Great cartoon but where's the deaf, dumb and blind School Bored?

   Quote of the year from the School Bored prez; "An investigation will maintain the community's confidence in the City School District!" lol-WTF! You lost the community's confidence like 36 years ago. An opera buffo. The inmates running the asylum. Fire everyone who knew, looked the other way or were too stupid to ask and then resign in total disgrace.

Quoted from benny salami

  Fire everyone who knew, looked the other way or were too stupid to ask and then resign in total disgrace.

Good idea Benny, but it ain't gonna happen. You are talking about public sector, unionized jobs.

Everybody knew what Rotterdam's X-supervisor Constantino was up to when he was employed by the Mohonasen school district for years....and everyone just looked away. It was the Guilderland Central school that nabbed him touching girls while he was teaching summer school.

And do you also feel the same passion for the SPD? Like nobody knew 'NUTHIN'?  Remember, unions protect and serve their own.  Let's spread some of that passion around, huh?

The horrible City School Bored is hardly unionized. They only "serve" for patronage and great love of the students and education. HA-HA! This is decades of patronage hiring of stunada's. The chickens have now come home to roast. The only way to fix it is for the State Education Department to takeover and clean out the barn. From top to bottom.

   The problem with the SPD is not the union. It's the horrible Mayor. No plan, no ability to lead, no command of the troops. What do you expect when you re-elect someone with absolutely no business nor military experience? Of course the police are laughing at him-so is everybody else.

     The SPD is a management problem. SOS hired Bennett to clean out the Department-how's that going? Stratton, Allen and Brucker were all sitting on the rubber stamp City Council that approved the Union Contract. Now they gripe about it. A fish rots from the head down-so does a police department. Hire a new Mayor.

Sure some heads should roll...that's a no brainer....but the bottom line is they have no choice but to work WITHIN the union contract. And until someone new comes into 'leadership' and re-negotiates these union contracts, I see it that their hands are tied. Something they have no one to blame but themselves.

And how does anyone expect that to happen with a democratically controlled county that has historically sided with unions, and a heavily unionized conservative party that will back only candidates that will grease their union palms? And ya can forget the reps. They should have the ideology, but they don't walk the walk. Heck they don't even talk the talk. Look what they did to Mertz.

Bottom line Ben, the  unions/dems run the show, including Raucci's union. Where is the union's outrage? Not there, cause they protect and serve their own. Screw the taxpayers!

Not sure which scandal you are talking about BT but let's stick to the bottom of the barrel City Schools. Of course they can fire anyone "for cause". Bringing dynamite to school is cause, harassing a worker is cause, harassing fellow union members is cause. Then we hear that the HR head is giving him gifts. The City School Bored meets for 2 hours and lays an egg. They want another investigation {stall until after school bored elections}?

    The City sheeple have finally had enough. Residents are organizing. The DA's office gave the City School Bored more than enough ammo to act. They refuse to pull the trigger. Weak spineless worms. Everyone who looked the other way should be canned. It's more than one bad apple. Clean house or State Ed will do it for you.

I'm agreeing with you here Ben, but if this is all true about harassing a fellow union employee, where are the union grievances? Isn't that one of the benefits of belonging to a union. If the 'company' doesn't handle a particular situation, a union employee can always fall back on their union.

Was the union EVER a where of such behavior? If 'yes', then why didn't they act on it? If 'no', why not? The schools are beholden to the unions. The unions have a responsibility in this just as well. And if the union knew nothing of this Raucci guy and his behavior, than where is the union outrage? I thought the unions were there to make sure their 'brotherhood' worked in a safe and healthy environment. I thought it wasn't all about the money, benefits and control.....or is it?

We can sit here and make it sound as political as we want, but the bottom line is that it is clearly a school/union issue here. It is obvious that in this particular case, this marriage didn't work.

The answer to that is that not all unions are really there for the members. That was the initial idea but some have been corrupted by the bosses and in this case the boss was Mr. Raucci, apparently. In a lot of instances today they are there to perpetuate the power of the bosses and the affiliated political people. I think what we saw in the city schools case is that the board were the one benefiting from Raucci and his support of them.

Quoted from GrahamBonnet

The answer to that is that not all unions are really there for the members. That was the initial idea but some have been corrupted by the bosses and in this case the boss was Mr. Raucci, apparently. In a lot of instances today they are there to perpetuate the power of the bosses and the affiliated political people. I think what we saw in the city schools case is that the board were the one benefiting from Raucci and his support of them.

So are you telling me that these union members that were harassed could not go above Raucci in the union organization? Come on....I can't believe that. If that is the case, than not only the school board, but the union needs a complete re-haul AND investigation. IMHO

Anyone who complained or dared run against this "Union President" got whacked so hard they didn't complain again. He was palsy-wowsy with the HR head. He provided campaign workers (at time and a half) to School Bored members. Then you wondered why he still hasn't been canned? We need a second investigation beyond the District Attorney's? The inmate was running the asylum. Everyone was looking the other way.

    According to a Gazetto poll almost 90% blame the pathetic City School Administration. Nobody has been canned. Nobody has resigned in disgrace. This has spread like wildfire-everyone has down loaded the PDF file (still on the TU site) from his employment letter. This is what happens when you have decades of patronage hiring and no opposition in School Bored races. State Education must now come in and clean out the barn.

To my point....union heads have to roll too!! A complete investigation from the top down of the school board AND the union. Funny, but no one is compaining about the union who clearly looked the other way too, while they still collected their union dues. I mean come on......it seems unusually strange to me.

Agreed BT. One of the most pathetic chapters in all of this was the State CSEA comments. "Nothing unusual" in Schenectady? Everthing is unusual here. Especially at the State's worst School District. Every day a Union President is taken out of a school in handcuffs, nobody can confirm an arrest and dynamite is found in his office?

   There is more on the web about this. Much more is coming out on this red hot story. It has been picked up Internationally. Nobody knew nuthin... nobody checked nuthin..its Ok for the HR head to buy him gifts...the idiots on the School Board need another investigation to duplicate the District Attorney's findings. You can't make this up. And still not one lob has resigned in total disgrace. Dozens looked the other way for decades. Start jumping from the sinking ship.

Of course no heads have rolled yet. Should they? Of course. But these heavily unionized public sectors jobs are the most difficult to resolve. Just look at the police departments. Look at the teachers that have been accused of some improper sexual offenses. These slugs keep getting paid by us the taxpayers while they all take their sweet time to come to some resolve. It is ridiculous!

Quoted Text

Carl Strock THE VIEW FROM HERE

Raucci was
team player at Sch’dy schools

    I wondered aloud the other day how Steve Raucci managed to work so long for the Schenectady City School District, intimidating employees to the point of allegedly setting explosives at their homes and on their cars, without being found out and fired.
    Well, it hasn’t taken too much inquiring to come up with an answer: Raucci did not operate in a vacuum as head of buildings and grounds or in his parallel position as head of the CSEA unit of the workers he supervised.
    He was part of a team, and that team included the president of the Board of Education, Jeff Janiszewski; a previous board president, Warren Snyder; the superintendent of schools, Eric Ely; and the director of human resources for the school district, Michael Stricos, not to mention his own immediate subordinates, known as “the round table,” who carried out his villainous instructions.
    I don’t mean the other team members vandalized cars, sprayed graffiti on houses and planted explosives. Of course not. But they ran the district, and Raucci helped them run it. He was the muscle.
    He was the guy who bullied janitors into working the phone banks at CSEA headquarters in Latham and stuffing envelopes at various Schenectady bars and restaurants in an effort to get people out to vote for the school budget and in favor of Janiszewski’s hand-picked candidates for the Board of Education.
    Several cleaners for the school district told me they were pressured into using their working hours to perform these services, stuffing envelopes, for example, at either Christy’s bar on Lower Broadway or at Brandon’s restaurant on Van Vranken Avenue. One of Raucci’s immediate subordinates would tell them Raucci expected it of them, and they were supposed to do it to keep him happy. If they did it they would be rewarded, perhaps with a paid day off, and if they didn’t do it, he would remember.
    They told me the actual envelope-stuffing, typically between about 5 and 7:30 p.m., when they were supposed to be cleaning the high school, was supervised sometimes by Snyder, sometimes by Janiszewski.
    Janiszewski freely acknowledges this. (I was unable to connect with Snyder, but Janiszewski acknowledges it on his behalf.) “I was certainly engaged in these democratic endeavors,” he told me, but he insists he did not know that the cleaners were on school time.
    “We didn’t need that, and they shouldn’t have done that,” he said, claiming that a few years ago he had heard a rumor that that’s what was going on and had spoken to Raucci about it. “No way anyone could be on the clock,” he says he told Raucci. “As I understand it, Warren spoke to people who came to the phone bank and said, ‘No one here is on the clock, I hope.’ ”
    That part may or may not be true, but I am bound to note that the Schenectady Board of Education and Janiszewski and Snyder in particular have a history of duplicity when it comes to promoting passage of the school budget and the election of candidates to the board.
    The mailings they were sending out, for example, were not straightfoward mailings from either the Board of Education or from themselves, by name. They were devious letters under the names of two front organizations with no real existence — Friends of Schenectady Schools, urging passage of the budget, and New Citizens Convention, urging the election of Janiszewski’s hand-picked candidates.
    The return address on the envelopes was that of Warren Snyder’s home, on North Brandywine Avenue, though Snyder was nowhere identified, and no one else was identified either. The innocent recipient would think he was getting a flier from some disinterested taxpayer group when in fact he was being solicited by the Board of Education itself, wearing a mask.
    The mailings were paid for by the teachers’ union, also unacknowledged.
    So, as I say, they were a team. Did each know the details of what the other was doing? Probably not. They wouldn’t need to. But they sure knew they were working together.
    “It’s definitely the case that CSEA members have been working for budgets and for school board candidates for years,” Janiszewski acknowledged, “as have members of the teachers’ union and parents.”
    As for Stricos and Ely, I have numerous reports that complaints about Raucci were made to both of them over the years, to no avail, except that Ely in one case told the complainant to go to the police. (Thanks a lot.)
    According to an affidavit by one former employee, Stricos once presented Raucci, his friend, with a photograph of Marlon Brando in his role as the Godfather. Heh-heh. Stricos declines to comment.
    It was also up to him to classify a woman employee whom Raucci was putting the moves on as a “messenger,” so her position would not be subject to Civil Service competition.
    So there are plenty of indications that both Ely and Stricos were aware of Raucci’s bullying behavior and protected him.
    That helps illuminate a letter that Raucci wrote to this newspaper and that was in the pipeline for publication when he was arrested last month and the letter was pulled.
    In it he wrote: “I am yet to come across a more caring, responsible and up front person as Eric Ely … He is a real down-to-earth man who doesn’t receive the support that is due him … Though some may have issues with Ely’s strong leadership style and abilities, he speaks from the heart. What more could anyone ask for?”
    I guess he himself couldn’t ask for anything more, though it is clear that Ely’s leadership style is more acquiescent and accommodating than it is strong.
    Then there was the letter that Raucci wrote to this newspaper back in 2005, responding to a column that was critical of Janiszewski for the way the board hired Ely as superintendent.
    “Never does the Gazette print that the school board president, as well as all school board members, dedicate many hours of voluntary time and work, and are community supporters,” Raucci wrote.
    “Not once has the Gazette published any of the accomplishments of Mr. Janiszewski and the board, who take on a job and responsibility whose only agenda is caring and acting in the best interest of our school district, with no personal or monetary rewards … the Gazette appears to have a problem with the strong leadership style and abilities Mr. Janiszewski has demonstrated,” and so on.
    So you see how things worked.
    Raucci bullied the 110 maintenance employees under his control and intimidated them into doing Janiszewski’s campaign work for him, sometimes on school time. Ely and Janiszewski covered for him (and so did Stricos), and Raucci, when he felt the muse whispering in his ear, picked up his quill and wrote letters of effusive praise about them, citing them for the strength of their leadership, and not incidentally, bad-mouthing this newspaper for our occasional criticisms and questions.
    Were these other people complicit in Raucci’s alleged violence and vandalism? I have no way of knowing, but as I say, they were on the same team.
    For Janiszewski now to announce that he’s going to do an investigation is pretty funny.

http://www.dailygazette.net/De.....amp;EntityId=Ar00900

Quoted Text

SCHENECTADY
District refuses to release records
Newspaper sought papers related to Raucci’s alleged misconduct
BY STEVEN COOK Gazette Reporter

    Copies of e-mail correspondence between suspended city schools Facilities Director Steven Raucci and his employees, as well as paperwork relating to any misconduct findings against him, cannot be released, district officials said.
    District Freedom of Information Officer Richard Yager has denied requests by The Daily Gazette for the records, arguing that they would “interfere with a law enforcement investigation” and “deprive a person of a right to a fair trial.”
    However, Robert J. Freeman, executive director of the state’s Committee on Open Government, on Monday said he believed the district would have to release the records.
    The items, he argued, are irrelevant to judicial proceedings.
    “In my opinion, this has nothing to do with any criminal proceeding,” Freeman said.
    An appeal has been filed.
    The Daily Gazette requested paperwork related to any misconduct findings against Raucci after his Feb. 20 arrest. He faces top-level arson and terrorism counts.
    Raucci, 60, of Niskayuna, has since been charged in two other cases and he is suspected in more than a dozen. He has been accused of placing incendiary devices at people’s homes or on their cars in 2001, 2006 and 2007. No one was injured.
    Police have also said a incendiary device was found in his Mont Pleasant Middle School offi ce after his arrest.
    The school district last week announced plans for an independent investigation into allegations of workplace misconduct by Raucci and any supervisor who covered up his alleged activities.
    Schools Superintendent Eric Ely previously said there was nothing in Raucci’s record to show similar allegations. He also said Raucci did not have a lot of formal complaints lodged against him. Ely himself could only remember one specifi c allegation against Raucci, in 2004.
    The Daily Gazette also requested the e-mails after allegations were made of a hostile work environment created by Raucci.
    Asked about the school district’s response Monday, Schenectady County District Attorney Robert Carney agreed that release of the information could negatively affect the investigation. Interviews are ongoing, he said. Carney’s offi ce is prosecuting the case.
    Raucci’s attorney Ronald DeAngelus, on Monday claimed that any e-mails sent by Raucci were copied to other school officials. He said he couldn’t speak to specific e-mails.
    Raucci remains at the Schenectady County Jail without bail. DeAngelus noted Monday they do not intend to revisit the bail issue until after indictments are reported.
    Carney has already outlined in court paperwork a host of allegations against Raucci, including harassment of employees by “anonymous” e-mails and other means. Also included in the paperwork was an alleged sexually harassing letter on school district letterhead. The letter had a list of offensive requirements.
E-MAILS TO EMPLOYEES
    E-mails obtained by The Daily Gazette through a district employee appear to have been sent from Raucci’s district account to “custodians.”
    By one estimate, Raucci supervised as many as 85 custodians and cleaners. Another estimate has the total employees under him at 125.
    The e-mails conclude with “Steve Raucci,” his titles as facilities supervisor and energy manager. His office phone, fax and e-mail address are also included.
    In a Nov. 6, 2008, e-mail to custodians, Raucci reiterates an earlier directive that early morning custodians are not to let in anyone, including kitchen staff.
    “If you fail to follow the above,” Raucci allegedly wrote, referencing his instructions, “you have not only failed to follow my directive, but also created a situation that forces me to act in a way that creates much more work for me. Do not afford yourself this situation.”
    He returned to the issue and others in a Nov. 23 e-mail, noting a custodial meeting the week before.
    His directives must be followed, Raucci wrote, and, because he had been made to look “foolish” by some custodians, he wasn’t approaching the matter lightly.
    “I can not make this subject matter any easier than this,” he wrote. “Although I have lost most if not all confidence in many of you, some of you remain loyal and perform your duties without question or hesitation.”
    He concluded that e-mail by asking the custodians to reflect on what he said and “at the very least have a safe and Happy Thanksgiving.”
    Jan. 2 brought two e-mails, one.................http://www.dailygazette.net/De.....amp;EntityId=Ar00902

THE ENTIRE SCHOOL BOARD SHOULD RESIGN.  THE SUPERINTENDENT SHOULD RESIGN.  ALL WHO COVERED UP FOR THIS BAFOON SHOULD RESIGN.  AREN'T THERE ANY EMPLOYEES AT THE SCHOOL WHO WILL STAND UP TO THE THUGS AND FORCE THEM TO DO SO.  AT OUR WORKSITE, WHEN WE HAD A PROBLEM WITH THE LEADERSHIP, WE POSTED A NO-CONFIDENCE PETITION AND THE ONES WE WANTED OUT RESIGNED.  THE SCHOOL EMPLOYEES, TEACHERS, STUDENTS, PARENTS SHOULD DO THE SAME.