McFarland Unified School District board exposed! - By N.L. Belardes

What’s going on in education in Kern County’s outlying farming towns? I’ve always wondered if the lands just north of Bakersfield were as ruthless as I’ve heard in the past when it comes to underhanded educational leadership. Thanks to reader, Gustavo, I’ve been able to take a look at the just released February 2007 Management Study from the McFarland Unified School District. And let me tell you, the District Overview makes McFarland’s school board out to be a group of untrained ruthless educational leaders with a vengeful spirit, loose pockets and inability to elect a leader. Apparently, they can’t even run meetings very well. The question is, does the McFarland debacle represent more of the outlying farming communities? Are they going to be studied too?

Is there a relationship between how the McFarland school system is being run with what I heard Delano college students once indicate as problems in the past with farm labor structure? Underhanded dealings and employment favors? Talk about interesting classroom discussions. I have no way to prove if such rural area labor structuring methods have anything to do with the McFarland board. Could be mutually exclusive. The real question is if the McFarland study is an isolated case in the outlying Kern County school system.

So what does this 37-page document say?

No real leadership for one with Superintendents coming in and out, and citing, “Board relations have been fueled by recall attempts, threatened firings of employees and contentious board elections.” As a result, many employees were cautious with the team doing the investigating, fearing their own jobs were at stake. Each staff member interviewed recalled retaliatory measures taken by the board against employees. And they indicated such actions were still occurring. In fact, check this out:

A common perception of staff and board members is that some board members often try to act in place of credentialed administrators, particularly in regard to personnel issues.

And if that isn’t enough, there are favors being passed around by people related on the school’s five-member board with school employees:

Staff members interviewed shared the perception that personnel decisions were sometimes influenced by personal preferences or agendas. It was shared that several employees of the district are related to each other or to board members and these relationships are perceived to sometimes be used to influence hiring decisions or to intercede in employee disciplinary actions.

Another area of the document provides evidence of intimidation tactics:

Individuals reported that the district and community might make disparaging comments in written communications to potential future employers. This was the case with the previous superintendent who accepted a position with another district in July 2006. His new district board received an unsigned, derogatory letter in summer 2006 about his performance in McFarland.

You don’t even want me to get into how loose their pockets are. The McFarland Board looks like they also never learned how to manage a budget. Their lack of expertise is a cause for serious concern by the investigators who found them in areas of over-hiring, financial mismanagement, misappropriated funds, poor record keeping and more.

Their policies appear just as poorly managed within a spectrum that lacks vision and mission: “The McFarland Unified School District has an adopted set of policies; however, they are not clearly understood, nor do they appear to be consistently followed.” When you have favors being done left and right for reasons of power, well, what do you expect, no corruption?

What does the investigating team recommend as solutions? Curtail nepotism. Sure. But how? Unless they place another body on site to monitor the McFarland board, how can they expect the board to comply? Sure, that would be expensive, but school systems, like anything else, must battle corruption. I guess that’s what these reports are for. Does make you wonder if their slap on the hand was simply their interrogation and the ensuing District Overview document.

I wonder if the document even becomes part of their individual records. When I read that the board must “realize that board member conflict and lack of cooperation fuel a district’s culture and create an environment of disharmony and lack of trust,” all I can think is: are they going to keep getting away with it? Didn't the board members realize they were corrupt while performing corrupt practices? Did they really need a District Overview to tell them they're being naughty? And what would that very board recommend would be done to ruthless students?

Yes, they would clean house. Expulsion.

And these are just recommendations, what the governing board should do. Why aren’t they listed as “ACTIONS”?

This entry was posted by N.L. Belardes, on Saturday, February 10, 2007. You can leave your response.