TJUSD - Educational Disaster Zone

[tronagirl]

It's up to 175. Let's get it over 200!

LINK: https://www.change.org/p/over-turn-the-corrupt-board-of-education-and-superintendent
The teaching staff voted 94% in favor of the letter regarding the superintendent and 86% in favor of the letter regarding the school board. The classified staff (separate union) also voted to support the letters. Here are the letters of no confidence:
SCHOOL BOARD:

Throughout the past several school years we have had concerns regarding the Trona School Board leadership, specifically regarding honesty and trust, support, decision making, vision, equity and lack of communication and commitment.

There has been a lack of transparency
Breaching confidentiality regarding staff and students
Disregarding the enforcement of the chain of command
Disregarding and abusing the role as a board member through micromanaging and overinvolvement
Removal of highly qualified leadership
Intrusion of communication between stakeholders
Involvement of regressive bargaining
Creating an atmosphere of nepotism and hostile work environment amongst all stakeholders
Creating an atmosphere of retaliation and intimidation
Trona has lost the ability to compete with other districts in terms of wages and benefits and has become harder to attract and retain great teachers

SUPERINTENDENT:

Throughout the past couple of school years we have had concerns regarding Superintendent Dr. Jairo Arellano’s leadership, specifically regarding honesty and trust, support, decision making, vision, equity and lack of communication and commitment.

The teachers have been concerned that despite a clear indication of a need to interact and become familiar with the superintendent, identified in the independent consultant report, Dr. Arellano continues to withdraw from staff, does not attend school events and activities, and removes himself from the community
Recently we have been concerned over a lack of transparency despite members making it clear that there is a strong concern of what is said versus practice
Breaching confidentiality regarding staff and students
Disregarding the enforcement of the chain of command
Misunderstanding of the purpose of the superintendent and support for the District, not the school board
Removal of highly qualified leadership for no known cause with a lack of due process
The superintendent isolates/manipulates communication between stakeholders
The practice of regressive bargaining is creating loss of trust
Creating an atmosphere of dissension and favoritism
We have also been concerned about the fact that Trona has lost its competitiveness in terms of wages and benefits and it has become harder to attract and retain great teachers (year for year negotiations)

[wildrose]

For those who may have missed it, here's a link to the Daily Insufficient article:

Trona teachers, employees vote no-confidence
Click the link for the article:
https://www.ridgecrestca.com/news/trona-teachers-employees-vote-no-confidence/article_4fb1154a-d630-11ec-9360-d3d514742976.html

And here's panamint_patty's comment regarding the article:

REGARDING THE ARTICLE: I can't believe how pathetic and inadequate the statement made by the stupid-intendent was! As for the school board, apparently they were left speechless. Clueless and pathetic morons!

[drdesert]

KARMA
They say Karma is a bitch and RuskyED seems to have had the school district in mind when he made this video. You have to know the back story behind the Rodeo Clowns thread to understand the implications, but there is major corruption going on behind the scenes in Trona!

[panamint_patty]

This was posted to the Mass Shootings - Blame It On The Books! thread in the News and Issues forum:

twister: With a toxic stupid-intendent, the toxic k12 coordinator, and the toxic school board, it's a wonder that something like this doesn't happen in Trona and with the HS right next to the elementary the odds are even worse! Hopefully it never comes to that, but the toxicity of the school in Trona is off the charts, probably far worse than in the Texas town where this recent event happened.

The school is a festering sore and we're all very lucky that someone hasn't done something like this. It's a disaster just waiting to happen.

Texas school shooter was ‘flashing red’: Former FBI assistant director
Twenty-one people shot dead at an elementary school. This is an incredible tragedy.

Although Salvador Ramos was described as “quiet” by numerous people who knew him, a young woman who worked with him at Wendy’s until March detected an aggressive streak. Several former friends said he had stopped showing up at school and was not going to graduate with the senior class this year.

[sandman]

When the people in charge are the people causing the problem, it's very difficult to bring about positive change. It's frustrating for everyone negatively impacted and there are always ass kissers hoping to receive a favor from the toxic leaders responsible for the mess!

[wildrose]

From everything I've heard, the last school board meeting was extremely contentious. Two school board members actually had meltdowns after being yelled at by several angry parents. Some of the parents even used rather rude language, but that's understandable given the circumstances. The main complaint has to do with the firing of the principal. The community sees him has effective and capable. He's well-liked and so why get rid of him? The main problem is the do-nothing superintendent who hides and whimpers in his office in hopes of avoiding any work or confrontations. Also the school board itself is a huge problem which is obviously why a couple of them had tantrums at the last school board meeting. The other problem has to do with the recently appointed K-12 coordinator, also known as the teacher who hugs too much. Other staff members see her as incompetent and unintelligent. Why would you put the least qualified person on the staff in a leadership position? What kind of message does that send to students, staff, and the community? It's almost like the school board and the superintendent want the school to fail!

What I've heard is that the superintendent has told the school board that he spends his time applying for grants. As a retired school teacher I am aware of what many call GRANT SCAMS. There are two basic types of scams which account for almost all grants: 1) KICKBACKS - Companies often give kickbacks to administrators who force the staff to use their products. 2) DISCOUNTS - Grants are often just discounts on over-priced products. Most grants lock a school into using a particular product. Almost all educational products are ridiculously over-priced. Grants are often just a way of taking 20% off the price of a product which costs about five times what it should. Companies which make educational materials rip off schools and in turn that means that tax-payer funds are being wasted on making these companies rich. The current weasel of a superintendent is just hiding in the backroom playing the grant game and the clueless school board is willing to allow him to get away with it and they're willing to pay him somewhere around $150K/year to do so!

[cactuspete]

wildrose: Some people are useful idiots. It sounds like the superintendent is a useless idiot!

[twister]

The other problem has to do with the recently appointed K-12 coordinator, also known as the teacher who hugs too much. Other staff members see her as incompetent and unintelligent. Why would you put the least qualified person on the staff in a leadership position? What kind of message does that send to students, staff, and the community? It's almost like the school board and the superintendent want the school to fail!

More and more is being said about this person. She seems to be at the root of many issues at the school. It appears that she is doing a lot of instigating and undermining. Her activities are obvious to some, but the stupid-intendent and the board seem to be oblivious to what she's up to.... unless it's they who are putting her up to it.

More has come out about the board member's daughter who went around bragging that she was going to be principal next year before the current principal had any idea that he was being canned. Apparently while she was a teacher here she had an affair with a student who was sixteen years old at the time. I have the name of the former student, but I'll keep that one to myself since this is basically a rumor with lots of details which sound credible, but it's still just an allegation just the same. The word is that she was fired as a direct result of this alleged affair which the school apparently kept under wraps. I don't know if there was an investigation by law enforcement or not, but the take away from all this is that the issues with the school are pretty deep and someone needs to come in and clean things up. It's not going to happen from within!

[tronagirl]

twister posted this a year ago and in the meantime nothing has changed. In fact, things have just continued to get worse. It's a downward spiral without any hope!

This is from the August 2020 Board Meeting Report:

Lots of activity on Facebook today. This topic has drawn a lot of interest. Several posts said that almost all the issues involve two people at the school. One is the school board member who has received a lot of attention in this thread and the other is his brother who is the head janitor. People say that they are both bullies who like to intimidate people and set up fights or disputes between people. Most of the posts involved the school board member, but both got mentioned fairly frequently. Someone at the school needs to sort things out a bit is what it sounds like.

There's an obvious problem when two members of the same family are part of the group leading an organization. Nepotism anyone? And it's even worse when nepotism is combined with incompetence!

HEAD JANITOR? Does that mean he mainly cleans toilets?

Nice!

Incompetence combined with nepotism: This situation has not improved since last summer!

[torn80]

Let's face it, TJUSD has never been regarded as a powerhouse of learning, but in the last few years things have gotten much worse. There are teachers working without full credentials. Those with credentials mostly went through weak programs which accept basically even the dullest individuals and provide credentials as the result of the completion of substandard programs, providing that tuition is paid. There are individuals who had to retake basic competency tests five times before they finally passed the tests. The dumbest people on the staff are the most influential and what we have is the worst case of "It's not WHAT you know, but WHO you know" that I've ever heard of. Friends and family who are complete flunkies get hired and their boneheaded mistakes are overlooked, whereas those viewed as outsiders are berated over nothing. It's the most backward, dysfunctional situation anyone could imagine. Trona has become crazy town on steroids. It was always a little off-kilter, but it's gone down the tubes big time in the last few years!