Monday, March 21, 2011

EASD: One More Reason to Love Joe Kish--Discrimination Suits

Now that he is retiring on our taxpayer dollar for the rest of his life, 
one has to ask--how much has Joe Kish cost Easton taxpayers 
during his years of "service?"

Posted by: Noël Jones


Just when you thought it might be over--just when you thought good grief--thank God Joe Kish is retiring, now that he is at the center of an investigation around accusations that he brushed away complaints by Easton parents and students about an alleged pedophile teaching at the middle-school--just when you thought soon he will not be able to cost us any more money in sweetheart deals to contractors,  unsustainable teachers contracts, and lawsuits against the district--now this:


Joe Owens, Editor of the Express-Times reports in his column:


"Some outrageous testimony from depositions became public last week in which school district employees allege Joseph Kish, assistant to the superintendent, and another school administrator routinely used racial slurs to refer

to minority employees. School board president Kerry Myers, who is black, testified there has been racial discrimination at the district by certain administrators, including Kish, and that Myers tried to engage fellow board members to act on it, but that they purposefully failed to do so."


This is the reason, Owens predicts, that Easton taxpayers will most likely get slammed with the bill for a settlement with Latoya Monroe, the former HR Director who was fired--she alleges--because of racial discrimination (after which the district hired John Castrovinci for her position). As Owens points out, it doesn't matter whether or not anyone says she was or wasn't a qualified administrator--the bottom line is that they hired her, whereupon she allegedly endured regular racial discrimination according to these depositions, and then she was fired. We are going to eat it--thanks to Joe Kish and the other administrators involved.


Just as disturbing though, is that the depositions seem to reveal a culture of racism within the EASD, which would be disturbing anywhere, but especially within a district with a student population as diverse as Easton's. Which means we will also undoubtedly get to look forward to taxpayers paying for more "sensitivity workshops" designed to protect the district from more litigation, and ostensibly to teach racist jerks to not act like racist jerks, setting us up for more lawsuits. I've got a better idea--how about not hiring racist jerks in the first place, so that they don't get to retire on our dime while we continue to pay for the lawsuits they cause?

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

So the School Board President, an African America himself, knew about the outrageous comments and did nothing about it??????? WOW, this Board is really messed up.

noel jones said...

Kerry Myers only became the school board president earlier this year, when Pat Fisher stepped aside. He was apparently a member of the board at the time this issue was coming to a head, and tried to get other members to work with him, but there weren't enough interested to make anything happen...