And back again:
"Ex-headmaster’s staff say problems were known" by James Vaznis and Andrea Estes | Globe Staff, August 02, 2012
Rodney Peterson, the Boston school headmaster allowed to keep his job after he assaulted his wife, was chronically absent from work and struggled with personal bankruptcy for much of his career here, raising questions among his former staff about why Superintendent Carol R. Johnson spoke highly of him as recently as last month.
Johnson, who has apologized for not placing Peterson on administrative leave after his assault arrest in June 2011, repeatedly championed Peterson during his three-year tenure in Boston, creating a $126,000-a-year job for him in 2011, describing him as “among our most outstanding school leaders” in a letter to the judge who sentenced him last August, and recently giving him a reference for a new job in Memphis.
Related: Boston School Superintendent Gets Report Card
And that was before Peterson.
Of course, failure is rewarded here in America. Think she is worth the pay ranking, readers?
Isn't Boston still closing schools and laying off teachers?
Now, Johnson has launched an investigation into whether Peterson abused the School Department’s sick time policy while in Boston. A Globe review of payroll records showed that he had missed more than 20 percent of the last school year at the O’Bryant School of Mathematics and Science and he may have been marked present other days when he was not. Peterson was reported at work even on the day he was arraigned on domestic violence charges and then sent back to jail.
Looks like THEFT to me!
“It’s not clear to me how a school leader could be absent that amount of time,” Johnson said in an interview, saying that she had no idea about the attendance problem until June. “It’s simply not acceptable, and it’s simply not acceptable I was not aware of it.”
But many teachers and staff at the O’Bryant, one of Boston’s exam schools, said Peterson’s persistent absenteeism was well known, estimating that he was away from the school half the time....
“It was a running joke at the school,” said one teacher, who asked not to be named out of fear of retaliation. “He was never present. Everyone would shrug their shoulders . . . You’d hear in the main office that they tried to get in touch with him’’ and he would not “return calls or e-mails.”
Teachers who worked with Peterson at the now-closed Odyssey School in South Boston said he was frequently absent there, too, though the official payroll record compiled by a subordinate showed he was out only 13 days for medical or personal reasons in two years as headmaster.
Peterson, who resigned in June to take a job in Memphis, also had a troubling financial background for a public official overseeing a budget of more than $7 million. Peterson filed for bankruptcy in 2007 after accumulating $180,000 in debt — and reporting only $80 in his checking account — forcing him to surrender his 2002 Mercedes S430 and to permit the court to take money directly from his school paycheck to pay his debts.
And I sit here thinking of all those bent over rank-and-file teachers on the front lines that are vilified and forced to give back hard-won benefits.
Johnson said she did not know....
That excuse never works for the kids, and if true proves rank incompetence or rancid corruption. It's all who you blow, I mean, know, isn't it, no matter what institution we are talking about in AmeriKa.
In fact, it's a decaying and decomposing hulk that is already beyond salvage. I've been here six years, and the time was then. I failed to prevent it, and I profusely apologize to the planet.
May God damn this nation into the next phase of human history, for history has already judged them because I am history.
Even now, Johnson defended her decision to hire him in 2009 in a last-ditch attempt to turn around the academically struggling Odyssey High School and two years later to make him co-headmaster at the O’Bryant in Roxbury.
She just doesn't get it, does she?
“I am deeply troubled and upset with [Peterson] about his behavior through this whole thing, but it was not that he was incompetent,” said Johnson, noting that Peterson has a doctorate, which exceeds the requirements for a headmaster.
And Johnson bristled at the suggestion by some that she hired Peterson in part due to the influence of her assistant chief academic officer at the time, Shonda Huery, who was dating him.
Like I said, it's who you....
Both Peterson and Huery had worked in Memphis, where Huery began her career as an intern to Johnson, who was Memphis’s superintendent from 2003 to 2007.
Johnson confirmed that Huery recommended Peterson, but said she did not know the two were romantically involved until much later.
She also said she did not know Peterson personally during the years they both worked in Memphis....
She DOESN'T KNOW MUCH for the TOP "ejerkatur" in the CITY!
One thing is clear, however: Peterson got a career break when Johnson hired him to run the tiny Odyssey School, his first headmaster job....
Peterson’s life was looking up in other ways, too. After the relationship with Huery ended, he married another woman in 2010, Memphis TV anchor Dee Griffin, and she became pregnant with their first child.
And when Odyssey closed in 2011, Johnson was impressed enough to promote him to a newly created second headmaster’s position at O’Bryant, boosting Peterson’s pay to $126,000 a year.
But even before Peterson could start his new job, he was arrested for allegedly punching and choking Griffin weeks after she had given birth to their son. In August, Peterson admitted to sufficient facts for a guilty plea and was sentenced to a year’s probation and ordered to attend a batterer’s program. At the hearing, Peterson’s lawyer gave the judge Johnson’s letter describing him as a rising star who “worked tirelessly to develop relationships with students, staff, and families.”
A few months later, records showed, Peterson began to miss work, racking up 42 official sick days and three personal days, including a monthlong stretch in the winter where he took sick days every day except for the paid February vacation week. Even on the day he resigned from school, June 8, Peterson took a sick day.
Do I really need to type anything? Do I?
Teachers heard that Peterson’s son in Memphis was sick, and he even thanked them at one staff meeting for being “prayer warriors.”
Yeah, okay.
--more--"
Think I'll take that Mercedes for a test drive.
FLASHBACK:
"After headmaster’s arrest, Johnson failed to act; Boston schools leader facing fire for backing, not suspending, educator charged with assault" by Andrea Estes and James Vaznis | Globe Staff, July 08, 2012
Boston School Superintendent Carol R. Johnson took no disciplinary action after one of her headmasters was arrested and briefly jailed on a domestic assault charge, and even wrote a glowing letter of support to the judge who sentenced him.
Police faxed a copy of their report to Johnson’s office within hours after Rodney Peterson was arrested on June 17, 2011, for allegedly punching and choking his wife five weeks after she gave birth to their first child. He later admitted to sufficient facts for a jury to find him guilty.
But rather than putting Peterson on administrative leave — a common practice in government when an employee is arrested — records show that she did nothing, not even informing City Hall attorneys of the charges against the co-headmaster at one of Boston’s three exam schools.
Instead, Johnson told Peterson that he could remain on the job at the John D. O’Bryant School of Mathematics & Science in Roxbury as long as the news media didn’t find out, according to someone who was directly briefed by Peterson at the time. Johnson, in an interview, said she did not recall making such assurances to Peterson.
“I don’t recall saying anything like that,” she said. “We clearly have suspended people in the past with or without media attention.”
Now, Johnson’s failure to impose discipline and her letter describing Peterson as “among our most outstanding school leaders” may be coming back to haunt her. Someone leaked the fact that Peterson was on probation for domestic assault to the news media last month in Memphis, where he had been offered another job. Peterson was then forced to withdraw, leaving Johnson to explain why she didn’t tell the Memphis officials — or anyone else outside of her office — about the assault.
“The entire affair is both shocking and disturbing,” said Mary Tamer, a member of the Boston School Committee. “It is the School Department’s duty to hold all adults who work with our children to the highest standards, beginning with our principals. Why was he allowed to remain on the job?”
****************************
Peterson’s humbling departure marked a rapid fall from grace for someone who had been a rising star in the Boston school system. At 35, Peterson had a beautiful wife, a baby, and a newly created job as co-headmaster of O’Bryant, one of the most prestigious schools in the city. His wife, Dee Griffin Peterson, had a successful career as an anchorwoman for a Memphis TV station, but she said on a local blog that she gave it all up for “God, marriage, and family.”
But, beneath the surface, all was not well at the Peterson home. In less than a year of marriage, Griffin Peterson had already left him once because of what she called his “very bad temper.” Finally, on June 17, the tensions boiled over in a disagreement about housekeeping in their Dorchester loft apartment....
Last month, Peterson, now separated from his wife, asked the judge to end his probation early....
By early June of this year, Peterson was well on his way to building a new life in Memphis, having accepted a job as principal of the Westside Middle School....
But when a Memphis TV reporter, who knew Peterson’s estranged wife, reported that Peterson was on probation for assault and battery, the Westside Middle School officials had second thoughts and Peterson withdrew his application. He is now looking for work, and a School Department spokesman said that if he applied for another job in Boston, he might return....
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He might return? The level of shamelessness astounds me.
Related: Boston Schools chief erred in failing to suspend tainted headmaster
Boston school chief hit with new criticism
Related:
Skipping School Series: Massachusetts' Students Smarter Than Tennessee's
I suppose it is just the way they talk in Tennessee.
Also see: Boston Globe Omissions: Hiding Health Care Failure
Just thought you would want to know after the Massachusetts model became yours, America.
