The North County Times story is extremely different from the Union Tribune version of this story. (Both versions can be seen below.) The UT author (and, very likely, her boss, Ricky Young) seem to have relied entirely on school district lawyer Dan Shinoff for their story. Interestingly, the Union-Tribune has kept silent on the story of the defamation suit against this blogger by Dan Shinoff's law firm, which is set for trial on September 7, 2012. Ironically, given the discussion in the article below about the hacking of Fallbrook's emails, my "Stutz Artiano Shinoff & Holtz" page (and countless other pages in my web site) have been hacked again and again over the past several years.
FALLBROOK: Ex-tech director says school district officials ordered her to destroy emails
By GARY WARTH
nctimes.com
June 10, 2012
The former director of educational technology for the Fallbrook Union Elementary School District has filed a $972,000 civil lawsuit against the district, alleging she was wrongfully fired after being falsely accused of snooping through emails.
The suit, filed May 31 by Encinitas resident Elaine Allyn, includes allegations of discrimination, harassment, retaliation and wasteful spending. She also claims that a district investigation into a teacher suspected of videotaping students was hampered because an administrator had ordered emails deleted, inadvertently destroying possible evidence.
Besides the $972,000 cited in the lawsuit, Allyn's attorney Susan Curran said her client also will be seeking lost past and future income, lost benefits, attorney fees and punitive damages.
Dennis Bixler, assistant superintendent of human resources, said the school board meet in closed session last month to discuss the claim Allyn had filed as a prerequisite to the lawsuit. Trustees rejected part of the claim and sent other parts back without action because they were untimely, meaning they had happened too far in the past, he said.
[Maura Larkins comment: This is exactly what the district has been instructed to do, by San Diego County Office of Education, with ALL CLAIMS.]
In the complaint, Allyn said she had been a district employee for 18 years and was earning about $109,000 a year when she was fired in May.
According to the lawsuit, Allyn had been subjected to six years of harassment from Ray Proctor, associate superintendent of business services at the district, who had become vindictive after learning she had complained that he made an inappropriate comment about her in a Cabinet meeting in 2005.
...According to the lawsuit, Proctor had said Allyn must have "slept with the vendor" to get the district its good cellphone contract.
Allyn said in the lawsuit that the human resources department ignored her complaint about Proctor, but her accusation was leaked to him. For the next six years, according to the suit, he was overly critical of her, giving her smaller budgets than her male counterparts and denying her staff assistance.
Also in the lawsuit, Proctor is said to have asked Allyn in early August 2011 to wipe out or cleanse the district's entire electronic data imaging from its archive system and to wipe out all emails that were in the trash bin of the active system.
The district hired Candy Singh as the new superintendent last August. According to the complaint, Singh also requested Allyn delete old imaging and emails, and Allyn said she again refused because it was a violation of state and federal laws.
At Singh's and Proctor's insistence, however, Allyn later hired a consultant to help dismantle the archive system, according to the lawsuit.
Last January, the lawsuit continues, Allyn was asked to assist in the investigation against a teacher suspected of videotaping students. Allyn said she scanned the video camera and found nothing incriminating, but was unable to provide a backlog of the teacher's emails, as requested by private investigator Bob Price, because there were few to read since Proctor and Singh had order a change to the archive system.
According to the lawsuit, Proctor asked Allyn for an administrative password to access additional log files on the computer system.
After she complied, Allyn said she was called in to Proctor's office and accused of illegally accessing and reading employee emails.
Allyn said the accusation was unfounded, as employee emails are not considered private and district policy gives her the right and ability to access emails and electronic files without prior notice or consent.
Bixler, however, said that while the emails are not considered private, and supervisors have the right to look into the emails of subordinates, Allyn was looking into the emails of her supervisors.
[All school emails are public records, arent' they?]
According to the lawsuit, Allyn said she was accused of looking into Singh's emails because she knew about complaints against the superintendent, including how $30,000 had been spent on new office furniture and remodeling. Allyn said in the suit that she knew of the complaints about the spending because people in the district were talking about them, not because she snooped in emails.
But according to a district notice outlining existing causes to discipline Allyn, which Bixler signed April 12 and provided to the North County Times, the investigator hired by the district found other indications that Allyn was looking into the superintendent's and other administrators' emails.
In her lawsuit, Allyn denied ever looking into the superintendent's emails.
[Maura Larkins comment: Both the elementary and high school districts in Fallbrook buy their liability insurance through SDCOE-JPA. Daniel Shinoff is the SDCOE-JPA lawyer who usually represents the district when it is sued.]
Fallbrook schools in fight over alleged email hacks
By Ashly McGlone
June 12, 2012 at 12:01 a.m.
The former technology director is suing the Fallbrook Union Elementary School District for nearly $1 million, alleging she was wrongfully terminated for erasing emails from the district’s email system. She claims she was told to do so, but the district accuses her of hacking.
Elaine Allyn of Encinitas claims the superintendent and assistant superintendent of business services directed her to dismantle the district’s email archive in August, permanently erasing emails in trash folders systemwide.
She also claims she was asked to change district computers so they would retain emails for one week — down from three years.
Her lawsuit says she told the superintendent the move would violate state and federal laws governing public agency records retention, and she was ultimately directed to keep undeleted emails for no more than one year, and deleted emails for no more than one week.
Allyn was fired May 7. The district claims she repeatedly hacked into administrator emails to snoop on her superiors for several months, and initiated unauthorized email deletions in “an attempt to evade detection of her deceitful activities” and destroy evidence of her email access.
District officials say Allyn’s actions were discovered in February when she was asked to retrieve the emails of a teacher under investigation by the district in a separate matter. (According to Allyn’s lawsuit, the teacher was accused of improperly videotaping students.)
When she could provide only limited documentation to an investigator looking into the allegations against the teacher, Allyn was placed under investigation and on a leave of absence.
Allyn maintains she accessed her boss’s emails solely to troubleshoot problems with their accounts and was following the boss’s orders, not acting on her own. Allyn claims in the lawsuit she was targeted for reporting sexual harassment by an administrator.
“I have never hacked,” Allyn said in an interview. “They have trumped up these charges, what has been my job for 18 years now and make it seem like I am untrustworthy, and hacking is appalling to me when I have tried to do my job with the utmost integrity and trustworthiness.”
Dennis Bixler, assistant superintendent of human resources, said the district stands by the charges against Allyn and her termination.
“The termination of Ms. Allyn was a just termination based on numerous acts of wrongdoing and violations of policies, procedures and laws. We look forward to being vindicated in time when this case is addressed in court,” Bixler said.
Attorney Dan Shinoff will represent the district. Allyn, whose final salary totaled $109,077 a year, retained attorney Susan Curran, of Encinitas-based Curran & Curran Law, to represent her.
The district has 30 days to respond to the lawsuit.
Sunday, June 10, 2012
Friday, June 8, 2012
Florida High School Student, Barred From School Bus After Reporting Bullying Of Special Needs Student
Stormy Rich, Florida High School Student, Barred From School Bus After Reporting Bullying Of Special Needs Student
HuffingtonPost.com
05/28/2012
Stormy Rich, an 18-year-old Florida student, says she was punished after reporting bullying of a special needs student on a school bus, and standing up to those bullies when the school didn't take action.
Rich, an Umatilla High School student, was riding on a middle school bus because she had earned enough credits to avoid a first-period class, getting to school later by taking the bus for the neighboring middle school, the Daily Commercial reports.
But one girl on the bus -- a special needs student -- was regularly being picked on by her peers, but couldn't comprehend what was being done to her.
"Just because she doesn't understand doesn't mean that should be happening to her," Rich told WOFL-TV.
She adds that the peer bullies would tell the girl that she couldn't sit in certain seats on the bus and would force food in her mouth.
"I actually had to tell her to spit it out because she didn't understand," Rich said.
The teen, fed up with their behavior, complained to the bus driver -- but nothing changed. She then complained to a high school official, who told her he would contact the middle school, but like before, the bullying continued.
So Rich decided to take the matter into her own hands by telling the bullies to stop aggravating the girl. The harassment stopped for a little while, but then the bullying students began threatening her, despite her regular complaints to school officials.
In response, the district revoked Rich's bus-riding privileges, saying Rich exhibited bully behavior.
"[The district official] said what I did made me the bully, with me telling the kids that if they didn't stop, and if the school didn't do anything, that I would have to handle it," Rich told the Daily Commercial. "To me, it was just going too far."
District officials are standing behind its response, telling WOFL-TV that two wrongs don't make a right. Rich says she's being punished for adhering to school policy, which calls on students to report any bullying they witness.
Lake County Schools communications officer Christopher Patton told the Daily Commercial that he cannot discuss the bullying complaints or student discipline, adding that this is just "one side of the story. …There are other parents that are involved in this."
Rich's story echoes a number of controversial school decisions made with respect to bullying. In March, Georgia student Essance McDougald said she was suspended for not reporting to Lithonia High School officials that she was being bullied.
HuffingtonPost.com
05/28/2012
Stormy Rich, an 18-year-old Florida student, says she was punished after reporting bullying of a special needs student on a school bus, and standing up to those bullies when the school didn't take action.
Rich, an Umatilla High School student, was riding on a middle school bus because she had earned enough credits to avoid a first-period class, getting to school later by taking the bus for the neighboring middle school, the Daily Commercial reports.
But one girl on the bus -- a special needs student -- was regularly being picked on by her peers, but couldn't comprehend what was being done to her.
"Just because she doesn't understand doesn't mean that should be happening to her," Rich told WOFL-TV.
She adds that the peer bullies would tell the girl that she couldn't sit in certain seats on the bus and would force food in her mouth.
"I actually had to tell her to spit it out because she didn't understand," Rich said.
The teen, fed up with their behavior, complained to the bus driver -- but nothing changed. She then complained to a high school official, who told her he would contact the middle school, but like before, the bullying continued.
So Rich decided to take the matter into her own hands by telling the bullies to stop aggravating the girl. The harassment stopped for a little while, but then the bullying students began threatening her, despite her regular complaints to school officials.
In response, the district revoked Rich's bus-riding privileges, saying Rich exhibited bully behavior.
"[The district official] said what I did made me the bully, with me telling the kids that if they didn't stop, and if the school didn't do anything, that I would have to handle it," Rich told the Daily Commercial. "To me, it was just going too far."
District officials are standing behind its response, telling WOFL-TV that two wrongs don't make a right. Rich says she's being punished for adhering to school policy, which calls on students to report any bullying they witness.
Lake County Schools communications officer Christopher Patton told the Daily Commercial that he cannot discuss the bullying complaints or student discipline, adding that this is just "one side of the story. …There are other parents that are involved in this."
Rich's story echoes a number of controversial school decisions made with respect to bullying. In March, Georgia student Essance McDougald said she was suspended for not reporting to Lithonia High School officials that she was being bullied.
Tuesday, June 5, 2012
America's Worst Educators
America’s worst colleges
How badly are for-profit schools serving young people? Corinthian Colleges embodies the industry's worst trends
BY ANDREW LEONARD
Salon.com
JUN 5, 2012
In the fall of 2010, three former students at Everest College, a for-profit career school in Salt Lake City, sued their school’s parent company, Corinthian Colleges...
A 13-page affidavit filed in the case by a former admissions officer, Shayler White, described a high-pressure recruitment process in which prospective students were barraged by phone calls multiple times a day and hustled through financial aid paperwork. With his employment contingent on meeting a strict enrollment quota, White made as many as 600 calls a month, and was, he said, instructed by his superiors to use bullying psychological tactics, to ask questions “designed at putting down the prospective student” and “making them feel hopeless.”
“The ultimate goal was to essentially make them wallow in their grief, feel that pain of having accomplished nothing in life, and then use that pain as their ‘reasons’ to compel the leads to schedule an in-person meeting with an Everest admissions representative.” ...Kent Jenkins, Corinthian’s current vice president for public affairs, deflected a question asking if White’s account accurately represented Corinthian’s recruitment process by noting that there has been no final disposition of the Utah suit. “There have been absolutely no court rulings that support any allegations” in the affidavit, he wrote in an email...
But generally speaking, there’s little question that an obsessive focus on constantly boosting enrollment is crucial to survival in the for-profit college world. Sky-high withdrawal rates plague the industry. It’s not uncommon for the biggest for-profits to enroll as many new students during the course of a single year as originally signed up for classes at the beginning of the year, a phenomenon referred to as “enrollment churn.” For example, Corinthian had 71,246 students in July 2008, enrolled 120,638 new students during the following year, but ended up with only 89,479 by June 30, 2009. Recruiting all those new bodies costs a lot of money. In 2009, Corinthian spent almost a quarter of its $1.3 billion in revenues on advertising and recruitment.
“They are, by and large, a marketing operation,” Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., said in a speech on the Senate floor last September. “Bring the students in, sign them up, bring in the federal dollars; bring in more students, sign them up, bring in more federal dollars.”
Corinthian Colleges, in that respect, is no different from any other career school. But in an industry where bottom-line considerations often trump devotion to educational achievement, Corinthian invites scrutiny. Over the course of its 17-year history, the company has attracted numerous lawsuits. Corinthian schools have recorded some of the highest default rates on student loans in the country, a worrisome fact for a company that derives nearly 90 percent of its revenues from government loans and grants. If you want to understand why the Obama administration has been so steadfast in its efforts to crack down on the for-profit industry, Corinthian is as good a place as any to start.
Founded in Irvine, Calif., in 1995 by five veterans of the vocational school business, Corinthian’s strategy from the beginning was to purchase already existing schools and aggressively boost enrollment. The business plan was simple: grow, grow, grow....
Corinthian generates almost as much bad press as profit.
In 2004 former students filed three separate lawsuits in Florida alleging credit transfer fraud, claiming that Corinthian misled students as to whether their credits would be accepted by other educational institutions.
In 2005, Corinthian paid the Department of Education $776,241 for violations of student aid procedures at California’s Bryman College.
In 2007, reported the O.C. Register, Corinthian paid the state of California $6.5 million to settle charges of false advertising relating to allegedly overstating “the percentage of its students who obtained employment via its courses.”
Just three weeks ago, Corinthian revealed in a regulatnry filing that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is investigating the company to “determine whether for-profit postsecondary companies, student loan origination and servicing providers, or other unnamed persons, have engaged or are engaging in unlawful acts or practices relating to the advertising, marketing or origination of private student loans.”
But perhaps the most embarrassing twist in Corinthian’s recent history came earlier this year in California. In 2012, a new state law came into effect that denied colleges access to the state’s Cal Grants financial aid program if the three-year student loan default rate at an institution exceeded 24.6 percent. Of the state’s 165 for-profit schools, 67 failed the test. Eighteen of those 67 schools are owned by Corinthian. In fact, some of Corinthian’s schools exhibited default rates of over 40 percent. None of California’s public schools failed.
...The high costs, withdrawal and student loan default rates all help explain why the Obama administration pushed last year to institute new “gainful employment” rules that would require for-profit schools to prove that acceptable percentages of their graduates were paying down their debt after graduation. However, even those rules were extremely watered down, say higher education watchers, after extraordinary lobbying efforts from the for-profit sector, including Corinthian Colleges.
That’s right: Corinthian spent money generated from taxpayer-funded student loans to pay for lobbying efforts aimed to weaken rules designed to ensure that students get a good education and taxpayers get their money’s worth. If that doesn’t send you screaming to your nearest publicly funded community college, nothing will.
How badly are for-profit schools serving young people? Corinthian Colleges embodies the industry's worst trends
BY ANDREW LEONARD
Salon.com
JUN 5, 2012
In the fall of 2010, three former students at Everest College, a for-profit career school in Salt Lake City, sued their school’s parent company, Corinthian Colleges...
A 13-page affidavit filed in the case by a former admissions officer, Shayler White, described a high-pressure recruitment process in which prospective students were barraged by phone calls multiple times a day and hustled through financial aid paperwork. With his employment contingent on meeting a strict enrollment quota, White made as many as 600 calls a month, and was, he said, instructed by his superiors to use bullying psychological tactics, to ask questions “designed at putting down the prospective student” and “making them feel hopeless.”
“The ultimate goal was to essentially make them wallow in their grief, feel that pain of having accomplished nothing in life, and then use that pain as their ‘reasons’ to compel the leads to schedule an in-person meeting with an Everest admissions representative.” ...Kent Jenkins, Corinthian’s current vice president for public affairs, deflected a question asking if White’s account accurately represented Corinthian’s recruitment process by noting that there has been no final disposition of the Utah suit. “There have been absolutely no court rulings that support any allegations” in the affidavit, he wrote in an email...
But generally speaking, there’s little question that an obsessive focus on constantly boosting enrollment is crucial to survival in the for-profit college world. Sky-high withdrawal rates plague the industry. It’s not uncommon for the biggest for-profits to enroll as many new students during the course of a single year as originally signed up for classes at the beginning of the year, a phenomenon referred to as “enrollment churn.” For example, Corinthian had 71,246 students in July 2008, enrolled 120,638 new students during the following year, but ended up with only 89,479 by June 30, 2009. Recruiting all those new bodies costs a lot of money. In 2009, Corinthian spent almost a quarter of its $1.3 billion in revenues on advertising and recruitment.
“They are, by and large, a marketing operation,” Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., said in a speech on the Senate floor last September. “Bring the students in, sign them up, bring in the federal dollars; bring in more students, sign them up, bring in more federal dollars.”
Corinthian Colleges, in that respect, is no different from any other career school. But in an industry where bottom-line considerations often trump devotion to educational achievement, Corinthian invites scrutiny. Over the course of its 17-year history, the company has attracted numerous lawsuits. Corinthian schools have recorded some of the highest default rates on student loans in the country, a worrisome fact for a company that derives nearly 90 percent of its revenues from government loans and grants. If you want to understand why the Obama administration has been so steadfast in its efforts to crack down on the for-profit industry, Corinthian is as good a place as any to start.
Founded in Irvine, Calif., in 1995 by five veterans of the vocational school business, Corinthian’s strategy from the beginning was to purchase already existing schools and aggressively boost enrollment. The business plan was simple: grow, grow, grow....
Corinthian generates almost as much bad press as profit.
In 2004 former students filed three separate lawsuits in Florida alleging credit transfer fraud, claiming that Corinthian misled students as to whether their credits would be accepted by other educational institutions.
In 2005, Corinthian paid the Department of Education $776,241 for violations of student aid procedures at California’s Bryman College.
In 2007, reported the O.C. Register, Corinthian paid the state of California $6.5 million to settle charges of false advertising relating to allegedly overstating “the percentage of its students who obtained employment via its courses.”
Just three weeks ago, Corinthian revealed in a regulatnry filing that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is investigating the company to “determine whether for-profit postsecondary companies, student loan origination and servicing providers, or other unnamed persons, have engaged or are engaging in unlawful acts or practices relating to the advertising, marketing or origination of private student loans.”
But perhaps the most embarrassing twist in Corinthian’s recent history came earlier this year in California. In 2012, a new state law came into effect that denied colleges access to the state’s Cal Grants financial aid program if the three-year student loan default rate at an institution exceeded 24.6 percent. Of the state’s 165 for-profit schools, 67 failed the test. Eighteen of those 67 schools are owned by Corinthian. In fact, some of Corinthian’s schools exhibited default rates of over 40 percent. None of California’s public schools failed.
...The high costs, withdrawal and student loan default rates all help explain why the Obama administration pushed last year to institute new “gainful employment” rules that would require for-profit schools to prove that acceptable percentages of their graduates were paying down their debt after graduation. However, even those rules were extremely watered down, say higher education watchers, after extraordinary lobbying efforts from the for-profit sector, including Corinthian Colleges.
That’s right: Corinthian spent money generated from taxpayer-funded student loans to pay for lobbying efforts aimed to weaken rules designed to ensure that students get a good education and taxpayers get their money’s worth. If that doesn’t send you screaming to your nearest publicly funded community college, nothing will.
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