSS sponsored event's rallying cry is "terminate the superintendent, demand fiscal responsibility and support our teachers."
There is no bigger disappointment in the Scottsdale Unified School District than Kim Hartmann - which, given SUSD's politically dysfunctional environment, says a lot about the first-term member of the School Board.
When voters elected Hartmann four years ago, they had high hopes for her. She had an impressive resume and long list of endorsements from movers and shakers inside and outside the school district. Now the confidence in Hartmann has been shaken. Even some of the opinion leaders who endorsed her have lost respect for her and regret their endorsements.
Wait ... someone is probably saying: "What about Pam Kirby?"
Kirby, unaffectionately referred to by SUSD insiders as the Governing Board's "Black Widow," is different than Hartmann. While both board members will be up for re-election this year, it's Kirby who is the political animal using the School Board to advance her political aspirations. What you see is what you get.
However, the Kim Hartmann who was elected to the School Board in 2014 is not the Kim Hartmann who is failing to represent taxpayers in 2018. The 2014 Hartmann disappeared and has been replaced by the 2018 Hartmann.
Going back to 2014, Hartmann campaigned in tandem with Francesca Thomas to fill two seats on the School Board. They were thought to be a formidable team. Hartmann won the election, but Thomas, who received about 6,000 fewer votes than Hartmann, didn't. Kirby, an incumbent, was re-elected by a comfortable margin.
The following year, Hartmann helped found Businesses United for Scottsdale Schools (BUSS), a non-profit organization. The organization, which partnered with the Chamber of Commerce, was created to advocate bringing business leaders and the school district together to develop a stronger Scottsdale public school system. While the organizational model made sense, BUSS faced challenges - primarily from the business community in which many leaders were more supportive of private schools than public ones.
Nevertheless ... BUSS is still active. But it's struggling to achieve the organization's objectives.
The next year, 2016, was when Hartmann went through an about-face. She became infatuated with the new superintendent's mission to make SUSD more competitive with private and charter schools. Unfortunately, Denise Birdwell's scheme triggered an exodus of teachers who fled SUSD for other teaching opportunities. Parents were outraged - but that didn't prevent Birdwell from replacing top administrators with several of her friends and former colleagues.
None of that fazed Hartmann, who had become an acolyte of Birdwell.
As conditions worsened in the school district, including the controversy surrounding the reconstruction of Hopi Elementary School, some of Hartmann's stunned supporters confronted her about her radical transformation - particularly how she could continue supporting Superintendent Birdwell's take-no-prisoners management style that was doing more harm than good.
Hartmann's response was always the same: "Be patient. Give the superintendent's strategy time to work. You'll see."
In the meantime ... Hartmann has not announced if she intends to seek re-election. If she does, voters will be curious to know which Kim Hartmann will be running.
Happy New Year?
What a difference a year makes.
At this time last year, Desert EDGE was called the Desert Discovery Center and its future looked cloudy ... the new SUSD Superintendent Denise Birdwell was still on her best behavior and hadn't begun her reign of terror ... and Mayor Jim Lane, who had just been elected to his third term, was clean-shaven.
Now the once potent grassroots campaign to prevent Desert EDGE has lost its pizazz. Dr. Birdwell and SUSD administrators are under investigation by the State Attorney General's Office. And Mayor Lane has grown a beard that evokes former Mayor Herb Drinkwater.
The year begins with those opposing Desert EDGE making a "Hail Mary" effort to put the project on November's General Election ballot. They need more than 30,000 valid voter signatures and they only have six months to gather them. No longer the issue du jour, Desert EDGE is expected to be nudged out of newspaper headlines by the continuing charges of corruption in the school district.
According to attorney Susan Segal, who conducted the internal investigation initiated by SUSD, her probe failed to find any wrongdoing by school district employees connected with the hiring of a construction company to rebuild several elementary schools. Later this month Segal is scheduled to announce if the school district and one of it vendors, PGPC, a private consulting firm, had a conflict of interest.
The timing of the opinion from the Attorney General's Office about SUSD business practices should be coming soon.
No matter what the further findings are, the controversy is sure to persist throughout the year and eventually be an issue in the November school board race for the two open seats. If board members Kim Hartmann or Pam Kirby run for re-election, the issue will undoubtedly be their Achilles' heel. That will increase the opportunity for challenger Mike Peabody, president of the Scottsdale Parent Council and SUSD watchdog, to replace one of them.
In the meantime ... three groups are looking forward to hitting the "refresh" button in 2018.
After creating a public relations nightmare with the "non-firing" of Neale Perl, Scottsdale Arts anticipates naming a new CEO next month. Hopefully, it will finally be someone with community connections who understands the lay of the land. Scottsdale Coalition of Today and Tomorrow (SCOTT) has been hibernating since the group was launched last fall. If the group can get all of its sponsors on the same page, it will have a chance to begin having an influence on issues in 2018. And, last but not least, Businesses United for Scottsdale Schools (BUSS) will use the new year to reinvent itself - which could help shore up the crumbling credibility of the school district.
The November election will reignite political animosity and touch off a new wave of the tribalism that has plagued the city in the recent past.
City Manager Jim Thompson will be urging the City Council to call for a bond election in November. After a year on the job, Thompson has determined that the city can't continue to rob from Peter to pay Paul to fund the repair and replacement of deteriorating infrastructure. In order to avoid past mistakes that have been the demise of other bond measures, this year's probable bond package must have the unanimous support of the City Council if it stands any chance of succeeding.
Kathy Littlefield, Linda Milhaven and David Smith are running for re-election to fill three seats on the Council. Three candidates have already announced their intentions to challenge the incumbents. Councilman Smith appears to be the most vulnerable of the incumbents, while Bill Crawford will be the most competitive of the existing challengers.
Even though the controversy consuming the school district is expected to continue, there's also the strong possibility that the SUSD Governing Board will place at least one measure on the November ballot - which would further complicate the passage of the city's bond package.
In short: This fall the political environment could be combustible.
Happy New Year!
SNAFU: SEA-IRS-SUSD
The ongoing confrontation between the Scottsdale Education Association (SEA) and the Scottsdale Unified School District (SUSD) has been complicated by the intervention of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS).
The IRS has revoked the tax-exempt status of SEA.
A spokesperson for SEA says the IRS' ruling was triggered by "clerical errors" in the organization's tax filings over the past three years. According to the spokesperson, SEA is in the process of having its 501(c)(5) status reinstated. The organization's position appears to be "no harm, no foul" and suggests that SEA is still a "legitimate entity."
SUSD isn't so sure.
Superintendent Denise Birdwell responded that the IRS's ruling"raises legal issues for the district." She notified all SUSD employees: "At this time, the SEA members may not use the email, mailboxes or a bulletin board to distribute SEA information." The SUSD Governing Board has scheduled an executive session to address the district's "possible legal concerns."
There's no good time to have a close encounter with the Internal Revenue Service - but SEA's recent experience with the IRS couldn't have come at a worse time.
The relationship between SEA and SUSD has become tenuous at best. Both groups are suspicious of the other's true motivations and don't trust one another. It's a classic political paradigm of management (administration) vs. labor (teachers). Growing tension between the two during the past nine months has coincided with Superintendent Birdwell's evisceration of the school district that's been disguised as "reorganization."
Obviously, SEA's tax status shouldn't have anything to do with it being recognized as an entity with which the SUSD administration should be engaged. But it should be equally obvious that Birdwell, who has a bad case of compulsive control, has been waiting for any excuse to mute SEA's voice with the school district.
SEA gave Birdwell an excuse, even though it's a flimsy one.
"There is no legal argument why SUSD is not working with us, period," according to a posting on social media by Rony Assali, one of SEA's leaders. "The administration is looking for a public reason to break ties with SEA being involved. They are using scare tactics."
Readers will recall that Dr. Birdwell attempted to end the school year two months ago on an upbeat note when she said: "We're going to be meeting this summer with the SEA. They have a new executive board and have a very positive outlook on moving forward.
"We're going to look at meet and confer," she continued, and then asked the rhetorical question: "Can we do it in a more productive manner?"
That out-of-character optimism was before the latest SEA-IRS-SUSD SNAFU.
When the Governing Board convenes their executive session at 3 PM Thursday at the Mohave Annex, they will look to their general legal council, Michelle Marshall, to guide their discussion about the so-called SEA dilemma. It's been said that Marshall, who specializes in employment and labor law, knows her stuff.
Unfortunately, because somehow Marshall survived Superintendent Birdwell's inquisition of much of the highest level of SUSD's administrative team, Marshall's objectivity is viewed with skepticism by many in the school district -- including members of SEA.