The Unruly Advocate Presents: The Kiko Awards

The departure of Dr. Esperanza Zendejas has been a period of intense reflection for The Unruly Advocate production staff. We won’t miss having to report on the destructive policy decisions that so egregiously wronged our friends and colleagues over the past couple of years. Yet, we have to admit we’ll miss the strange, almost surreal comments that trickled down from the district office from time to time. Farewell bon gaffes, farewell.

In the past couple of months readers and even the media have asked if we’ll shut the site down now that Zendejas has joined the swelling ranks of golden severance package recipients. Nope. We want to keep the memory alive and documented; it’s good for voters and good for district officials to know their constituents are keeping tabs on them.

The Metro gave us partial credit for bringing an end to the Zendejas era. We don’t know how worthy we are of that credit, but we did learn a couple of things in the past year. First, school board members and autocratic superintendents hate when the public catches wind of their blunders. We also learned a website can expose those errors in greater depth than the lackluster local mass market daily paper—especially a newspaper whose editorial staff makes the sin of omission a department policy. Second, we confirmed what insiders in education have known for years: true reform needs to start at the top, not the bottom. If a bad teacher works in a school, by all means the administration/school board needs to get rid of the teacher. There are plenty of other careers to pursue. But while it’s true that a bad teacher can ruin a class, a bad superintendent (or board member) can destroy an entire district. Need proof? Read the study we discussed in this article

Why doesn’t the general public hear more about the machiavels who govern districts? Probably something to do with money. Teachers don’t make enough to write a fat check to a favorite politician. That’s why they join unions. Everyone throws a couple of bucks in the pot to give to a sympathetic candidate. A six plus figure superintendent, however, earns enough to cut a check, not to mention host a fundraiser, give a rally speech and offer an endorsement. It’s not politically expedient for a newspaper to bash minor public figures who are more valuable for the endorsements they give than the mediocre district policies they enact.

School district elections, though, are small and local. They tend not to get mired down in the national partisan divide that sours voters on participating in elections. The common pessimist dismissal of politicians (they’re all bad) or the political process (my votes don’t matter) doesn’t fit when a mere 50 votes determines a victory. The public usually doesn’t pay attention to school district politics. They’ll vote for the incumbent nine times out of ten. Unless they’re angry, motivated, and educated about the candidates.

Someone on Team Unruly pointed out that there has to be more Zendejasesque superintendents or Ramirezish board members out there, and maybe we could do something unruly to help. We looked. We can.

It is time to reframe the debate. No longer should the general public waste their energies attacking beleaguered teachers whose ten-hour days, three hour commutes and $2000.00 rents leave little patience to suffer the deadly demands of a demented despot. No more should teachers be the first to blame for teaching a curriculum watered down by a superintendent who thinks kids will love all the flashy pictures and extra large type of a content deficient textbook purchased for $500k after three weeks of persuasive selling by a publishing representative who cuts deals over pricey cabernets and a few plates of Oyster Rockefeller. No more should an over-hyped competitive superintendent market automatically grant a person making 200k a low-interest home loan while good people whose daily sacrifice fails to earn them the necessary income to live where they teach. No more should the concerns of parents receive a sympathetic ear only near the dates of an impending board election. And never again should a discussion surrounding a grossly overpaid administrator’s contract renewal take precedence over direct services to students.

Team Unruly is proud to announce a new direction, a bold vision, and a hell of a lot of unruly fun. We’re no longer just the voice of the East Side Union community, we’re taking ‘em all on. Ladies and gentlemen, Team Unruly gives you The Kiko Awards.

Over the summer we started looking for other controversial superintendents and board members throughout the country. It took all of five minutes to compile a short list. Our plan is simple. Each month we’ll select a winner, someone whose level of malfeasance and obnoxious incompetence is second only to the person who thought laying off 965 people was a sound idea. We’ll provide a detailed description of the controversial behavior that earned the winner the award, with links to support our claims. And we’ll post all that info in a new sidebar button we lovingly call the “Rogues Gallery”. We’ll send an actual award to the winner, complete with a description of why he or she won and a picture of Kiko, the unofficial mascot of The Unruly Advocate. We’ll also send a press release to local media and union officials in that particular district.

Fear not, East Side readers. This public service helps us too. Our board will soon begin searching for a new superintendent. Consider the “Rogues Gallery” a working list of who SHOULD NOT even bother sending in a resume.

For those who don’t know, Kiko is the name of Dr. Esperanza Zendejas’ ventriloquist dummy. That loveable scamp has come to symbolize the duplicitous nature of the modern day superintendent or self-righteous board member seeking to financially or politically gain on the backs of the children they purport to serve, all of whom appear to have a lot of practice talking out of both sides of their mouth. . .

And the nominees are:

Grossmont Unified School District Superintendent Terry Ryan, whose incompetence has made teachers so irate they actually protested outside of the board president’s workplace

Anne Marie Robeson, the superintendent of Sausalito-Marin schools, whose plan to exchange high school teachers with middle school teachers to “expose” students in the early grades to the rigors of high school seems to have been a factor in her being placed on administrative leave.

Arlene Ackerman, the soon to be oustered San Francisco superintendent, whose routine pattern of salary extortion in whichever district she winds up in led to a fierce school board battle, inspiring local male exotic dancer “Starchild” to enter the race in the singular hope of bringing a little peace to the warring district

But the unanimous winner hails from a district across town from the unruly offices: Cupertino Unified School District Superintendent William Bragg.

In 1997 William Bragg came to Cupertino from Oceanside. Rumor has it folks in San Diego felt the collective sigh of relief from their northern neighbors who had tolerated Bragg’s incompetence for far too long. Rumor also has it that Bragg was on the bottom of the finalist list and rose to the top because the other candidates couldn’t afford to move to ultra-affluent Cupertino. Teachers and site administrators quickly noticed a more autocratic tone at the district office, so much so that by 1999 a local paper wrote about the exodus of teachers leaving the Cupertino district. The article also describes an unruly activity that made Bragg a shoe-in for the award.

At the faculty picnic that year, teachers started telling the old joke that resurfaces in tough workplace times: What’s the difference between the Cupertino Unified School District and the Titanic? Answer: they played music when the Titanic sunk. A group of unruly teachers took the joke a step further. They built a model of the Titanic, christened it the CUSD, and brought it to the all faculty picnic.

District officials were not amused.

Bragg has managed to hang onto his job in spite of a 90% vote of no confidence back in 02. To make matters worse, teachers have been without a raise for a couple of years and their benefits package are a constant source of contention. Bragg, meanwhile, has managed to DOUBLE his salary in his nine years on the job. He started at 120k and now makes 210k, the equivalent of 4 starting teacher salaries, thanks to the support of a divided board. The full out war over Bragg’s salary versus teacher pay and morale issues led to a failed recall attempt and a bit of a nasty exchange in the Cupertino Courier letters section. It’s there that Bragg showed his true mettle, blaming the state for the district’s financial woes and, get this, bemoaning to the citizens of Cupertino that their students attend a “low wealth” district, the cause of all their budget woes.

Cupertino and low wealth: two words that don’t work in the same sentence.

The proof is in the numbers. Cupertino’s teachers cannot afford to buy a home in the district, one cause of the mass exodus. Bragg? Word has it he owns three homes, one by the beach.

And let’s not forget his relationship with parents. As succinctly described by one Cupertino parent, "Dr. Bragg works from the top down. There is no communication or give and take in the district. He doesn't listen to parents. He comes to us with already made decisions.”

Bragg’s crowning achievement has to be failing to prevent Cupertino Unified becoming the center of an unnecessary national controversy and the scourge of the anti-public education right by the way he handled what should have been a minor incident at Stevens Creek elementary. Former fifth grade teacher Stephen Williams brought some religious documents and the Declaration of Independence into the classroom. Some students complained about the appearance of proselytizing. The case escalated into a right-wing dream moment, confirming publicly what Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Michael Savage and a host of conservative bloggers have always misguidedly believed: that public schools favor godless communism and mandate anti-American sentiments in school curriculum.

And where was the Mercury News during all of this turmoil. Besides the few stories on the Stephen Williams issue, they were noticeably silent on Bragg’s incompetence these past nine years. No mention of the anger, the public debate, the recall movement—we found none of that in the Merc’s archives. Team Unruly hopes Luis Zaragoza can pick up the ball and set these matters right.

If you want to see the documented evidence of Bragg’s malfeasance, click on the “William Bragg” section of the “Rogues Gallery.” If our Cupertino readers would like to share their stories, feel free to contact us at Teamunruly@unrulyrus.com.

And so, for helping to cause a mass exodus out of the largest elementary school district in Santa Clara County, for decimating morale to a point that compels teachers to build a model of the Titanic in protest, for earning a salary that grossly awards glaring incompetence, for having the testicular fortitude to deceptively label Cupertino a “low wealth” district, for failing to listen to the irate complaints of parents and community members, and for setting the debate surrounding public education’s social studies curriculum back five decades, The Unruly Advocate says to you, William Bragg, in a proud and steady voice, hail to thee, Jackass! You earned yourself a Kiko.