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When Educrats Attack: January 10, 2008 The Nutmeg State’s education monopoly has never borne criticism with aplomb. Question the efficiency and performance of government schools in Connecticut and you’re likely to face the wrath of the state’s most powerful political and public-relations machines -- even if you’re a longtime member of the education establishment. Just ask Armand Fusco. With 35 years of experience in education (17 of them as superintendents in Connecticut and Massachusetts), the Guilford resident’s career exemplifies everything the government-school lobby would have taxpayers believe about professional educators. But in 2005, Fusco violated omertà. He self-published School Corruption: Betrayal of Children and the Public Trust, a 300-page exposé of “cheating, deceit, waste, mismanagement, fraud, and stealing” in government schools across the nation. Even worse, he’s devoted the remainder of his life to training elected officials and taxpayer groups to ensure sound stewardship of school districts’ revenue. Rather than embrace the retiree’s warnings and proposed reforms as vital tools that would surely be useful to rebuild taxpayers’ faltering faith in government schools, educrats’ first reaction was to pretend Fusco didn’t exist. His offer to conduct corruption-fighting workshops for the Connecticut Association of Boards of Education (CABE) and Connecticut Association of Public School Superintendents (CAPPS) was ignored. When shunning didn’t work -- when it became clear that Fusco was finding an audience with members of the media, elected officials, and good-government activists -- the monopoly attacked. Last month, in a memo distributed to all Connecticut superintendents and board of education chairs, the executive directors of CABE and CAPSS claimed his “attacks” on government schools “are so far removed from the reality of public schools that we see no common ground to even have a conversation on this subject.” (Translation: We’re afraid to debate him.) Things got even uglier when Fusco offered a presentation on sound fiscal management to Enfield’s board of education earlier this month. Educrats turned out in force, muttering and hissing their disapproval. But they needn’t worry -- their allies on the board were all too willing to toe the CABE/CAPSS line. During Q & A, board member Thomas Arnone launched a lengthy, fact-free berating of Fusco, capped off with a tactic straight from the left’s playbook: an ad hominem attack. The retired educator’s activism, Arnone claimed, was designed to “instill fear in people to sell books.” Happily, Enfield’s board is moving ahead with one of Fusco’s proposed reforms: an external audit committee. Eleven residents have offered their time to probe and prioritize the district’s spending. Board member Sue Lavelli-Hozempa is pleased with the quality of volunteers who have stepped forward, describing them as “professional, either retired or still working … [with] a background in either finance or insurance.” Scrutiny from such outsiders terrifies the K-12 education establishment, because in its view, Connecticut’s government schools are completely corruption-free. The CABE/CAPSS memo whined that Fusco’s “charges are broad brush, unfair, unproven, untrue and frankly, outrageous.” The anecdotes used in School Corruption: Betrayal of Children and the Public Trust, the memo bizarrely averred, “are from other states with different fiscal and governmental structures” -- as if Connecticut’s government schools aren’t funded with tax revenue and overseen by politicians, as is the case in every state. Between 1981 and 2001, enrollment in Connecticut’s school districts rose by less than 10 percent. Inflation-adjusted spending on government schools, however, doubled. The notion that not one dollar of that expenditure explosion wasn’t wasted is laughable. In recent years, Connecticut government-school employees have been caught abusing sick days, stealing industrial-arts equipment, and submitting fraudulent reimbursement forms. In 2006, according to the New Haven Register, the West Haven Board of Education “not only let friends and relatives of the board chairman and a school principal off the hook for essentially stealing services to which they weren’t entitled, it has effectively lent them, interest free, the money they need to cover their misdeeds.” An investigation is reportedly underway into whether the New Haven School District exaggerated the number of projected students for a new school in order to inflate state subsidies. And a grade-changing scandal is swirling in the Windham School District. For the sin of refusing to follow the script of government-school happy talk, Connecticut’s education monopoly is doing everything it can to portray Armand Fusco as a bitter crank. But as more officials and advocates solicit his aid -- and more citizens grow concerned about the way waste and mismanagement in Connecticut school districts surely drive the state’s runaway property taxes -- the indefatigable reformer’s credibility will only grow. D. Dowd Muska is a writer, commentator and public-policy researcher. He can be reached at muskacolumn@cox.net. # # # # # |
