Showing posts with label Jennifer Gottlieb. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Jennifer Gottlieb. Show all posts

Tuesday, November 13, 2012

More business-as-usual at Broward School Board is NOT good news for students, parents or taxpayers; Why the need by Broward Schools officials to impose omertà on school volunteers in Broward?; the very curious Hallandale High School roof situation reveals much about School Board's culture; Why is South Florida news media largely ignoring Broward Schools Diversity Comm. and their Audit Comm.?



CBS4 News/WFOR-TV Miami video: Broward Committee Demands Action For Dilapidated School. Reported by Natalia Zea. February 28, 2011 10:42 PM. Article at 

Despite what she promised over 20 months ago, above, Broward School Board member Ann Murray never kept her promise to the community most directly-affected -Hallandale Beach.
In fact, she has assiduously avoided coming here and being subject to answering pointed questions from constituents about her behavior, judgment and votes.
It's an all-too-familiar refrain from Ann Murray -spouting nonsense, and thinking that the public will fall for her lies.

My last blog post, on various aspects of education policy, corruption and the recent election of new people to the Broward School Board, 
http://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2012/11/speaking-of-diversity-and-backsliding.html
had far too much information to digest for for one post, so I've decided to split it in two and have migrated the second part of it  here so that the important issues I raised can get the proper attention they deserve.
Why the need to impose omertà on school volunteers in Broward?
Just for the record, I'd like to state that among sincere people I know who are very concerned about education in this city, for both educational and business reasons, they honestly feel they've never publicly received an adequate public explanation for the cancelling of the follow-up tour earlier this year by the Broward Schools' Diversity Committee at Hallandale High School, and the overriding of a vote to have the meeting.

So there's no confusion on this point, Supt. Robert W. Runcie and School Board member Ann Murray are the ones who specifically owe this community a full explanation, not staffers.
Runcie said nothing about it on his recent trip to Hallandale Beach City Hall.
But that doesn't mean that people here have forgotten.

According to people who are in a position to know, Ann Murray and her crew looked at the numbers at Hallandale High and made the decision that they were fine with what they saw, and then she made the decision to NOT have the School system's Diversity Committee re-visit the scene of the crime.

Now onto the case of the curious leaking roof at Hallandale High School...

  From: Michael J. Marchetti
To: andrew@addinsol.com
Cc: RR ; Ann Murray ; Laurie Rich Levinson ; Robin Bartleman ; Patricia Good ; Benjamin J. Williams ; Nora A. Rupert ; Maureen S. Dinnen ; Donna Korn ; Katherine Leach ; charlotte8@comcast.net ; Thomas E. Lindner ;mjmsplace9@aol.com ; Patrick O. Reilly

Sent: Monday, May 28, 2012 9:47 AM
Subject: Hallandale High Re-roof Project


Andrew,

In reviewing the agenda items for tomorrow's board meeting I came across item number JJ7 to re-roof HallandaleHS. To my surprise FCM is utilizing the TPM delivery method which is something FCM management told the Board they would not use anymore. As you know TPM is almost identical to the CM@Risk delivery method that allows the District to negotiate as apposed to seeking the lowest contract amount through a competitive bid process. Again, FCM management when asked by the Board specifically said Cypress and Palmview were the last of these types of projects.

In review of the GMP numbers the proposed cost of work is 1,221,678.00 plus fees of 378,000. That translates to the District paying 30% of the cost of work in fees alone. Also noted FCM is justifying these numbers based on an audit done in 2007 by an outside firm when construction costs were at their highest. And finally FCM notes that the plans have been permitted under the old 2007 code but will be resubmitted to the new 2010 code. Why in the world would FCM negotiate a TPM contact with a roofing company as apposed to  hard bidding it after they had a permitted set of plans based on the new code? I suspect one of their answers would be that we came in under the approved budget. This is no special accomplishment when you consider that FCM establishes the budget themselves. If you set it high enough you can always look like a hero. The only way to get to the real number is to competitively bid the job.

It is hard for me to grasp the recent behavior of FCM management. They rushed to issue an NTP for the Zone 4 project when everyone knew there was a problem with the contract. I don't have exact numbers for the settlement but I am sure that cost the District needlessly as FCM management continued to argue on behalf of the contractor. They also continue to argue on behalf of the contractor for delays on the Cypress El. Kitchen project. This despite their own staff and now our internal auditors saying those claims are not justified. FCM and the contractor are claiming that a CCD was not promptly processed by the project manager that caused this extraordinary delay. If this were true FCM management should be held accountable for not having any kind of management report that would have red flagged this over site. The question is how does an important CCD go unprocessed for months without upper management not knowing this. Did they forget to discuss this issue in their staff meetings for six months?

Most recently I notified FCM staff and the Superintendent that they had issued a notice to proceed on the Cooper City HS phased replacement project with only a foundation permit. Again in complete contradiction to FCM management claims to the Board they would never start a project without a complete set of plans that was fully permitted. This past and now current practice of starting projects without complete plans and a permit have been denounced in the past two grand jury reports as always costing the District needlessly.

At the most recent Board workshop on the capital budget I spoke about the Stranahan HS funding of items that are clearly not an emergency or the most critical need of the District. This at the very workshop that Capital Budget came to announce to the Board that their intention was to only fund emergencies and equipment breakdowns because of the shortage of capital funds. Even the most casual observer could look at these events and see despite all of the verbose claims of being fixed and we have better processes now and better people in place are just empty words with no facts to substantiate them. It is clear to everyone that it is business as usual. It is especially clear to the employees who work hard and try to improve the organization that they must keep their heads down in fear and hope they are allowed to remain as FCM management is in the process of purging good employees while hiring more people they can trust to sing in the chorus of we are all better now. Singing in chorus will not change the facts that while claiming financial hardship FCM is authorizing and arguing on behalf of contractors to needlessly spend precious capital funds with no one holding them accountable.

Because the meeting is tomorrow and there is no time for discussion prior to the meeting I am copying the Superintendent and the Board on this issue so they are aware.          

Michael J Marchetti
Physical Plant Operations
Zone 2, Supervisor I

(I've deleted the email addresses and phone numbers that appeared above -except one.) 


In a related matter, who the hell in the Broward School system specifically told members of the Diversity Committee NOT to speak publicly to the news media about what they'd seen and what they knew? 
That person or group of people need to be publicly identified and fired -today!

And seriously, would it kill the local Miami TV stations and newspapers to get off their asses and actually try to find out why administrators feel there's a need for a system of omertà among community volunteers who are, alternately, getting stabbed in the back or getting the shaft from elected officials?

Some of the longstanding personal animus against Murray and which is starting to develop against Supt.  Runcie in this community is directly attributable to the way the Diversity Comm. has been handled and the general state of things at Hallandale High School, though in my case, it doesn't happen to be the only reason to be against Murray.
That's a much longer fact-filled bill of particulars!

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South Florida Sun-Sentinel
FDLE: Contractor allegedly billed school system for Hummer repairs, Disney trip
Records shed new light on district dealings
By Megan O'Matz, Sun Sentinel
October 13, 2012

More than 250 pages of newly released interviews taken in the state's now-closed corruption probe of Broward Schools contain fresh allegations of a contactor padding bills, employees moonlighting on the job and managers shirking their duties.

Among the jolting assertions in the documents obtained by the Sun Sentinel are the reported actions of an executive of The Weitz Company, a construction firm that did considerable business with the school district.

Joanne M. Lenz, a former Weitz employee, told Florida Department of Law Enforcement agents that her boss, Rick Kolb, had billed the school district about $5,000 for personal expenses, including repairs on his Hummer and a family trip to Disney World. The costs were hidden in invoices submitted to the district for new elementary school cafeterias that Weitz built, Lenz told FDLE under oath in June 2011.

She also told the investigators that in 2008 Kolb helped arrange for a golf tournament to benefit the Broward Education Foundation, a School Board entity that awards scholarships. Kolb recruited subcontractors he did business with to participate at a minimum cost of $2,500 for four players, she said.
When the subcontractors later were awarded school district jobs through the Weitz firm, Kolb added the golf tournament entry fees to the bills submitted to the district and then reimbursed the firms, Lenz said.

"The way the School Board was treated was unfair," Lenz, now a data processor at a Broward school, told the Sun Sentinel Friday.

Kolb was not charged with any crime. He could not be reached for comment Friday through his current employer, Suffolk Construction in West Palm Beach. The FDLE documents do not indicate whether Kolb was asked to give his side of the story.

Weitz's senior vice president of Florida operations, Jon Tori, declined comment Friday, saying he was unaware of the allegations made to FDLE.

Broward Schools Superintendent Robert Runcie, who took over the district last year after the investigation ended, said Friday he is working to eradicate mismanagement, corruption and fraud.

"The game's over," he told the Sun Sentinel. "There's a new sheriff in town. We're going to make sure we operate with integrity and that we focus our efforts on doing what's in the best interest of children. Always."

Among his priorities, Runcie said, is hiring additional internal auditors to ferret out waste and abuse.

The documents obtained by the Sun Sentinel are summaries of interviews FDLE conducted on behalf of a Statewide Grand Jury impaneled in February 2010 at the request of then-Gov. Charlie Crist to investigate public corruption.

The Grand Jury did not indict anyone but released a scathing report in February 2011 saying the Broward School District was so grossly mismanaged it could not be explained by incompetence alone but must involve "corruption of our officials by contractors, vendors and their lobbyists."

From the spring of 2010 through most of 2011, school employees, board members, and vendors were invited or subpoenaed to talk to FDLE.

Much of what the individuals told investigators has been widely reported: that the district was a place where contractors were paid in full despite not finishing jobs, safety inspections were compromised, shoddy workmanship was ignored, board members interfered in day-to-day operations and cronyism drove decisions.

But the fresh crop of documents from FDLE provides new insights into district practices and relationships. Often the information provided to state investigators dealt with the alleged misdeeds, large and small, of School District personnel.

Among the assertions: one district employee was selling hurricane shutters on school district time. Another: real estate.

One employee testified that his job included shuttling School Board members to and from the airport and escorting district "guests" around town.

Another described how a school roofing job, botched by one contractor, was given to another, which was found to be a paving company -- not a roofer.

In the process, the paving company hired an engineer, who hired a lobbyist: the husband of former Broward Commissioner Diana Wasserman-Rubin, according to FDLE's report.

In the midst of the Grand Jury investigation, a secretary in the district's construction department reportedly was seen shredding documents.

Many of the interviews focused on the district's Building Department, which inspects school construction to ensure that the work is done properly and according to safety codes.

Employees described how at times district inspectors were furloughed and private companies hired to do their jobs at additional taxpayer expense.

Because of union rules, certified inspectors were laid off and replaced with uncertified staff with more seniority, FDLE learned.

One of the lesser trained individuals told investigators he inspected fire dampers at a job site while the certified inspector "remained in the car."

Another trainee said after about two weeks of instruction, he was sent out to perform 50 to 70 inspections despite being unlicensed. His supervisor signed the reports, he told FDLE.

Investigators looked closely at relationships some School Board members had with lobbyists and vendors.

A former construction project manager, Sharon Zamojski, told FDLE she attended a political fundraiser at one lobbyist's home, where contractors doing business with the school district each donated the $500 maximum allowed by law.

Contractors at the event then telephoned subcontractors instructing them to show up and also make a contribution, FDLE quoted Zamojski saying. Subcontractors "began to arrive and as they were met at the front door, they delivered their contributions in the form of checks in the amount of $500," the documents state.

The documents also include new claims about the actions of School Board member Jennifer Gottlieb, who abruptly resigned in August 2011.

For example: Gottlieb allegedly did not like the color the newly constructed Beachside Montessori School in Hollywood had been painted and ordered it redone, at an additional cost of $1,500.

In an email to the Sun Sentinel on Friday, Gottlieb said: "I don't remember making any request for the color of the school, maybe someone misconstrued my comments about the colors."

FDLE also was told of the chummy relationship some School Board members, Gottlieb included, reportedly had with Kolb, the Weitz executive.

Lenz said under oath that Kolb regularly took board members to lunch. In one case, she said, Kolb and Gottlieb had a five-hour, $400 lunch at Le Meridien, then a resort in Sunny Isles Beach. She said Kolb was reimbursed by their company for the lunch.

Elected officials cannot accept gifts of over $100. Gift disclosure forms filed by Gottlieb do not reflect any lunches.

Gottlieb told the Sun Sentinel Friday: "I have no recollection of a $400 lunch, but I have no idea what he may have expensed. It was my standard practice to pay cash for what I ate."

In May 2010, district auditors reported that taxpayers overpaid $47 million for 15 cafeteria projects because School Board members added unnecessary playgrounds, bus loops and other items to the deals and doled out the projects to favored firms, Weitz among them, rather than award the contracts based on the lowest bid.

I made the last paragraph bold so it would be sure to catch your attention, since if anyone needed a contemporaneous snapshot of this dysfunctional school system, that's it!

-----

City of Hollywood residents and members of the community are invited to meet Broward County Public Schools Superintendent Robert Runcie on Thursday, November 15, 2012 at 6:30 p.m. at the Boulevard Heights Community Center, 6770 Garfield St. in Hollywood. Mr. Runcie will be available to answer questions from the public about local public schools and other education issues. Members of the public who are interested in attending and asking Mr. Runcie a question are encouraged to arrive early to fill out a question card. 
Light refreshments will be provided. 
For more information, contact Donna Green at hollyed1@aol.com.

Wednesday, September 26, 2012

Broward Schools Supt. Robert W. Runcie to visit Hallandale Beach City Hall Thursday night; Bob Norman on latest news re public corruption at Broward School Board; Does Hallandale High School have a long-term future?


Above and below, July 13, 2010 photo by South Beach Hoosier, looking south at the Broward County Schools HQ, 600 S.E. Third Avenue, Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. 

© 2012 Hallandale Beach Blog, All Rights Reserved





















If you have not already seen it, I strongly encourage you to read Channel 10's Bob Norman's latest blog piece regarding  public corruption at the Broward School Board, which concerns Broward County Comm. Lois Wexler's forthright and damning testimony to the statewide Grand Jury.

Report: Lobbyist 'controlled' school board
By Bob Norman
Published On: Sep 26 2012 08:15:08 AM EDT  
Updated On: Sep 26 2012 12:24:48 PM EDT
Below is the recently released report from the grand jury after an interview of Broward County Commissioner Lois Wexler, a former school board member.
In it Wexler describes how lobbyist Neil Sterling "controlled" the school board and how he sold software to the board -- called Riverdeep -- that was faulty and wasted millions of dollars for the district (she says it wasn't, as the report says, "hundreds of millions").
Read the rest of the post at: 
And be sure to read the reader's comments!

Well, it turns out that all the negative things you ever heard about the truly craven nature of former School Board members Bob Parks and Stephanie Kraft are all true -and then some!

The "CCC" referred to in the article that got former School Board counsel Ed Marko so upset directly concerned the Broward County School Board and Hallandale High School and serious allegations of racial discrimination, which later resulted in the Board signing a consent decree.

In related news, Broward Schools Supt. Robert W. Runcie will be at Hallandale Beach City Hall Thursday at 6:30 p.m. to discuss a number of matters.



Above, Supt. Robert Runcie after a public meeting of his Listening Tour at the City of Hollywood's  Fred Lippman Multi-Purpose Center, which was the second time I'd heard him speak in-person, having previously heard him in March at Hollywood Hills High School, also in Hollywood.  
May 14, 2012 photo by South Beach Hoosier. © 2012 Hallandale Beach Blog, All Rights Reserved.
Some well-informed people in this county who follow these things more closely than me seriously wonder if there's a real future for Hallandale High or not, which ought to be a concern of everyone here who wants this city on the countyline to have a higher quality of life.
The one we ought to have now.

It will be very interesting to see whether or not School Board chair Ann Murrayour ethically and morally-challenged representative, actually shows her face publicly after continually refusing to show-up here, year-after-year, including at the impressive education forum put together by my good friend, Catherine Kim Owensin June of last year, when both Murray and At-Large member Jennifer Gottlieb, both Hollywood residents, refused to make the short drive down the street, even while Board member Robin Bartleman, from Weston, could summon forth the time and energy to actually get here.

I remind you again that in the nearly nine years that I have lived here in Hallandale
Beach, Mayor Joy Cooper and the HB City Commission have never once shown the intelligence or gumption to convene a long-overdue city-wide meeting or forum on education in HB and what was really going on here.

That longstanding failure to be smart and thorough about this city's educational choices and options created a vacuum, one that Peter Deutsch and Ben Gamla Hebrew Charter School thought to exploit, even while they verbally sought to intimidate and bad-mouth the city, the NE 8th Avenue neighborhood and all residents of this city in the process, with nary a word of public criticism about THAT from Joy CooperAnthony Sanders or Alexander Lewy.
Just something to think about tomorrow night...

So what's happened since the city over-paid for that property from Peter Deutsch & Co.?


Hallandale city manager calls in special auditor to review property bought from ex-congressman
By William Gjebre, BrowardBulldog.org 
September 18, 2012 AT 6:17 AM

Correct, nothing positive.

Thursday, September 20, 2012

A perfect end to a perfect Wednesday night thinking about ethics: Jennifer Gottlieb and Eleanor Sobel FINALLY get exposed; hot pizza, cold Heineken beer, '80's fave Lisa Whelchel on "Survivor," and reading some of the fascinating Grand Jury testimony re Beachside Montessori Village; Miami Herald: Records in Broward schools investigation reveal affairs; #BeachsideMontessoriVillage


 
Jennifer Gottlieb, standing, Ann Murray, sitting, Hollywood Beach Culture & Community Center, Hollywood, FL. Photos are all from February 22, 2011, all by South Beach Hoosier. © 2012 Hallandale Beach Blog, All Rights Reserved
Nineteen months later, I haven't forgotten how pitiful it was to watch the organized group of brainwashed Beachside Montessori Moms in attendance that night cheer Gottlieb and Murray's serial lies, spouting their Kool-Aid nonsense that denied the self-evident reality of how the school came into being and how it came to be the particular way it was - racial whitewash.

Yes, the same two School Board members from next-door Hollywood who couldn't be bothered to attend the long-in-the-planning event at the Hallandale Beach Cultural Center four months later in June of 2011 on the longstanding funding/physical problems at Hallandale High School, where the parents and taxpayers got a chance to vent as well as hear from some of the original litigants in the successful lawsuit against the Broward Schools to end the unequal funding.



My friends Csaba Kulin, Catherine Kim Owens and myself were the only objective people from Hallandale Beach in attendance that night in Hollywood to see the entire dog-and-pony show, which sadly, only Channel 7 bothered to cover, despite the opportunity to ask two people with some real culpability for the whole sordid mess to explain in their own words what had really happened.

 
 


The devastating article that the Miami Herald is printing in its Thursday edition -see at bottom- regarding the unethical conduct of former Broward County School Board member Jennifer Gottlieb leads me to make the following observation:

Bob Norman: 1
Miami HeraldSouth Florida Sun-SentinelChannels 4, 6, 7 & 10: 0
Bob Norman wins.

Here's my post of July 26, 2010 on the subject that remains one of the most-read posts I've had in over five years:
Weeks later, Miami Herald, Sun-Sentinel & Miami TV newscasts STILL consciously ignoring Bob Norman's spot-on story re School Board's Jennifer Gottlieb

The latter members of the South Florida press corps were, sadly for of us, all too gutless to print or report on TV what some of them knew, she was putting taxpayers at risk, so instead of simply reporting the news and letting readers or viewers people draw their own conclusions, news reporters here didn't just actively avoid reporting the news -they actively suppressed it! 
Surprise! Welcome to Egypt!

Meanwhile, all the timethe Herald's supposed Education reporter at the time, Patricia Mazzei, well, she "knows nothing, nothing" -just like Sgt, Schultz!

But then as many of you know from prior conversations with me where I have cited specific articles of her's and the subjects, among people I know and trust, Mazzei is better known for what she consciously chooses NOT to report, rather than what she writes.
Which helps readers how, exactly?

Two months ago I saw Mazzei at a M-D County Commission meeting in the chaotic and almost-Third Worldly Steve Clark Bldg. in downtown Miami, and it was all I could do to not to laugh hysterically when I saw her just a few feet away from me, thinking about all the interesting facts and points I'd heard at the meeting we'd both been awake for, but which I knew she'd make sure never saw the light of day in the newspaper, leaving readers in the dark yet again. 
Mazzei would make a very good "minder" in North Korea.

This Herald article below, two years too late, comes as the perfect end of a perfect Wednesday night thinking about ethics: hot pizza, cold Heineken beer, '80's fave Lisa Whelchel on "Survivor," and reading some of the fascinating Grand Jury testimony re

My favorite so far? 
Someone under oath posited that mendacious former Broward County School Board member Eleanor Sobel wanted to use the school "to bolster  her campaign for the Florida Senate."

That's 100% believable because that's the same woman who had the nerve to actually use a HB City Commission meeting as an opportunity to get signatures from the audience -during the meeting- so she could run for School Board, even though we all 'knew' she'd not stay, and was just using that job to get a salary and govt. pension while waiting to run for Steve Geller's Senate seat.
And that's what she did, isn't it?

I know that we're all still waiting to see Norman's promised interview with our mendacious mayor Joy Cooper on his blog on Channel 10's website re the city's red-light camera report that repudiates everything she's been saying, and her receiving mayoral campaign contributions from the Arizona firm spearheading that RLC effort in South Florida, American Traffic Solutionsjust days after she wrote an essay in support of red-light cameras in the Sun-Sentinel.

Yeah, I guess nobody at the Sun-Sentinel had the good sense to ask truth-averse Cooper


if she'd received any campaign contributions from the firm when the paper asked her to write essay. Oops!!!

That was real nice of the firm to wait until AFTER Cooper wrote a pro-RLC Op-Ed before giving her thousands and thousands of dollars.And damn convenient, eh?
That's how Joy Cooper rolls!

By the way, for those of you who didn't get the word earlier today, some other things have come up, so my long-in-the-works blog post that publicly crushes Hallandale Beach beat reporters, the Sun-Sentinel's Tonya Alanez & Herald's Carli Teproff, for their longstanding lack of curiosity and attention to detail -esp. re Comm. Sanders and the ethical scandal that has been swirling around him and his wife Jessica for the past three years, and specifically, his abject refusal to meet with HB taxpayers and tell them the truth- originally slated to appear this week, will appear on Saturday or Sunday morning instead.

Trust me, it's NOT going to be very pretty for them, but then given their dismal track record covering news here, of almost going out of their ways at time to avoid reporting what was right in front of them, a fact which has ill-served Hallandale Beach residents who want real reform and transparency at Hallandale Beach City Hall, how could it be otherwise?

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Miami Herald
Records in Broward schools investigation reveal affairs
By Michael Vasquez
Posted online September 19, 2012
While still in office, former Broward School Board member Jennifer Gottlieb engaged in two different romantic affairs with men who worked for a company doing business with the school district, according to law enforcement records now made public.
Florida Department of Law Enforcement records show that two employees of Citigroup, which was hired to help Broward finance bonds used to build schools, admitted to sexual trysts with Gottlieb.
Read the rest of the article at:
http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/09/19/3011179/records-in-broward-schools-investigation.html

In case you didn't see it yourself, here's Bob Norman's take on the situation:
http://www.local10.com/news/blogs/bobnorman/FDLE-School-board-member-had-voting-conflicts/-/3223354/16654466/-/2p6c5vz/-/index.html

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See also:
WPLG-TV, Miami
Bob Norman's Blog
Has school brought segregation to Hollywood?
Published On: Mar 24 2012 01:25:20 PM EDT  
Updated On: Mar 24 2012 01:31:53 PM EDT
  
I saw former Broward School Board Member Jennifer Gottlieb at a kids' event not long ago and she mentioned that the controversial school she helped build in her city of Hollywood, Beachside Montessori Village, was rated third-best in the state for FCAT scores.
I thought about saying, "Yeah, it's amazing what $20 million in taxpayers' money can do."
Read the rest of the post at 
http://www.local10.com/news/blogs/bob-norman/Has-school-brought-segregation-to-Hollywood/-/3223354/9693822/-/2m3qr1z/-/
And be sure to read my friend, Charlotte Greenbarg's comments below it!

Monday, March 26, 2012

Broward School Board redistricting/incumbent-protection racket set to get first dose of public criticism tonight in Hollywood. Just don't say racial whitewash & Beachside Montessori together aloud or Ann Murray's head will explode. Both are Ann Murray's idea of success stories! LOL!!



Broward School Board redistricting/incumbent-protection racket set to get first dose of public criticism tonight in Hollywood. Just don't say racial whitewash & Beachside Montessori together aloud or Ann Murray's head will explode. Both are Ann Murray's idea of success stories! LOL!!
"Ann Murray could not be reached for comment despite messages left at her office..." 

Hell, this despicable woman won't even answer reasonable questions posed to her when she's sitting right in front of you at a public meeting that's supposed to inform the public.
She is such a disaster for this county's school children and this part of it in particular.

Wait until you see the upcoming videos I have of her sitting stone-faced at Supt. Robert Runcie's Listening Tour visit to Hollywood Hills High School and repeatedly refusing to answer questions posed to her by Hallandale Beach residents.

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Broward Schools Press Release

School Board Redistricting Steering Committee
Schedules Public Hearings and Mapping Workshops

            The Broward County School Board recently appointed a 19-member Redistricting Steering Committee to lead the single Board member reapportionment process, and create a recommended map with new district boundaries to balance the populations of the seven School Board districts based on 2010 Census data.
            Although proposed changes to School Board member districts will modify the geographic areas for single member districts one through seven, countywide seats eight and nine will not be impacted. Map revisions also will not affect attendance boundaries and student transportation.
            The Redistricting Steering Committee has scheduled three mapping workshops to be held in each of the District’s south, central and north administrative areas. These workshops will provide instruction, requirements and assistance to those who wish to create a new School Board member district map for consideration. The first of three mapping workshops will be held on Monday, March 26th at 5:30 p.m. at McArthur High School, Auditorium (6501 Hollywood Blvd., Hollywood).
            The 2011-2013 redistricting project provides for extensive public participation through a series of seven public hearings – one in each of the seven districts throughout the county – to inform community members and receive public comment. The second in a series of public meetings to inform the public about the process for drawing new School Board district map alternatives will take place on Thursday, March 29th from 6 – 8 p.m. at the Kathleen C. Wright Administration Center, Board Room (600 SE Third Ave., Fort Lauderdale).
            For more information about the redistricting process and dates and locations of future public hearings and mapping workshops, visit:(www.broward.k12.fl.us/redistricting) or contact Patrick Sipple, School Boundaries, at 754-321-2480.
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South Florida Sun-Sentinel
Broward School Board protects incumbents, fails to redistrict for 2012 elections
By Anthony Man, Sun Sentinel
9:27 PM EDT, March 22, 2012

One criterion Broward School Board members are unabashedly using to redraw district boundaries: saving their own jobs.

"Protection of incumbents" is one of the seven principles board members have said should be used to remake district boundaries for electing the School Board to take into account the latest Census results.

Though it's not illegal, and incumbent protection has been upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court, plenty of people are displeased.

"We all know that's the unwritten rule in redistricting. But someone put it in black and white?" asked Kevin Tynan, a former Broward Republican Party chairman who served a year as an appointed School Board member and lost a 2010 campaign for a full term. "That's so wrong."

Civic activist Charlotte Greenbarg — president of the Broward Coalition of 200 homeowners associations representing 150,000 people and an appointed member of three School District advisory committees — termed it "bizarre."

Tynan, Greenbarg and Carol Smith of the League of Women Voters of Broward County are also concerned about the School Board's failure to redraw the political boundaries for seven board members in time for the 2012 elections. The two other board members are elected countywide.

District boundaries are normally redrawn every 10 years to reflect population changes as shown by the Census. Instead of redrawing boundaries for elected members' districts for the 2012 elections, the Broward School Board is delaying until 2014.

The state is redrawing districts for the Legislature and Congress in time for this November's elections. The Broward County Commission and the Palm Beach County School Board have already completed their redistricting.

Board members' district boundaries have no impact on where students attend school. The delay means unequal representation for residents in decisions affecting the county school system because the populations in the existing districts are so out of whack. District 2 in southwest Broward has 45,700 more residents than it should. District 5 in central Broward has 20,300 too few, and District 7 in the northeast part of the county is short 16,500 people.

As long as those inequities aren't remedied, the School Board is pretty clearly violating the principle of one-person, one-vote handed down by the U.S. Supreme Court. Tynan, a lawyer, said the board is "lucky" it hasn't been sued.

"It's something they needed to do. There's no excuse," he said.

The School Board was blasted in a February 2011 report from a statewide grand jury looking into corruption which found the board was so lacking in leadership that it deserved to be abolished.

Scott Spages, a Davie political activist, said the School Board's redistricting priorities will do nothing to improve its reputation. "This School Board has ranged from criminal to dysfunctional, and it just further speaks to the issue of them being dysfunctional," he said.

Both Spages and Greenbarg said they couldn't understand how the School Board bobbled a task that other Florida government bodies have managed to complete. After all, they said, the 2010 Census and need to redistrict in keping with its results weren't exactly secrets.

"Redistricting isn't rocket science," Greenbarg said. "They should have done it the first opportunity they had to put the numbers in the computer and get the districts."

Michael Rajner, chairman of the School Board's Redistricting Steering Committee, referred questions about the timing of redistricting and the incumbent-protection mission to board members.

School Board Chairwoman Ann Murray could not be reached for comment despite messages left at her office on Wednesday and Thursday. Laurie Rich Levinson, the vice chairwoman, said she wasn't happy with the failure to redraw districts in time for the 2012 election.

She said she raised the matter at workshops with other board members in August and September, but that district staff balked, arguing that it would be too difficult to redraw the map by the end of 2011. State law requires setting school board boundaries in odd-numbered years.

"In retrospect I think there should have been more pushing to go out and get it done when everybody else managed to go out and get it done," she said.

The Census Bureau provided population information in April. The Palm Beach County School Board held hearings around the county and adopted its new districts in November. The Broward School Board appointed its Redistricting Steering Committee that month. The seven criteria the board told them to use: compactness and contiguity; preservation of political subdivisions, communities of interests, prior districts and incumbents; and compliance with federal Voting Rights Act requirements for creating districts that help elect members of minority populations.

Though disappointed by the delay in redrawing the map, Rich Levinson, who was elected to the school board in 2010, said there's a positive element to what's happening now. The series of public hearings the redistricting steering committee plans around the county means process will be "very thorough and transparent," he said.

Details on 11 hearings and workshops planned by the Redistricting Steering Committee at SunSentinel.com/BrowardPolitics.


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WPLG-TV, Miami
Bob Norman's Blog
Has school brought segregation to Hollywood?
Published On: Mar 24 2012 01:25:20 PM EDT  Updated On: Mar 24 2012 01:31:53 PM EDT
    
I saw former Broward School Board Member Jennifer Gottlieb at a kids' event not long ago and she mentioned that the controversial school she helped build in her city of Hollywood, Beachside Montessori Village, was rated third-best in the state for FCAT scores.
I thought about saying, "Yeah, it's amazing what $20 million in taxpayers' money can do."

Read the rest of the post at 
http://www.local10.com/news/blogs/bob-norman/Has-school-brought-segregation-to-Hollywood/-/3223354/9693822/-/2m3qr1z/-/
And be sure to read my friend Charlotte Greenbarg's comments below it!

Some of you will recall that in an email earlier this month, I shared with you the URL to the Westside Gazette story that Bob Norman notes above re Bethune Elementary, the day after it first appeared.

 
February 22, 2011 photo by South Beach Hoosier.
Further, I not only haven't forgotten the joke of a public meeting that Jennifer Gottlieb and Ann Murray had on Hollywood Beach on February 22nd last year at the Hollywood Beach Culture & Community Center, following the devastating final report of the grand jury that so many of us hoped ended with some more people in hancuffs.
I haven't forgotten how pitiful it was to watch the organized group of brainwashed Beachside Montessori Moms in attendance cheer Gottlieb and Murray's serial lies, spouting their Kool-Aid nonsense that denied the self-evident reality of how the school came into being and how it came to be the particular way it was - racial whitewash.

February 22, 2011 photo by South Beach Hoosier.  

February 22, 2011 photo by South Beach Hoosier. 
(Yes, the same two School Board members from next-door Hollywood who couldn't be bothered to attend the long-in-the-planning event at the Hallandale Beach Cultural Center four months later in June on the longstanding funding/physical problems at Hallandale H.S., where the parents and taxpayers got a chance to vent as well as hear from some of the original litigants in the successful lawsuit against the Broward Schools to end the unequal funding.)

Csaba Kulin, Catherine Kim Owens and myself were the only objective people from HB in attendance in Hollywood to see the entire dog-and-pony show, which sadly, only Channel 7 bothered to cover, despite the opportunity to ask two people with some real culpability for the whole sordid mess to explain in their own words what happened.


 

I would have liked to have been able to link or post the Channel 7 video with then-7 reporter Reed Cowan interviewing Murray, and her patently absurd alibis and claims that persuasive information was coming soon that would make the public see the Board's side of everything and agree with them, but unfortunately, it is no longer available on their website -though I have it saved on my computer.
(Cowan is now at KSNV-TV, Channel 3, the NBC affiliate in Las Vegas. Quick, someone tell http://www.sfltv.com/ )

Disappearing TV news videos are a blogger's perpetual lament, of course, as well as for anyone seriously interested in public policy, and yet it's become a depressingly familiar routine at South Florida TV stations.
Unfortunately for me, that includes a few rare stories I've seen in the past eight years down here that actually paint an accurate picture of government financial funny business and government agencies run amok, ones that I'd love to keep permanent links to on my blog for everyone to see, some for the very first time.
But once they're taken off the station website, they're never to be seen again except on a demo or portfolio reel for some future employer. 
Sorry, no Jen-Jen for you today!