Chronicle of a Death Untold: Team Unruly's Not-so-rapid Response #3 — Amending the Wednesday, July 6th Editorial Sidebar

On Wednesday, July 6th, The San Jose Mercury News ran an editorial about the resignation of controversial East Side Union High School District superintendent Esperanza Zendejas. Accompanying the article was the following sidebar, a chronology of some of the key events that took place during Zendejas’ time at the helm. Team Unruly presents this article in its entirety, with our corrections, comments, analysis and additional information.

And believe us, this article needs a lot of corrections, comments, analysis and additional information. The crackerjack matchbook school of journalism alumni at the Mercury News slapped this haphazard piece together, after all. We’ve detailed the more salient points of Zendejas’ tenure, shied away from topics related to the board of trustees unless Zendejas was directly involved, and in responding to this article retread some familiar ground. For those looking for a detailed synopsis of Zendejas’ tenure and the San Jose Mercury News’ ability to obfuscate facts, this is the place to start. For our loyal readers who either know of or experienced the fallout of this history, we’ve thrown in a couple of new items for your enjoyment.

To be fair, the Mercury News really doesn’t have the time or the column space to give a detailed account of Zendejas’ ESUHSD tenure. They have other issues to cover, even though they have dedicated far more ink to East Side matters than any other Santa Clara school district these past two years. The key events they note offer an outsider’s perspective. But it is not objective. The sidebar is a brief synopsis written by her staunchest supporter, who often calls for reform when discussing education issues but always fails to explain what types of reform education needs. He saw Zendejas as a reformer, that assumption caused him to blindly support her policies, actions and motives without question.

Zendejas’ story is thus emblematic of the unacknowledged yet far too serious problem in the education reform debate. Rarely do those who call for reform mention how much a school board or a superintendent can negatively impact a school district. Too often teachers carry the burden of the blame when the easiest change can take place at a district office. Administrators and governing board members are fewer in number and wield much more power than the teachers they employ. Their decisions can have far more devastating effects on the quality of instruction schools deliver. That is why true reform will happen when school districts stop rewarding administrative incompetence at the expense of the teachers, students, and community they purport to serve. That’s the untold lesson of the Zendejas chronicle.

Or should we say debacle?

If you are keeping tabs on our ability to cite sources for general reference, personal curiosity, or a desire to begin a libel investigation, please note that “the following article will be available for a limited time ” from the San Jose Mercury News website:

San Jose Mercury
Posted on Wed, Jul. 06, 2005

"KEY EVENTS OF ZENDEJAS' SHORT TENURE

As is typical of Zendejas. The average professional lifespan of an urban school district superintendent is 3 years, according to the National Education Association. In both Brownsville and Indianapolis, Zendejas managed to remain on the job for 2.5 years. Her career average, when adding in her 1 year stints in Westmoreland and Desert Sands, is about 1.75 years.

San Jose Mercury Jul. 06, 2005 (continued)

2003

July: Trustees unanimously vote to hire Esperanza Zendejas, chief academic officer of Cobb County, Ga., as superintendent with a $225,000 salary, and a home loan of $400,000 at 2 percent interest.

This is perhaps the second time the San Jose Mercury News has printed the information about Zendejas’ infamous home loan. In her first year, the Merc denied the existence of the well-below market home loan because they wouldn’t bother to check. San Jose, like the rest of the San Francisco Bay Area, nearly tops the list when it comes to exorbitant property values. Some union officials estimate that 25% of the district’s workforce commute upwards of 5 hours a day roundtrip to work in the district. Board President J. Manuel Herrera told a crowd of teachers that ?job market realities? necessitated the expense of the home loan, in light of the district’s claim that it was on the edge of insolvency. Read the article from the Metro here: . It’s also worth noting that Zendejas had attempted to get superintendent positions in Milwaukee (read here: ) and Cincinnati (read here: ) prior to being hired by East Side. It’s easy to surmise the proximity of those districts to Indianapolis was a significant factor in her being passed over for the positions. That, or their school boards might not have been looking to commit a ?slash and burn?. Board President Herrera noted to the aforementioned group of teachers that a ?Latina with a Ph.d? is in high demand nationally for superintendent positions. But when she came to East Side, nobody seemed to ask the hard questions like why the former superintendent of some large urban school districts was slumming in a minor administrative post in Georgia. Or why did Milwaukee and Cincinnati turn her down if she is in such high demand? When Zendejas’ hire was announced, word traveled quickly to type her full name into Google and read the first story to appear. Here’s the infamous link: The story raises a number of red flags about Zendejas’ qualifications, but no Mercury News reporter at that time bothered to mention it.

It’s also worth noting that the initial vote to hire Zendejas was not ?unanimous? as the Mercury claims. There was a 3-2 split; Herrera and Shirakawa conceded to give the appearance of unity.

San Jose Mercury Jul. 06, 2005 (continued)

August: Zendejas asks all English teachers to assign and correct an essay from every student so she can assess the quality of writing. The extra work angers affected teachers.

The extra work did not anger English teachers. It was Zendejas’ dictatorial process and lack of integrity when questioned by teachers. For three years the ESUHSD had conducted their own internal writing assessment for statistical evaluation. Only freshmen and sophomore students took the assessment, which was administered in mid-October. Zendejas demanded that all students from 9th thru 12th grade be tested on the first day of school, promising to read a writing sample from every student in the district. Since the test normally took place six weeks after the opening of school, the 12,500 needed exams had yet to be printed. Zendejas’ proclamation doubled the number of exams to 25,000 to be ready for delivery in just under two weeks. The end result was chaos. To pour salt into the wound, when teachers questioned Zendejas about her abrupt decision, Zendejas gave a different answer at every school she visited. The best ?excuse?: someone at the district misunderstood her—she only wanted to test the freshmen.

August 2003: Zendejas holds her first meeting with school site administrators. Her opening remark: ?At my last job I fired 15 principals; I have no problem doing that again.? In her first meeting with district office employees, she encourages people to report to her if their colleagues are engaged in non-work related activities during company time. A member of Team Unruly dubbed this the ?Narc-on-Your-Neighboring-Cubicle? policy.

August 2003: Two weeks after being appointed superintendent, Zendejas applies for a concealed weapons permit and purchases a handgun. Nobody has yet been able to determine if this purchase was charged to the district. Zendejas also puts in a request to have hidden microphones installed in the board room.

August 2003: An article celebrating the successes of the Valdes Mathematics Institute—and the threat of the program being cut— appears in San Jose Magazine. The article is instrumental in raising funds to keep the program afloat. Much of the fundraising effort is spearheaded by PRx, a public relations firm under contract to promote district programs and attract corporate donations. Within months, donations to Valdes total over 6 figures. By the end of the 04-05 school year, money raised for Valdes is surreptitiously placed in the general fund.

San Jose Mercury Jul. 06, 2005 (continued)

September: Zendejas launches weekly radio show called ``Esperanza Para Nuestros Ninos'' (``Hope for Our Children'') to reach out to Latino parents. She later cancels it after teachers object to the $22,600 cost.

She managed, however, to sneak the cost of the radio show back into the budget in September of 2004, and thus the radio show never really went away. She also launches ?Supertalk/Supercharla? on a local cable access channel. Team Unruly has watched some of the episodes. While Zendejas used alternative types of media to reach out to parents, district insiders claim she used the shows to subtly embarrass school principals and for self-promotion purposes. Also on the radio: Zendejas tells her listeners that men have two brains but they only think with the one in their pants. A teacher listening to the show called the district to complain. Then-Deputy Superintendent Bill Kugler, at Zendejas’ request, met privately with the teacher to ask her to keep the matter under wraps.

September 2003: Zendejas acquires necessary technology at district expense that allows her to access anyone’s email account, the intent being to read the emails of union leaders and site representatives—a direct violation of the collective bargaining agreement. Warnings are sent to school sites about the appropriate use of email. Teachers label the move Orwellian. By the end of her first year, one school went so far as to purchase their own email server to circumvent the prying eyes of district officials.

September 2003: One of the future members of Team Unruly looks up Zendejas’ novels on Amazon.com and discovers that the reviews for her book ?The Tame Cactus? were written by friends and family members, including a real estate agent named Zendejas in the Southern California area. The overly-celebrated claim that Zendejas is a published author left out the fact that her books were ?self-published.? A month later, amid a national controversy involving authors writing their own five-star reviews, Amazon.com updated its security policy and eliminated personal information from customer book reviews. Around the same time, an East Side librarian purchased a used copy of ?The Tame Cactus.? According to a stamp inside the book’s cover, the original owner was the Indianapolis Public Library.

September 2003: By the end of the month, Zendejas finishes meeting with the staffs of each school in the district. Teachers across the district swap stories about her strange remarks and comments. Team Unruly’s favorite: At Independence High School, she introduced herself to the staff by describing the grow lights she had in her dorm room.

San Jose Mercury Jul. 06, 2005 (continued)

October: At the instigation of the East Side Teachers Association, Zendejas confronts improper or undocumented credit card expenditures by her bosses, the trustees.

A half-truth. Zendejas alerted the media with this information, and the union did not ask Zendejas to confront her bosses—they were more than willing to do that themselves. The truth? One of her apparent ?unwritten? orders: find evidence of malfeasance on the part of outgoing superintendent and then-state assembly candidate Joe Coto. Leaking the information about the misuse of credit cards was a way to make her appear more efficient to the media than her predecessor. Coto’s most vocal opponent on the school board, trustee Craig Mann, ironically turned out to be the most prominent credit card abuser.

Zendejas also has a history of trying to control school boards. She does not work to build a consensus for her proposals; she institutes a plan and expects unilateral support from the trustees she serves. The turning point in Zendejas’ career in Indianapolis came when the board pulled their support of her plan to fire twelve school principals (read the article here: ). Others argue that Zendejas ruffles school board feathers because she has an ulterior motive: force a buyout to earn a hefty settlement. Whatever the case, it is apparent Zendejas wanted the school board to know she was in charge when the scandal broke. Of course ESTA was interested in the scandal because the credit card expenditures were illegal and ironic, given that the ESUHSD board of trustees often lamented that money was tight, but had no qualms about using the district credit card for thousands of dollars worth of personal expenses. With the media celebrating Zendejas’ belt-tightening, she convinced the board to authorize another audit—the third in three years—claiming the other audits did not adequately expose the depth of the district’s financial matters. She hired FCMAT to conduct the audit.

She also requested that the board give her the authority to approve all trustee expenditures in light of the credit card scandal: in a real demonstration of unanimity, the board denied her request.

October 2003: Zendejas transfers her first site administrators. After a month of repeated requests from former Santa Teresa APED Millie Brink to find out if she was to become the principal of Santa Teresa High School, Zendejas appeared in her office 10 minutes prior to announcing the identity of the new principal to the ST staff. She informed Brink that she did not get the job, and in the first of many classic ironic moments, Zendejas pointed her finger in Brink’s face to tell her she lacked the necessary people skills to be a school principal. Brink became the APED at Andrew Hill High School. She appointed David Riley, Andrew Hill’s APED, to the principalship at Santa Teresa.

October 2003/November 2003: Zendejas and one of the trustees travel at district expense to Mexico and south Texas to recruit teachers for East Side. By this time, Zendejas has also made some of her more famous bon gaffes, including the mathematically challenged tortilla and the Super Words on Super Talk.

November 2003: A committee forms to interview candidates and make recommendations for the superintendent’s cabinet. The first open position was the Chief Academic Officer, formerly titled the Deputy Superintendent of Instruction. The post was held by Dan Ordaz, a member of Coto’s administration who remained to assist with the transition. The committee submitted a list of three top candidates, including former Independence principal Carrie Vaeth and former Andrew Hill principal Bruce Shimizu. Zendejas didn’t like the recommendations and demanded that the list include a few more names. Art Darin’s name was added to the list. His appointment to the position was announced at the end of November.

November 2003: Zendejas discovers what she believes to be an illegal action by Coto and leaks the information to the press. The Galarza Institute, a non-profit organization that provides social service assistance to qualified East Side families, was incorporated with Coto signing on as the CEO during his tenure in East Side. Zendejas tells the media that the district paid the institute over $200,000 in a two-year period. Coto counters that he registered himself as the CEO to avoid government red tape. An investigation is secretly launched. Ramon Martinez, at the time the district’s grant writer who was associated with the Galarza Institute, is demoted to site principal at Mt. Pleasant and forced to take a cut in pay—a change of job description administrative contract violation. When Martinez retires in June of 2004, he files a lawsuit against the district. Six months later, Martinez wins the lawsuit. In spite of the investigation, Coto is elected by a landslide to the state assembly.

November 2003: In a move that should have been a red flag for the board of trustees, Zendejas’ secretary transfers to another position. In the course of her two year tenure, Zendejas would run through 6 secretaries—an all-time district record.

December 2003: Zendejas hosts a Christmas party for district administrators at her new home in an upscale Evergreen community. Out of the blue, Zendejas shares a ?heart-warming? tale from her childhood. One Christmas when Esperanza was little, she received a package from one of her older brothers a few weeks before the holiday. Her mother would not allow her to open the package until Christmas day. For weeks, the young Esperanza fought the urge to open the inviting package. On Christmas day, she tore into the wrappings. One large box turned into a succession of small boxes. The final surprise? A pile of dog excrement. The ensuing uncomfortable laughter from the gathered administrators died as quickly as it began.

San Jose Mercury Jul. 06, 2005 (continued)

2004

January: In the first of many leadership changes, Zendejas brings in new administrators to James Lick High; transfers affect leadership at four schools.

(See October above) The Merc speaks a half-truth: this was the second admin shuffle, but the first of many questionable administrative changes, a common Zendejas practice and well-documented morale destroyer in Brownsville ( ) and Indianapolis ( ). Overfelt and James Lick celebrate the changes, Oak Grove laments, and Evergreen Valley is enraged. One of the first major changes under Zendejas, EVHS loses its untraditional teacher/advisor/administrator, school-within-a-school small learning community model and reverts to a traditional comprehensive high school structure, with one principal overseeing an admin team. Community reaction to the change is mixed. EVHS teachers feel strongly that the school’s SLC model was never given an opportunity to develop and see the change as obtrusive. Zendejas argues that EVHS’ instructional model was cost prohibitive.

January 2004: Zendejas meets with a group of teachers holding work visas, most of whom hail from the Philippines. The teachers were hired by Coto to address the on-going critical shortage of qualified math and science teachers. Zendejas informs them that she has received complaints from parents and carelessly says some of the complaints have to do with their accents. Zendejas leaves the question of renewing their work visas in doubt.

January 2004: After a number of political setbacks resulting from the credit card scandal, most notably his dismissal from his chief of staff position for San Jose City Councilmember Terry Gregory, trustee Craig Mann conducts a little damage control by announcing his plan to tour all of the district’s campuses. The move was an attempt to drum up an endorsement from the East Side Teachers Association. Having witnessed the demoralizing effect Zendejas’ autocratic behavior was having on site administrators, teacher leaders tried to alert Mann to an impending crisis. He dismissed the complaints as the "shock and awe of change"

January 2004: Zendejas launches a "superintendent advisory council." Two or three teachers from each school site were selected to meet monthly with the superintendent and her cabinet. The "advisory" in the title was misleading: Zendejas used the forum to either make policy pronouncements or deflect the damage she and her cabinet created. After three meetings, one teacher from Santa Teresa asked if the teachers would ever be allowed to offer advice, as the council’s title implied. Zendejas told her that was never her intent for the council. As anger and frustration with district management rose in successive months, Zendejas attempted to skew the balance of the council by inviting her rapidly diminishing base of supporters from each campus. By January of 2005, the advisory council is disbanded.

San Jose Mercury Jul. 06, 2005 (continued)

February: Zendejas recommends common dress policy for district schools without fully consulting principals. Three months later, after a series of stormy public hearings, she backtracks.

Zendejas backtracking on an idea is not uncommon (see ?famous reversals? ). When Zendejas met with principals from Andrew Hill and Yerba Buena in the fall of 2003, two district schools with common dress policies, she chastised the administrators for failing to fully enforce their own rules. That didn’t keep her from borrowing the idea, though. She then discovered that implementing a common dress policy requires ambassadorial finesse, not a dictatorial edict. Parents and students from the district’s more affluent areas criticized the autocratic process of the out of the blue decision just as much as the argument in favor of the policy. Most memorable moment: students create a fake blog to ridicule the superintendent:

San Jose Mercury Jul. 06, 2005 (continued)

Zendejas cancels all district credit cards because of questionable expenditures by administrators.

This actually took place in December

San Jose Mercury Jul. 06, 2005 (continued)

March: Trustees approve sending out 84 preliminary layoff notices, involving teachers as well as two dozen advisers, librarians and school psychologists. Zendejas proposes $6 million in cuts to balance budget.

The Mercury’s list is incomplete and misleading. By this time, Zendejas had convinced board members that the district would be facing a budget deficit, but she never shared her numbers with the employee unions, which made her claim about a crisis suspect. The call to uniformly reduce advisor positions at all district campuses had been in the works since October. Charged with maintaining campus safety and student discipline, advisors are universally seen as the most vital component to campus security. Teachers across the district never understood why district administration wanted to jeopardize school safety by removing essential personnel already overworked in their positions. The process initially used to eliminate these positions also raised concerns. Back in the fall, Zendejas attempted to change the job description in violation of the collective bargaining agreement. When that plan failed, she made a suggestion to the board of trustees that they eliminate 12 of these positions, one at each school. In protest, concerned teachers sent all staff emails defending the need for the positions. Union officials at some schools refused to sign school safety plans as legally required to certify the safety of a school. Eventually, the advisor issue, as well as the proposed cuts to librarians, counselors, school psychologists, career center technicians, janitors and other classified positions led to the first large-scale march on the district (see May below)

At this time, the Board also approved Zendejas’ recommendation to suspend contractual class size limits for the fall.

Not only did she layoff teachers and classified, but around this time she sent notices to administrators. The kicker? All but one of the African-American administrators in the district received a pink slip notice. Rick Callendar of the local chapter of the NAACP attempted to address the issue at the April board meeting, but Board president Juanita Ramirez did not allow him to speak. A few days later, some of those administrative notices were rescinded. Coincidently, a similar event took place during Zendejas’ tenure in Indianapolis (read the ?Indianapolis Reporter? article ?Are Black Principals out at IPS?? ).

March 2004: The FCMAT audit is completed. Fearing the information could prove damaging to her strongest supporter on the board (Craig Mann), Zendejas—possibly at the behest of Mann—orders former Chief Financial Officer Doug Emerson to suppress the audit report. In response, ESTA files a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit to have the report released to the public.

March 2004: Zendejas takes charge of organizing the district’s ?Cesar Chavez Essay and Poster Contest? luncheon. The luncheon had been held at the MASCA center for a couple of years, but Zendejas felt use of the center was another example of Coto spending beyond his means. Prior to the center being built, the luncheon was held in the Overfelt multi-purpose room at no facility cost to the district. Zendejas opted to rent a tent and hold the luncheon at the district office. The cost of the tent was a couple of thousand dollars, but Zendejas boasted of the savings to the district. At one point, someone bumped into a light fixture and almost caused a fire. A guest speaker was also flown in at district expense: a former student when Zendejas was a guidance counselor who sang Zendejas’ praises to the crowd. Zendejas critics cite the incident as another example of Zendejas’ self-promotional tendencies.

April 2004: Zendejas’ second secretary vacates the position

San Jose Mercury Jul. 06, 2005 (continued)

Spring: Union activists spread rumor that Zendejas wants to replace Filipino teachers on work visas with teachers from Mexico. (Issue is resolved in May, after Bob Nunez, new chief human resources officer, untangles visa problems he inherited.)

Here we go. Get ready for a long bracket. The Mercury News still considers this to be a rumor because they are by and large inept at —or unwilling to conduct— investigative research.

After what some felt was a successful meeting with trustee Mann in February, Andrew Hill’s union leadership arranged a meeting with then-board president Ramirez. Ramirez never earned high praise for her knowledge of educational issues, but she was a notable voice of reason during the credit card scandal. The most famously disturbing skeleton in Ramirez’s closet came from her tenure on the Alum Rock school board, where she tried to run over another trustee, Esau Herrera—the brother of her East Side board colleague J. Manuel Herrera—with her car (read the story: ) 20 to 25 teachers attended the meeting. While a confrontational air hovered over the proceedings from the start, all of the attending teachers agree that Ramirez’s responses to their questions were condescending, which did nothing to ease tensions. When the topic of the Filipino teacher visas was raised, Ramirez reiterated what she learned from Zendejas. The heart of the initial controversy stemmed from Ramirez possibly saying there have been complaints about some of the Filipino teachers’ accents. While not all in attendance at the meeting can confirm Ramirez made that statement, there is unilateral consensus that she implied the district intended to replace Filipino teachers with teachers from Mexico. That question was raised more than once, and Ramirez’s condescending answers only confirmed the suspicion.

The issue reached its pinnacle at the May board meeting, when local dignitaries from the Filipino community came out in force to condemn Ramirez—not Zendejas—for the accent comment. Ramirez squirmed as person after person came forward to denounce her actions as racist. Ramirez, notorious for failing to follow Robert’s rules of order as well as Brown act protocols, remained silent until a trustee from the neighboring Berryessa School District mentioned Andrew Hill as the place where the comment was made. At that point she rose to her defense, saying that she was not a racist, promising to conduct an investigation, all while swearing that she knew who was behind this attack and would never meet with teachers again. Why didn’t she rise to her defense earlier? She was either in shock or she made the offensive comment more than once and couldn’t finger which group to blame.

An investigation of sorts did take place: Zendejas and Ramirez held a meeting with Hill’s principal Dr. Bruce Shimizu. They instructed him to call in all of the people who attended the meeting, compile a list and, in violation of collective bargaining protections and the fifth amendment of the constitution, force one of them to confess. Zendejas also threatened Shimizu, telling him ?had this happened prior to April 15, I would have pink slipped you!?

Shimizu’s loyalties resided with his school site colleagues; he compiled a list of attendees, but offered no other help. The humiliation of this event was the final straw for Shimizu; he accepted a position in another district. In spite of the Mercury’s repeated claim that Zendejas cleared out bad administrators, it is worth noting that Shimizu was awarded ?Principal of the Year? by the San Jose Chamber of Commerce in 2003, and the only principal in the East Side whose school met API growth targets three years in a row. The Mercury News never acknowledged those facts.

And even though some of the members of the Filipino community returned to the June board meeting to retract their statements and apologize to Ramirez, some claim the damage cost her reelection in November.

The Mercury is also wrong in saying Bob Nunez fixed the problem when he took the human resources job that May. To his credit, Nunez was able to save some of the jobs, but others unable to get a work visa renewal were forced to return to the Philippines by the end of August. At the September Superintendent’s Advisory Council meeting, Zendejas informed attendees that some of the teachers were deported. She blamed the Philippine government for not processing the paperwork in a timely manner.

Zendejas did hire two teachers from Mexico, who began work in the fall. One of them started forwarding what she believed to be secret union information to Zendejas (read ?It’s not only kids who tattle? ) Team Unruly has learned that as of June 2005, neither teacher had been able to pass the CBEST. If they fail to pass the test this summer, they will not be issued permanent teaching credentials and thus be forced to return to Mexico.

To give you a better idea of how inept the Mercury is at investigative reporting, around this time the first pro-Zendejas articles appeared in the paper. One was an op-ed piece written by John Fensterwald, the man responsible for covering East Side events for the Merc’s editorial board. The other, called ?Superintendent Works to Shake Up Status Quo,? by Joelle Tessler (which is unavailable from the Mercury, but you can read the opening paragraph: ) was supposed to provide a little more balance than Fensterwald’s opining. Tessler spent a significant amount of time on the phone with disgruntled teachers, including one member of Team Unruly. She told the Team Unruly member that she researched Zendejas’ background in Indianapolis and Brownsville, claiming that her sources in both cities seemed to speak highly of her. There was no Unruly Advocate at the time, but had there been, Tessler would have been slapped back into journalism 101. She didn’t bother to contact newspapers or look into archives for information. Nor did she bother to check the validity of her sources. In Brownsville she spoke to the board of trustees. The problem is none of the BISD school board members were around during Zendejas’ time. The BISD board, infamous for failing to keep superintendents around longer than 2 years, had recently bought out the contract of superintendent Dr. Noe Saucedo in 2003 (). At the time Tessler interviewed the BISD trustees, anyone who had managed to stay in the job for more than a year appeared capable. Had she bothered to contact Brownsville’s local newspaper, she would have received some fairly telling articles about Zendejas’ reputation, such as this: .

It gets better. The school board in Indianapolis refused to discuss Zendejas with Tessler, probably because of the second to last line in this article from the Indianapolis Star: . Had she bothered to contact the local paper, she would have gotten an earload. We did: .So who did Tessler interview that gave Zendejas high marks for her performance? The former Republican mayor of Indianapolis, Stephen Goldsmith, Zendejas’ strongest supporter and ally during her tenure at IPS, as you will learn later this month in the second installment of Team Unruly’s ?Esperanza Zendejas: the Unauthorized Biography.?

As a fitting end to this extensive bracket, it was around this time that The Unruly Advocate started to develop. The initial focus was to get Mann and Ramirez off the board in November. Quality reporting from the local newspaper as detailed above necessitated a change to a journalistic format by the fall of 2004.

San Jose Mercury Jul. 06, 2005 (continued)

May: Advisers, librarians and counselors are built back into budget.

After the first substantial march on the district forces the board to search for other alternatives. The march, organized by the classified employee union CSEA, drew close to 300 people. The focus of the protest was not the board of trustees, however. The criticisms were aimed at Zendejas. Most memorable moment: although the picture is not available in the on-line archives of this story, the Metro ran a blurb about the march, showing a picture of a sign that read ?Ship Zendejas to Iraq.? () The Mercury News failed to report on the protest, nor the accusations leveled against trustee Ramirez (see above). In a June editorial, Fensterwald credited Zendejas and the trustees for restoring the positions after ?wisely listening? to parents and community members. They did not mention the students, teachers, or classified staff who protested.

May 2004: Zendejas pushes the trustees to develop a formal email policy that restricts email content and, as such, silences her critics. As morale drops, emails critical of the superintendent’s policies increase. After a spammed email invite for a Coto fundraiser gets sent to all users, Zendejas sends out an all staff email explaining the rules for email and arguing the case for a restrictive email policy. In the letter, Zendejas complains that she had received a number of offensive emails and claims that she even turned a couple of emails over to the DA’s office to investigate. Best response: one Oak Grove teacher writes back “That’s funny. The only offensive emails I ever receive come from your office.”

First week of June 2004: State Superintendent of Education Jack O’Connell makes a detour to Andrew Hill High School before heading to Evergreen Valley High School to give an award to trustee Martinez-Roach. The surprise visit was arranged by PRx. O’Connell, a strong supporter of International Baccalaureate and Small Learning Communities, visited the school because of these programs and its outstanding API growth.

Meanwhile, Zendejas arrives at EVHS only to discover that students have hung protest signs questioning her cuts to career center technicians and posing questions about her 400k, 2% home loan. She orders that the signs be removed. When O’Connell arrives, he asks Zendejas why he missed her at AHHS that morning. After the presentation, Zendejas corners Shimizu and asks why he did not contact her about O’Connell’s visit. Shimizu informs her that O’Connell’s office did not confirm the visit until 8:30 that morning. Someone from the school emailed Zendejas upon receiving confirmation from O’Connell; Zendejas confirms that she did receive an email, but was unable to check her messages until the afternoon. Others at the district office confirm the deputy superintendent tried to contact her to no avail. The issue becomes a heated point of contention between Zendejas and the staff at AHHS. Some claim this event led to Kugler’s abrupt dismissal (see story below). Shimizu almost missed O’Connell’s visit too: that morning he was interviewing for the position he now holds in another district.

At a farewell party for Shimizu that summer, AHHS teachers learn an interesting fact about why Zendejas was unable to check her email that morning: she never gets to work before 10:00 am.

The Monday following O’Connell’s visit, Zendejas sends district rep. Jim De Diego to EVHS to question students and find out which teachers were responsible for the protest. He didn’t have any luck.

District employees were not the only ones to suffer Zendejas’ wrath. PRx did not receive a payment for contracted services; a lawsuit is currently pending.

San Jose Mercury Jul. 06, 2005 (continued)

June: Deputy Superintendent Bill Kugler, the teachers' union choice for the job of superintendent, resigns with salary settlement.

Not quite, Fensterwald. Get ready for another long bracket. The day of the June board meeting (the final meeting of the school year), Bill Kugler arrived to work as he always did. Though he had submitted a letter of resignation, he intended to leave his post in August prior to the start of the new school year. That afternoon, he received a call from a family member telling him that he had just become a grandfather. 20 minutes later, Art Darin and Alan Garafolo, who had been in the district as long as Kugler and now worked with him as members of the superintendent’s cabinet, arrived in his office. Their assignment? Escort Kugler from the premises.

Kugler returned later that day with his attorney. By that time, the board meeting was underway. The district’s legal counsel left the board room to meet with Kugler and his attorney. A member of the audience decided to follow: the Mercury’s John Fensterwald. As the attorneys begin discussing the abrupt and callous termination, Fensterwald tried to enter Kugler’s office. Kugler let loose a few expletives before throwing Fensterwald out.

Kugler’s inhumane treatment infuriated district employees. It also angered a board member who happened to be one of Kugler’s former students: J. Manuel Herrera. The next day he sent out an email apology to all East Side employees, taking his board colleagues to task for the termination while offering his own tribute to Kugler’s career called ?The Bill Kugler so Many Knew.? (read the entire letter: ). The following Monday, board president Ramirez, through Zendejas, responded to Herrera’s email with a ridiculously terse and insincere letter that quoted the settlement’s legal language to imply mutual agreement was reached by both parties. Here’s the email:

I have been asked to forward this message to all ESUHSD email users.

Esperanza Zendejas, Ed.D.

-----Original Message-----
From: Ramirez, Juanita
Sent: Monday, June 28, 2004 10:05 AM
To: Zendejas, Esperanza
Subject: RE: Resignation of Mr. William Kugler

Dear ESUHSD Community:

I am writing to inform you that Deputy Superintendent William "Bill" Kugler, who has been with our District since 1965, submitted his letter of resignation effective August 30, 2004.

The Board of Trustees has unanimously approved an agreement with Mr. Kugler regarding his resignation, Mr. Kugler has signed the agreement, and the agreement is now a matter of public record.

I wanted to emphasize that Mr. Kugler and the District have expressly stated their mutual desire "to amicably resolve any and all disputes between them, without malice or ill will towards each other." Additionally, I point out that the Agreement provides for cash payment to Mr. Kugler as well as for payment of medical and dental care for Mr. Kugler and for his wife.

On behalf of the entire District, the Board of Trustees wishes Mr. Kugler all the best in the future.

Juanita Ramirez
ESUHSD Board President

San Jose Mercury Jul. 06, 2005 (continued)

Board unanimously extends Zendejas's contract through July 2007 with generally good review.

The aforementioned Kugler firing and the May board protest necessitates Fensterwald’s use of ?generally.?

San Jose Mercury Jul. 06, 2005 (continued)

Budget adopted with $6.5 million in personnel cuts. It includes raising the teacher staffing ratio from 28 to 30. Later, facing a union grievance, Zendejas backs down. District has to quickly hire more teachers, contributing to a budget crisis in the fall.

Another glaring example of the sin of omission from the Mercury’s editorial board. While cuts were made, most of the savings came from eliminating or consolidating district office positions. The cuts left the district in disarray and exacerbated long-standing problems in district departments, such as purchasing, accounts payable, and human resources. A quick trip to Google shows that district office instability is a Zendejas management cornerstone (read the third major recommendation from this Texas auditor’s report on the Brownsville Independent School District here: ). One of the positions she eliminated was district grant writer. At one time, the grant writer was bringing in over 3 million dollars a year into district coffers (see our story ?A Manufactured Crisis? here: ); Zendejas autocratically demoted the grant writer, in part due to political retribution against Coto. The district not only loses soft money revenue brought in by a grant writer. Around this time, Martinez files his wrongful dismissal lawsuit against the district (see November 2003 above).

Zendejas raised the staffing ratio, but also declared the district was facing ?extraordinary circumstances? that necessitated eliminating class size limits. That’s the issue the union intended to grieve. Legal counsel for both the union and the district realized ESTA would win the grievance because Zendejas failed to share budget information with the union, which called the severity of the financial crisis into question. Eliminating those limits meant the district could shove as many students as they wanted into classrooms, well beyond the 30 implied by the Mercury.

The Mercury also repeatedly failed to acknowledge that Coto raised the staffing ratio prior to Zendejas’ hire, from 26 to 28. The Mercury reports this information as if Zendejas came up with the idea. Raising the staffing ratio to 30 does not mean all class sizes will be at 30. All that changes is the number of teachers assigned to a school site. Even under the initial ratio of 26 problems existed every year with classroom overcrowding. According to Team Unruly’s statistician, a staffing ratio of 30 sets the average class size at 37. Read our take on the staffing ratio here: .

Implying the threat of a grievance forced the hire of teachers in the fall and also significantly contributed to the budget crisis is disingenuously wacky. So many factors contributed to the district’s budget problems, including the fact that much of the purported crisis was blown out of proportion, that blaming a district’s sole reason for existence—to hire teachers to teach students—is ludicrous.

Then there’s the little matter of the November 2004 board election. When school began in August of 2004 the normal chaos that accompanies the opening of school quadrupled. Teachers faced classes with over 50 students in rooms designed to hold 35. Parents (i.e. voters) started calling to complain by the afternoon. At the board meeting held on what was the second day of school, the decision to rescind the elimination of class size limits was made. People far more savvy than the average Mercury News editorial writer could connect the simple dots between angry parents and an incumbent’s fear of losing an election. But we’ll play nice. If the Mercury is right in their assertion that the hiring of more teachers contributed to the budget crisis, perhaps the last line of their observation here is a typo that should read “Board members Mann and Ramirez, worried about losing reelection bids in November, contribute to a budget crisis in the fall.”

August 2004: Zendejas hosts a party at her house for principal secretaries from all of the various school sites. A smattering of unappealing appetizers such as ?toothpicked meatballs? top the menu. Zendejas arranges chairs into a circle, and once the attendees find a seat, she turns the party into a fishing expedition. Zendejas asks people to share any rumors they might have heard at their respective school sites. No one responds. Taking matters a step further, Zendejas offers examples, naming specific site administrators and their rumored behaviors. She claims one administrator at Oak Grove spends more time off campus at the beauty parlor than in her office. She also implies a principal and an APED are having an affair. By and large, the secretaries remain tight-lipped. The next day, the secretaries share details of the party with site administrators. A class action lawsuit is filed and is still pending.

August 2004: Jack Mahrt comes on board to replace the outgoing Chief Financial Officer Doug Emerson. Emerson would leave by mid-September.

San Jose Mercury Jul. 06, 2005 (continued)

September: Complaints of scheduling problems and crowding at Independence High and other schools.

At the September Superintendent Advisory Council meeting, Zendejas, on top of blaming the Philippine Government for failing to renew teacher work visas, is forced to address the aftermath of the class size issue. She passes the buck—twice in one meeting!—and blames the entire decision to suspend class size limits and the subsequent aftermath on recently departed CFO Emerson.

September 2004: The Mercury News writes another laudatory full-page editorial praising Zendejas. Titled ?Tough Love, Tough Year? the article fails to detail any of the complaints raised by employees, instead choosing to write off those complaints as sour grapes by ?some leaders of the teachers union, whose own choice hadn’t gotten the job,? claiming that they ?spread rumors and generally made life rough.?

The best line in the article in light of Zendejas’ resignation is the one that follows: ?If her critics thought she’d pack up and leave, they were wrong.?

Oops.

The article acknowledges that some feel ?she is remote and autocratic.? It also offers her some advice, but overall the people blamed for the district’s woes are the teachers union and Coto. The Mercury also indicates who they intend to endorse in the November election: ?It is critical that whoever is elected shares Zendejas’ vision.?

An accompanying sidebar to the article, ?Now Running the Show,? profiles Zendejas’ five cabinet members. By the end of the school year, only three would remain employed in the district.

A week or so later, the Mercury publishes a short celebratory editorial about all East Side high schools meeting their API growth targets. The Mercury credits Zendejas and Chief Academic Officer Art Darin for their instrumental roles in the success. They cite one factor that they believe led to the increase: a summer school program for students slightly below grade level called the ?Summer Institute.? While teachers involved in the institute feel the program is valuable, conventional wisdom holds that the program—in existence long before Zendejas arrived in the district—did not impact the API to the degree suggested by the Mercury.

September 2004: To plug up part-time position holes created by the class size reversal, Zendejas orders all the district’s subject area coordinators back into the classroom.

San Jose Mercury Jul. 06, 2005 (continued)

October: Independent state audit, requested by Zendejas, finds budget as much as $15 million out of balance. District files first negative budget with county.

Since Zendejas failed to make the audit’s information public, employees are skeptical of the claim. At the end of the month, ESTA wins its Freedom of Information Act lawsuit forcing the district to publicize the audit’s information.

October 2004: The Mercury News endorses Mann and Ramirez for the election ?with reservation? solely on their unbridled support of Zendejas. In fact, the Mercury had this to say about their criterion for endorsing a candidate: ?Next month's election could determine whether Superintendent Esperanza Zendejas can move forward with the bold changes and curriculum reforms that the East Side Union High School District deserves. Electing trustees who fully support and defend her is, in our mind, the overriding issue in the election.? The article launches The Unruly Advocate into journalism mode with our first editorial response .

Mann wins reelection to the board, claiming it is ?an affirmation that [Zendejas and Mann] are on the right course.? (read it here: ). Mann never acknowledges that his name appearing first on the ballot and his incumbent status had anything to do with his reelection. The candidate the Merc dismisses outright for his public criticism of Zendejas’ performance, Lan Nguyen, goes on to defeat Ramirez.

November 2004: The day before the election, ESTA holds a press conference in to expose the political cover-up and depth of Mann’s improper credit card expenditures. The Mercury News sides with Mann’s explanations, and fails to note the conference’s most significant event. Former CFO Doug Emerson, no friend of the teacher’s union by any stretch of the imagination, returns to publicly expose that Zendejas ordered him to suppress the audit information until after the November election to protect Mann. And though the Mercury helped to cover-up the incident to ensure the candidate they endorsed got reelected, the story was reported in another newspaper—unfortunately, in a neighboring county:

San Jose Mercury Jul. 06, 2005 (continued)

November: $50 parcel tax that would have brought in $7 million a year fails. Budget crisis deepens.

[Perhaps Fensterwald would like a slice of humble pie to go with his crow. He fails to note here that he spent most of the pre and post election season blaming the failure of Measure K on the union. Read our old editorial on how Fensterwald put his foot in his mouth here:

[November 2004: Self-Promotional article celebrating Zendejas appears on districtadministration.com. Best ironic quote: “Not talking to people at all levels "will easily catch up with you," Zendejas says. "Lots of times messages don't reach down, and they don't reach up."

San Jose Mercury Jul. 06, 2005 (continued)

November and December: Zendejas changes administrators in five more high schools, bringing in more women as principals.

Fensterwald really has his facts wrong here. Two principals go on medical leave, necessitating interim placements at two schools. The big changes take place at the end of January. The staff at Mt. Pleasant remains unscathed, Silver Creek’s teachers rejoice and Andrew Hill’s staff decides they have had enough.

The story goes like this. Art Darin had fallen out of favor with Zendejas for reasons unknown (or too various to narrow down. For more on that story, see this summer’s ?Did You Know?? . He was sent to Silver Creek to replace Dr. Ana Lomas, who was sent to Andrew Hill to replace David Riley who went on medical leave. One question was raised at both sites: why did Lomas have to move, thereby disrupting two schools instead of one? A specific answer was not given.

Silver Creek teachers were not enamored with Lomas. At that point, Lomas had racked up more grievances than any other principal in the district. Darin, in his short tenure as CAO, managed to anger some of the staff at Hill. He didn’t want to go where he knew he wasn’t welcome. And there is the real possibility that Zendejas feared putting a district insider at the school she perceived to have the most radical activists in the union.

Creek’s teachers were happy about the change, but Hill’s staff saw Lomas’ arrival as another example of Zendejas’ retributive nature. Earlier in the school year, she transferred the Valdes program to Independence High School. Hill’s health clinic was also scheduled to close by the end of December, even though clinics at other schools remained open. Zendejas goes to Creek to deliver the news; Nunez goes to Hill. Best line: a teacher at Hill gave this rallying cry, eliciting thunderous applause: ?I asked Dr. Zendejas about her management style when I first met her. She said ‘I manage from the heart.’ I have yet to see that woman’s heart!? It would be the fifth administrative change at Hill in two years.

Fearing the school was rapidly being dismantled, Hill teachers begin talking about converting to charter the moment Nunez leaves.

And what of Fensterwald’s claim that Zendejas brought in more women as principals? Zendejas drove more principals out than she ever brought in. See the bracket below for one story. In January, after being given an ultimatum to choose which employee to pink slip, Piedmont Hills principal Carol Blackerbee resigns. The one significant hire Zendejas made was Wendy Guadalewicz, who replaced Carrie Vaeth as the principal at IHS. Opinion is mixed on Guadalewicz, but her past still haunts her. She resigned as principal of Gilroy High School after parents demanded honors classes for freshman and sophomore students. Guadalewicz felt she was being asked by district officials to ?track? students (read it in her own words here: . To get an alternative view of the incident and to learn one person’s opinion on Guadalewicz’s staff morale track record, read this blog entry from ?The Republic of Gilroy? website: Her most famous moment in East Side? At a budget task force meeting, Guadalewicz boasted of her affiliation with WestEd, an education think-tank, and told task force members that East Side’s schools could do fine without counselors. She must not have read any of these studies while at WestEd:

San Jose Mercury Jul. 06, 2005 (continued)

December: Andrew Hill High teachers vote to look into forming a charter school to save programs they see as threatened by budget cuts. Some parents in Evergreen propose secession for two schools.

Hill teachers vote to send a Proposition 39 facilities letter to the district by December 16. Early that month, Hill’s APED, former district statistician Dr. Laurene Payne, who left Zendejas’ office in tears when she was sent to Hill, leaves the district. The obvious red flag? She accepted a job in the notoriously volatile Alum Rock School District. The ?out of the frying pan into the fire? move raises eyebrows district-wide.

The Evergreen secession is not motivated by Zendejas’ actions. Leaders of the movement claim the two high schools in their neighborhood, EVHS and Silver Creek, could function better if they unified with Evergreen’s elementary and middle schools.

Around this time, Jon Fortt begins covering East Side news for the Mercury’s “Valley” section. Fortt meets with Hill’s teachers and learns how low morale has become since Zendejas took over the East Side. Fortt would go on to balance out the East Side coverage in the Mercury News. In February, he exposes the real motivation for the Evergreen secession: the group wants to change the attendance boundaries to increase API scores—and thus, property values.

December 2004: Esperanza Zendejas finishes ?Wings of Bamboo?, her third book. The memoir receives praise from three ?editorial reviews,? including one ESUHSD librarian who would soon be presenting to the East Side budget task force to keep the district from cutting librarians. Although we are not entirely sure of the timeline, around this time Zendejas begins the process to adopt two migrant worker ?John Doe? corpses. Supporters and KNTV’s Damien Trujillo see the adoption as a selfless humanitarian act; critics claim it is a self-promotional tactic, done in part to promote her new book.

The Unruly Advocate switches to a monthly webzine format during winter break.

San Jose Mercury Jul. 06, 2005 (continued)

2005

January: Trustees order $2.4 million in budget cuts and $2.5 million more in February.

January 2005: Trustees are shocked to discover Hill wants to convert to charter. New board member Lan Nguyen visits different schools, starting with Hill, and finds out firsthand how angry teachers are with Zendejas. At his victory party, Nguyen asks Zendejas if she has spoken to Hill’s staff. Zendejas claims that she convinced the school not to go charter. Zendejas would go on to meet with a small group of Hill’s teachers—but never the whole staff—three times that month.

January 2005: Zendejas transfers handful of principals at the end of the month. Staff at Piedmont Hills is upset; teachers, students and parents at Yerba Buena are outraged; as are parents and teachers at Oak Grove. Yerba Buena’s story is the most interesting. Extremely popular principal Dan Moser is sent back to Piedmont Hills to replace the outgoing and disgruntled Blackerbee. To make matters worse at PHHS, they lose Juan Cruz, their associate principal, to YB in exchange for Moser. Outraged teachers at YB start shouting at Bob Nunez, who came to deliver the news. Students at YB plan a walkout, but teachers convince students to take a different approach. Instead, students hold a lunch time rally in honor of Moser. Read our story on the event here:

January 2005: The Unruly Advocate dedicates an entire issue to comparing Zendejas to California’s other controversial superintendent, San Diego’s Alan Bersin. The article attracts unruly readers in both Northern and Southern California. By the end of the month, Bersin’s contract is bought out; two months later, Schwarzenegger appoints him to the secretary of education post.

January/February 2005: Due to growing criticism and faltering morale, the Superintendent Advisory Council disbands.

San Jose Mercury Jul. 06, 2005 (continued)

February: Trustees authorize cutting up to 169 positions for 2005-06.

Trustee Chairman J. Manuel Herrera creates budget task force with goal of cutting $9.5 million. Zendejas attends all sessions but does not play an active role.

The 169 positions to be cut, including counselors, librarians, and teachers on special assignment, is based entirely on Zendejas’ recommendation.

The Budget Task Force, which actually started in November, is formed with the goal of exposing actuary revenues and district expenditures to the public—in direct contrast to Zendejas’ shroud of secrecy concerning the budget. Subsequent meetings reveal the depth of the district’s management problems. Jack Mahrt reveals calculation errors on the part of his office that exacerbate the problem. Those errors are balanced out by programmatic savings found in other budget line items. Mahrt suggests using a form of special funding akin to a second mortgage called COPS. Zendejas feeds story to local media, but is forced to abandon the plan when the County Office of Education questions its legality.

February 2005: At her last meeting with select Hill staff, Zendejas concedes that she is not used to letting teachers have input into her management decisions.

February 2005: Team Unruly learns an unsubstantiated rumor that editors felt couldn’t be published. One district source claims that Zendejas, in a fit of anger, said she would do something that would force the trustees to buy her out. That story’s validity remains uncertain. Team Unruly does know that chinks in Zendejas’ armor are starting to show. At one district meeting, Zendejas goes off on a tangent, threatening to sue the board for a breach of contract if they buy her out prematurely. She boasts that she will make close to a million.

It is also interesting to note that by this time Zendejas has lost all credibility with site administrators. District administrative meetings begin to follow a familiar pattern: Zendejas comes into the room and berates principals and associate principals. Nobody says a word. She leaves with her cabinet for 20 or 30 minutes, during which time site administrators roll their eyes and laugh off her criticisms. When she returns, nobody speaks. The Mercury News alludes to this problem in the editorial accompanying this sidebar.

March 2005: Zendejas, celebrated repeatedly by the local media for her financial integrity, illegally attempts to shift Title I funds to non-Title I schools for the 05-06 school year. Her interpretation of the law and her push for the plan run into a wall at a County Office Title I workshop, where an embarrassed Zendejas is told publicly that her plan is illegal. Read our story

March 15: Preliminary layoff notices go out to more than 900 educators, including the majority of teachers. Zendejas blames poorly kept personnel records as reason for so many notices.

The final layoff number is 965. Trustee and primary Zendejas supporter Mann emails the press the day before the layoff, claiming the number will be about 400. Even he is shocked. Statewide 3000 teachers received notice, making East Side responsible for 1/3 of the teacher layoffs in the state. The figure represents 80% of the district’s workforce. Groups of parents, particularly from schools like Piedmont Hills, flood the district office in protest. Zendejas hires a body guard and spends a lot of time in her office.

San Jose Mercury Jul. 06, 2005 (continued)

Teachers union President Don McKell calls the layoff ``obscene.''

Our sentiments exactly.]

San Jose Mercury Jul. 06, 2005 (continued)

March 19: Hundreds of teachers protest layoff notices at county office of education.

Because the district ironically planned to have a booth at the County Office’s job faire. At this time, none of the layoff notices had been rescinded. District officials claimed they were only going to hire special education teachers, which infuriated the special education teachers who received pink slip notices.

The media portrayal of the event is a sad comment on the state of journalism today. KNTV and KTVU showed clips of the protestors, but closed their stories questioning why teachers chose to protest a job faire since East Side didn’t even have a booth at the faire. That’s sort of true: district officials pulled out of the job faire the day before the event. Had the media bothered to pick up a program instead of calling the district, they would have seen East Side prominently listed as actively seeking teachers for the following positions: special education, English, math, social studies, science, foreign language and physical education.

Fensterwald showed up and got into arguments with union officials. A reporter from the Metro was also there to witness Fensterwald’s lack of journalistic integrity. His comment to Team Unruly? “That was Fensterwald? What a prick!”

San Jose Mercury Jul. 06, 2005 (continued)

March 22: Students at several high schools walk out in support of teachers; police called to Piedmont Hills High after scuffle breaks out.

The Mercury News, at the behest of Zendejas and Mann, blame teachers for encouraging the protest. The offensive editorial failed to note that radio station Wild 94.9, catering to the 25 and under market, primarily encouraged the students to walkout. A few days later, the Mercury News publishes a letter from an “S. Mann” who argues teachers should be fired for endangering students by encouraging them to protest.

San Jose Mercury Jul. 06, 2005 (continued)

April: 400 teachers outside board meeting protest layoff notices.

The number was well over 900 and the largest protest to take place at the district office to date. The Mercury News’ Jon Fortt captures the moment accurately, noting that Zendejas remained emotionless as protesters called for her ouster. A petition of ?no confidence? is submitted to the trustees. A huge quilt of pink slips is presented to the board. One parent laments that, since she is dying of cancer, she will not be able to see her son graduate, and she condemns the trustees and Zendejas for taking opportunities away from students. Only two people’s dry eyes remain in the house: Zendejas and Mann.

Meanwhile, as the protest begins, KNTV broadcasts a story on Zendejas’ corpse adoption to show her “humanitarian side.” The timing is too coincidental for some.

San Jose Mercury Jul. 06, 2005 (continued)

Teachers' union agrees to add an average of three students per class for next year, a major concession.

And one that Fensterwald argued for all year, often couched in an attack on the union. The editorial covering the event confirmed a lot of suspicions about the unholy alliance between the Mercury News editorial board and Zendejas: the Mercury published the information before the union had a chance to inform its members. Team Unruly narrows the leak to two sources: Zendejas or Mann. Declaring the leak a ?bad faith bargaining tactic,? union president McKell chastises the Mercury News for violating the Rodda act (the act that sets policy for collective bargaining) in a published letter.

April 2005: Discussions begin on a buyout package for Zendejas. Somewhere around this time, the home Zendejas purchased with her 400k, 2% loan is quietly put on the market.

San Jose Mercury Jul. 06, 2005 (continued)

May: State consents to let district put $11.7 million from sale of unused land toward budget over three years, allowing the district to phase in budget cuts.

Although what exactly needs to be cut as well as the severity is still in question. A key difference between Coto and Zendejas: Coto intended to use the Quimby land money to cover budget shortfalls that he predicted were heading from the state; Zendejas argued for months that using the money was illegal, escalating a fight with the teachers union, often through the Mercury News, that came to a head at the board protest in April. At the meeting the district’s legal counsel conceded that they could get a waiver from the state legislature to use the funds. Assemblyman Coto makes the request, Fensterwald attacks him for causing the mess in the first place. The article, however, notes that a similar event took place the year before in Santa Clara Unified, thus proving the Mercury is squeezing a news story out of an insignificant event.

San Jose Mercury Jul. 06, 2005 (continued)

Teachers submit proposal to convert Andrew Hill High to charter school.

Zendejas, who thought she had quelled the charter movement by appointing a member of Hill’s staff to the APED position, is speechless. An overwhelming majority of the staff (76%) votes in support of the charter. Conventional wisdom holds that Zendejas’ pink slipping 80% of the district workforce was responsible for the additional votes.

May 2005: Trustees hold two closed session meetings, one regular, one special, to discuss “public employee performance evaluation: superintendent (government code sub-section 54957).” According to the district website, 8 meetings are held through June to negotiate the terms of Zendejas’ resignation.

May 2005: In a grand example of nepotism gone awry, Zendejas’ husband John Fox is hired as the principal of the County Career Occupational Center. Trustee Mann coincidentally sits on the CCOC board.

[May 2005: Two cabinet members leave their positions. Jack Mahrt, CFO, lands a similar job in a local community college district. Some claim Mahrt felt he was being asked to compromise his integrity too often. An all staff district email claims Darin requested to remain Silver Creek’s principal. Darin submits his intent to retire letter a month later, contradicting Zendejas’ email.

San Jose Mercury Jul. 06, 2005 (continued)

June 16: District passes balanced budget for 2005-06 after three negative reports for 2005.

Yet again calling into question the severity of the crisis. Also worth noting: Pat Roach calls for a libel investigation against The Unruly Advocate:

San Jose Mercury Jul. 06, 2005 (continued)

June 30: Trustees hold the last discussion on the superintendent's evaluation.

Insiders see the vote as 4-1 up to this point. Conventional wisdom holds that the negotiation took a month so that Zendejas’ strongest supporters—including the Mercury News—could save face. The question of gross negligence or intentional malice, a cornerstone of the editorial discussions at The Unruly Advocate, is left unanswered.]

San Jose Mercury Jul. 06, 2005 (continued)

July 1: Zendejas and the board announce her resignation. Terms of settlement will be revealed in August."

Six days later, Fensterwald sort of concedes he backed the wrong horse, driving a stake through the heart of the Mercury News’ editorial credibility.