January 4th - my notes from meeting with Buzz Trafford

 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” 12^th 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.