OC Blog

What If Rocco Were On A Corporate Board of Directors?

There's some interesting discussion in the comments section of my earlier post, "Fred Smoller's Rocco-mentary."

In response to a question about what important work OUSD's Area 51 Trustee Rocco disrupts, Chapman U. professor and Rocco-mentarian Fred Smoller replies:

What important work, "Rock Me" asks? How about a $100 million bond issuance that was discussed at the last Board meeting, or the drug testing program being discussed this week? OUSD has a $250 million budget, 31,000 students, and several thousand employees. Would the private sector ever tolerate a "Rocco" on the board of directors of a similarly sized corporation?

Smoller has point - up to a point.

Fred Smoller's Rocco-mentary

Fred Smoller -- Chapman University political science professor, political consultant and erstwhile Democratic candidate for Assembly (no-prize to first commentator to name the year and GOP opponent) -- is producing a documentary on Orange Unified School District Trustee Steve Rocco. (H/T to Total Buzz).

A Rocco-mentary, if you will.

Smoller has posted some clips on YouTube. They're entertaining to watch if one has never seen Rocco in action.

Rocco Recall Won't Make February Ballot...Or Any Other

I just received an e-mail update from the Greater Orange News Service that the effort to recall OUSD Trustee Steve Rocco (who represents OUSD Area 6) is sputtering to a halt and will fail to submit the necessary 15,000 signatures by September 20 to qualify it for the February 5, 2008 ballot.

I'm not surprised. As I wrote a couple of weeks ago, this recall campaign has been absolutely invisible. Not only will they fail to make the deadline for the February 5 ballot, but I doubt it will ever qualify for any ballot.

Greater Orange News Service provides a pretty spot-on analysis of why that is:

More Censorship At Orange Unified

I spotted this on the Greater Orange New Service:

The “Missing Gap” in Public Comments about OUSD Trustee Wes Poutsma and The "Missing" Rocco Two Minutes

For the second time in less than a year, Orange Unified School District Superintendent Dr. Thomas Godley ordered the censorship of an Orange Unified School District Trustee Meeting before it was broadcast to the community. Godley ordered two parts of the June 21st, 2007 Orange Unified School District Trustee Meeting public regular session to be cut from the public showing of the meeting over the OUSD cable station. As of the publication deadline of this report, Dr. Godley and OUSD Board President Kim Nichols did not answer emails requesting a statement from them about the censorship of the broadcast to the Greater Orange Community.

Lawsuit Filed Against OUSD Censure Of Steve Rocco

The Greater Orange News eBlog reports that a lawsuit has been filed against the Orange Unified School District for its censure of Trustee Steve Rocco:

Arguing that the Orange Unified School Board Censure of Trustee Steve Rocco violated the First Amendment Free Speech protections, the Brown Act and the California Constitution, Californians Aware President Richard McKee filed a lawsuit against the October 12th Orange Unified School Board Resolution of Censure against Rocco. The 27 page petition demands the OUSD Board rescind the Resolution of Censure and take steps to insure that free speech is not violated at the OUSD meetings in the future.

McKee had appeared before the OUSD Board arguing against the wording of the resolution and warning of legal consequences if the resolution was approved as written. The Censure Resolution was prepares by the OUSD legal team represented by Parker and Covert law firm. McKee has tangled with the law team before winning against them in similar Brown Act cases involving OUSD and other Southern California school districts.

Greater Orange News eBlog Bares Its Fangs

Does this strike you as a "radical" statement?:

“How school districts are run belongs under the control of local parents and taxpayers, not the State or Federal governments."

How about this?:

“Federal control of education strikes at the very heart of the system of federalism…"

Or this?:

“We therefore believe that all attempts to increase State or Federal control over any aspect of our education system or its funding should be resisted."

The scribe(s) behind the Greater Orange eBlog think they are.

These statements were lifted from the Education Alliance's website. The fact they are held up by the Greater Orange eBlog as examples of "radicalism" says far more about the Greater Orange News eBlog (GONE) than about the Education Alliance.

The Greater Orange News eBlog has its roots as a widely-distributed e-mail newsletter sent out during the successful 2001 recall that ended the conservative majority on the Orange Unified School District Board. And it shows whenever they write an "election analysis" about the Education Alliance -- which they report on with the same dedication objectivity and factualness Pravda brought to the Cold War. The robotic application to the Education Alliance of pejoratives like "radical" and "fringe" reminds me of Communist Bloc news reporting: "The democratic peace-loving peoples of the USSR condemn the war-mongering statements by the imperialist government of the USA..."

By way of example, I offer Greater Orange News eBlog's "history" of the Education Alliance's founding:

The Education Alliance is the brainchild of Orange County political activist and ultra conservative attorney Mark Bucher and his allies Jim Righeimer (now Orange County Housing Commissioner) and Frank Ury (now Mission Viejo Councilman). The idea was to elect fringe ultra Christian right extremists (which they label as conservative) to local school boards.

Really? That was our idea?

I was there in Mark Bucher's living room in late 1993 with Jim Righeimer, Frank Ury and number of other Prop. 174 volunteers when we met to discuss forming a group that could be some sort of counter-weight to the teachers unions in school board elections. At no point did one of us say, "Remember! Our goal is to elect fringe ultra Christian right extremists -- which we will label as conservative -- to local school boards!"

We didn't care whether or not a candidate was religious. Our concern was to find and assist candidates who supported back-to-basics education, local control, maximizing parental choice (they didn't necessarily have to support vouchers) and charter schools.

Ask For Your Money Back

In the wake of yesterday's post on the Wacko Rocco and the Orange Unified School District (via Professor Fred Smoller at Chapman), here's the quantified bad news and proof of the general inability and incompetence of these bureaucrats to run a school system: BAD NEWS IN STATE TEST SCORES FOR OUSD.  I particularly appreciated the unidentified writer's reference to the idea that a lot of money's been spent here, perhaps mitigating the usually certain complaints and scripted reactions from the bureaucrats and the unions that they're continually being stiffed.  In part,

The California Department of Education released the latest school testing data on August 31, 2006. Orange Unified School District, like California as a whole, had bright spots and as has happened since standardized testing was instituted some scores went up. However, the released state testing data results reveal continued troubling results for OUSD at schools across the district. Those continuing problems continue to be overlooked by the current OUSD administration with its “one size fits all” approach of top down management style and millions of educational dollars invested in the controversial consultant program called Focus on Results. For the millions of educational tax dollars invested, OUSD has yet to see any bang for its buck. In fact the test data points to Focus on Results appearing to have caused unfocused results in schools across the district.

While a hallmark of the model Good to Great companies (a model that OUSD Superintendent Dr. Godley has embraced) is to acknowledge and take ownership of “bad news”, as in the past the current OUSD administration has again tried to put the best spin possible on the overall troubling test results just released and ignored the ownership required from the Jim Collins’ Good to Great business success stories. Despite the millions of educational tax dollars spent on the OUSD administrators’ pet bureaucratic Focus on Results program, OUSD did no better than the rest of Orange County in “test growth”, but at the same time had two more schools named by the state as underperforming Program Improvement Schools. In addition, subgroup populations at schools across the district had dropping test scores which are yet another early warning for the OUSD Administration.

An examination of the just released OUSD scores shows major problems in the important Academic Progress Index (API) test scores for the federally mandated student population subgroups. Orange County has 12 unified (K-12) school districts. Orange Unified was second only to Santa Ana Unified ( the only other Orange County school district that has had a significant Focus on Results commitment) in the number and percentage of schools failing to meet their mandated API goals.

How is this acceptable?  This kind of performance would never be condoned in the corporate world (here's just ONE example from the private sector when performance goes south -- Ford to cut salaried jobs by one-third -- of course, Ford also has a new CEO and a resigned COO this month too).  Yet, I'll bet Bill Ford's severance that the OUSD School Board, including the Steverino, keeps their jobs (as will District Administration) and take no accountability for these dismal numbers.

Ongoing, continually poor performance in the real world causes real results and changes -- we don't spend our money at those places anymore, in fact we request it back.  I'd ask for a refund.

Roccomania

From the Greater Orange News eBlog by PoliSci Chair Fred Smoller of Chapman University:

In 2004, Steven Rocco was elected to the Orange Unified School Board. He says that something called the "Partnership" runs Orange County, and that Albertsons and Kodak are out to get him. Political observes concluded his victory was due to "voter fatigue" and an inaccurate ballot description. Others say they voted for Rocco to demonstrate their displeasure with the school board majority. If so, they have made their point. Regardless, after two years, it is clear nearly everyone that he is unfit for this position and should resign.

Mr. Rocco has made it a policy not to attend closed session meetings of the Board because he feels that all issues should be discussed in public. This would be insensitive and unwise, and could possibly expose the district to a lawsuit. Closed sessions are where sensitive personnel and other disciplinary matters are discussed. Moreover, one has to take part in the deliberations that precede the public meeting in order to make an informed decision. Mr. Rocco does not have to agree with his colleagues, but he does have to listen to them.

Mr. Rocco is not seriously engaged in the issues. He consistently abstains and reflexively votes "no" on everything before the board--including the approval of the minutes-without offering any coherent explanation. Also, Mr. Rocco is completely unresponsive to the needs of his constituents, or to his Board colleagues, reporters, or district administrators. He does not return telephone calls, emails, or other efforts to contact him. He should resign and thus spare the district an expensive recall election. The board should then appoint someone such as his opponent to replace him.

More on the Steverino at Total Buzz: Former Dem boss gets the cold shoulder.  It is time for this guy to go -- a joke's a joke and this one's just plain stale.

Not the Worst Idea You'll Hear Today

Ohmigod...more competition for the CTA and the educational establishment: Tutoring US math students adds new twist to Indian outsourcing saga. 

As parents and educational consumers have apparently no way to cause Barbara Kerr and her minions to produce quality product and pull graduation rates out of the basement, the free market and entrepreneurial technologists offer an alternative -- at a helluva margin.  With cheap bandwidth, VoIP and the interactive capability of the Internet, this service is a natural.

Now if only the Assembly Dems can figure out a way to unionize these Indian folks as they're trying to do to an environmental bill.

Unionize This

Not the worst idea you'll hear today: Outsourcing Teaching.