I met with Buzz Trafford today, and meeting lasted from 10am to 2pm!
This was 2 hours longer than anticipated.
He did not want me to run recorder during session, and I made deal that if conversation went south, I would just leave.
Interview was interesting, one time I think he flirted with "disgruntled employee" edge was when he asked about promotions at Kingswood. Was fishing to see if I felt I was passed over.
I am including notes and impressions I took during interview. Also asked him to vette my recollections to see if I was accurate.
Notes from memory Buzz Trafford interview, 10am – 2pm!
Meeting was caused by my
email to Board.
Talked a good deal about CIO
and org chart (and how I fit in it…) from Harvey Martin on.
Asked did I report issues to
bosses. Said yes.
Asked did bosses report
issues to their bosses
I said in cases of Linda
Yoder, Tim Phillips, Doug Yoder – yes they did.
Said that Gail Davenport
said she did, but I am not 100% sure she actually said anything.
I did not voice concerns to
Cyndi Blake. Knew where I stood with
her.
Did ask about the times I
mentioned potential issues to Gene.
Said I did, but did emphasize I
was pretty diffident and did not press the issue when she told me to bring it
up with CIO.
He asked if I ever went
around chain of command to report data scrubbing. Said no, but that I did meet with John Stanford when he started
as COO (2010?), to discuss Kingswood. Told Buzz
about how I recommended (to Stanford) that all administrators at Kingswood should be
dismissed, they were a detriment to the district.
Many questions asked about
the 2004 policy review. Which I had to
answer in the negative, since I was not involved.
Buzz asked me about lack of
promotions at Kingswood. I told him
they were not available. He pressed me
as to why that was, and I had to reply I honestly did not know. Asked if I was ever passed over in favor of
someone else – to my knowledge I was not.
Asked if anyone lost their
job after crossing Tankovitch. Said to
my knowledge no, but said person could be “de-emphasized”. Did talk about the pervasive atmosphere of
“jobs are hard to find”, and “if you don’t like your job you can quit” attitude
from Kingswood administrators (2007+).
Did mention that I had been threatened with “insubordination” charges by
Tankovitch, MVD and Blake – but never actually taken downtown about it.
He asked about reporting
issues to Internal Auditor. I talked
about the conversations I had Steve Zwelling, and his lack of concern about the
issue.
He was curious about
difference between data warehouse and SIS.
Not well understood. I told him
much of my ability to spot chicanery was because I was constantly monitoring
the data in SIS vs data in K12.
He wanted to know what
reports were commonly asked for. Told
him to look in my finn/projects/CCS at a Glance folder – how I ran weekly jobs
for each school, and how I distributed them via email.
Asked if any principals did
data scrubbing for financial gain. I
said in my opinion, no.
Spent time on Michael Taylor
role, and how we developed method to find students who had been marked absent
but then used lunch number on same day.
That we used due diligence to find out if students were actually there.
Spent a lot time (1 hour??)
on how the withdraw and admit cycle affects absences. Pointed out that a student with entered absences during a period
when they were withdrawn has no need to have the absences deleted. The system ignores absences on days when the
student was not enrolled in school.
Lot of questions asked on
when I realized (2003-04) what Steve was doing in the June “secret meetings”
with principals. Spoke about the MS
principal who asked for the 10 consecutive UNX absence report, and how Steve
told him to withdraw those students during the consecutive absent days. How I told the principal that was not how
things were done, and that I would not supply the info.
Other Aha! moment we
discussed was when I realized Steve was creating “zombie” 12th
graders. Zombie 12th
graders are the 12th grade students Steve Tankovitch had "enrolled"
in the Virtual High School in summer of 2010 so they would not be added to the
count of drop our students in the 2009-2010 school year. They were 12th
graders in June 2010 that were not going to graduate, and not in summer school.
Steve had them enrolled as non-graduating 12th graders for the 2010-2011,
but they never actually took and classes or attended school - but
they were counted in the October 2010 student count.
Talked about the way Steve
would reverse engineer the ODE equations so he could figure out what to change in
SIS data to affect the State Report Card.
Described the almost “party or festive” atmosphere that took place in
July as each EMIS Submission brought the CCS numbers closer to Continuous
Improvement.
Spoke at some length on how
the questions raised by Katie Huenke on why her truancy kids would get cases
dismissed due to falsified withdraws and deleted absences. How this plagued CCS and her department for
years. And what I found when she asked
me to poke into it in August 2012, and her suggestion that I look for deleted
absences.
I was asked who I thought
was guilty of misfeasance. I named
Steve Tankovitch, Janice Zacherl, Michele Van Dyke and Rod Houpe.
I was asked who he (Buzz
Trafford) should speak to. I named Linda
Yoder, Tim Phillips, Mark Foor, Jill Dannemiller, Katie Huenke, Frank Habeker.
Also
curious – he did not know that a new CIO had been hired on January 2nd.
