Something happened after Gilbert Public Schools Governing Board Member Julie Smith stated on December 15, 2015 that GPS employees have a right under GPS Policy GBP to file a complaint with the Governing Board. Someone did just that!
Here’s the text of the most recent anonymous letter sent to the GPS Governing Board:
Here’s Julie Smith talking directly to GPS employees:
Westie has posted many, many times about the Old Good Old Boy regime under Dave Allison, and how the Loose Zipper Brigade operated in Gilbert Public Schools. Most of the GPS employees involved are no longer GPS employees. The good people of Gilbert, Arizona hoped for a fresh new beginning in their school district, one that would focus on educating students rather than Top Dogs examining the looseness of their zippers while feeding at the public trough. Ewwww, the mental image!
For a short time, there were few stories about *inappropriate behavior* involving GPS and the GOBs. But, alas, the New Gang of GOBs that were recruited by GPS Queen Superintendent Christina Kishimoto seem to have been totally in the dark about the goings-on in GPS that led to their own employment. We’ve all learned what happens in the dark in GPS … or in locked closets.
Westie: Note to scalawags and carpetbaggers: follow links here and in the linked posts; they will explain much about the circumstances that brought you here.
Keyboard: It ought to scare the pants off you! Ooops, inappropriate image. I’ll go get the brain bleach.
The New Gang of GOBs didn’t take very long to start establishing their own empire in Gilbert Public Schools. They seemed blissfully unaware that anonymous letters about abuse of authority led to an implosion of the GPS superintendency. The fact that those anonymous letters identified inappropriate behavior between a principal and his dean at a GPS junior high school was serendipity for the press, which received copies of the eleven anonymous letters at the same time the GPS Governing Board received them. Those anonymous letters, of course, were public records, which included things like this:
The teachers’ reports cited numerous instances regarding Brian Yee and the Dean of Students, who were caught several times, by many different people having sex in his office, in closets at the school and on the football field during and after school. The students at Highland even knew this was going on… The only thing that came from the meeting at the school between the staff and the teachers was the Dean of Students being moved to another school.
Trying to close the sordid mess, GPS announced: “Superintendent Allison told Highland Junior High staff and teachers that Yee was exonerated and that disgruntled employees would be involuntarily transferred.” Of course, Brian Yee was NOT exonerated, but GPS tried to put the kibosh on those public records the GOBs didn’t want the public to see. The kibosh didn’t work out very well, but it sure let GPS employees know that retaliation is the “Gilbert Way” in response to anything GOBs didn’t want to hear. So of course this new anonymous letter writer is worried about retaliation!
The saga of Brian Yee was a story that wouldn’t go away for GPS … it just got bigger and bigger as new revelations surfaced over time. Good Old Dave Allison tried to keep it all under wraps, hiring one of his pet attorneys to *investigate* and make it all go away. Good old Matthew W. Wright tried to do that for his pal Bishop Allison, writing TWO reports: one for public consumption and one that was supposed to remain private. The *private* report was vastly different from the public report and we all know how that part of the story ended … the private report became public. Even so, Lily Tram went on a tirade about how wonderful Brian Yee was in spite of the evidence against him. For some unknown reason, Brian Yee is still employed as a GPS principal at Greenfield Junior High School, with a pretty young woman assigned as his Assistant Principal, according to the school website. Is the past prologue in this case? Only time will tell. But we digress.
Surely someone will FOIA the public records from GPS that will confirm this anonymous teacher’s revelations. As Westie knows from past experience, anyone else will receive public records from GPS a lot faster than Westie will. What would you like to bet that the Brian Yee report was among the public records that Dave Allison thought he destroyed? We’re digressing again. However, many facts exposed in the anonymous letter can be confirmed by public records already available.
First, Christina Kishimoto did indeed file for and receive a divorce from her former husband Michael Kishimoto. According to the Kishimoto Divorce Case History, the GPS Queen kicked her mentally disabled husband to the curb over the summer of 2015. We know Christina Kishimoto’s husband was mentally disabled because she testified to that fact in court in January 2015. Listen to the audio transcript here. Christina Kishimoto describes her husband as mentally disabled at the 3:15 mark. This recording is evidence of Superintendent Christina Kishimoto’s perjury and false statements in court in January 2015. For simplicity, we’ll accept that Christina Kishimoto was telling the truth about her husband even though she blithely told lies that day about countless other details, which even Lily Tram could have warned her against. But Christina Kishimoto thought we (and the public) would never know. Kind of like now.
Second, Director of Technology Steve Smith was indeed hired as described and promoted by Queen Christina Kishimoto to be Executive Director of Technology in 2015. The promotion appears to have occurred after her divorce was finalized in July or August of 2015, with a property settlement signed by the Kishimotos in May 2015. For those wondering just how inappropriate their relationship might be, Steve Smith is divorced.
There are good reasons for public policies that forbid inappropriate relations between a supervisor and her subordinate. The imbalance of power makes it impossible for such a relationship to be considered consensual.
If the romance is between a supervisor and subordinate, those emotions and potential hostilities can manifest themselves in claims of retaliation or sexual harassment. Worse yet, the supervisor may feel regret about the relationship and its impact on his or her working relationship with the subordinate. In such a case, the supervisor can feel trapped in the relationship, knowing that exposure or termination of the relationship could have a serious impact on his or her career and reputation.
A coworker who perceives favoritism between the romantic pair can claim to a court, “Well, it was obvious to me that the only way to succeed at the company was to sleep with your boss, and I’m not going to do that, so I’m suing.” Even if that is incorrect, try proving a negative in a court of law. Further, imagine the other applicants for the subordinate’s position – they might later learn of the relationship and sue the company claiming that the manager only hired the subordinate because of an intended romantic relationship. On the other hand, the stark reality is that most romantic relationships end. And many end poorly. If the supervisor dumps the subordinate, that person will be both a jilted lover and a disgruntled employee, ready to spin any story for his or her own financial gain. That person could claim that they were forced into the relationship against their will, that they were either expressly or implicitly told that they needed to engage in sex in order to keep their job or advance in the company.
As with most situations involving clandestine relationships between a public official and an underling, opportunities to abuse public trust abound, usually connected to the public purse. It won’t be difficult to connect more dots in this saga, and it doesn’t bode well for the New GPS Loose Zipper BrigadeBS and their enablers. It doesn’t look good for Superintendent Christina Kishimoto’s *national reputation* thingy, either.
We’ve already figured out that a national reputation is what this superintendent craves, and by golly, she doesn’t care how she gets it. Each 3-2 vote, which occurred with the 2014 school board as well as the 2015 school board, is a black eye for Christina 3-2 Kishimoto’s reputation. We can’t wait to see what Christina 3-2 Kishimoto has in mind after the election in November 2015, whether she succeeds in getting more taxes for the district or not.
Everyone has a right to privacy in their personal lives, and Superintendent Christina Kishimoto is no exception. That said, she is a public officer, and with that position and its rich rewards come responsibility. In this case, it appears that a line may have been crossed. Unfortunately for the Superintendent and her alleged boyfriend, the allegation is that the inappropriate behavior occurred in public.
Okay, Beloved Birdies, send in your photos! Westie will know what to do with them.