So, early afternoon should pretty much end the last remaining support for outgoing Superintendent Covington . . .
However . . . It kind of puts the recent tumult in a different light. While he (and his supporters) are filing Sunshine requests on volunteers . . . There's this other, sweet job out there.
As usual. . . Taking the money and running from Kansas City always seems like a good plan.
LINKS:
Covington leaves a firestorm brewing in Kansas City
Detroit Free Press: Candidate named to lead Education Achievement System
Board Member: Covington To Accept Michigan Job
Report: Covington up for Michigan job
Superintendent Reportedly Has Another Job Offer
KCMSD/Board member Arthur Benson withdraws resignation
Update 2:45 . . . KC School District Up for Classification Decision This Fall
"The Kansas City School District is among several districts due to receive a formal classification this year by the state. The Department of Elementary and Secondary Education will present a recommendation to the State Board of Education after 2010-11 performance results are finalized in mid-September."
Word is Covington has already agreed to take the job.
KCMOSD looks to the future w/o leader
Covington wastes no time finding job; accepts position in Michigan
The Covington News Release from Michigan
KCTV5: Covington heading to Michigan to oversee low-performing schools
$175,000 SIGNING BONUS FOR COVINGTON FOR THE MICHIGAN JOB!!!
Developing . . .
Always have a Plan B
ReplyDeletelol.
ReplyDeleteHe should immediately forfeit any and ALL benefits from Kansas City. After all, HE quit and HE took another job in the process. I say fowl!! Also, fuck him!
ReplyDeleteSo now we do the whole thing all over again.
ReplyDeleteShit.
Covington is a coward.
ReplyDeleteI think the board has more questions to answer about these Sunshine Law requests.
ReplyDeleteIf he has a contract with the city that he ended early, I hope they can get out of paying him any severance or other benefits under breach of contract.
ReplyDeleteNow we see Benson for the greedy little man he is!
ReplyDeleteI'm sure someone who bailed out of his last job under false pretenses will be VERY popular presiding over the schools in Detroit. But he can join Michelle Rhee in the hearts of the choicers and the people who think the #1 reason for bad schools are bad teachers if he doesn't quit Detroit in 2 years.
ReplyDeleteSo, everyone is pissed off at each other and are quitting or threatening to do so. This will make for interesting drama. But what about the allegations of contract irregularities? That should be of foremost concern for us all at the moment. Have any laws been broken and is any law enforcement agency looking into this? I say no one should leave the scene of the crime till we find out who dunnit!
ReplyDeleteYOur'e right, 2:28. It's easy for people to shoot off their mouths on causes and effects from the comfort of an anonymous keyboard, but I think you may well be exactly right and are pointing the way.
ReplyDeleteEverybody else is just speculating and look how foolish everyone's been doing THAT for the past 36 hours!
I don't think the fat lady has sung yet--specially since the principals have yet to publicly speak without carefully worded statements.
There are no contract irregularities you d-bag. It was Benson's contrivance to get rid of his enemy, West. West released all emails to the media. The Robertson/Helling story in the Stat this morning vindicates West.
ReplyDeleteDidin't the board already accept benson's resignation letter?
ReplyDeleteI personally wouldn't let him rescind it; Benson leaving the board was a huge plus to this whole farce....
nobody is getting vindicated in this.
ReplyDeleteWe need to get rid of the board and the district.
Start over.
OK. Now it comes out.
ReplyDeleteCovington was driving that SUV that landed on the roof of a house the other night.
Sly James' son was riding shotgun.
Covington is being interviewed in Detroit right now, thru live video stream at:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.mistreamnet.com/livestream.php?chan=remc20travel
Please! Please! Please! Don't let Benson withdraw his resignation.
ReplyDeleteHe said if Covington leaves, he leaves. A deal is a deal.
You might want to go to the Detroit Free Press site (freep.com) and leave your comments on how Covington has handled his departure from KC...and how he cut and run before he finished his job here.
ReplyDeleteBenson coming back is worse than Covington leaving.
ReplyDeleteI told you. Again, Steve Bilko is 100% correct on education issues.
ReplyDeleteAgree with 3:47
ReplyDeleteI just watched them hire Covington for the Michigan job!
ReplyDeleteThe last laugh is the business community who trusted him.
Covington is exactly who we knew he was!
ReplyDeleteThe problem here hate for the sake of hate.
He deserves a little bit of hate if all he did was close schools and then leave us to deal with the aftermath.
ReplyDeleteBlame Airick for trusting him and helping push the agenda.
2:08 am, did you mean "fowl" llke chicken? Are you a graduate of KCSD??? Stupid fuck.
ReplyDeleteMr. Covington is a genius! He got out before he got fired! KCSD should hire another outsider to continue the trend. Being hired as the super in KC is a super job. Another one hits the KC lottery.
ReplyDeleteI'd move to another country if I had a passport. Hell, I'd move to Kansas if I had gas money.
Hey, anon 4:22 PM, did YOU mean 2:08 PM instead of 2:08 am? Let's see, what are the words I'm searching for? Oh yes.....Stupid fuck!
ReplyDeleteWith love, a KCSD graduate.
Can't we all just get along?
ReplyDeleteI think this calls for a picture of London Andrews' big ass!
ReplyDeleteWe've been snookered!
ReplyDeleteP.S. I vote YES on London Andrews
Ha Ha Benson you're an asshole and this is hilarious!
ReplyDeleteScrew us once shame on us, screw us for the 120,575th time
ReplyDeleteNothing surprises me about that school district.
ReplyDeleteI can sum it up in one phrase: " The clowns are in charge of the circus."
Well done Mr. Covington!
ReplyDeleteAny truth to the rumor that Covington is driving around Detroit in a Crysler like Emminem?
ReplyDelete"You don't get ahead by doing the right thing, you get ahead by doing what you gotta do"
ReplyDeleteCovingtons Formula
It's one thing for the young people on the school board to get snookered, but having Benson and all the "civic leader" swells get their butts handed to them shows what jokes the people who think they really "run" KCMO are.
ReplyDeleteNothing should surprise any of us.
Hahahaha! I fucking knew it! A fucking con job! Called it yesterday! I wonder if he will be paid for his contract? The city better have the balls to immediately void his contract for him not fulfilling his obligations to BE A FUCKING SUPERINTENDENT!
ReplyDeleteOtherwise this black guy completely shit on his own race. Talk about grade A mafia tactics!
4:30, suck my nigger dick bitch.
ReplyDeleteUmm, 5:33?
ReplyDeleteHe wasn't employed by the city. How can the city "have the balls to immediately void his contract", when he isn't a city employee?
Educate yourself.
Let us stop the vulgar language. Dr. C is an outstanding individual, has served the district well and deserves an opportunity to fix another school district. Detroit is the winner!
ReplyDeleteLet's face the facts. KCMSD got played. City of Kansas City got played. KCMSD Students got played. Arthur Benson got super-played. The only joy I take in this whole debacle is Arthur Benson finally looks like the real idiot he is. Why no one ever challenges this sorry bag of bones is beyond me. He has gained his wealth on the miseducation of Black youth. Score one for Dr. Covington over this nitwit. However, the real losers are our children who have already suffered at the hand of the major loser: Arthur Benson. Look at the facts and you will see Benson has controlled, manipulated, orchestrated and devised the direction of the KCMSD Board for years. Will the media ever expose Benson? Now would be the perfect time.
ReplyDeleteWhile the 26th edition of the KCSD superintendent circus wraps up, Kansas City's kids continue to slide further and further backwards into preventable stupidity. Kansas City's children deserve better than this.
ReplyDeleteAgree with 6:12 absolutely.
ReplyDeleteThis is a fucking shame.
Shame on Benson, shame on Covington Shame on Airick and all the school board.
YOU HAVE FUCKED OUR SCHOOLS
Jewel: Is you using "dick" as an adejective? Are you wanting your dick or your bitch sucked?
ReplyDelete6:10 KCMSD is not fixed. Covington did some good things but he didn't fix the system. Check the test scores, employeee morale, the dysfuntional board, egotistical district administrators, and the decision to integrate special needs students in schools that can't service special ed students. He put us in a position to make some progress. But he left the job incomplete. Last time I checked, incompletes become a failing grade if they are not rectified.
ReplyDeleteAirick wha da moneys. Mah Faxon dollas bout run out.
ReplyDeleteSOmeone elsewhere suggested Covington did exactly what he was hired to do... use a knife to gut that fat fish and move on to the next town to fix THAT one.
ReplyDeleteLots of CEO's do that for a living... don't even bother to move to the target city. THe board may very well have hired him for this purpose...or at least a faction on the board. To get rid of the excess schools, a pile of teachers the district can't affoard, and after pissing everyone off, moved on.
Conclusion
ReplyDeleteAll the money spent in Kansas City brought about neither integration nor higher levels of achievement. The lessons of the Kansas City experiment should stand as a warning to those who would use massive funding and gold-plated buildings to encourage integration and improve education:
The political realities of inner-city Kansas City made it impossible to fire incompetent teachers and principals and hire good ones.
Because the community regarded the school system as much as an employment opportunity as an educational institution, less than half the education budget ever made it to the classroom.
School superintendents found it hard to function because every decision was second-guessed by the court-appointed monitoring committee; the attorney for the plaintiffs; and the state of Missouri, which was paying most of the bills.
Because the designers of the Kansas City plan assumed that inner-city blacks couldn't learn unless they sat in classrooms with middle-class whites, the district wasted exorbitant amounts of time and money on expensive facilities and elaborate programs intended to attract suburban whites instead of focusing its attention on the needs of inner-city blacks.
By turning virtually every school in the district into a magnet school, the Kansas City plan destroyed schools as essential parts of neighborhoods, fractured neighborhoods' sense of community, and alienated parents.
The mechanism used to fund improvements to the school system (a federal desegregation lawsuit) deflected attention from the real problem--the need to raise black achievement.
The ideological biases of local educators and politicians, and the federal court, made them reject solutions that might have worked, such as merit pay, charter schools, or offers by private schools to educate students in return for vouchers.
Because the district had no way to evaluate the performance of teachers and administrators, promotions couldn't be based on merit.
The desegregation plan created inverse achievement incentives--the district got hundreds of millions of extra dollars in court-ordered funding each year but only if student test scores failed to meet national norms.
Mr. Covington is smoking a cigarette with his legs hanging over the side of the bed!
ReplyDeleteIs prostitution still illegal?
Radioman nailed it. This happens all the time. Get in, make some sweeping changes (good or bad) and then get the hell out of Dodge. If I cared enough and I probably should I would take a look at how his former districts have fared under his leadership. He must say the right things in interviews 'cause the man keeps gettin' jobs.
ReplyDeleteJust because it happens all the time doesn't mean it's right here.
ReplyDeleteAirick promised he would not micromanage and he lied.
Covington promised he had a plan and he lied. He left after creating destruction.
The school board members lied because they said they would be good stewards of our resources.
The district is broken down. Everyone reading this can do a public service by steering as many people as they can far, far away from it.
Never going to change. Too bad. So sad. Move to Johnson County.
ReplyDeleteDisaster Capitalism
ReplyDelete$20 Billion goes up in smoke
John Sharp for KCMO School District superintendent, he got that A+ for education.
ReplyDeleteTony Boetello for KCMO School District superintendent!
ReplyDelete6:24 PM --
ReplyDeleteThe East German jusge gives you a
"10" for that post! Congrats on the insights.
Sorry ... it should say, "... the East German judge ..."
ReplyDeleteJust know that the republican party and the governors who have hoodwinked the electorate to get in under false pretenses, plan to do the same thing to the ENTIRE COUNTRY!
ReplyDeleteThis is exactly what Rick "Mr Education Governor" Perry is trying to do in Texas. Gut Texas to line the pockets of his rich friends.
Its a national outrage. BUt sadly, some of it needs doing, like in KCSD.
How bout Herbert Camacho?
ReplyDeleteIf you needed a reason why people live in Johnson County.
ReplyDeleteToday you got it.
First, I think some people owe and apology to Airick West. Apparently this resignation had little to do with him.
ReplyDeleteSecond, what a tragedy that Benson withdrew his resignation. He really, really needs to go. He has made millions of $ suing the KCMSD. In fact, at one time, the federal government, acting in their capacity of suing the district, was his only client. He sends his child to Pembroke, but everybody else's kids get the shaft. Well, he always said that the students did not have a right to a good education, just an integrated one. Now they have neither, thanks to him.
Third, I read an article that the Park Hill SD (right next door) set a record on their MAP, ACT and SAT tests last year. The students, teachers, and the administrators deserve our congratulations. Their superintendent has announced his retirement. Why don't we hire him? He seems to know what he is doing.
It seems it's broken beyond repair at this point. Insanity is doing the same thing over and over hoping for a different outcome. Or something like that.
ReplyDelete8:33, the Park Hill school district is not "right next door" to the KCMO school district. There's an entire other shool district that seperates the two.
ReplyDeleteYes, Benson is truly a piece of shit, and needs to go. Have the State take over, parse the monstrous KCMOSD bureaucracy into zones where every child, regardless of location, gets the same $ from taxes alloted to him/her, and fix this goddamned embarassment. Airick West is a legend in his own mind only. It should require a college degree to be on the School Board - and it's questionable what his resume would really vet out to be if he were investigated. Where there's smoke, there's fire - congratulations to Mr. Covington for the SSL requests.
ReplyDeleteHow about the KCMSD cfo, Rebecca Lee Gwin, is a finalist for the Cleveland (OH) superintendency. I would imagine that if she does not get it; she will go with Covie.
ReplyDeleteRadioman KC @ 7:47 - So you take a town like KCMO that is being driven into the ground by unchallenged Democrat leadership and manage to somehow make it about Republicans? You sir are a politician's wet dream. No accountability.
ReplyDeleteAll I was talking about was this Board hiring a gunslinger to gut the district, much as republicans aroudn the country are gutting THEIR schools and other govt services.
ReplyDeleteTHe only think I agree with is that KCSD needed to be leaned down, as I understand it, because they can't run deficits. What else to do besides the unhappy closing of schools and cutting of teachers.
Sadly they can't cull the worst teachers but thats not how it works in teacher union america.
John Sharp, KC's Mr. Education for Superintendent.
ReplyDeleteNice typo there, Freud.
ReplyDeleteHome schools, fools.
ReplyDelete5:33 you are a racist POS you are uneducated as it seems. You are not a part of any possible solution in KC yet you are definatley part of the problem in KC..you are a fucking douche and I am a white guy! get some education, grow some balls and be a man!!! You need a shrink my faggot taxpayer. (if you even pay)
ReplyDeleteKC residents are some of the biggest pussies that apparently never get any pussy.
Apologize to Airhole West?? Yeah right, that fucking nigger is just as bad as everyone thinks he is.
ReplyDeleteOh, how cute, the kickback fairy drug him to kc to rip us off, Just like so many others. The rumor is out and true. That is why these crazy politicians tell you that they are going out for national advertising to find candidates. So step brother finds step brother. Then you have it a split sign on bonus that amounts to most of our salaries for 3-5 years. Not a bad deal. Many come to kc just to get a piece of the pie. What is the race ratio of sign on dollars. There is nobody that handles the money that does not have either their hands in the jar or scared to tell us - because you will never see that report printed.
ReplyDeleteEither kick backs, silent legislative contracts, or paid through a secondary source. It is all legal, blind eyed bs. But ask Ron and he will tell you how to screw kc on some heavy coin.
KC taxpayers are yuppies without balls that grace the crooks with silver linings in life. We deserve some gratitude.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.......AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAH!!!!! THIS ONE GOES OUT TO ALL OF THOSE "POLITICOS" WHO SAID COVINGTON AND AIRICK WEST WERE "DOING IT FOR THE KIDS!" HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
ReplyDelete