This post was contributed by a community member. The views expressed here are the author's own.

Health & Fitness

Patch exclusive (Not Satire today)- HCSO: Unsolved silence

Regarding the Wharton graduation where the salutatorian was silenced during his speech by the principal. The Superintendent then defended the principal for cutting off the young man. But Elia only lamented that the student never bothered to meet with the principal after first being humiliated and escorted out of the facility by the Sheriff’s Office.

Let’s break this down: the superintendent, who is speaking for the principal because he has not bothered to speak for himself (not being allowed to speak?), is criticizing the student for not bothering to speak to the principal.

Apparently the superintendent expects more from her students than she does from her own staff, and what an artful dodger.

So why is the principal not speaking or is it he’s not being allowed to speak? This backstory is eerily reminiscent of the January 2012 death of Bella Herrera that went unreported to the board for 9 months which conceivably required untold numbers of staff who knew, to sit in front of the board for 9 months and, likewise, all remain silent.

Find out what's happening in Brandonwith free, real-time updates from Patch.

Another backstory not acknowledged: why has the Sheriff’s office never investigated this deafening silence? Why has this almost complete 9 month administrative silence gone uninvestigated by the Sheriff’s department in behalf of the administration? An administration that had a duty to act and a silence that arguably led to the drowning death of a second ESE student Jenny Caballero 9 months later, for lack of training and updated procedures that should have taken place during those silent 9 months.

Is the Sheriff’s office there to protect the students or protect the administration from bad publicity? 

Find out what's happening in Brandonwith free, real-time updates from Patch.

And here is another backstory that was not acknowledged: the Superintendent’s interim 2011-2012 performance review would have been in January 2012, the same timeframe as both the Herrera death and the re-election campaigns of 4 sitting board members. The Superintendent’s failure to inform for 9 months managed to eclipse her entire 2011-2012 performance review and most of the campaign for re-election for those board members.

“It is unethical for you to not have notified us of the death of one of our students in January 2012” says school board member Susan Valdes in this year’s performance review of the Superintendent, a clear reference to the death of Bella Herrera in January 2012. See more excerpts of this performance review exclusively at OlsonandEliamustresign on Facebook. 

So even some board members believe this was unethical. And last week the federal court decided to allow the Herrera lawsuit to proceed in their effort to establish a pattern of the Hillsborough County Public Schools failing to ensure the safety and well-being of special needs students. So now the parents of Bella Herrera will be having to do the discovery in court that arguably should have been done long ago by the Sheriff’s Office.

By the way, absent any action by the board, the Superintendent’s employment contract automatically renews in one week on July 1 and, except for this article now in the Patch, the local media has likewise been silent about the Board’s performance review of the Superintendent’s silence. Having failed to ever provide a complete explanation for the administration’s silence, the board, at the least, should require strict performance goals for communication and student safety for the Superintendent’s continued employment.

The county’s citizens should not also be silent about this; silence kills.

We’ve removed the ability to reply as we work to make improvements. Learn more here

The views expressed in this post are the author's own. Want to post on Patch?