NEWS OF THE WEIRD (BUT ISN’T IT ALL WEIRD?)

They came from every neighborhood in the East Side, from the Berryessa foothills near Piedmont Hills bordering Milpitas to the Bernal road edge of San Jose near Santa Teresa. There were parents, students, community members, and of course, teachers. They were united by their anger and collective distaste for a superintendent who saw fit to layoff 965 teachers, only to rescind all of the notices by the end of May. They chanted, they brought signs, and they sang scary songs urging a clueless school board that the problem was more serious than they could have ever guessed.

They could have done their research, though.

While hundreds of people from the community gathered outside and in the halls of 830 North Capitol Avenue, a little story made its way onto the local NBC affiliate news. It showed the softer side of our superintendent, and failed to mention that the largest protest in the district’s history was taking place at that very moment.

Everyone in the East Side Union High School District community knows that Dr. Esperanza Zendejas is an author of three books. It’s one of the first things she tells those who meet her. The books are self-published, two novels and a memoir, that only garner a reading audience if she actively gets the word out. To do so, she attends speaking engagements, rents herself out as a motivational speaker, and finds friends in the media who fail to realize the ulterior self-promotional motives behind her media appearances.

This story is perhaps the most puzzling story to ever be presented about Dr. Zendejas. Most of her employee critics think she was trying to soften the blow the protest would have on her educational career, showcasing a side of her compassion that few of her critics ever see. While there might be some truth to this view, Team Unruly suggests that her intent was a bookselling ploy to sell her current memoir, Wings of Bamboo, and her upcoming work, Chicken Mole, due out later this year (read here: )

The story goes like this: two unidentified corpses were sitting in a south county or Salinas-area morgue for a number of years. They were the bodies of migrant workers found in a drainage duct in an agricultural area. Zendejas claims to have read about the case (although it’s not a giant leap to suggest she came up with the idea and looked for unidentified bodies with a few phone calls), and got to work adopting the bodies. She brought the corpses to a local mortuary, and with the help of some corporate donors, prepared the bodies for shipping and their eventual burial on her family plot in Michoacan.

The story was too weird to believe. Some thought her critics were making the whole thing up. But the evidence was showcased on KNTV’s “Communidad Del Valle” in mid-May.

Team Unruly’s VCRs were at the ready.

It’s infuriating that KNTV spent more time on this story than they did on the massive protest taking place at the district office the night they initially aired the piece. It’s despicable to consider the cash-strapped East Side has nobody searching for corporate donations to save vital academic programs while the person charged with managing funds has no problem drumming up change for her own self-promotional activities.

But the video evidence proves everything we have ever written about the current leader of the ESUHSD.

Take a look for yourself. Items to note: the crocodile tears moment when Zendejas is too choked up to answer the reporter’s question, Zendejas rolling up her blouse sleeves to hammer in the makeshift cross, and the necro-freaky description of allowing mothers whose children mysteriously died in the north to touch the corpses before they were laid to rest. And the ultimate self-promotional kicker: Zendejas’ reason for adopting the corpses—she connected their experience to her father’s.

An easy connection to make with one memoir published about her childhood and another due out at the end of 2005.

(Insert video link here: )

Then there’s this story that made its way into the Metro. A disgruntled East Side employee, upset about being laid off after an unknown number of years of service to the district, claims to want to run a wooden post in the next Board election so that voters who already think the current batch of incumbents are dumb as a post will have a real option. The money quote: “Whoever says board members are dumber than a post will have to vote for the post.” (Read the article here: ).

Team Unruly liked the idea, so we sent our crackerjack team of field reporters out to Home Depot, Orchard Supply, and San Jose Lumber. None of the posts there were willing, or for that matter able, to speak with us. The manager at Home Depot told us to check back in a couple of weeks since new shipments arrive monthly.

Team Unruly promises to follow this story if anything further develops.