Education

Ogilvie 'disappointed' to be Paladino's latest target

WBFO-FM 88.7

Published March 25, 2015 at 5:00 AM EDT

Buffalo School Board Member Carl Paladino is calling for the ouster of interim Schools Superintendent Don Ogilvie. But Ogilvie plans to stay at least until the end of the school year.

Paladino is planning to submit a resolution at Wednesday night's school board session asking to remove Ogilvie.

Focus on Education reporter Eileen Buckley caught up with Ogilvie at a Buffalo School while appearing at Say Yes Buffalo news conference at a city school.

"I'm disappointed that he has turned his focus on me and on the work that I have done and the work that has been done with a team of people who in my estimation are as fine as I've ever worked with. We will continue to push forward," said Ogilvie.

Paladino is claiming Ogilvie failed to implement a reform agenda supported by the board's majority. But Ogilvie says attempts to get full support of those reforms never happened.

"There was an attempt in the early fall to get that vision statement brought to everybody. It didn't get very far. Then re was an attempt to retain a facilitator to bring the whole board together and that never came about, then there was an attempt to initiate a superintendent search, which would have included a discussion about goals an division. That has not come about. There never has been a consensus on the whole board concerning a vision," said Ogilvie.

Ogivlie said he plans to remain with the district until the end of the school year. "Certainly, leaving at the end of this school year. There's an appropriate time to finish things up and move on, and I think my sense is that I'm going to take advantage of that," stated Ogilvie.

"I'm disappointed that he has turned his focus on me and on the work that I have done and the work that has been done with a team of people who in my estimation are as fine as I've ever worked with. We will continue to push forward," said Don Ogilvie, Interim Buffalo Schools Superintendent.

The following is Paladino's 'agenda' he wants to submit for the March 23 school board meeting.

To: Buffalo Board of Education (BOE) and Donald Ogilvie, Superintendent of the Buffalo Public Schools
From: Carl P. Paladino
Date: March 23, 2015
Cc: Everybody else
Re: Agenda for the March 25, 2015 meeting of the Board of Education (BOE)

1.) Item # 55. Motion #60. SEED Schools. Many of the students in the BPS are from high risk homes and statistics show that without appropriate guidance, nutrition, development of study habits and exercise from a young age "at risk" students are not given a fair opportunity for education and become doomed to failed lives. SEED schools are boarding schools and nationally they have provided an answer, other than finger pointing at the failure of parents who in most cases are victims of the same dysfunctional society and school systems that their children are in.

2.) Interim Superintendent. Considering that the Superintendent will be replaced by a permanent Superintendent in the proximate future and that the permanent Superintendent will want to put in place administrators, exempt and non-exempt, to operate the Buffalo Public Schools (BPS), I move that the Superintendent not hire or appoint any new administrators, extend the contracts of any present administrators or in any way make any representations or execute any MOUs, or conduct any negotiations with any of the various unions of the personnel of the BPS pending his departure from his position.

3.) Interim Superintendent. Insofar as Superintendent Ogilvie has:

a) violated the representations made by him to BOE members prior to his appointment to the Superintendent position and further betrayed the trust given to him by members of the BOE when he failed to keep his promises to begin the implementation of elements of the reform agenda, defined in a vision statement provided to him, thereby exacerbating the dysfunction of the BPS and prolonging the fair opportunity for education for the 34,000 students in the BPS, and

b) failed to install new, exempt and non-exempt, administrators in the BPS to implement the reform agenda, choosing instead to use the same administrators who created the dysfunction and disintegration of morale in all constituencies of the BPS to maintain the status quo, and

c) in fact has worked in many instances to obstruct, delay and otherwise frustrate elements of the reform agenda including the use of neighborhood schools, charter schools and all other available vehicles and opportunities to provide seats in performing schools to all children in the BPS,

d) I therefore move that Superintendent Ogilvie's appointment as Superintendent be terminated effective immediately.