The recent news about the resignation of Santa Clara Country Superintendent of Schools Colleen Wilcox can be looked at in two ways, depending on your perspective. First, it is alarming that a school superintendent who is supposed to have our children’s best interests at heart was almost dismissed because of ruthless and manipulative tactics. How is it that someone like Wilcox achieves the high post as a leader for our principals and teachers and put in charge of an office that is supposed to educate young children? Is it any surprise that our school system finds itself cast in such a negative light after news charting the school boss’s behavior like she was the villain Miranda Priestly from The Devil Wears Prada hits the front page? It is a sad state of affairs when those that we place in charge of our kids’ future turn out to have qualities that we despise.
Then again, you can look at her resignation—a preemptive action taken by Wilcox to avoid getting fired—as a positive step. If they can clean up things in-house at the county office of education, then maybe they can clean up things outside the office and in our schools. It seems that educators who get away from the actual profession of teaching—administrators, supervisors and those in higher offices of education at the government level—soon forget what got them into education in the first place. Serving others and making a difference in the lives of students and families, while treating everyone with respect, are important reasons to enter the world of education. It’s refreshing that someone in such a lofty position is reprimanded for not holding those qualities in high esteem. If only we could use the same parameters to clean house of those who are making education decisions for our children now at the state and federal levels.
It’s no wonder that people lose faith in our education system when the front-page news isn’t about an uplifting teacher or a student who defied the odds in order to succeed but, rather, about a leader who apparently used rude and inappropriate tactics to make her way in the world. Let’s hope that whoever succeeds her in this post has the finest qualities of an educator—not of an opera diva.
Wilcox is not in charge of priniciples and teachers, school districts are. She was in charge of a bloated bureacracy that spent taxpayer money like drunk sailors on leave attempting to second guess school districts. Duplication of Service should be the name of this department.
First the UC Regents, and now elementary school administrators.
Paying her a small fortune to go away is no victory. It’s just another example of throwing taxpayer money away.
If she is as awful as described in the Merc, she should have been told to fill up a box, walked to the door and handed a check for two weeks severence pay.
SG—Interesting “column”, and your take on the fraud in education is exactly right. I was president of the County School Board that appointed Wilcox, and based on her resume, she didn’t even make the first cut of candidates for the job on my list and on that of another board member who wanted a real supt. for the job. The rest of the board stated up front, however, that no man would get the job. As it turned out, the best candidate was a man, who was immediately hired to be supt. in San Diego. He would have been my choice. Of the remaining candidates, some dozen or so women, there were many ballots before Wilcox was chosen as the least problematic.
The discussions among the board members about qualifications would have made a great sitcom. As Mark Twain said 100 years ago: “For practice, God made idiots, then he made school boards.” If you care about education, the best place to be wasting your time is on a school board, just as, if you care about teaching kids, the last place to be is in the classroom—where you won’t be for long because if you’re effective, your “peers” will quickly move to have you fired, an insight gained from teaching English for 25 years at San Jose City College. (Fired first year, fought back, saw many talented teachers fired despite my best attempts to keep them.)
Wilcox was exceptional in that though she trashed her subordinates, she even intimidated the board for 14 long years tho they were nominally her boss and she their only employee. She even had the gall to require them to submit to being fingerprinted so she could pursue her hunch that one elected member was a crook, and a Latino. And how about paying her almost half a million dollars just to go away?
The board had no educational goals for her, of course, since such boards are just a stepping stone to “higher” political office, and none of the members have serious credentials in education. And despite the letters to the Murky extolling her “contributions” as a “spokesperson” for education here, there and everywhere, it’s amusing to read the short list of “accomplishments” you’ve never ever heard of that was published in her bio in the Murky yesterday.
Education in Santa Clara County and everywhere else is a “priority” because it is heavily larded with piles of tax money—and no accountability at all. Thomas Jefferson would be appalled: he was certain that a successful democracy, which we are not, is based on a valid educational system. It would seem that none such is in sight. But to actually see how bad it has become, the current outrage over the County Superintendent of Schools is, as SG says, a great step forward. The Empress of education has no clothes, and it ain’t a pretty sight. George Green
There are women like Wilcox in positions of power who are tormenting employees across the country as I type this. I’ve been subjected to a few of them in my years of employment and every last one of them seriously needs to be humbled.
The problem is, Wilcox’s reaction is that she’s done nothing wrong and she will continue to believe that her management style is fine. You can’t humble somebody who refuses to acknowledge the error of his or her ways. She’ll cause the same trouble somewhere else before too long, count on it.
Even more important, the Sharks last night in Dallas showed they can, possibly, play together as a team. Keep that up and they just might make the playoffs again this year.
A little bit more grit, and they could go all the way.
Hmmm…
Ma’am… With all due respect, you can only look at this travesty from those two particular points of view if you buy the Murky View in total…
As in hook (sensationalism…), line (where there is smoke there is always a forest fire, and eyewitness testimony is always very reliable and objective), and sinker (keep repeating… it will become the accepted view…)
I don’t… And you shouldn’t either without knowing a lot more about this political sacking. The SCCOE Website has an Employee Suggestion Box, maybe we could review it for complaints… What is available goes back a few years and no one’s identity is revealed… Where are all the complaints about this horrible woman that these poor dears endured silently… for 14 years? And as to the pliant politically ambitious members of the Board… Can you name more than one that has risen to a higher rank than the Mtn View City Council?
These are the sourest grapes from the most comfortable folks around, all safely retired on our dime, carping from the sidelines… Giving every critic one more opportunity to dump on Public Education.
I have opposed Colleen on more than one appearance before the Board, I ultimately was very disappointed in direction that Alternative Education has taken in the County. But I do know why, and I know why because Colleen carefully and compassionately explained it to me… It was called the Law.
As for management style, well they hired her to cook up some omelets, and guess what? Eggs were broken… No one who is effective in a system like the SCCOE as a top administrator emerges without a few folks who didn’t like the menu.
This witch hunt began as a complaint, which had no basis in any fact, of racism. It resulted in a free for all, a piling on that has been used to someone’s political benefit, to be determined in Act II.
Stay tuned…
It is remarkable how many people with seemingly first-hand knowledge of exactly what occurred all have chosen to share the intimate details here on little old SJI. What are the odds of that?
#1 get a clue,
You unpatriotic screaming couch potato. If it weren’t for those sailors, you’d probably still be abusing the Army, or Marines.
The next time you chose to sterio type an American Sailor, Print your real name.
As# #ole!
Lost at Sea
I only know what I have read recently about the seemingly Jekyll/Hyde Ms. Wilcox; so I cannot help but wonder how she stayed in place for 14 years if half what has been claimed were true.
Then I read that Mr. Walter Valen, a 21 year veteran of the office, went out on STRESS LEAVE when Ms. Wilcox SUGGESTED he retire. STRESS LEAVE????for a SUGGESTION???!!! And some other idiot in the office bought that and allowed him to be paid for not working?
Ms. Wilcox should have adopted what many said was her habit and called him the PC, milquetoast, non-performing, whining, sniveling, worthless malingerer that he most probably is. And how much did the taxpayers pay this stressed out wimp while he was on STRESS LEAVE??
Reading betwen the lines of Monday’s Murky News article, it sounds like all the PC non-performing clods Ms. Wilcox was trying to get rid of finally ganged up, found some specious race card to play, and got her to resign. Guess she’s not so tough after all.
On the other hand, since she resigned, why are the taxpayers getting stuck for almost hal a mil$?
Strong comment to follow.
RG—Omelettes? She wasn’t hired for any other reason than that she was the “most charming” of the female candidates. I was there; you weren’t. Turns out the charm was well cultivated and focussed on those who would provide her an advantage. Everyone else got the “uncharming” persona. Right away her hand picked personal secretary quit before lunch, early and brutally tested for “loyalty” it would seem. That problem couldn’t be hidden, but the board majority who hired her pretended it didn’t happen. Subsequent boards were aware of the same oppressive behavior but it had to build for 14 years before it couldn’t be ignored.
Frustrated fin fan, always insightful and intelligent—and eloquent, may be right about racism being the current useless board’s reason for dumping the Empress, but the evidence is clear that they had no educational goals for the woman, having none for themselves, only political advancement (and that not very far, mostly fancy), but her “long” list of accomplishments in the bio printed in the Murky was trivial. The day the story broke in the Murk, the big headline was that high school dropout rates were up in Wilcox very own county, not possible if she were actually an accomplished educational leader. Perhaps she was dumped for a trumped up, even sick reason (though as a midwesterner she had many OBVIOUS prejudices), but 99% of California School Administrators could be fired for any reason
and nothing would change. George Green
Here is a good example of an important hiring decision having been made according to a politically-correct agenda; in this case, that a woman be selected even when better-qualified male candidates were available. As much as I abhor this terribly common practice, the point I want to make lays elsewhere.
My question is this: what does it say about a decision-making body when it makes a decision using a standard (here, gender preference) that is contrary to the purpose for which it was created? If the board was established to serve the interests of education, and those interests are best served by hiring the best people, then how is it possible to justify a desire or decision to hire an inferior candidate? The answer is, of course, that such decisions (which are the rule rather than the exception in much of government) are justified by the manufactured claim that diversity is sometimes more valuable to an organization than is raw talent. But now, with several decades of such nonsense under our belts, it is time to look beyond the explanations offered in defense of “progressive” decision-making and examine the reality.
Can we detect, when we look deep into such decisions, wisdom and good intentions, or do we instead see comfortable seat-holders mindlessly twisting with the prevailing wind? From the looks of the events that preceded the departure of Colleen Wilcox, I think the evidence suggests the latter. Consider this: if the sum total of her credentials + gender was enough to get her selected over better candidates in the first place, then we should expect to find, amongst the explanations for her receiving the bum’s rush out the door, an even more impressive sum total of evidence against her.
But where is it? What were her great sins? Being curt? Crass? Angering a few subordinates? Fourteen years and that’s it? How does the evidence against Ms. Wilcox stack-up against the enormity of the sacrifice made when she was hired: the sacrifice of talent secured (by selecting an inferior candidate), objectivity exercised (the board reduced to practicing sexism), and fairness extended (to the guy whose Y-chromosome cost him the job)?
It doesn’t stack-up. What really cost Ms. Wilcox her job was the strong breeze that caught the board at a time when race, not gender was blowing in the wind. Armed with a level of evidence that even the investigator admitted was insufficient to support the allegations of race discrimination, the fact that the “R” issue was in the air and within sniffing range of the media was more than enough to get the board to turn up its nose to gender diversity and its back to Ms. Wilcox. One can only wonder how different would things have been if Ms. Wilcox had been born with a bit more melanin in her system.
The entire affair is pretty pathetic from my seat, but exactly what I would expect from a decision-making body that long ago abandoned the mandate that it do the best for our educational system. The best never involves choosing by what’s politically fashionable at the time. Political correctness has proven itself just as fraudulent and corruptive as did cronyism, racism, and the spoils system that preceded it. Colleen Wilcox may have lost her job, but by my tally of the evidence it was the conduct of the board of education that was offensive.