Teacher fired, but Cathy Valdes promoted despite Nightmares left by Facilities Dept.

Teacher Ingrid Peavy was fired last week because a student walked off of the Pierce Middle School Campus in October 2012. That is- the TEACHER was fired because a student walked off the ENTIRE CAMPUS, not just the teacher’s classroom.

Not even a year ago in March 2013 the District’s security expert said (link): “Many of Hillsborough’s schools were designed decades ago and are a NIGHTMARE from an ACCESS-CONTROL standpoint.” And now they are so far gone the “costs would be prohibitive” to even pursue.

Access Control typically includes both entry and exit because if you can’t control people getting in then you can’t control student’s leaving and the Hillsborough County School District has a Facilities Department that is supposed to renovate and update existing school campuses on an ongoing basis to keep schools controlled, safe and up to date.

The Facilities Department is supposed to be spending millions of our taxpayer dollars every year to renovate and update existing schools so that we don’t have safety nightmares like when student Jenny Caballero scaled a small 4 foot high fence and drowned in a 12 foot deep retention pond that was on the Rodgers Middle School Facility.

But instead the school board promoted the Chief of Facilities Cathy Valdes 2 weeks ago and then followed that with firing Teacher Peavy last week!

"Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job."

The Board vote to fire Peavy was split 4-3, with Elia’s voting block of the three senior entrenched board ladies- Doretha Edgecomb, Candy Olson, Carol Kurdell voting to fire peavey and joined by Stacy White. This is the same block that previously rated Elia’s performance above satisfactory in complete contrast to Susan Valdes and April Griffin who gave Elia straight ones- the lowest possible score- with Griffin lamenting that she was not allowed to give zeros.

And Stacy White wants to be your County Commissioner next. Good luck with that.

But that still doesn’t tell the whole story because none other than Superintendent Elia used to be Chief of Facilities and ran the Facilities Department. It says so right in her biography online (link) – MaryEllen Elia was RESPONSIBLE for the maintenance and operation of more than 200 existing schools and educational facilities.

So MaryEllen, who recommended the firing of Ms. Peavy was arguably responsible for what she is now blaming Ms. Peavy for- making sure that the Pierce Middle School campus was controlled and secure.

What happened? Well, to begin with MaryEllen never had any professional design qualifications or design training in the first place. How would she know if a facility campus was designed to secure students? Despite this lack of qualification, the School Board appointed Elia Chief of Facilities where it seemed like she was parked for 2 years, just waiting to become Superintendent. So by extension- that would arguably make the school board responsible for what they fired Ms. Peavy for and the NIGHTMARE of facility safety that exists at our schools. The School Board even lowered the qualifications for Superintendent in 2005 before making Elia Superintendent. MaryEllen Elia would not have been qualified if the qualifications had not been lowered.

Apparently that now makes it Ms. Peavy and the other teacher’s responsibility to compensate for the School Administration’s years of neglect and failure to secure school facilities.

The Child Protective Investigations division of the Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office was consulted about the PIERCE incident. The Child Protective Investigations division are CIVILIAN investigators that are not even identified at the Sheriff’s Office website (link) for public scrutiny, such as what their qualifications and training might be.

Did the anonymous civilian Investigators at the HCSO Child Protective Investigations division ever investigate INADEQUATE SUPERVISION by the School Board, by the Superintendent, by the Facilities Department, and so on?

The District’s security expert was correct- this kind of neglect does not happen overnight, it literally takes decades of neglect. Some might call it CULPABLE NEGLECT.