On Thu, Oct 17, 2019 at 10:09 AM Lopez, Marisol O wrote:
Commissioners,
Recently, you have had some conversation related to the May 14, 2019 minutes and a statement on the minutes that some felt was included in error. Below are two screenshots that will provide greater clarity on where the statement derived (the documents are attached). When compiling minutes, we use a combination of what was said and what was provided as part of a presentation or report. All of these documents are on board docs. I hope this clarifies any misunderstanding. Thank you.
Marisol O. Ramos-Lopez
Special Assistant to the Board of Education
District Clerk
Rochester City School District
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From: Van White
Sent: Thursday, October 17, 2019 10:36:03 AM
To: Lopez, Marisol O
Cc: Amy Maloy Cynthia Elliott; Dade, Terry J ; Davis, Judith ; Hallmark, Elizabeth F ; Kristoff, Karl W Lebron, Beatriz ; Lehner, Annmarie R; Powell, Willa W; Ricardo Adams; Scott, Francine; Sheppard, Natalie; Wade, Kallia C
Subject: Re: May 14 Board Meeting Minutes
All:
Thank you for providing that clarification. So now it is abundantly clear that Mr. Sewell did make the representation that the 2018-2019 budget was “on track” to be balanced. Given the fact that we have have learned that it, in fact, the budget was not “on track”, I have proposed to Terry that, going forward, that the BOE receive financial reports (even through the summer months) at our regularly convened Finance Committee Meetings.* I’m hoping the BOE will support this change as well.
Van
*This would be a change from our past practice which did not require an end of the academic year report until months after the academic year ended. Terry has indicated to me that he was going to recommend this change as well.
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From: Sheppard, Natalie
Sent: Thursday, October 17, 2019 10:56:24 AM
To: White, Van Lopez, Marisol O
Cc: Amy Maloy; Cynthia Elliott; Dade, Terry J; Davis, Judith; Hallmark, Elizabeth F; Kristoff, Karl W; Lebron, Beatriz; Lehner, Annmarie R; Powell, Willa W; Ricardo Adams; Scott, Francine; Wade, Kallia C
Subject: Re: May 14 Board Meeting Minutes
This should go on public record to be corrected since it was brought up in a public meeting because I checked weeks ago all of the written presentations and discovered the reason when watching the videos with Commissioner LeBron that Dan asked Everton to go into the presentation since he started with other questions and Everton started his presentation off on page 4 and this statement was in the PPT on like page 2 or 3.
Sidenote: I intended to bring this up at last Tuesday's meeting but didn't because I got sidetracked mentally with the fact that no one but myself provided suggestions for the Supt to help develop a plan through this financial crisis.-Natalie
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On Oct 17, 2019, at 11:32 AM, Lebron, Beatriz wrote:
I agree with Commissioner Sheppard
It was in his presentation it was not verbally stated. The fact that we continue to focus on the wrong issues at hand. I get it some of you really want to have a scapegoat for the lack of responsibility of doing your part. You don't need to be a content expert to understand some really basic concepts. Barbara was over spending. She was terrorizing her staff. Many people spoke to various commissioners about this too.
There needs to be more changes than that. Willa Powell should not be the chair.
The board should have reports and actually go through them and understand them.
The CFO should be reporting to the board as a whole. And if this suggestion isn't one that folks are interested it should be a clause to allow the board to call the CFO into a private executive session if there is a cause. When I asked Van to allow the CFO to speak without Barbara or any administration present that request was denied. But this should not be the case. We also have a duty to create an open door space.
As far as areas for Terry to look at. I have no idea what the implications are of any ideas but I have shared with Terry directly and he has my ideas. I am not sharing with the full board. But if you would like to know Natalie I'll hit you up & share with you. however as a board we need to question the cuts needed at EAST too. I said this Tuesday because this isn't something Terry can lead. But it will be absolutely an injustice for all of the entire to school district to eat this and not have EAST eat a portion. And no 1.1 million isn't going to cut it.
So what we do moving forward to prevent this will absolutely require work, effort and accountability and changes from the board too.
Beatriz
Beatriz LeBron
Commissioner, Rochester Board of Education
131 W. Broad Street
Rochester, NY 14614
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From: Powell, Willa W
Sent: Wednesday, October 23, 2019 9:16:48 PM
To: Lebron, Beatriz
Cc: Sheppard, Natalie; White, Van; Lopez, Marisol O; Amy Maloy; Cynthia Elliott; Dade, Terry J ; Davis, Judith; Hallmark, Elizabeth F; Kristoff, Karl W; Lehner, Annmarie R; Ricardo Adams; Scott, Francine; Wade, Kallia C
Subject: Re: May 14 Board Meeting Minutes
This is at least the fourth time Beatriz has called for my resignation from the chairmanship of the Finance Committee, so I feel I have to respond.
Correct me if I am wrong, but when the year began, the Finance Committee was comprised of only three Board members. I was elected from among those three. You, Beatriz, opted out of serving on that committee, even though the invitation was extended.
If, now that we are a committee of the whole, the body would like to hold new elections, I will not stand in the way of that, but neither will I facilitate it by stepping down. If anyone would like to call for a new election, I only suggest that that individual be sure they have the votes to oust me, and that they have a volunteer l8ned up who can get four votes to assume the Chair, so that action can move smoothly and not take up a lot of valuable committee time.
We also have an opportunity in January of 2020 to vote in new committee chairs to each and every committee. I have said many times over the years that I don’t care which committees I serve on, nor which one I would facilitate as Chair. I have served as Chair of Finance as much because no one else wanted the job as any other reason.
One last point on the subject: as with any other committee, the role of Chair is one of facilitation, not gate-keeper. When I met with the CFO in advance of the Finance Committee, I only had one objective: to anticipate Board member questions, and make sure the staff came prepared to answer the those questions that I could anticipate. Reading between the lines of this clarion call for my removal, one might surmise that Beatriz believes that I conspired with the finance staff to conceal facts. I completely reject any such assertion.
No one has EVER been denied the opportunity to ask questions about ANY part of the financial reports under my chairmanship. If anyone needed more time to review the reports during the meeting, they only needed to say so. We all own the problem we now face. The committee of three reviewed the reports for most of the last fiscal year, and didn’t notice or ask questions that would raise suspicions, and we all had that opportunity once we met as committee of the whole after that.
I didn’t see the “tells” in our financial reports until the NYS Comptroller pointed it out, but no one amongst us called it out either. I don’t say that to lay deflect from my own responsibility, but I say again: as Chair, I merely facilitate. The Board owns all it’s actions, and inactions. We accepted the financial reports as they were presented month after month, as a body. We all trusted the finance staff to present us with an accurate picture of our financial status without omission or obfuscation.
Willa
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On Oct 24, 2019, at 11:10 AM, Lebron, Beatriz wrote:
And I will CONTINUE TO CALL YOU OUT and Ask that both YOU AND VAN STEP DOWN FROM ANY LEADERSHIP ROLES. You both have proven to be ineffective and clueless to Leadership.
In addition I absolutely declined to be on finance committee specifically because there are no experts on that previous committee. I already was serving on 3 others. But you weren't elected. We all gave Van our choice and nobody objected as we all have to take on our share.
This is the biggest difference between myself and some of you, you guys care about titles and I don't. I just want folks to do the work. I don't care if I have " the votes" Willa. You won't get mines and you all can work it out amongst yourselves who you all want to vote in. But I clearly can see as the rest of this community that there is major lapse in judgment and capacity among board leaders and as I recall some of you were completely and blindly following the in competencies of Barbara dean Williams with absolute certainty that she knew what she was doing even when it was evident time after time that she was incapable of every delivering her pipe dreams into reality. Willa you can say whatever you want but rest assured. I will keep speaking out. I can't wait until the state auditors finish there report. In the meantime at this point any commissioner that votes for you to continue as financial chair should be called out for lack of judgement as well.
Beatriz
Beatriz LeBron
Commissioner, Rochester Board of Education
131 W. Broad Street
Rochester, NY 14614
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On Oct 24, 2019, at 11:43 AM, Powell, Willa W wrote:
Three points:
1) I know it looked like Chairs were appointed, and I had to continuously remind Van and other Board members that the position is elected by the committee. That committee members agreed to support a particular member as Chair before the committees were convened doesn’t change that fact.
2) Please put a motion on the floor at the next meeting under New Business to call call for new elections. Get your second. But to say “you all can work it out amongst yourselves who you all want to vote in“ is irresponsible because you won’t get four votes for a new election if Board members haven’t coalesced around an alternative.
You wrote, “I just want to do the work,” but you also say, “i will keep speaking out” on this issue. If you don’t work out an alternative with your colleagues, all speaking out will do is continue to sow division and divert us from doing the work
3) Anyone who knows me well knows that the title does not matter to me either. Your assertion only demonstrates how closed you are to actually getting to know me, and possibly your willingness to work toward a cohesive Board.
Willa
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From: Amy Maloy
Sent: Thursday, October 24, 2019 1:05:16 PM
To: Powell, Willa W
Cc: Lebron, Beatriz ; Sheppard, Natalie; White, Van; Lopez, Marisol O; Cynthia Elliott ; Dade, Terry J; Davis, Judith; Hallmark, Elizabeth F; Kristoff, Karl W; Lehner, Annmarie R ; Ricardo Adams; Scott, Francine; Wade, Kallia C
Subject: Re: May 14 Board Meeting Minutes
Good, God! We need to act like adults! We have the responsibility to model mature behavior to our students and community. Going off in our own directions serves zero purpose. And the self-righteous manner in which some people are operating is ridiculous. Our job is to represent constituents, yes. However, we also have the job of stewardship in the sense of working towards agreed-upon common goals as a board. Cooperation is what will lead us to compromise and solutions. The ability to compromise and hear one another respectfully appears to be lost in all of this. We all want a financially responsible district, and we will all work together to solve these issues with Terry, the person we hired to run our district’s day-to-day operations. The board is not tasked with running those day-to-day operations, and shouldn’t be.
We have the ability to jointly solve many problems instead of merely engaging in vitriolic and petty finger pointing for the sake of disruption. I’m flabbergasted by the self righteous cries of “I’m doing the work and no one else is...” It’s beyond immature and unprofessional. We owe it to our students and community to act like responsible adults. We don’t have to personally like one another. But we do need to get along, and make the effort to see one another as peers, equals, and individuals who share a desire to better their community. Name-calling isn’t going to serve us well. There needs to be a reset on our relationships. We’ve got to agree to move past prior slights or frustrations or we won’t achieve anything for our students and families. We should be teaching our students how to be problem solvers. Let’s model that for them.
Amy
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From: "Lebron, Beatriz"
Date: October 24, 2019 at 1:57:48 PM EDT
To: Amy Maloy ; "Powell, Willa W"
Cc: "Sheppard, Natalie"; "White, Van"; "Lopez, Marisol O"; Cynthia Elliott; "Dade, Terry J"; "Davis, Judith"; "Hallmark, Elizabeth F"; "Kristoff, Karl W"; "Lehner, Annmarie R"; Ricardo Adams; "Scott, Francine"; "Wade, Kallia C"
Subject: Re: May 14 Board Meeting Minutes
First of all Amy this doesn't even concern you but if you must. Let's get it going. You ARE NOT THE WHITE SAVIOR FOR ME. Please spare me the lecture of maturity and self serving when you have not had the history of being apart of just the last year alone on this board.
Secondly you are never going to be some one I seek any advice from so you can save yourself the energy from even addressing me from this point on.
I respect just fine those I know are capable, competent and caring. When the fight for URBAN PUBLIC EDUCATION IS FIGHT FOR PRIMARILY BLACK AND BROWN CHILDREN. neither of those can you ever in your life relate or understand the struggle. So really spare me the woos and lectures about civility when my people are involved. We are NOT EQUAL. And society is very clear about that. And I am teaching my people to be assertive and fight for theirs. You want to be hand held into this and you can continue to come in and do what others gave done and so be it. This community at large will know the truth. This is reality and there is no damn reset. We are in a crisis and a real risk of continuing to fail black and brown kids. My kids included. So again spare me about your views on professionalism and maturity I don't follow white people's standard of either and in fact I present that very topic every time I can! I will never want my kids to follow a white standard of either.
Willa I don't care about what you had to remind Van of. I'm speaking about how it went down. No I will not be voting for none of you nor do I care to have any of your votes. The work I have been putting into my community for 18+ years did not start here and will never stop as long as I'm alive. I don't need validation from you or Amy or any other white women period about my performances or my mouth.
You two want unmerited respect because of what? Miss me with all the bull. The board as a whole will undoubtedly have to publicly decide how it will proceed around financial chair. And everyone will be watching if they all want to allow you to continue so be it but I will not be casting that vote and I will keep asking for your removal as the chair.
Beatriz
Beatriz LeBron
Commissioner, Rochester Board of Education