Here come the lawyers - oh the lawyers -- more lawyers

So what's the tally? Anyone know??? Of course not! We have no way of knowing exactly how many millions of our tax dollars have gone to lawyers. We are paying lawyers all over metro Atlanta – lawyers for the criminal lawsuit against Dr. Lewis and Pat (Pope) Reid and others. Lawyers in the civil case (countersuit) by DCSS against Heery/Mitchell. Lawyers to defend the system in reductions in teacher pay, employment dismissals or bullying or nearly $400,000 spent on a judge to investigate bullying only to find that none existed!  On and on.

In February, the AJC informed us in an article entitled, DeKalb schools hire law firm for ex-superintendent, that the school board capped Dr. Lewis' defense fund at $100,000. Then, Judge Cynthia Becker decided that Dr. Lewis had to find a new lawyer, as his current lawyer is a member of a firm representing DCSS' new construction manager, Barbara Colman's firm.  Colman is scheduled to testify for the school system. So, has the board now thrown more money Lewis' way? Do taxpayers realize that they are paying for the prosecution and the defense in these cases?  In that article, we also discover the following:

DeKalb County schools have capped the amount of money the district will spend representing former Superintendent Crawford Lewis in an ongoing civil lawsuit at $100,000.

The school board has hired Atlanta law firm Goodman McGuffey Lindsey & Johnson to represent Lewis in the school system’s ongoing lawsuit construction manager Heery/Mitchell, but capped the expense at $100,000, district spokesman Jeff Dickerson said Friday.

This is the third law firm the board has hired to help with the suit. The district has already spent $15.5 million in legal fees in the case. The district is seeking $100 million from Heery, alleging fraud and mismanagement.

Earlier this month, the suit was moved from federal to DeKalb State Court and 17 new defendants were added to the suit, including the individual board members and Lewis. Lewis was terminated April and has since been indicted on charges he ran a criminal enterprise at the school system.

Well guess what! Again, according to the AJC, the school board just voted in February of this year to spend $700,000 defending seven former board members in the construction lawsuit. One of the seven, Sarah Copelin Wood is actually still a sitting board member. (Did Sarah vote to spend money on her own legal defense?)

So, the law firm, Elarbee, Thompson, Sapp & Wilson, LLP in Atlanta, was given carte blanche to spend $700,000! Yowsa! And these are "bit players" in the big scheme of the Heery/Mitchell case.

Allow me to continue. But get a tissue, you will cry.

The board has a separate contract with attorney Halsey Knapp, Jr. for former board member Simone Manning-Moon.

There are other, miscellaneous law firms that are hired to handle worker's comp and other employee issues - cases that Josie Alexander is already under contract to handle.

Let's add the aforementioned $15.5 million spent at King & Spalding on the Heery/Mitchell case. The Daily Reporter tells us that King & Spalding might be pushing the limits on this case. The DA "stopped just short of accusing the firm of making a frivolous bid to halt discovery, implying via carefully placed quotation marks that King & Spalding and the school district engaged in disingenuous legal reasoning".

DeKalb DA Robert D. James Jr. wrote that King & Spalding and its client showed "bad faith and collusion" and claimed attorney-client privilege "where it does not exist" in discovery-related matters.

Did I mention that we have paid over $15 million for King & Spalding's legal representation so far? And there is no court date yet on the docket. Judge Seelinger ordered them to remediation out of concern for taxpayers dollars, saying, “This has grown far, far too expensive for the parties, and one party is the school board. Taxpayers are paying for this. Mediation is the best way to get this resolved."  However, that remediation quickly disintegrated.

This is taxpayer money - earmarked by the state and county for educating our children. How much more will taxpayers be forced to spend on law suits instead? What would happen if taxpayers revolted and refused to pay the school tax portion of the property tax bill? What would happen if the state stepped in and demanded an accounting of exactly how many state tax dollars are going into the pockets of lawyers instead of the backpacks of students? How much more of this financial vortex of legal fees must taxpayers endure? When on earth will this nonsense end? Are there any adults in the entire state of Georgia willing to step up and demand answers?

Ramona Tyson promised to the parents attending her first public meeting, the Emory Lavista Parent Council meeting back in April of 2010 that she would conduct an audit. In fact, the ELPC minutes quote her as saying, "The priority will be to protect the services closest to students while conducting a forensic audit to examine programs that are not working." (Click here to review the other unfulfilled promises made at that meeting.)

A small, but rumbling group of parents is fed up. They have begun a campaign to declare the school board incompetent. They are currently taking an approval rating poll and may invoke a public vote of No Confidence. Thank goodness for the will of everyday parents and taxpayers. Maybe they can make a difference where no highly-paid, high-powered official has even raised an eyebrow. Fran Millar tried. He posed placing former state school board president, Brad Bryant as superintendent in order to clean house and mend fences.  After giving Bryant a cursory interview, he was completely ignored. Two additional, viable candidates were sabotaged in the process. Nancy Jester, Pam Speaks, Don McChesney and Paul Womack tried to alert the public regarding the behind-the-scenes manipulation in an email, but were publicly criticized by the board chair. How odd is that? The messengers who informed us of wrong-doing are the ones to be criticized by their leader. However, that same leader put forth no effort to root out the saboteurs.

The comment below was posted by Carolyn Henry Rader on Maureen Downey's 'Get Schooled' article "Can someone shake DeKalb school board out of its fog so it can see mounting problems in schools?"

"A few parents and citizens of DeKalb representing Central and South DeKalb met for the first time last night to start the process of forming a county-wide “Parents Coalition”. There is enough talent, passion, professional and business acumen throughout DeKalb County that needs to be tapped into and utilized. It is time to mobilize parents, business and community leaders to move our school system from dismal to successful. There is no more waiting around for Board members to do this but we welcome those who are passionate about helping the whole school system to move forward in a positive direction. A strategic planning process for DeKalb may be the first item on the agenda and one that includes input from the community, and ultimately produces a bold vision and mission that we all can work towards and uphold. And one more thought – change the name of the School Board to a ‘Board of Trustees’ – elected community members who are entrusted to uphold and be accountable for ensuring the jointly (community/school administration) led strategic plan is followed and implemented. Our next meeting is August 24, The Marlay, in Decatur, at 6:15 pm. Please see http://www.washoe.k12.nv.us/community/strategic-plan
for an inspiring example of a school district that decided enough was enough and they embarked on a powerful strategic planning process with strong community partnership move their schools from failure to success."

Our board does not realize just how fed up the public is with their lack of fiduciary responsibility to the people of DeKalb. What level of cognitive dissonance do our board members have in order to continue this never-ending cycle of outrageous (but hidden) legal fees and bad governance?  How disengaged are our state leaders in that they can continue to turn blind eyes to irresponsible actions of the DeKalb School Board?

At the very least, a NO vote on SPLOST IV this November would send a strong signal that taxpayers won't "take it" anymore.  Do not give them access to another half-billion dollars to squander.  Replace this board and place new school administrators and then we'll revisit SPLOST next year.

Message to DeKalb School Board:  No. More. Money.

Racketeering: The Crime that Keeps on Giving ...

We have often complained loudly about and marveled at the amount of money DCSS spends in legal cases. Now that the indictments are in (will there be more?), at least we taxpayers can rest easy that our tax dollars will be safe from lawyer fees defending Lewis and Pope/Reid, right? Not so fast ...


Unfortunately, even though the criminal charges do leave the targets of the indictments to fend for themselves in terms of paying for defense fees, the prosecution itself doesn't come free! I am afraid we need to brace ourselves for a very expensive and drawn out case. And who will pay? Why the same taxpayers that were paying to protect the suspects during the investigation.

To add to the drama of this case, how is this for a turn-your-stomach twist: after suspects grab millions in tax dollars for themselves, and after the tax payers pay bags of money to defend the offenders, and after paying even bigger bags of money prosecuting the offenders, there is an acquittal.

I'm not predicting this outcome I'm just sharing my worst nightmare as a taxpayer inspired by this reading on CommunityRadar.com today:

Lawyers in GA School Racketeering Case Reflect High Stakes

Talk about delayed gratification, not only may we have to wait a long, long time to have a chance at justice. We have to spend a lot of money through the DA's office to get this case brought to closure.

If this drags out as long as it very likely could, how will this affect the current interim administration and the recruitment efforts for a new superintendent? Oh! If only we could see swift justice this time around. I'm planning on the opposite and you should, too. The cloud of this thing is going to hang around for awhile ...

Going forward, how  much am I willing to pay for prevention of future such schemes? Looking at the downside risk we're seeing now, there are a whole lot of zeros behind the number I would support for proper oversight, control, and audit of DCSS.

The School Board Needs To Make Decisions Based On What Is Best For the School System Now in the 21st Century

First - a little history. The courts supervised the desegregation of the DeKalb County school system for over twenty-five years. After the process of desegregation was deemed over, the school district still appears from time to time to be divided over race (Bates & Gagnon, 1996). This can be observed repeatedly by actions of the members of the DeKalb County School Board Members (Smith, 2009).

In 1968, several black high school students from DeKalb County, including Willie Eugene Pitts, and their parents in addition to four white students and their parents decided to file a class action lawsuit against Jim Cherry, the superintendent, and the entire DeKalb County school system. The complaint dealt with the county’s failure to integrate the school system as well as the failure to comply with the United States Department of Health, Education and Welfare that was mandatory under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. If the DeKalb County School System did not comply with this would result in the elimination of federal funding to the school (Bates & Gagnon, 1996).

In June of 1969, the courts ruled that the DeKalb County school system must be completely desegregated by the start of the school year in the fall of 1969. The court also ordered DeKalb County to redraw the school zones. The school system could not have any all black or all white school districts. All the black schools were closed in DeKalb County School System and over the years many policies and procedures were implemented to encourage integration such as busing, the Minority to Majority (M to M) program, the magnet schools for high achievers and other initiatives. In the early 90’s the Supreme Court allowed the Dekalb County School System to stop busing students and the court later dismissed the mandate due to the fact that the system had become a majority African-American. However, the school district remained largely divided in terms of race (Bates & Gagnon, 1996).

Even today, sadly, the DeKalb County School Board appears to remain largely divided in terms of race. Dr. Speaks read a statement last night indicating that she had been bullied by other board members to vote along racial lines on the issue of contracting a law firm. Dr. Speaks however will not vote on racial lines. Dr. Walker indicated last night also that he sees black and white. He went to an all black high school so apparently race does matter. Don McChesney also read a statement indicating the possibility of ethics being broken in situations like this. (IMO)

The issue was over hiring the most qualified attorney firm and saving the school system a great deal of money. The issue was discussed at a called board meeting last Monday. (On Common Ground News has a good report on the heated discussion). However, some members of the school board wanted the African-American attorney, Alexander and Assoc, who the county has had for many years in the past, which is part of the reason the county has such large bills to start with. The previous attorney’s office could not handle many of the cases so other attorneys were hired. It appeared to also be "warm fuzzies" verses getting the best attorney firm to represent the school system. The two attorney firms that represented us before had conflicts. Womack proposed hiring Sutherland Asbill & Brennan, LLC, a big firm downtown which had 400 lawyers who would do all the school systems work for 1.7 million dollars a year. According to Common Ground, "DeKalb County Superintendent Crawford Lewis, who was charged with negotiating the contracts, returned to the board with a figure of $2.4 million after reviewing bids from both firms. Lewis recommended that $1.5 million go to Sutherland and $900,000 go to Alexander. But Womack said Sutherland would be willing to do all of the work for a flat fee of $1.7 million."

In the end, the votes were not there and Jay recommended that the the two groups get together and see if together they would share it for 1.7 million dollars. The two groups did get together and will do it for 1.7 million dollars. However, there are still many who question if the decision of the group based their decision on race and warm fuzzies and were willing to pay an extra $800,000 just to hire the other attorney on the side.

DeKalb County is home to some of the finest leaders in the state. However, some Dekalb County School Board members continues to be stuck in the past. Could this be due to the age of some of the school board members? Could age not matter at all with other school board members? Could this be just because of the history of the Dekalb County School System? Regardless, should decisions of the Dekalb County School System be based on warm fuzzies and race? What is wrong with the picture here? Regardless of our race, our disability, our religon, should we all in Dekalb County not ban together and do what is best for our children in Dekalb County? For the Dekalb County School System to move into the 21th century do we not need to make decisions based on what is best for the school system now?