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The Summer of Love is Over; Welcome to the Summer of Kiko
Kiko’s status at the advocate has evolved from his humble beginnings as a figure of satiric ridicule against the petty tyrant who pulled his lovable strings to a symbol of, well, satiric ridicule of all petty tyrants whose hands should never be allowed to traverse the open backs of those in the trenches we lovingly dub the puppet proletariat. In September the Advocate introduced what was intended to be a bi-monthly feature: The Kiko Award, given to administrators and public education officials whose heinous crimes merited the scorn of those who truly care about the state and profession of public education. Having suffered two years of autocratic management under Esperanza Zendejas, the Kiko Award specifically targeted dictatorial policy makers and administrators whose totalitarian bent decimated employee morale and sent exemplary educators running to the private sector, forever damaging the most noble of professions in the process. In the post-Zendejas era, the Kiko Award has been our grandest achievement. Too bad we got sidetracked with all the Reykjavikian aqua vitae and smoked salmon to publish consistently. Until now. This issue of the Unruly Advocate is dedicated to our mascot Kiko’s important awards as we take you on a journey through the level of Hell Dante and Milton forgot and Blake only envisioned after a few stout pints from the hand-drawn pump: public education administrative politics. Pack up the Volkswagon Campmobile, stock up the standard equipment air-cooled refrigerator, pop in the Quicksilver Messenger Service tape, wear the tie-dye if you must, and take a long trip to a beach where, baby, it never ends. Award recipients, cover your genitals! We’re taking a road trip through hell, from Oakland to New York and a few points in between. The Summer of Love is history. This is the Summer of Kiko. |
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Where the Rubber Meets the Kiko: Mayor Bloomberg, Chancellor Joel Klein, and the New York Department of Education Await You in "the Rubber Room"
Hats Off to Larry: Apartheid Schooling Comes to the Franklin-McKinley School District
Members of The Unruly Advocate have witnessed the progress and fallout of middle schools caught in the test score improvement quagmire in San Jose’s Franklin-McKinley school district. The local media never bothered to cover this story; our knowledge of these atrocities is first-hand. Screaming Tomatoes! Scientology's New Attempt to Tempt Impressionable High Schoolers Earns a Kiko
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Kiko Award #1: The Haliburton No-bid Contract of Public Education Reform – Jack O'Connell, Randy Ward, and the Eli Broad Connection
Why on earth would the Unruly Advocate want to award a Kiko to this pillar of educational virtue? Kiko's Book of Revelations: The Grossmont Union High School District TheocracySan Diego: one of California’s most conservative counties. Local Republican activists successfully push for smaller government entitlement programs, unrestricted support for big business, and drastic experiments in education reform. One progressive think tank report suggests San Diego is high on the GOP priority list because conservative governing reform theories can gain enough support to be implemented. Education Last Stop on Kiko's Electric Kool-Aid Tour: Team Unruly Visits the Merry Pranksters of the East Side Union High School District Board of Trustees
Yes, they were responsible for hiring a superintendent who made Randy Ward and Terry Ryan look like rank amateurs in the autocracy department. And faithful East Side teachers and Unruly Advocate readers know if someone ever builds a Hall of Fame for Scandalous Local Politicians, this guy’s framed picture will be right by the front door . However, with Zendejas gone East Side’s board appears more incompetent than maniacal. Their dysfunction is sadly emblematic of many school boards across the nation — abuses of power, inflated egos, micromanaged policy, personality clashes, litigation threats, rampant nepotism, gratuitous cronyism, fiscal improprieties, all done with one eye searching for the right moment to run for a higher public office. True, they hired the worst superintendent the district had ever seen, but at least they aren’t conspiring to build a Grossmont-style theocracy. That doesn’t excuse their dysfunction, nor make them any less Kiko-worthy. |
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Those unfamiliar with this website need only turn to our extensive archives to learn about the infamous Dr. Esperanza Zendejas whose abhorrent management style led to the largest unnecessary layoff in California public education history. This website stood in defiance of her totalitarian management style, and when we needed a mascot, we turned to the last word in the hobby section of her odd resume: ventriloquism. Dr. Zendejas had a dummy. We needed to satirize a dummy. Kiko’s star was born.
Little Johnny Martinez-Roach, a student in your fifth period government class, slumps two seats behind his ex-girlfriend, Suzie Shirakawa, fresh from her recent triumph as the fourth runner-up in the county’s Hormel Foods-sponsored junior miss competition. Upon turning 17 two days ago, Johnny received an 80 gig iPod from his parents and half an ounce of hash from his closest friends, the nascent effects of both simultaneously exacerbate his inherent inattentiveness as he sits through your lecture. A twenty-five year classroom veteran with a master’s from Princeton, you’d have politely reminded Johnny about the school’s electronic device policy and the appropriate decorum you expect all mannered students to display in class had you been able to notice the trace of a white headphone cord dangling from Johnny’s ear like an ill-placed strand of angel hair pasta thrown by a slightly inebriated Italian grandmother busily preparing the Sunday meal in her kitchen’s cramped confines. Your eyes, unfortunately, still need to adjust to the new bifocal prescription, for which you paid 90% of the cost having exhausted the remaining funds allocated under your district’s benefits cap.
Arguably the most important book on public education published in the past year is Jonathan Kozol’s “The Shame of the Nation: The Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America”. Kozol details how a rampant governmental push for standardized testing and school ranking systems modeled after business performance indexes has created two tiers in America’s schools. Schools in more affluent neighborhoods are not under the same pressure to succeed as lower-ranked schools serving poor and working class families, offering the upper-echelon schools access to a wide array of creative and appealing curricular options. Schools in poorer neighborhoods are, by default of the system’s business competition model, forced to teach test-preparation and thus adopt canned reading and instructional materials with little intrinsic educational value beyond developing standardized testing skills. The end result of this lopsided system not only blocks a low-income student’s access to a well-rounded education, it demoralizes an entire education community forced to sacrifice instructional creativity for test score improvement.
Thanks to the star power of a couple celebrities and Issac Hayes’ hasty departure from South Park, the Church of Scientology attracted substantial media attention this past year. Founded in 1953 by the late pulp fiction hack L. Ron Hubbard, the infamous cult’s mission appears to be to turn a sizable profit. Unlike traditional churches, The Church of Scientology charges its members to attend specific classes, and the class level determines the fee. Like any pyramid scheme, The Church of Scientology must bring new members into the organization to grow and remain solvent.
In political circles Jack O’Connell could be described as the candidate’s candidate. Articulate, handsome, quick on his feet, he does what few in the era of divisive partisanship can: genuinely appeal to folks on both sides of the aisle. In fact, he is such a respected moderate, as a state assembly member he once received the nomination of both the Democratic and Republican parties. In 2002, California’s largest teacher’s union, CTA, proudly endorsed O’Connell as the new State Superintendent of Education, describing him as “a strong advocate for public schools,” citing his favorable positions on class size reduction, improving teacher recruitment, and his tenacious belief that “We have a testing system that is out of whack and out of balance”.
reform is perhaps the area where conservatives have made the most gains, as we reported last year when business interests pushed trustees to hire a federal prosecutor to run the San Diego Unified School District — into the ground. North San Diego was the congressional territory of Randy “Duke” Cunningham prior to his fraud conviction that made national headlines.
Standing near the entry gate, we wondered how the East Side board of trustees would measure up to the horrors witnessed on our cross-country trek. After all, we had seen the worst humanity could offer to those entrusted with educating America’s youth. Could the East Side board sink to those depths?
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The Sun Sets on the Summer of Kiko: A Conclusion
The truth is writing the Advocate is a time-consuming, masochistic experience. Once Zendejas left, we started the "Kiko Award" to expose the incompetent, destructive and often criminal actions happening in other school districts. We initiated the award with an expose on the morale-decimating William Bragg, the former head of the Cupertino Unified School District. Though Bragg’s incumbent board supporters won reelection, Bragg submitted an intent to retire letter by the end of December. At least one Cupertino voter credited the Advocate for making it clear to the community that Bragg did more harm than good. We were happy to help.
We also got a little overwhelmed by the pervasiveness of the problems we researched. Dysfunctional school boards and despotic superintendents seemed to be the rule, not the exception. Nor did enough professional educators willingly stand up to these injustices. They either fought for their dignity through union activism, only to be vilified by a complacent media, or more often than not, abandoned their district for saner pastures. We started to wonder if anyone even bothered to read our website since Zendejas’ abrupt departure. Was it worth the time?
Did You Know?
Did you know that a week after we finished the story on Oakland Unified, Randy Ward, the state-appointed administrator, got hired to run the San Diego County Office of Education? Did you know he’ll be making close to if not more than $250, 000 in base pay, not including perks like a travel allowance? Did you know State Superintendent Jack O’Connell praised Ward’s reform efforts? Did you know the San Francisco Chronicle’s Chip Johnson wrote an article noting that although Ward was considered “unyielding and tyrannical,” in the end “Oakland Owes [a] Debt to Randy Ward”?