Accusation against SOMA School Board member
chalmers said:
While levels are the bogeyman in our district, if levels caused the achievement gap there would be no gap in our unlevelled elementary schools and mostly unleveled middle schools (except for math) but The real issue is that equality of opportunity is not enough for those who want equality of outcome.
I didn't bring up the topic to debate the pros/cons of levels or possible root-causes of the achievement gap. I brought it up to show how Mr. Fields' lawsuit could impact the district/BOE/budget, and how having Ms. Baker and Ms. L-M removed could influence the outcome:
Suit Charges South Orange-Maplewood with Continued Discrimination, Seeks $12M to Fix ‘De Facto Segregation’
Feb-27-2018
...The hope, said BPW legal counsel Robert Tarver, is to spur the district to “develop a comprehensive plan, supported by budget dollars, to de-level its academic structure, abandon tracking as a tool to segregate students by race, overhaul its disciplinary process, provide the necessary supports for African-American students, and recruit, hire and retain African-American teachers.”
(ETA: Which is why it's political intrigue that someone from the inside anonymously provided the video to Mr. Fields).
After listening to Sting sing at my daughters graduation we headed into NYC to grab a celebratory dinner. Later that evening, my eldest daughters husband asked if we could drive past the old home in Maplewood and I obliged. After years away, he needed a sobering reminder of why we moved to Northern California, my wife suggested to my son in law to venture onto maplewood online.. and here we are.
I love Maplewood for being exactly the same as when we left.
Congratulations! It was sweet of you to take the time to complete the account re-activation process on this new board just to say 'Hi', and to remind us of your love-hate relationship with MOL, and the town itself.
Hope you are enjoying this thread. Never a dull moment... so I'm sure we'll be seeing you around.
jeebus - what the hell have you folks been talking about for 500 comments?
drummerboy said:
jeebus - what the hell have you folks been talking about for 500 comments?
I dunno -- I think we got on the news or something. I'll put on some coffee for all our out of town guests. Can you pick up some treats from Sanitary Bakery on your way?
sprout said:
drummerboy said:I dunno -- I think we got on the news or something. I'll put on some coffee for all our out of town guests. Can you pick up some treats from Sanitary Bakery on your way?
jeebus - what the hell have you folks been talking about for 500 comments?
Should I go back and read all these posts to catch up? What would I learn?
As for Sanitary Bakery - sweet or savory?
Some of each. Start at the beginning of the thread. Then either decide it's not that relevant to your current situation or that it's already been over-discussed. Skip to the end for some cameos so you can see some old-timers who may eventually make an appearance in your preferred threads. Then enjoy the baked goods.
Coffee's ready. 
drummerboy said:
sprout said:Should I go back and read all these posts to catch up? What would I learn?
drummerboy said:I dunno -- I think we got on the news or something. I'll put on some coffee for all our out of town guests. Can you pick up some treats from Sanitary Bakery on your way?
jeebus - what the hell have you folks been talking about for 500 comments?
As for Sanitary Bakery - sweet or savory?
And some bagels. He said "Northern California", after all.
At least South Orange cops don't frame people for capital crimes the way California cops do.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/05/17/opinion/sunday/kevin-cooper-california-death-row.html
note: since this column ran, Senator Kamala Harris has called on the governor to allow testing and so has John Chiang, the state treasurer and a candidate for governor.
chalmers said:
sprout said:
chalmers said:If Ms. L-M and Ms. Baker were to step down (which is what Mr. Fields is calling for right now), then there are 7 BOE members left.
The Steve Latz majority on the BOE would still control the vote if Ms. L-M were to resign so a new BOE member would be a minority dissenting member and have no impact on the budget. Just keeping it real.
There's a lot I don't know about the lawsuit, or how it will interact with the BOE, but here's my off-the-top-of-my-head thinking. (Note: I'm neither pro-leveling nor pro-deleveling, but I am pro-data-based-decision-making.):
We just deleveled ("STEM Realignment") the high school from a large amount of levels to somewhat more 'normal' levels, without too much drama. I expect Mr. Fields' suit will push for further deleveling by indicating that this initial deleveling was insufficient. This push for further deleveling of the high school could be for the 2019-2020 school year. Three out of the 7 remaining BOE members seem likely to vote for additional realignment. Only one more would be needed to push through this initiative.
For the 2018-2019 school year deleveling, there was more than enough data to indicate that the current levels were failing students, and where those points of failure were. After the first year of the new levels, any data will be unreliable as the implementation will still be in development. In other words, any discussion on further deleveling would be citing examples of where it failed after a first year with the new levels -- but most initial implementations are not optimal in their first year. The argument will be whether to be a good progressive BOE member, and delevel more based on these initial points of failure, or wait another year for more reliable data to after some kinks are worked out.
Removing Ms. Baker and Ms. L-M seems a good strategy for pushing through something too fast that will be highly divisive. And require budgetary support for it.
While levels are the bogeyman in our district, if levels caused the achievement gap there would be no gap in our unlevelled elementary schools and mostly unleveled middle schools (except for math) but there is. The real issue is that equality of opportunity is not enough for those who want equality of outcome.
It could take different people in the same seats to accomplish. With a resignation the board would effectively need to choose someone for just 6 months. Not a lot of time in terms of “school time” but it’s better to snd the right msg and give people that don’t have bias a say.
Sadly, it appears the fallout from this is: she won't resign. we won't recall her, and they'll probably re-elect her. And if you don't like it, it's your problem, not hers.
Ironically, the $127m budget with a partial intent for “integration” will be voted on a BoE tainted by bias and conflict of interest. Let’s see what the sba ethics commission says/does, because that could impact the re-election (if there is one) conversation. Every other BoE member should be outraged by this event. Voters will pay attention at the polls.
There’s no doubt voters will be paying attention. That said, I’m sure many of them will also have a nasty tax hit and a positive vote for rezoning at the top of their list of negatives.
This thread is amazing. Every morning there are 45 new posts and absolutely nothing new.
Well there’s some news on the village green that ethics charges have been filed.
Also news that Roseanne is canceled for racist remarks, much celebration. SLM makes a statement that she has “no plans” to step down, crickets.
kmt said:
Well there’s some news on the village green that ethics charges have been filed.
Yes, by Mr. Fields:
Fields Reports He Has Filed Ethics Complaint Against Lawson-Muhammad
sprout said:
kmt said:
Well there’s some news on the village green that ethics charges have been filed.
Yes, by Mr. Fields:
Fields Reports He Has Filed Ethics Complaint Against Lawson-Muhammad
https://villagegreennj.com/towns/government/fields-reports-he-has-filed-ethics-complaint-against-lawson-muhammad/
Maybe we can file a complaint against Mr. Fields for hypocrisy?
kmt said:
Well there’s some news on the village green that ethics charges have been filed.
Also news that Roseanne is canceled for racist remarks, much celebration. SLM makes a statement that she has “no plans” to step down, crickets.
I’m fluent in cricket. They’re asking why, after 45 new posts every morning, some cogent (even if debatable) reasons for distinguishing between the cases aren’t clear to Lawson-Muhammad’s critics by now.
I don't understand what ethics violation Lawson-Muhammad is guilty off. As far as I can tell, she is guilty of:
1. Driving while stressed and then making things much, much worse by giving the cop a hard time.
2. Failing to have a team of lawyers, PR people and language experts review her apology to ensure that it sounded sufficiently contrite.
tjohn said:
I don't understand what ethics violation Lawson-Muhammad is guilty off.
Trying to pull rank, goes one argument. Fields has written that Lawson-Muhammad invoked her “supposed immunity from being held to the same standards as an average citizen.”
Public officials should act with integrity. I don't think S L-M trying to use her position as a public official to pull strings and get out of a ticket -- which is effectively trying to use her public position for personal gain -- constitutes acting with integrity. Do you?
There's your ethics violation.
f. I will refuse to surrender my independent judgment to special interest or partisan political groups or to use the schools for personal gain or for the gain of friends.
https://www.state.nj.us/education/ethics/coe.htm
On the scale of potential violations of Section F of the ethics code, where do we think trying to talk one's way out of a ticket by mentioning being a BOE member would rate? On a scale of 1-10, I think maybe it's a 1.5.
ml1 said:
f. I will refuse to surrender my independent judgment to special interest or partisan political groups or to use the schools for personal gain or for the gain of friends.On the scale of potential violations of Section F of the ethics code, where do we think trying to talk one's way out of a ticket by mentioning being a BOE member would rate? On a scale of 1-10, I think maybe it's a 1.5.
https://www.state.nj.us/education/ethics/coe.htm
I guess that's to be decided. It can be argued that ethics violations are binary, you either commit one or you don't -- any perceived scale is irrelevant. Look at the firefighter/lifeguard in South Jersey who lost jobs over stealing $7.98 of stuff from Wawa.
And if you are going to put it on a scale, I think you skew your estimate by your very pleasant characterization of her "trying to talk one's way out of a ticket by mentioning being a BOE member ". I think she leaned on the cop pretty good.
Smedley said:
It can be argued that ethics violations are binary, you either commit one or you don't -- any perceived scale is irrelevant.
but that would be a fairly ridiculous argument. Would you recommend the same penalty for a BOE member running a kickback scheme for a decade as you would for a someone who asked a cop to let them off with a warning at a traffic stop?
ml1 said:
Smedley said:but that would be a fairly ridiculous argument. Would you recommend the same penalty for a BOE member running a kickback scheme for a decade as you would for a someone who asked a cop to let them off with a warning at a traffic stop?
It can be argued that ethics violations are binary, you either commit one or you don't -- any perceived scale is irrelevant.
The ethics committee would be the least of that person’s problems.
Smedley said:
Public officials should act with integrity. I don't think S L-M trying to use her position as a public official to pull strings and get out of a ticket -- which is effectively trying to use her public position for personal gain -- constitutes acting with integrity. Do you?
There's your ethics violation.
Jeez. She was having a high-stress day and then proceeded to make a complete *** out of herself and, I imagine, has embarrassed her children to no end. Unless you think being locked up in the stocks on the public square is nothing, I would say she has been punished pretty thoroughly and has learned a lesson from this experience. I don't see how this event affects her ability to be a useful member of the BOE.
I keep seeing variations of 'she was having a bad day'. Do we really know that or is that just a convenient excuse we all give when we get busted. Let's recall that it was 8am when this happened, I wonder how much could have really gone awry that early in the day.
Red_Barchetta said:
I keep seeing variations of 'she was having a bad day'. Do we really know that or is that just a convenient excuse we all give when we get busted. Let's recall that it was 8am when this happened, I wonder how much could have really gone awry that early in the day.
My experience has been that when you have kids, quite a lot can happen by 8 AM to put you into a state of stress.
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As I understand the rules: The board would have 65 days to appoint replacements by a majority board vote, after a public solicitation for interested candidates to apply for consideration. (After 65 days, the county superintendent gets to step in.)
If the replacements were appointed by the end of the July, new replacements for them would be elected this November, to serve out the terms. If after July, the new replacements would be elected in November 2019.
So either way, I think the three members whom you align together would need two more allies, in appointments made after July or in candidates who win this November.