This is a startling turn of events. A group of citizens in Bridgeport sued to oust Bridgeport Superintendent Paul Vallas because he lacked the credentials specified in state law to be a superintendent. Vallas has been superintendent of schools in Chicago, Philadelphia, and the Recovery School District in New Orleans. The mayor of Bridgeport and the school board approved his contract.
But today Superior Court Judge Barbara Bellis ruled that Vallas was unqualified and ordered his removal. Presumably, there will be an appeal.
As soon as I get more details, I will post them.
This is a quote from the judge’s decision: “Because Vallas did not complete a school leadership program, he was not entitled to a waiver of certification. The waiver he received on 6/17/13 is invalid. The court orders that Paul Vallas be removed from his office.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Pryor, the commissioner of Ed, had rigged up a quickie, three credit independent study for Vallas with a UConn prof, which he then called a “leadership program.” I guess nobody was buying that.
Celebrate!
Here is the memorandum of decision:
http://civilinquiry.jud.ct.gov/DocumentInquiry/DocumentInquiry.aspx?DocumentNo=6363104
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Bridgeport saw the light when Chicago, Philly, and NOLA didn’t?
I believe the track record and his “success” in those three cities will be his downfall, not to mention educronies and sleazy maneuvers.
Could be he was unqualified for those jobs, too? But, apparently no one went to court?
Wow! I never thought that would happen! We keepnsaying that the only way to fight “reform” is in the courts. This is a sign that maybe that is the direction we should be heading.
Monday’s Supreme Court decision on Voting Rights indicates this not necessarily so. It would be very dangerous to think the courts will end corporate education deform. People must organize for a fight!
With the filing of an appeal, Vallas would be allowed to continue in his position, would he not?
I’m sure Pryor will find something else for Vallas to do.
The best part is that the judge basically called both Stefan Pryor and Paul Vallas disingenuous. “Vallas and his witnesses were, at times, less than candid with the court.”
Stefan and Paul lied? OMG!
HALLELUAH!!!!! Now, we can go after Adamowski!
Citizens are catching on.
Yes, they are catching on! I hope this movement continues! I also hope the judge’s ruling is upheld.
Amen. One Bozo down!
Great blog called Wait, What? by Jonathan Pelto has a detailed running record of the Paul Vallas fiasco in Bridgeport, CT
http://jonathanpelto.com/tag/paul-vallas/
I think Eli Broad has a mini camp for little chiefs. Instead of the arduous ten weekend BROAD Superintendent Academy, the mini camp allows for full Broad certification after passing a twenty question multiple choice test, and a signed endorsement of the NCTQ “report”.
Not really but wait……
Next court challenges should be in Hartford and New Haven.
If Corrupticut falls, then the ed-deformers will likely be defeated.
Unfortunately — what is happening in states like Wisconsin — they are beginning to “loosen” the requirements for leadership — anybody can be a teacher (without training) so it only follows that anyone can be a school leader (principal, supt) without understanding teaching and learning… While I am pleased we have places “standing up” for what is right — I fear that those with the power in government will just continue to make the rules as they go…
Among the early efforts to improve learning was to ramp up the requirement to be certified to teach in public schools. That was directed at the existing & soon to become teacher corps. Now that privatization is taking hold & replacing many public schools & public school teachers, certification requirements are obstacles to bringing in less qualified teachers & paying them less, thereby improving the bottom line earnings &/or administrative salaries. You want cold hearted business types for that kind of work, so it’s better they just don’t grasp the nuances & enforce the bean counter policies.
Unqualified school leaders rule the day in education today. I’ve worked for a superintendent that was numerically illiterate, an executive director that never taught nor led a school, and a network leader with an MBA and 2 years of classroom experience. It’s ludicrous. In no other field have so many led with so little for so long.
I know someone who worked in a charter where the principal had been a used car salesman and no degree (this is not a joke). You would not believe how bad the leadership is in these schools. A nightmare
I know of private religious schools where the only qualification to either teach or serve as the principal is to be a member of the church. I know of teachers and principals in such schools whose only education is that they are high school graduates. Yet, they firmly believe that they are better than we public school teachers. Unbelievable.
Our last superintendent was an accountant, the district CFO, when he was hired. He quit in disgrace over a horrendous budget deficit.
His replacement is a retired military officer who worked in Chicago under Vallas and then in the Minneapolis schools as CEO.
I’m giving him the benefit of the doubt for now, since he’s only been here about 3 months and he had a heck of a mess to clean up but when he said Vallas was someone he emulated and admired my warning bells went off.
We shall see what transpires. Wish us luck.
It’s a real sign of laziness on Vallas’s part. There are so many garbage on-line programs he could have signed up for. More and more supers are getting their “degrees” from these mills.
He is too arrogant to believe any of those requirements apply to him. This man is a serious example of a narcissistic personality disorder. He is really out of touch with reality.
When CT citizens were pointing out the desperate situations in his former reformlands (Chicago, Philly, NOLA), he actually said, “Maybe it’s because I am not there anymore.”
He’s accustomed to having state laws changed just for him, so he could be cronied in.
He did have the state law changed for him- then he violated that!
Are there any attorneys out there who would like to help me go after Adamowski?
Woo Hoo! Millions of victims, young and old, from the four cities (plus Chile and Haiti) that this non-educational leader has impacted with his creative destruction business model over the past two decades are now rising to rejoice in celebration! Eventually, wrongs really are righted. Yippee!
Read the ConnCan drivel:
One man’s bureaucratic technicality is another man’s LAW!
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
CONTACT: Brett Broesder
PHONE: (406) 565-0083
EMAIL: Brett.Broesder@ConnCAN.org
ConnCAN on Bridgeport Superintendent Paul Vallas Ruling
New Haven (June 28, 2013) – This afternoon, a Superior Court judge unfortunately ordered Bridgeport Superintendent of Schools Paul Vallas removed from office. Judge Barbara Bellis ruled Vallas, who was approved Monday as superintendent by the Board of Education, did not complete a school leadership program as required by law, according to the Connecticut Post.
In response, Jennifer Alexander, the acting chief executive officer for the Connecticut Coalition for Achievement Now (ConnCAN), made the following statement:
“Right now, Bridgeport ranks 163 out of 165 school districts in Connecticut, with more students trapped in failing schools than in any other city in the state, according to the State Department of Education. And only one in four Bridgeport kids are reading at grade level.
“In order to address these problems, Bridgeport Superintendent of Schools Paul Vallas has been working vigilantly to ensure every child in the state’s largest city will someday have access to a high quality public education regardless of race, wealth or zip code.
“Superintendent Vallas rightly realizes that a stronger commitment to educating our children for tomorrow’s jobs will make a Bridgeport a place where people want to live and work, where companies want to invest and hire people, and where our strong communities help create a stronger economy.
“Today’s ruling is unfortunate. It was not made based on a performance evaluation or merit. Instead, it was made based on a bureaucratic technicality. What’s important is the need to keep improving student achievement in our schools because a stronger education system means a stronger Bridgeport. We’re hopeful that in the end, justice will prevail and Superintendent Vallas will be able to continue his work to help ensure a better future for kids in Bridgeport.”
Alexander’s comment are so starkly irrelevant to the issue in the court ruling as to suggest her utter incompetence, as well as Pallas’s lack of qualifications. Neither seem a very stellar example.
I would expect nothing else but irrelevance and incompetence from the privatizing Edushysters posing as “reformers” feigning concern for the poor brown child while funneling taxpayer money into their pockets.
They have gotten away with it for so long they thought they were untouchable.
And Ken one more thing:
Sick of the failing schools, zip code mantra. We have kids in abandoned schools in failing cities.
They only get “rescued” when they turn them over to a charter management company who require a hefty fee and a fleet of overpaid “leaders” AND THIS they don’t want to talk about:
Children are trapped in failing cities led by failing mayors controlled by failing governors who follow failing presidents corrupted by a failing society controlled by failing corporations.
I just sent an email of rebuttal to Mr. Brett Broesder of ConnCAN since the link is posted here. I think that it would be nice of everyone here to do so. It might make his day hearing from each of us.
CT Post Editorial:
There is no celebration over a court ruling Friday that removes Superintendent Paul Vallas as head of Bridgeport public schools. It means yet more turmoil for a struggling system desperately in need of continuity. No matter what happens on appeal, there will be doubt and uncertainty throughout the summer months and into the start of the next school year.
And yet it is impossible to miss the pattern that has played itself out over the past two years. This has been a nonstop rush of cut corners, secret deals and special treatment that started with the abdication of the elected Bridgeport Board of Education in the summer of 2011, almost exactly two years ago.
No one ever doubted that the school system desperately needed help, and still does today. But all the planning for the school board takeover by the state happened behind closed doors, with no one outside the circle of plotters, including three members of the school board itself, aware of what was happening until it was posted as an agenda item just before a holiday weekend.
http://www.ctpost.com/news/article/Vallas-ruling-just-the-latest-failure-4637077.php?cmpid=twitter
Is the author of this CT Post editorial kidding? There is a huge amount of celebrating going on throughout CT!
The closing is a dagger:
It was Vallas’ friend and ally, state Education Commissioner Stefan Pryor, who made it possible. He and the state Board of Education came up with a sham of a program at the University of Connecticut for Vallas to complete in lieu of a legitimate certification. Vallas’ 13-week UConn session did not come close to meeting statutory requirements for a superintendent certificate, but officials approved it anyway.
A court, however, did not. Superior Court Judge Barbara Bellis ruled, properly, that Vallas’ course did not meet the requirements and as such ordered him removed from office.
This is a failure on multiple fronts. It’s a failure of Mayor Bill Finch and Gov. Dannel P. Malloy, both of whom were involved in the school board takeover and are responsible for its shortfall. It’s a failure of the state school board. It’s a failure of the majority on the Bridgeport Board of Education, who pretended a clearly insufficient certification passed muster. But it is not a failure, it must be said, of four local school board members who questioned the deal and now appear prescient.
Most of all, it is a failure of Stefan Pryor. This is an embarrassment for Bridgeport, and it is Pryor more than anyone who brought this upon the city and its school system, cutting corners and clearing obstacles in obvious violation of the law.
This is, ultimately, about the children of Bridgeport public schools. And they have been let down, again. The parties who made this happen must be held to account.
One more:
Schools out for Vallas:
http://www.ctpost.com/local/article/School-s-out-for-Vallas-4637246.php
Love this part written by the judge, “The court accepts Vallas’ testimony that the work, although done over the course of ten weeks while fulfilling his employment as acting superintendent, could have been completed in a week.”
The court agrees with Vallas that it was a sham one week course!!! Guess he didn’t realize he was hanging himself when he suggested that would suffice for what is typically a minimum 13 month requirement for every other superintendent attending UConn who has no clout.
And his supporters plan to hold up Chicago, Philadelphia and NOLA as examples of his “track record,” when every single one of those school districts remain in dire straights today? Those cities are not models for anyone. And why would people think that, after two failing years in Bridgeport, he is still going to be making improvements there?
The only thing accomplished is that administratively engineered devastation has been brought to scale across our nation thanks to Vallas and his protege Duncan.
Until reading the judge’s decision, I had never ever read anything before about Vallas having “served as a school teacher.” Considering all the uproar about him being a businessman and not an educator when he served as CEO of Chicago Public Schools, you’d think that would have been shouted to the roof tops.
Anyone know the source of that information?
Well they didn’t have TFA in 1950 so probably he subbed once.
They fabricate everything else, so who knows?
He mentioned he was a “History teacher” a few times at his Forums around town. I never was able to find the source of that info. anywhere!!
And the latest on the CT Mirror:
In April, the state board approved an independent study created for Vallas by the University of Connecticut as a valid program. But the judge said Friday that the short, independent study he completed in May at UConn was merely a simultation.
“There is no doubt that Vallas received preferential treatment,” the judge wrote in her 27-page decision.
Vallas is in his 17th month of leading the 21,000-student school system.
The judge also noted that Vallas lacked the required prerequisites to enroll in the regular UConn program in the first place, and that such an independent study hadn’t been approved for anyone else in the last decade. Additionally, the university’s governing board had never approved an independent study program.
“Ultimately, the course standards were reduced,” the judge wrote. “The court accepts Vallas’ testimony that the work, although done over the course of 10 weeks while fulfilling his employment as acting superintendent, could have been completed in a week.”
The judge also ruled that Pryor, the state’s education commissioner, improperly waived the certification requirements.
“The evidence submitted at trial established that Pryor did not adequately vet Vallas when evaluating whether he was ‘exceptionally qualified’ because Pryor was unable to provide specific details of that process in his testimony,” the judge wrote.
It is unclear what the ruling means for Vallas’ three-year contract with the Bridgeport school board. Vallas, who is being paid $234,000 a year, has led the Chicago, Philadelphia and New Orleans school systems.
Carmen Lopez, a Bridgeport resident and former judge who filed the lawsuit, called the decision a “triumph.”
“We are still a nation of laws, and not of men, which I am sure comes as a shock to Paul Vallas and Stefan Pryor. The message of this decision is simple — no one is above the law,” she said.
“Fortunately, when the executive branch is arrogant and unresponsive, citizens can still have redress in the courts in order to check unrestrained abuses of power,” Lopez said.
This is the second time in the last two school years that the state’s involvement in the governance of a school district has been overturned by a judge. After the state ousted the former, locally elected Bridgeport Board of Education, the state Supreme Court ruled that that takeover was illegal because the proper steps were not followed.
https://www.ctmirror.org/story/judge-rules-bridgeport-superintendent-not-eligible-run-school-district
Wow….read this just left on a Bridgeport blog by Bridgeport Educator:
I don’t know where or from whom you get your information Mr. Lee, but there is no time left to tell for Bridgeport students. They must be freed now from this gang of thieves. Here is Vallas’ legacy: Go into any of the three high schools and see the apathy, frustration and fear in the students. The students know that they are not getting an education. They are sad and starving for discussion and essays, for reading and questioning real literature and historical and topical documents. They wonder where their teachers have gone. They spend day after day completing tests and being called out of class for rap sessions with college students, for pilot programs for test companies, comprehensive test practices for textbooks and curriculums and to visit college courses and support fund raisers.
Teachers are left out of all district decision-making. Questions to the administration are met with anger and punishment and sarcasm. It is a clear “like it or leave it” atmosphere. Courses that have had high enrollment and were successful are eliminated because they didn’t start with the Vallas gang and replaced by the same class with a new name. Music, drama, and specials have no budget. Certified staff and faculty positions for Graphic Arts, Electronics, Print shop, Woodshop, Clothing, Foods and Child Care have been or are being eliminated. Guidance counselors, nurses, drug counselors, librarians, literacy and math coaches are being cut or totally eliminated.
There has been zero funding for libraries and little or no funding for pencils, toner, general school supplies, copy paper or basic classroom materials. Substitutes are rarely called so students are herded into the gym or cafeteria or auditorium with few if any certified staff. Student IDs were never completed this year. Special Ed records were never brought up to date because the new Vallas software never quite worked.
What ever happened to “Safe Corridors”?
Next year the high school schedule is absurd. Students at Central will have 4 full days of straight classes and one full day of essentially substitutes or study hall. This is to allow their teachers to meet for a day of PD. What PD will it be? Will it be the latest Gates or Broad flavor of the month? Will it be purchased to funnel more Bridgeport public money into a private corporation? More money being spent on out of state/ out of district snake oil programs. Also do you remember state mandated School Governance Councils? They were mocked and ignored. The Parent Center dismantled.
There are no directors for areas of academic discipline; therefore no one oversees the English, history, art, music, reading or math departments. No department meetings. No sharing of ideas or lessons. No one is responsible for the reading programs in the elementary schools or for any professional development or training. A comprehensive and completely new curriculum along with very expensive textbooks was purchased, but no training or practice was ever completed. In fact no teachers were a part of the decision making in the purchasing. But highly paid, $300.00 -$500.00 a day consultants from Vallas’s out of state coterie sit in empty and unstaffed libraries reading education articles on their computers and meeting teachers to hand them the articles.
This administration hired a football coach with a record that includes rule breaking, suspensions and cheating. But at some point even he had to get a certificate to be a coach. Mr Lee, if all this doesn’t make Bridgeport parents and taxpayers realize this administration has only contempt for them, I don’t know what will.
It is apparent Vallas is neither academically nor morally qualified to lead children? Bridgeport students and residents are and will continue to be his victims if we don’t heed the verdict.
Mr Lee, the state certifies, licenses or credentials nurses, manicurists, lawyers, arborists, LPNs, hair colorists and so many more, but perhaps with regard to our students no license need exist as long as one is a friend of Malloy or Pryor. (As is certainly the case in most Connecticut charter schools.)
The last 18 months have been chaotic, confusing and demeaning. There is no time to tell any more.
And please tell me what in God’s name does this mean?
They have been visualized, set in motion, communicated to many publics and are working their way forward by a QUALIFIED individual. Who is truly taking on the tasks of the “kids in the classroom”?
http://onlyinbridgeport.com/wordpress/judge-bellis-rules-against-vallas-qualifications-to-serve-as-school-chief/#comment-59390
In Los Angeles, “Dr.” (a term L.A. teachers sneer at) John Deasy got his PhD from the University of Louisville after six months attendance and nine units of coursework from a “Professor” (another loose term) Felner whom Deasy had previously awarded $375,000 in consulting contracts while Superintendent of Santa Monica. Felner later received a vote of no confidence first from the University and then the U.S. Justice Department which sentenced him to five years in federal prison for defrauding the US Government and urban school districts of $2.3 million. Deasy lied on his resume, claiming to have taught at Loyola and was “installed” by Eli Broad (he’s a Broad Graduate), Bill Gates, and Mayor Villariagosa. Not only did LAUSD not conduct a national search, they didn’t even interview him. When I say “installed,” I mean, “INSTALLED!” He is now busy wrecking the careers of hundreds, soon to be thousands of dedicated teaching professionals using false allegations, many related to child abuse. Does anyone truly believe we suddenly have thousands of child-abusing teachers in L.A., or has an unqualified, vindictive, malicious Superintendent launched an unprecedented McCarthyistic witch hunt against primarily senior teachers to cover his own behind for mishandling other legitimate sex scandals (including a previous Superintendent’s) and solve his budget problems by riding himself of highly skilled (relatively expensive) veteran teachers while simultaneously robbing them of district-paid lifetime retirement health benefits –a quarter of a million dollars or more these veterans have spent decades earning while serving to LAUSD students?
Six months and nine units got Deasy a PhD. Oh and by the way, his dissertation is dated months before he even enrolled at Louisville. How many ways can you spell “Quid Pro Quo?” What is the plural? Is it “Quids,” “Pros,” or “Quos”? All three? It can’t be “Pros.” Deasy is anything but a “pro.”
Deasy is literally skinning teachers alive with false allegations. And after paying accused child molester Mark Brendt $40,000 to resign, he did not notify the State’s Teacher Credential Commission for more than a year, the penalty for which is the revocation of your (meaning Deasy’s) administrative credential. Why does a man who admittedly broke the law still have an administrative credential? Why is he still an administrator? Why is his butchering of teachers being allowed to continue? Two reasons. The first is “Eli” and the second is “Broad.”
Oops. Sorry. Should have been “ridding” himself of highly skilled (relatively expensive) veteran teachers… Typos. Ugh.