Letter to the Editor: Lennox School District
The administration building for the Lennox School District. (Photo by David Rosenfeld)
Dear 2UrbanGirls,
It’s been almost a year that the former Lennox School District Superintendent passed away and current board president, Angela Fajardo is still smugly reminding everyone at the board meetings how he exhausted the reserves and how she was kept in the dark. She also proudly stated last Tuesday at the board meeting how she has been serving on the Lennox Board for 13 years.
With so many years of experience under her belt, red flags should’ve been raised when board members were allowed to stay at lavish hotels, expenses were paid, iPhones and iwatches being supplied at the expense of the District. Or when the current board president, Angela Fajardo, was allowed to go to Houston in 2017 with her daughter costing over $1,000, who at the time was a middle school student. Or when she went to Puerto Rico with her daughter in 2016, along with 17 other students and staff. This 4 day Puerto Rico trip cost the district $57,000 and that didn’t include meals and miscellaneous costs.
Concerns weren’t raised when she voted “yes” on the Travel Consultant Agreement on April 26, 2016 for this trip? Did she not question how the district was going to fund this study trip, since such lavish trips/costs were never granted before.
These justice warriors knew how much was being spent on contracts, overtime, promotions, extra personnel, student study trips, etc… Invoices didn’t get paid by themselves. The time to question how the funds were being spent was then. Time to stop playing victim and time to move on.
Dazed & confused in Lennox
Can we move on past police brutality? past gentrification? Moving on past an undesirable situation towards a better, transparent, and more productive environment requires that the players, structures, and secret processes that made a shameful situation possible be permanently eradicated. How can the besieged Lennox School District parents, teachers, and students move past the powerful and still operating machinery installed by the stubbornly entrenched incumbents and their benefited teams? Moving on, if it is to be a positive transition, cannot be based on the innocent pretense that the tragic passing away of one of the most intimidating and effective manipulators at the helm of the LSD gravy train will suffice to finally bring the Lennox community the school district they rightfully deserve.
I bear witness to the thriving of the corrupt machinery, which in all fairness, was not built by the disgraced Mr. Taylor, who at the snapping of fingers of the then undisputed bosses of the LSD, created the job I once held, to be later replaced by a gentleman that now, along with other employees which directly benefited from their friendship with the former Superintendent, now seeks monetary compensation from the Lennox School District, due to alleged sexual harassment.
Nothing is moving on but the gaze of those that mildly care about the fleeting issues that are popular in the corporate news and social media. When the now infamous Superintendent was rising to unchallenged power, I, as a Public Information Officer, along with committed activist parents, desperately reached out to your respected information venue. Our voices were not heard.
We will not move on until the direct enablers and beneficiaries are voted out.
Look at the board meeting today and see how rude Sergio Hernandez is to a speaker that reminded them about how “in the dark” they were! No tienen verguenza!