Recorded with my son Forest Arturo Dunn. Forest's great friend Rick Moe on drums. c larryburldunn
I have had the most difficult job drawing attention to the most egregious failure of government that I have personally experienced. I’m going to try again. This story is about my former employer, a public school district, getting away with the theft (or the “borrowing”) of emplyee Social Security money! I have enough proof to believe that theft occurred, but it would take a real government audit to prove it in a xourt of law. So far, no government agency cares enough to do that audit, so I have come to two conclusions: 1. The utter lack of transparency in the management of taxpayer dollars is indefensible; and, 2. The theft of Social Security money at LOCAL levels is a new part of the right wing attempt to brankrupt ALL aspects of the government expect the war making economy.
In this new posting I have eliminated all quotations from MY emails to government in order to shorten the posting. I will quote from the emails I received. Most of them are from one particular person in the state auditors office back in 2007. Follow the dates. Notice the long gaps in time. Notice how long it took to get an actual admission from the auditor’s office that something was wrong.
I ask you to post a comment to my blog. Whatever you think, go ahead and write it. Maybe I should just let this go. Maybe I’m wrong in thinking that it matters. Please let me know, but if you find it shocking let’s stir it up and demand accountability! I don’t think it’s an isolated case. I’m betting that it goes on nation wide.
I am removing the name of the state and I do not want to reveal the name of the school district for only one reason- in my experience it is always and only the STUDENTS and TEACHERS who pay the price for school district malfeasance. I have saved all the emails and would share them with anyone who I thought could use them to do good.
Okay, all my emails were requests for an investigation because I was being told by many fellow employees that yearly Social Security statements showed zero income for various years.
Date: Wed, 31 Jan 2007
Mr. Dunn,
We are in the process of contacting the school
district's independent audit firm to ask them to look into your concern regarding the earnings amount showing on your Social Security Statement of Earnings for the last 2 years. I will contact you again once I hear back from the audit firm.
From March 22, 2007
Mr. Dunn,
We contacted the independent audit firm prior to them going back out to the District in February asking them to look into this issue and report
back to us. After receiving your e-mail yesterday, we contacted the audit firm to find out the results of their inquiry. They have not yet returned our call. I will contact you by Monday or Tuesday next week to update you or let you know what the audit firm found.
March 27, 2007
Mr. Dunn,
We are still following up on your question. ____ ____, on my staff, spoke with one of the partners at the audit firm who was going to check on what her staff found out. She told ____ she would call her back yesterday or today. I have left two messages for the partner today on her office phone and cell phone. I will continue to follow-up on this to get you an answer.
April 2, 2007
Mr. Dunn,
We understand your frustration. We get many calls and e-mails with
questions regarding school districts and rely on the contract auditors
to answer some of the questions if they are currently auditing a
district.
If we do not get an answer back from the Districts auditors with in the
next week, we will check into your question ourselves.
Mr. ______
April 3, 2007
Mr. Dunn,
I explained to you in my last e-mail that we rely on the contract auditors to answer some of the questions we receive, if they are currently auditing a district. I also reassured you that if we did not receive an answer to your question from the auditors within the next week, we would check into your question ourselves.
You sent a return e-mail thanking us, but then did not allow us that week before questioning our integrity. I can assure you that our agency takes seriously every inquiry we receive and that we respond to every question or request for information with an answer or the best referral we can find to help with the question or request.
April 9, 2007
Mr. Dunn,
You do not have to wait on us to take whatever action you feel is appropriate. We will call the contract audit firm today, as promised,
to see if they have an answer to your question. If they do not, we will research your question ourselves. We cannot estimate how long it will take to obtain an answer. The "contract" audit firm, which I am referring to, contracts with the school district and not with the Office of the Auditor General. We have no specific statutory authority to make an independent audit firm answer an employee's question, but asked them to look into your question.
We will send you information on your question when we obtain it.
April 10, 2007
Mr. Dunn,
We have received information that indicates that the District may not have filed its Form W-3s (Transmittal of Wage and Tax Statements) with the Social Security Administration for the tax years 2002, 2003, and 2004. We are in the process of verifying that social security withholdings for those years were properly withheld and submitted.
We will provide you with further information on this matter when we have concluded our research.
Monday, April 23, 2007
Mr. Dunn,
The contract auditors have determined and confirmed with the Social
Security Administration (SSA), that W-2s were not filed timely by the
District with the SSA for the calendar years 2002, 2004, and 2005. The
District's payroll clerk has since submitted W-2s for those years to
SSA; however, discrepancies exist among the documents submitted to the
SSA for each year, as well as 2003, which must be resolved by the
District by working with the SSA.
My division, the Accounting Services Division, will be taking over this
matter from the contract audit firm at this point and following up with
the District payroll clerk and other District officials, as well as with the Social Security Administration, until each of these years'
discrepancies are resolved.
If you, or your fellow employees, are showing -0- dollar amounts for any other years than 2002, 2003, 2004, and 2005 on your Social Security
Statements, please provide me with faxed copies of those statements with the names and social security numbers blacked out, so we can expand our review to the affected years.
I will continue to keep you updated on this issue until it is resolved.
From the state office of the Attroney General, May 3, 2007:
Hello Mr. Dunn: I will review this with others in the office. At this
juncture, this matter is not being treated as a violation of criminal
law. We have been in touch with the District through its legal counsel
and we will continue to monitor the situation. Thank you for your
vigilance in spotting this problem and in reporting it.
From the Auditor’s office, May, 3, 2007
Mr. Dunn,
Rather than forwarding my previous e-mail to all your co-workers, you may let them know that -
The Office of the Auditor General has confirmed that W-2 forms for at least 3 years (2002, 2004, and 2005) were not filed by the District with the Social Security Administration (SSA) in a timely manner. The Auditor General's and Attorney General's Office are currently looking into this matter to help ensure that it gets resolved.
As stated before, I will continue to keep you updated on this issue.
From the state Ombudsman, May 18, 2007
Mr, Dunn,
We contacted the Auditor General's Office and learned that the concern about the district not submitting W-2s was not included in their audit report because they issued the report before they had all the information about this problem. Nevertheless, they have been in contact with the district and the district is working on resolving the problem. The state Attorney General's Office has also been in contact with the district's attorney's to explain to them how serious this is.
Well, Dear Reader, do you think you or I would be allowed to get away with this kind of crap if it was one of us who was this sloppy with our accounting? Would our lawyer be notified about how serious the matter was?
I recently read a CNN Money report that the current amount of money “borrowed” from Social Security and Medicare by the federal government is FIVE TRILLION DOLLARS! How much more is unaccounted for from private and local governments? Are there any “IOUs” on file for that money? Is there any “good faith and credit of the United States government” backing up us little people? Are we “too big to fail?” I think so.
Get Common Sense Into the Debate
And Grandstanding Out
So this morning on the Stephanie Miller show I heard (from another room), I think it was Representative George Miller talking about the House Vote to Protect Pupils Against Abusive Discipline. He was raising the teacher terrorist alert level to red- danger, danger teachers are tying kids to chairs, sitting on them, taping them to desks. Students, especially Special Education students, are being abused and humiliated. Obviously, nothing short of a new federal law can save the day!
Now kids, let’s put on our thinking caps. Do you think there is a state in this Union, or a county in any of the fifty states that does not already have laws against such things? I mean is it legal to tie a child up and deny them water, food, and bathroom breaks? Where Representative Miller? Before today I mean.
Teachers are being demonized as part of the current racket that passes as reform. Wouldn’t you like to know who was testifying about these events? I’d ask them, “And to whom did you report these abuses before you came to Washington today? Did they arrest the teacher? Did they arrest the administrators who run Guantanomo Elementary School? Madman Middle School. Hellspawn High?”
Can we get real or not in this country? I call on Congress Miller and his committee to name the districts, the schools, and the teachers. There is simply no freakin’ way a new federal law is needed because existing laws cover all of that!
This is the kind of mindless crap I would expect from a Republican, and from them it’s not so mindless because their lies are simply part of the inexorable march toward privatization of education. This country DID need federal intervention to end segregation, but acts like these are not necessary. This bullshit will be used to smear teachers, not administrators! I can just here the Queen Bees and King Crabs now, “I tried to get rid of Mr. Drone after that first incident when he killed a student, but the Union protected him. He had tenure! We must stop the slaughter! Outlaw the Unions. Untie our hands.”
Queen Bees and King Crabs- the Role Models for the New Anti-Teacher School District
I know the difference between strict and mean. I could give examples from all walks of life, but my blogs are about school improvement. The strictest principal I ever worked under was an anti-environmentalist, right wing Republican. The meanest superintendent, well it’s a tie, but I’ll go with the woman from a Democratic family. And, as if I need full disclosure, I’m an Obama Democrat.
This principal expected you to follow orders and he noticed if you didn’t, but he instilled a pride in his teachers unmatched in my seventeen years of experience. Mr. G came in with a team. His asst. principal was a rough looking man who nobody wanted to mess with. Nothing is so comforting to a teacher who is learning proper classroom teaching, and therefore discipline, than an asst. principal who kids don’t want to see! The counselor was a woman who was the ONLY counselor in my teaching career who could get things done on time by herself. She worked alone, and like that great blues song, when she worked alone she preferred to be by herself! But, on the first day of school student schedules were ready (and teachers had input); the plan of distribution was announced; teachers knew exactly what was what.
Mr. G.’s method of creating happy teachers was so simple it points out how demoralized teachers were before he came. He’d start the year by saying, “I intend for this school to be the best school in the district. If you don’t want the same thing you shouldn’t be here.” To meet with individual families, he instituted the only after-school meeting system I ever saw that would have every teacher present, along with the counselor, one or both principals, and a representative of special ed., when appropriate. We’d meet until 5 p.m. or later without complaint. If a parent showed up late he’d say, “Ms. T….., you’ve kept my teachers waiting.” If little Johnny wasn’t there as well as Mommy or Daddy, he’d say, “I told you we needed Johnny to be here. Now we’ll make an all-call on the PA and if he doesn’t show up we’ll meet for a little while and then reschedule for a proper meeting.” UNHEARD OF CHUTZPAH!
Mr. K., the asst. principal was brilliant. One day he got wind of two boys who were rumored to have an after-school fight planned. He went up to each one and said, “You boys know we don’t allow those baggies in this school. I’ll tell you what, I won’t send you home today, but I want your belts. Now.” For the rest of the day these two boys had one hand busy keeping their pants up!
The counselor broke up a long-running habit of our middle-school girls running in (in groups) and saying, “So-and-so is spreading such-and such a rumor and….” Boom, automatic counseling session, usually lasting the entire math or language arts class. You see the favorite activity of inept counselors and asst. principals is to drop WHATEVER they are doing (like scheduling for the upcoming semester or grade reports for all students), closing the door, and having little heart-to-hearts, or little tough love sessions. Twelve to fourteen-year-olds played them like a cheap violin!
I know the difference between effective leadership and bullshit game playing. You can’t run a school on the basis of “All our parents are our customers.” The customer is sometimes the biggest problem. Even after I was effective at motivation and discipline I’d have the occasional student who was not afraid to push to the penultimate limit, but not when Mr. K. was in charge of discipline. In the last several years, when I knew that no phone call to home had worked and no threat to be sent to the office would work (students are the first to learn when the office is weak), I’d say, “You know what, I will not tolerate this. I don’t care what anyone says, if you are allowed to win this battle of wills, I don’t WANT to work here. I will not give up; YOU must change!” You know, it always worked.
Whew! Well, on to queen bees and king crabs. I had to establish my “creds.” I served under, let’s see, at least seven superintendents in seventeen years. Until the last two there was only one basic kind- the ones who did whatever it took to keep the district financially afloat without the embarrassment of state take-over. Finally, they got just the right asshole and he straightened it out. To do it he got rid of our school supplies we were used to requisitioning from the warehouse and then got rid of most of the warehouse workers; he froze teacher pay; he instituted a four-day week; and finally he did a Reduction-In-Force of many teachers. It didn’t matter to him or the board that the students and teachers suffered from a lack of supplies, that good teachers moved on, willingly or not, or that classroom size increased and instructional time diminished. He had only one function and that was to put the books right and avoid the embarrassment of a threatened state takeover.
A highly politicized and experienced group slowly took control of our school board, as could happen in any district. They had a little darling in mind to instill as superintendent and they did it. Immediately the tone in our district changed. We’d go to school board meetings and hear, “The same road that brought you into this district will take you out again.” “There’s a new school bus in town. Get on it or get out.” The newly installed queen inherited a clean financial slate and her first moves were to buy a fleet of small cars for administrators to drive in to and from work (with school-supplied gas), a remodeling of administrative offices including a bunch of flat screen TVs and new computers, and a really fancy desk for her to bask behind.
The fallout began immediately. The director of transportation questioned her use of funds for private cars when he needed some new school buses. He’s outta here! A woman I knew who had worked her way up from teacher to counselor to principal asked for some explanations about superintendent-mandated changes in her high school. She’s outta here! Administrators who worked year-by-year with no other job security than that one-year contract either kissed ass or got kissed off. Teachers got the message when it came to scrutinized behaviors, but those in-the-hallway gripe sessions were intense. A person like me might think, ah the time is ripe to fight back! Wrongggg! Those fatal six words, “I’m afraid I’ll lose my job.”
Only two teachers routinely spoke out. One was the local president of the American Federation of Teachers union. And the other was an AFT member- me. I am a solo musician and I worked alone, and when I worked alone I preferred to be by myself (not politically wise). I came at them in the “Call to the Public” open sessions. I was careful enough to draw attention to things such as the lack of teacher supplies or money for same and the lack of soap (!) in student bathrooms. I always focused on issues that were student-related. But when the board or the superintendent lashed out at us, I’d walk to the front row and hold out the microphone of my tape recorder and scowl right back at them!
This was in the anti-union state of Arizona, but at the time, I had a bit of protection, which has since been done away with. I was a “continuing teacher” (in my fourth or higher contract year) and they couldn’t fire me if I could prove I was telling the truth and if my classroom performance was adequate (never challenged). But they could do some things. I saw the head of security photographing me from the corners of board meetings. He brought a video camera to any teacher-called after-school meeting we held on campus. (We stopped that pretty quickly by meeting off-campus.) Once, when I had reached the three-minute limit on speaking at a call to the public the board president called “time.” I immediately stopped in mid-sentence. I turned around and there was the head of security two steps away from my back. If I had said another word he would have had the pleasure of grabbing me! Sheer intimidation tactics.
In the end, two employees who had been run off from the district allied with a third community member and, in an election with high teacher turn out, took over the board. But, they did not get rid of that Queen Bee by calling her out in board meetings for her gross incompetence and mismanagement. They bought out the remainder of her multi-year contract!! They paid her around $100,000.00 to go away!
Then they hired a King Crab who was every bit an asshole as the Queen Bee, but wayyyy smarter and HE started raising hell with us! First, he told principals to tell teachers they were not allowed to speak at the Call-to-the-Public unless they were parents of students in the district and they spoke as parents, not as teachers. To my ever-lasting regret I obeyed that dictum at the first board meeting under his term. I did it out of respect to a new leader. I had the goods on him and it was a highly attended meeting with a bunch of ticked-off parents. Damn!
The issue involved a state-mandated teacher training. Those of us who were not “grandfathered” in with an English As a Second Language certification had to attend several trainings to receive certification. The deadline wasn't until NEXT year, but he had a long list of teachers who had not received the training. Guess why? Even though most of us had attended the training sessions, the district ADMINISTRATOR in charge of organizing the sessions had hired a consultant who WAS NOT certified by the state to give the training. It was entirely an administrative error. I was armed with emails from that administrator promising that the trainings would count, but he didn’t get the job done. He had simply missed the deadline of having his consultants certified. I also had a series of emails from a long-time employee wherein the personnel director assured her that she could get the training done, at her own expense, over the summer. Yet, a group of twenty or so teachers who had taken the training from the district and that one who was going to pay her own way over the summer were up for dismissal.
Yes, we kept our jobs then, but now, in Arizona, such incompetence as the administrators displayed could indeed lead to punishment. For instance, now in Arizona, on short notice, a teacher who had worked up to a pay scale of $40,000.00 a year or more- a person with decades of experience and a masters degree can be offered a contract equal to a twenty-two-year-old fresh-out-of –college. In fact, in my former district and any other Arizona district, they could be replaced with a legal alien! It’s so sick. In Arizona where so many people freak out about illegal Mexican migrant farm workers performing stoop labor that few Americans could endure, my district was in the business of hiring groups of Filipinos and no one complains (in public)!
Yes, those teachers let go in the Reduction-in-Force were needed after all, but they didn’t come back (were they contacted as law required?). Filipinos came over. The old robber-baron dictum applied- at any time I can hire newly arrived immigrants to take the jobs of old immigrants.
Accountability for such meanness has not come from any level of government! Teachers and students pay the price every time. Bad leadership can run a district into the ground and by the time the type of accountability being discussed now takes place it’s too late for years of students. It’s too late to sort the bad from the good. Teacher unions are not the problem. They could be the solution. Even in the most under-performing district there are some good teachers getting thrown out with the dirty bathwater of change.
Obama’s Approach Will Succeed…
In Opening the Door to Privatized Education
I taught school for seventeen years beginning at age 40 so I have some insights into the ongoing debate on education reform that may not occur to a teacher who began at age 22. Before teaching I spent five years working in radio, a year in a meat packing plant, time as a fish processor, day labor, and many jobs in warehouses and light manufacturing (while I dreamed of being a professional musician). I have a lot of one-liners based upon this variety of experience: 1. If one believes, as I do, that the amount of supervision a worker receives reflects the desire of management for quality, then screen doors and wire rope are more important than students; 2. The best way to ensure the privatization of education is to keep the current phony auditing system intact and keep throwing more money into those corrupt hands; 3. No country can find enough angels to serve as school teachers, so let’s define teaching as a job and not as a “calling”; 4. The dumbest people I ever worked with were the school superintendents and principals who were strongly supported by school boards; etc. Oh, one more thing- working in a public school system taught me how the Nazis were able to subdue the German people.
I had the experience of attending two conferences before my first year of teaching. These two wonderful conferences fired me up so I entered as a true believer who intended to be an “Agent for Change” bringing a “Paradigm Shift” to my district.
Soon, I learned that my Assistant Principal did not intend for me to take the conferences to heart. He simply was required to provide two teachers in order to meet the requirements to continue receiving some grant money. About year later I learned that this Asst. Principal was the “head” of Vocational Education in the district. This was around the time he tried to stab me in the nuts. Think I’m kidding?
Before I taught one day in my new career, I attended two exciting conferences dealing with new concepts in Vocational Education. Thanks to the Carl D. Perkins Vocational and Technical Education Act there was BIG money available for schools that truly sought to update these programs. The thrust of the ideas behind the money was to remove old-fashioned “shop” classes taken by a subset of students and replace them with career education for all students. One conference was a hands-on training in aspects of what came to be called (at least in Arizona) Level 1- we built bridges out of toothpicks and then submitted them to stress tests that measured the breaking point; we built race cars and ran them down ramps to measure which ones went farther (reminiscent of Cub Scouts). An essential element was discussion among participants on best-design ideas and instruction in basic architecture, friction, etc.
The other conference (Level 2) utilized one-armed robots feeding automated mills and lathes. Students could write programs that caused the robot arm to feed the mill or lathe, which would then carve into plastic blocks or turn wooden dowels into furniture-like pieces (according to student-written commands), then the arm would remove the completed work and stack it up or set it upright. The year was 1990 and I remembered a book from one of my history classes that examined how Japan had built up an extensive tool and die industry prior to its epic surge in the automotive industry. I was eager to share these activities. The idea was to utilize technology as a motivator to all students. Put more “stuff” and activities into science and math classes. Put more science and math into Vocational classes.
The dreams instilled by those summer conferences lay almost dead until I was approached by a state employee in charge of assisting schools with grant fulfillment. He was fed up with the district and gave me the courage to go straight to the Superintendent and raise hell. The superintendent had his hands full already with financial accountability issues. Long-story-short he told my Asst. Principal to hand over the district’s vocational “files” to me. That man did so. They were letters thrown into a cardboard box! The letters had a consistent theme- we (the state) are withholding this year’s funds until we receive last year’s reports). There were several variations upon that theme, but I can’t bear to compose that fugue of failure.
Now these funds were not the largess that went to schools that were playing ball. Those we were missing out on entirely. These were more basic funds that probably were being used to finance the district’s old-fashioned Vocational classes. The state wasn’t requiring that all-important paradigm shift, just a basic accounting to prove the funds had somehow been spent on Vocational Ed. The only people who suffered as a result of this lame accountability system were students!
The combined pressure of that state man and me (a vocal/local pest) led to a Superintendent-mandated string of visits to other Arizona schools to study how they handled Voc. Ed. The first trip was to be made by my Asst. Principal and myself. I met him in the early morning darkness. I plopped into the passenger seat and felt a sharp bite in my upper thigh/lower buttocks area, about two inches from my balls. What the hell! It was from one of those windshield ice scrappers WITH A METAL INSERT that had been shoved down into the crevice between seat and seat back, sharp corner up!
The Asst. Principal, whose initials are B.S., apologized profusely. He drove me to my home where I cleaned the wound and changed out of my bloodstained underwear and torn slacks. Teachers assured me later that B.S. was a good man and this was surely an unplanned accident.
B.S.! Imagine my lack of concern when B.S. was non-renewed.
As the visits to other school districts continued I saw the sincere efforts of school districts to get this incentive money. Two districts stood out. In one students were actually building the new teacher housing units from the ground up! In another, the high school had a video system whereby students produced and distributed the daily announcements like a daily local news show. They also had an alternative restaurant with student waitpersons, chefs, and nutritionists! I asked the TEACHER who ran the grant aspect of these and other fine programs, “How do you get these things done?” He answered, “Well you may not know that most grants come with a 10% or more clause for use in administering the grants. In most districts the administration skims that straight into the Maintenance and Operations budget, which is totally controlled at the upper administrative levels. WE, however use that money to pay a stipend to TEACHERS to plan and execute change in our programs.”
My superintendent refused to do that, saying, “I thought teachers were supposed to care enough to give up some personal time for the kids.” The funds, year in and year out, that were supposed improve vocational education were stolen as far as I’m concerned. I guess I was just a “sore ass.” Yeah, a sore ass with a cardboard box full of evidence of why Obama’s educational reforms will fail without a revolution in financial accountability!
I heard a perfect juxtaposition of stories on NPR today. The first one I heard talked about how depression is not so much a “disease” as it is a normal condition. The author talked about how demoralization is not the same as depression. American teachers are demoralized. Well, only the good ones are- the others are only interested in keeping their jobs.
I guarantee you that No-Child-Left-Behind was just another bill with a poison pill. As we can so readily see now with a black, Democratic President trying to reform the health care system in the U.S., the new “Radical Republicans” are out to scuttle anything and everything Obama proposes. So why the hell did he support the wholesale firing of teachers today (3/1/’10) in a speech to the Chamber of Commerce, a group that is owned lock, stock, and barrel by the Radical Republican agenda?
Reagan killed the Aircraft Controllers Union and energy independence. H.W. Bush instilled the idea that religious organizations (a thousand points of hypocrisy) will “clothe the naked and feed the poor.” Baby Bush and his evil Dick encouraged Americans to mistrust and spy on one another (good Nazis in their Fatherland, eh Homeland.) Clinton gave us NAFTA and No Child Left Behind, among other disasters.
It’s time to realize that the Radical Republicans want power more than Democrats want justice. How do we make Obama, with whom the Democrats will rise or fall, see the light?
One idea is to force ALL government organizations to publish easily accessible facts on how every damn dollar is spent. Okay the CIA and the NSA, etc. can be exempt. Then eliminate the auditing agencies and allow teachers and community members to publicize what they find. Teachers can’t survive telling the truth, however unless they are UNIONIZED. It’s how you avoid stepping in dodo in the dark- shine a bright light on it! I have more to share in other postings on how feeble current auditing systems are. But, I tell you, sir, we can’t continue throwing money we don’t have into a broken system because, just as good Germans were beaten into submission by Nazis, teachers without protection will submit to anything because of the six most common words I heard as a teacher- “I’m afraid I’ll lose my job.”
One last thing- the other Radical Republicans, after the Civil War, wanted to tear up the plantations and give every slave head-of-household forty acres and a mule. How just! What a change that would have meant to many families for generations! Instead of further alienation of your base you could actually strengthen Unions AND save public education! Before spending another dime, make school administrators accountable for the money they now waste.
Open Tuning, key of C.
Inspired by that Supreme Court decision that extended imminent domain to insane levels. My song- feel free to share for non-profit.