EDITOR: The insanity in the Morgan Hill School District has
reached epic proportions. As with all epics, it deserves a special
identity of its own. I would like to propose:
“Carolyn’s Folly.”
EDITOR:
The insanity in the Morgan Hill School District has reached epic proportions. As with all epics, it deserves a special identity of its own. I would like to propose: “Carolyn’s Folly.”
Having been lured into this foolishness by our inadequate superintendent, Carolyn McKennan, I feel that this period of overspending, poor planning, questionable ethics, poor judgment, failure to heed the advice of paid counsel, negligence, coercion, political spin, undocumented decisions, cost overruns, leadership crisis, low employee morale, abdication of oversight responsibility, failure to protect the interests of the district (and the taxpayers and students), inadequate research on contracts, failure to plan properly, favoring a company represented by a personal friend which ultimately cost tens of million dollars more than bid, failure to plan for future maintenance, entering into an untried contract structure with an out-of-state company that had not built previously in California, failure to staff properly for construction projects … well, you get the gist of it. Something this big and this stupid needs a nice, short, memorable name. Carolyn’s Folly.
I’ve never written a sentence that long before and I was only half way through the mismanagement and negligence perpetrated on the taxpayers and students of MHSD. Mismanagement of this proportion would be forgotten due to its unmanageable volume if not for a code name. So “Carolyn’s Folly” it is – and believe me my friends, it is her folly and foolishness, along with healthy doses of disrespect and aggressive politicking that got us into this financial mess.
We have an expensive new high school with not enough students to make it efficient and an old (unfilled) high school upgrade that is unfinished – all at costs that should have given us the Taj Mahal of buildings. After her friend’s construction company gave us the most expensive elementary school ever built (on a per-square foot basis), McKennan mismanaged the bidding process on Sobrato School so elegantly that it went $10 million over budget and we get the privilege of paying the original construction firm another $500,000 just to go away.
We get a state fiscal reporting agency sadly reporting that there was not quite enough evidence of criminal intent or criminal negligence to prosecute our superintendent. Maybe a civil Grand Jury will think differently. Then we get our superintendent discussing and downplaying a second coming of the same efficiency reporting agency that has been requested by the MHSD Board.
McKennan says of the coming report, costing the district $7,500 (admittedly a paltry sum in the face of her usual overruns and inefficiencies) that “it’s a bit crystal ballish.” I won’t try to tell you what kind of doublespeak that is – sort of like saying dog dodo is “a bit brownish” – but I will say that looking to the future to minimize mistakes and waste is probably one of the things she should have been doing from the get-go.
Our superintendent goes on to compare the coming efficiency report to “a homeowner inviting in an interior decorator. There are many suggestions and you adopt some and not others … Some just don’t suit your style. We’ll have to look at what best fits our district.”
Well that style has made a folly of the building and renovation of schools in our community. Perhaps an end to the superintendent’s style would be the best thing for our community, its schools and especially its students. What best fits our district might be her absence – on a permanent basis – from a position of power in educating the children of this state.
During the time that the superintendent has mismanaged our money and our children, her total compensation package has gone up 45 percent. The person wasting our money by the millions per year is making nearly $150,000. If she can hang on to this or a similar position for a mere two years, it is my understanding that she will be able to retire with full benefits. In retirement she would be making more than most of us will ever see for a year’s worth of real work. I would propose that we fire her posthaste and give negative recommendations for future employment; possibly saving the taxpayers (we and our children) hundreds of thousands of dollars.
If we do not, then we must live with the very discomforting knowledge that we will continue to pay good money after bad to support the high life for one who has handled our community resources with negligence, carelessness and disrespect.
John N Quick,
Morgan Hill
Editor’s note: The writer presented much of the letter during the public comment session at Monday’s school board meeting.
