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Health & Fitness

Chair Griffin resigns County Commission Race after making Speakers wait, and wait

School Board Chair Griffin has resigned her attempt to run for County Commissioner claiming that it was taking valuable time away from her duties as school board chairwoman. After seeing the last school board meeting, that may mean she needs to spend more time stifling speakers to control public perception. 

Chair Griffin even rearranged the school board agenda during the Tuesday meeting which delayed the public speakers and made them wait, apparently hoping that they would give up and leave without speaking. They make speakers wait hours just to speak their allotted minutes. Some public speakers waited more than 5 hours to speak for 5 minutes.

 And did you notice that when the administrative appointments were dismissed this time at the Hillsborough County School Board meeting on Tuesday, that they played music over the audio during the live webcast in order to mask any conversation in case Superintendent Elia was foolish enough to leave her microphone on again. And then when you view the recorded webcast online it is dead silence. Check it out online athttp://www.sdhc.k12.fl.us/board/, advance it to 128:30 (128 minutes, 30 seconds).

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That’s how they roll down at the School District. You won’t read that in the Tampa Bay Times.

At the Tuesday meeting, the Hillsborough County School Board reviewed their massive $2.8 Billion Budget but the Tampa Bay Times had little to say about it in their article “Hillsborough School Board ponders budget transparency”. Their “Education” reporter Marlene Sokol’s usual format is to mention the topic and then quote several board members making random self-serving comments. While numerous public speakers also spoke about the budget, Sokol does not bother to quote any of them. And she provides almost no detail about the actual budget.

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Now some might think that for something as significant as the $2.8 Billion school budget that the Times might report about the budget in advance of the meeting so that their readers/ the general public would know about it in advance and be even better informed, but the Times didn’t do that. What a disservice to the community.      

At the meeting, most of the public speakers and most of the board comments were demands/requests for more transparency and information, the very thing that Sokol also did not provide in her report. Sokol none the less quotes intrenched boardmemebr Doretha Edgecomb saying she wished those complaining about the system would offer specific suggestions. Sokol reports this as though it is an intelligent comment from Edgecomb rather than a clueless comment from someone who apparently did not just hear what everyone in the room was just saying: PROVIDE MORE TRANSPARENCY AND DETAIL. That is the resounding specific suggestion from those “complaining” including your fellow board members, Ms. Edgecomb. Please pay attention. 

Not much “education” involved in education reporting I guess. You get the distinct impression that Sokol suffers from the same problem as the rest of the school board and the county’s citizens- that she can’t begin to comprehend what is going on with the School Budget either and yet, despite being a reporter for the Tampa Bay Times, she does little to demand change and will only “ponder” it along with the school board as though they are all helpless to do anything about this.

Something else the speakers demanded was that the administrative appointments also be transparent and named on the agenda so that citizens could speak about them. As it stands the appointments are not named on the agenda so no one can tell who is being appointed. It's a surprise! And coincidentally, one of those “secret” appointments on Tuesday was the Times’ own Grace Posada, marketing manager for the Times Publishing Company. She will now be manager of the department of strategic initiative communications and marketing for the school District.

Now isn’t that something? After that embarrassing open mic incident at the previous July 16 board meeting they “secretly” hired the Times’ Grace Posada for “strategic communications initiatives”. Is that another way of saying "spin doctor" ? This probably includes things like strategically claiming you are for transparency while you try to stifle speakers and have no intention of doing anything about transparency.

That’s how they roll down at the Tampa Bay Times and the Hillsborough County School District.

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