{"id":18990,"date":"2013-10-22T11:34:39","date_gmt":"2013-10-22T15:34:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/?p=18990"},"modified":"2013-10-22T11:34:39","modified_gmt":"2013-10-22T15:34:39","slug":"holly-manzones-letter-of-resignation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/?p=18990","title":{"rendered":"Holly Manzone&#8217;s letter of resignation"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;\"><em><strong>Note to Readers:<\/strong> The following is the unedited text of the letter of resignation by Dr. Holly Manzone, who announced her immediate resignation from the Unionville-Chadds Ford Board of Education, Monday night.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<p><strong>To:\u00a0 Members of the Board of School Directors, UCFSD<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>John Sanville, Superintendent, UCFSD<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Bob Cochran, Secretary, Board of School Directors, UCFSD<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>It is with regret that I hereby resign from the Board of School Directors of the Unionville-Chadds Ford school district, effective immediately.<\/p>\n<p>As a member of the School Board, I have viewed my role as representing the interests of the constituents who elected me as well as the students of our district.\u00a0 I do not think School Board members should simply rubber-stamp the decisions of the School Administration, but rather should critically examine our district\u2019s policies, practices, and results to identify issues and potential improvements.\u00a0 While I believe UCFSD is an excellent school district, there is clearly room for improvement. \u00a0In my view, the best way to effect that improvement is to have open and honest discussion, based on facts and data that are unfiltered by administrators or others who wish to influence outcomes of decisions, audits, and performance reviews.<\/p>\n<p>Over the past several months, this kind of discussion has become increasingly difficult and I no longer believe it is possible for me to discharge my duties responsibly and effectively.\u00a0 The administration and Board have become more concerned with looking good than with confronting real issues that need to be addressed.\u00a0\u00a0 In particular:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Open discussion is frowned upon and dissent is squelched at both the public and executive meetings.<\/li>\n<li>Meetings, especially public meetings, are often orchestrated, with many\u00a0 \u201cpre-meetings\u201d and phone calls behind the scenes to prevent genuine public discussion of contentious issues and avoid any embarrassment to the administration or the Board, i.e., \u201cno dirty laundry.\u201d<\/li>\n<li>Executive sessions are over-used.\u00a0 If there is a way to characterize a topic so that it can be discussed privately in executive session, it is.\u00a0 Engineering topics in this way may allow the district to comply with the letter of the Sunshine Law, but it surely violates its spirit.<\/li>\n<li>Community members raising issues are often themselves considered the problem.\u00a0\u00a0 Energy is expended complaining about these individuals rather than focusing on improvement.<\/li>\n<li>Access to underlying data and original documents is withheld, even if it is not confidential.\u00a0 \u201cConfidentiality\u201d is used as an excuse to withhold access to broad categories of data, without foundation.<\/li>\n<li>Information is shared unequally, with not all Board members receiving the same background for deliberations.\u00a0 Also, private \u201cvotes\u201d are held without canvassing all members.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>We have become a model of poor governance.\u00a0 I share the feelings of some Penn State Board members quoted in the Freeh report:\u00a0 issues are filtered, Board members are shown only \u201crainbows\u201d and not \u201crusty nails,\u201d and meetings are scripted, with decisions \u201cbaked.\u201d \u00a0I can no longer continue to participate on the Board on this basis without violating my principles and disturbing my conscience.\u00a0 I cannot allow my continued presence on the Board to connote agreement with these practices.<\/p>\n<p>The final straw for me has been a recent situation in which the district administration failed to adequately investigate and pursue a clear violation of our residency requirements, confirmed by investigative reports.\u00a0 Rather than aggressively defend the interests of the district and our taxpayers, the administration dragged their feet for more than two years and ultimately struck a \u201cdeal\u201d with the parties\u2014without discussing their actions or the terms of the \u201cdeal\u201d with the Board. \u00a0The Board learned of the deal and its terms only a year after it was struck.\u00a0 The \u201cdeal\u201d includes forgoing back tuition payments for the period of non-residency and a pledge not to question district residency in the future. \u00a0When I asked for the reports underlying this course of action, I was told I could not see them.\u00a0 While this particular instance may be a \u201cdone deal,\u201d the refusal to examine it means there is no hope of improvement or change in the future.\u00a0 It is not possible for me to represent the interests of our citizens under these conditions.<\/p>\n<p>It has been my privilege to serve our district for the past four years.\u00a0 I hope that by calling attention to the practices and behaviors outlined above, UCFSD can make the changes in governance that are badly needed to realize the full potential of our students and educators and to become an example of good citizenship for our children.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: right;\">Sincerely yours,<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: right;\">Holly Manzone<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: right;\">School Director<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: right;\">UCFSD Region B<\/p>\n<div class=\"pdf24Plugin-cp\"> \t<form name=\"pdf24Form0\" method=\"post\" action=\"https:\/\/doc2pdf.pdf24.org\/wordpress.php\" 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\/> \t\t<a href=\"https:\/\/www.pdf24.org\" target=\"_blank\" title=\"www.pdf24.org\" rel=\"nofollow\"><img src=\"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/wp-content\/plugins\/pdf24-posts-to-pdf\/img\/pdf_32x32.png\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\" height=\"32\" \/><\/a> \t\t<span class=\"pdf24Plugin-cp-space\">&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/span> \t\t<span class=\"pdf24Plugin-cp-text\">Send article as PDF<\/span> \t\t<span class=\"pdf24Plugin-cp-space\">&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/span> \t\t<input class=\"pdf24Plugin-cp-input\" style=\"margin: 0px;\" type=\"text\" name=\"sendEmailTo\" placeholder=\"Enter email address\" \/> \t\t<input class=\"pdf24Plugin-cp-submit\" style=\"margin: 0px;\" type=\"submit\" value=\"Send\" \/> \t<\/form> <\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Note to Readers: The following is the unedited text of the letter of resignation by Dr. Holly Manzone, who announced her immediate resignation from the Unionville-Chadds Ford Board of Education, Monday night. To:\u00a0 Members of the Board of School Directors, UCFSD John Sanville, Superintendent, UCFSD Bob Cochran, Secretary, Board of School Directors, UCFSD It is [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18990","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18990","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18990"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18990\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18990"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18990"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18990"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}