Fraudulent Application and Unprofessional Conduct

From: Robert Chandler 
Sent: Sunday, November 24, 2013 10:04 AM
To: SH Staff; Cynthia Elsberry; Neil James; Janet Graham; Janice Morreale; Jeffrey Garland; Jimmy Washington; Joe DeFeo; John Poston; Karen McIlrath; Kay Loftus; Pam Timms; Harvey Eisner; David Cox; cmurray@thesunnews.com; heather.gale@myhorrynews.com; vgrooms@thesunnews.com
Cc: skelly@ed.sc.gov; wcartled@ed.sc.gov; oig.hotline@ed.gov; robertfchandler@gmail.com
Subject: Fraudulent Application and Unprofessional Conduct

 

To Whom It Should Concern:

 

Dr. Elsberry was given the opportunity to do the right thing, when I called her the morning of September 12, 2013, to inform her that a terrible mistake was being made, in violation of district policy, by her requiring the signatures of professional staffs on a highly sensitive issue.   She did not.

 

Thursday, September 12, 2013, was the day that voting occurred in all Horry County Schools that were “participating schools” in the district’s Race to the Top – District competition for FY 2013. 

 

Dr. Elsberry’s late morning modification to allow anonymity, but also to allow signatures, was still a violation of district policy because she did not “guarantee” anonymity, another major mistake.  Of course, a teacher can still always choose to sign his or her name on a ballot, but Dr. Elsberry should have followed district policy to guarantee an anonymous process.  She did not.

 

What the district did, in many schools, was to allow the original signature sheets to circulate.  Whoever signed his or name in support or non-support was under pressure to produce a supportive signature.  Many signed their names in the “appropriate” spot, and all of those signing could see who had voted and how they had voted.  This was NOT a process that guaranteed anonymity.

 

I notified the Horry County Board of Education in the early afternoon, informing them of the violation of policy and the inadequate amount of time given for consideration of the matter.  There had been no time for understanding, discussion, and debate of what we were voting on.

 

The superintendent and the board had four days to consider the details of my arguments before the board vote of September 16th to sanction our district’s application for the Race to the Top – District competition.  Neither the superintendent nor the board communicated with me in any form to examine my concerns, ask any questions, or follow up in any manner.

 

Hearing nothing, I determined that I must address the board in person the night of the 16^th to vigorously protest its moving forward with our grant application.  Both the superintendent and the board had ample time to stop this endeavor.  They did not.

 

Instead, after hearing my many reasons, during the public comments portion of the meeting, that our application was produced inappropriately, the board voted unanimously in support of our application, with no discussion of my concerns.

 

Upon submission of the application on October 8, 2013, both the superintendent and the board committed a fraudulent act, for they submitted an application with gross exaggerations and incorrect information. 

 

Monies do not have to be received for fraud to occur.  If one submits information which is false or misleading, a fraudulent act has occurred.  This is exactly what the superintendent and the board did.

 

Section B4 of the application proper includes numerous false and misleading statements.  For detailed evidence of this, see my November postings on my blog, “Teachers Are Citizens Too,” at  http://teachersarecitizenstoo.blogspot.com/.

 

Part of this evidence includes Horry County Schools having claimed “to convene teachers at on-site meetings.”  Our district claims that it “scheduled meetings at each participating school, preceding each meeting with a detailed description of the content of the Consortium’s vision of personalized learning” because it “recognized the importance of receiving feedback from staff at participating schools.”  This did not happen.

 

By the district’s own admission, in a response to a South Carolina Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, Teal Harding, district respondent to my FOIA requests, stated via email, “...per your question regarding a meeting at Socastee High School to engage teachers in the development of the Race to the Top proposal, I have no records indicating a meeting at your school for this purpose.” (email dated Monday, November 11, 2013).

 

I was not involved in an iterative, “repetitive” process, to develop our grant application.  According to the rules of the competition and according to our own application’s narrative admission, I was supposed to be, and so were the thousands of participating teachers in Horry County Schools.  We were not.

 

No one can claim that a time frame of less than eight hours, during which one is supposed to be mainly teaching, could possibly allow for a process of “meaningful stakeholder input and support.”  The evidence shows that we were not appropriately involved in the development and support of our grant application and that false and misleading information of a gross nature was in the application, thus making it fraudulent.

 

Dr. Elsberry and the Horry County Board of Education were extremely negligent in their responsibilities, unprofessional in their conduct, and fraudulent in the submission of our Race to the Top – District application for FY 2013.

 

(Government Accountability Office, Washington DC - refer to control # 61258)

 

 

Professionally,

Bobby Chandler

 

International Baccalaureate History Instructor

Socastee High School, Myrtle Beach, SC