If the Fort Worth school board thought it was getting rid of the Joe Palazzolo case last week when it voted to pay the former administrator and whistleblower — without his knowledge or input— a year’s back pay as a settlement of his appeal of his firing, it was dead wrong.
Yesterday, Feb. 23, Palazzolo filed another grievance against the district protesting the board’s action stating, in part, “The Board never indicated I was terminated. Some have suggested this vote may have resulted in the end of my employment with FWISD. To the extent FWISD has ended my employment, I am appealing because such termination is in retaliation for my whistleblower activity. I hope my employment has not ended, but I am filing this in an abundance of caution.”
Palazzolo was fired more than a year ago following his exposure of malfeasance by administrators at Arlington Heights High School where he had worked as an assistant principal for two years. The allegations were proven to be valid. Still Palazzolo, who was not charged with any wrongdoing at the school, was fired. He only reported what he had seen and other teachers had charged in affidavits. He was reinstated and put back on the payroll with full back pay and benefits under the orders of Commissioner of Education Robert Scott who upheld his appeal, ordering that he either be reinstated or that the board order a new hearing and pay him a year’s salary.
Because the board initially opted for reinstatement and failed to order a new hearing, Palazzolo, according to the grievance, said that that the board’s latest action is unclear as to his employment status, therefore: “To the extent I have been terminated, I seek reinstatement, back pay, damages, fees and expenses. I would like to be placed back in active employment as a Secondary School Administrator, involved in the daily education of students.”
Joe Palazzolo is useless. He threw people under the bus based on his incompetency as an administrator at AHHS. He knew that if he got people terminated he could move up. Guess what, he went nowhere. He is nothing but a whiny little child with nothing better to do than trash the people he worked with and cry foul at anything he doesn’t think is fair. You had a year off and now you are gonna get back pay? Seems fair enough for a person who, more than likely, was involved. Why be a whistle blower if you have nothing to hide. Here’s to hoping this string of bad luck, and bad hair pieces, follow you wherever you go.
Dear “Arby”????another Melody minion. P brought forward our complaints. I never heard him throw anyone under the bus nor did he whine. He did complain about Judy Needham’s ceaseless cover-ups. The real wimps were those who resigned rather than face the music. Hairpiece?
Oh my Arby! Is that the best you can do for a pseudonym, Perry? Did Starbucks fire you too for dropping the “F” bomb on the Frappuccino’s, that now you work at “ARBY” (s)? Well, that’s not fair is it? I mean, you aren’t necessarily Perry, but probably Alexander, MJ, Reyna or even scarier yet…Needham! Either way, you BS continues to shine through as usual! Who else has so much contempt for Joe? I know the answer to that and so do many other people! Joe stopped the crap from mutating any further. He cut-off the bleeding, and stood up for what he believed in. Joe didn’t back down, when he was lied to, ridiculed, ostracized, and so forth; he knew he was opening up a big can of corrupted worms by coming forward with his and the teacher complaints! Sure, hate him for bringing an end to your horrendous little games of covering up and wrongdoing! And you can also hate him for complaining about haggard old Needham and her slimy ways. But NEVER accuse him of having a hairpiece!!! Listen up idiot minions! YOUR WHINING on this blog about Joe is useless! It is apparent to me that you are jealous of Joe (and his nice REAL hair), b/c you are obviously losing yours (Needham)! If anyone has a comb-over it’s YOU! You and your pack of wolves have been dissing Joe since the AHHS mess was uncovered, b/c he thought your BS was hurting the school and the students! Ah yes, the students! Do you remember the students? The kids who graduated without enough credits? Or the ones absent excessively and counted present, and graduated anyway? What about the students exposed to Perry’s filthy perverted mouth and sexually harassing innuendos? If you ask me (and I don’t care if you didn’t), “Arby”, you are the loser; a bitter, wrinkled, criminal, who should have been thrown in jail years ago, for taking part in a corrupt deal. And as far as you accusing Joe of “being involved” in the mess; you are not only jealous of him (and his hair), but you are also plain stupid and ignorant…and saying that would be an insult to stupid and ignorant people! You are grasping at straws, b/c you can’t grasp anything else (and who in their right mind would even let you!). Move on minions! Joe is NOT going away and neither is his lawsuit to get his job back! Someone will acknowledge this witch hunt for what it truly is…a retaliation schema of epic proportions. Oh you can bet it’s coming alright…and it will be a grand day, when the hateful crap comes back to you a hundred fold!
I feel compelled to join the chorus. Joe is one of the most honorable men I’ve met in my 64 years on this planet. AND I can tell you he had tremendous support from fellow teachers parents and students, at AHHS. I say this because I met with several teachers who worked with Joe as the corruption was being exposed. As an outsider but also a parent of an AHHS student, I had my own poor experiences with AHHS principal and a teacher or two but heard in the meeting with teachers some of the most horrifying stories related to the poor judgement and mistreatment of students and teachers.under principal Alexander. AND abuses are on going at AHHS today.
Palazzolo was the ONLY Assistant Principal who went above and beyond to assist students, teachers and parents. His witnesses were targeted by FWISD until they transferred, quit or were bullied into silence. The current principal at AHHS, Jason Oliver, even directed that his daughter’s transcript be witheld. It took a State Representative to get that released. Arby would do well to read Betty’s previous story’s on Palazzolo. Dansby also would do well to at least read the15+ teacher and staff statements. We would all do well to remember that two well respected teachers went to Judy Needham with allegations of attendance fraud after Palazzolo had brought them to FWISD. Needham’s response was to ask Robert Ray to delay the investigation until AFTER graduation. That is how an additional 21 students graduated without sufficient credits. None of Melody’s allegations against him were proven correct. TEA charged FWISD with $18,000 for falsifying attendance in a SINGLE WEEK. No further audit for the past seven years has been done. Finally, Betty Brink was awarded “Investigative Journalist of the Year” by the Trial Lawyers Association for Texas/Oklahoma (believe that is correct) specifically for her reporting on the AHHS scandal/Palazzolo lynching. WAKE UP Mr. Dansby!! Time to clean house!
We hoped that some members of the boards would make a better choice for selecting a better candidate to be the Superintend. Dansby won’t be able to clean the house! If he decides to clean the house, he is in the list of employees who should go too. In his advantage, his salary was increased for a well-deserved retirement. Great move!
The members of the board believed that bringing somebody from outside it will take time for that new superintendent to learn the system. Guess what, they took the risk of preserving the dysfunctional system by placing somebody who knows the system. What a mistake! We agree with UEA that Dansby knows all campuses because of his last job assignment. But Dansby is tangled with the corrupted and proven incompetents. Now, he has to ride the same train with them to the same destination. What Dansby doesn’t know is that teachers are fed up with all the nonsense and his “people.” Employees will continue dragging their feet to success.
Credibility is one of the most important factors for change and his team doesn’t have credibility to pull it off. His team, including Dansby, operates by fear the same way Tocco established in his regime. The challenge for this regime is we are in the new millennium and there are more tools available to communicate and establish a network to confront the nonsense.
Palazzolo’s case is the tip of the iceberg of the corruption in FWISD. The School Board is giving more fuel to Palazzolo’s case of whistleblower for making stupid decisions. Do you think the board is going to change his legal team? Just wait when the whistleblower case goes to an independent jury and jurisdiction. Some board members will go to court to sit on the bench and explain their decisions in cross-examination. This case will set a judicial precedent for school law. It’s too late to apologize, too late.
Does this crap surprise anyone? Let’s recap shall we? MJ and Dickerson spear headed a multi-million dollar fiasco known as “Connects” aka Tyler Systems. Everyone on the board and on MJ’s cabinet, including Dansby, knew about this shady deal! The piss poor accounting system was not ready to roll out, as it was stated numerous times by accounting personnel, but the fools did it anyway, costing a million in taxpayer money that was overpaid to employees! Then the district turns around and fires the person who warned them, b/c somebody had to pay the price for that major snafu! The employee turns around and files a lawsuit and it drags on for a couple of year to date, I believe!
The AHHS debacle: Thousands had to be repaid to the state for attendance fraud that was proven, NOT speculated! Dozens of anonymous statements by teachers were brought to administration by Palazzolo and given to MJ, about the corruption at AHHS by numerous people, namely Needham, Alexander, Boyd and Perry. Palazzolo is tricked into taking the anonymous statements back to the teachers and have them identified; otherwise they would not accept them. Cue the bullying and retaliation of said teachers, including Palazzolo! Palazzolo was demoted, transferred and later fired, for allegedly having questionable info on his hiring record. The witch hunt commenced, spending more $ on man hours to dig up false or outdated information on Palazzolo, so they could justify firing him. Meanwhile, Chuck Boyd, is given the opportunity to retire nicely, even though he was accused of borrowing 5K from a booster fund, which was controlled by the malicious Izzy Perry. There were thousands more embezzled by Perry out of the booster fund; no one was arrested, tried or convicted! Nita Alexander (Principal) was transferred at first, immediately after the scandal broke, to a better school; I am sure this was a directive from MJ and her top administrators and Needham, to include Dansby! Their misstep proved to be outrageous, so they allowed Alexander to resign gracefully (the last I saw, she was still drawing $ from the district).
The Palazzolo lawsuit ensues and the district overpays a sleeze bag investigator, so he could vote in favor of the district against Palazzolo. And who headed the witch hunt and spending all the time, energy and funds to try to cover-up the mess…Reyna, Needham, Ray, Dickerson and Menchaca. And don’t tell me Dansby was holed up in his office or out visiting his schools that he didn’t know what was going on? Many depositions and court dates later and we fast forward to a new school year, where they used the “budget” excuse to remove Sharon Herrera from her position of Diversity Trainer, b/c she admitted under oath that she thought the Palazzolo firing was done out of retaliation. Mind you, this was right about the time Reyna was plotting her revenge on Dansby and the board for not being chosen to be interim Super, so in comes a 13 million dollar “communication mistake”, orchestrated by Reyna. Dansby was interim super during this time; he claimed that he, nor the board, were aware of the magnitude of “miscommunication” that cost extra millions! And what, pray tell, happened to Reyna? Nothing, except she was bullied into dropping out of the permanent super job, in exchange for her future “unexpected” retirement. She, like Boyd, will get to step down with grace and retain her retirement money!
In the meantime, Palazzolo’s case is nearing the half a million mark in defense, to try and break him to drop his case. They throw a couple of bones his way to pacify him, until the next plot is secured, which was Dansby’s permanent super assignment. One would think the millions and thousands already lost would be a wake-up call for people, but hell no; the district just keeps spending, especially to ensure Dansby was the only REAL candidate for the job. The district pays almost 60K to hire a firm to do the bogus search, only to fool the public into thinking that it was a fair process to look for the best candidate. If there was another candidate, they never mentioned who it was, nor did they mention other possible hopefuls, b/c they planned it that way…to make it look like it was a big process! More little snafus appear in the midst of this sham, like the Western Hills teacher fiasco, which Dansby and his administrator’s botched from day one, calling in an “Independent investigator”, which was a bunch of crap, b/c there wasn’t anyone independent, short of calling Menchaca an independent, which he is not!
Fast forward still, to another major crisis headed by interim super Dansby and his board of idiots, which was the Dunbar nipple pinching principal. Botch up another investigation, using the excuse that MJ knew about the principal and did nothing when she was super. People kept their jobs in that scenario, including the known nipple pincher, aka Williams, who got promoted to central office and continues to draw his pay. The reason Dansby used is that he didn’t want the district to endure another lawsuit! So instead, he allowed the mother of one of William’s victims to come forward with her complaints and threat of a lawsuit. Confronted by the mother, Dansby lies that Williams admitted to doing the things he did, even though Betty Brink reported it on two separate occasions, straight from the horse’s mouth (Dansby). Many asked, and still do, why the board and Dansby kept someone, who admitted to wrongdoing, yet they fired Palazzolo for the idiotic reasons they gave. Conveniently, the mother was allowed to tell her story the very same day Dansby was named permanent super. Why? So Dansby would have a “non-media negative bashing”, which would ensure his appointment on the 21st day! Also, on this very same night, the board votes to offer Palazzolo a year’s salary, instead of reinstating him???
WTF? I am not an investigator, AG, or the lame OPS dept. head Menchaca; I see corruption with a capital “C” and no one has done a damn thing about it!!!???!! I see maliciousness at its best, by Dansby, Needham, Reyna and Whatley, to make stupid legal moves to continue to drag on the inevitable. So instead of firing a disgusting pedophile, you are willing to pay thousands more in defense attorney fees to keep Palazzolo away from HIS administrative job??? These moves are not only ludicrous, but also moronic! My only hope, and everyone else’s, is that the reason no one has done a damn thing to this district so far, is that they are already being investigated internally by someone undercover with the FBI or U.S. Dept of Ed!
So Board Members and Mr. Superintendent, employees and parents are wondering……. Why is Williams, an overpaid and admitted pedophile, promoted and still employed along with his assistant principals who failed to report him, while $500,000+ later, we are still trying to fire the only Administrator in FWISD who tried to do the right thing? Why is Robert Ray, the man who covered up both of these disasters, still Chief of Schools? Do you not think this is going to play well before a jury of parents and grandparents when Palazzolo’s case goes to trial? This was a third strike for Perry….the Watchdog busted her for stealing gate receipts; ESPN busted her over the pregnant volleyball player @ AHHS (We all saw how the District lied to cover her in that fiasco) and then the Booster Club $$ and verbal abuse of students and staff which Palazzolo and the AHHS teachers reported. What are you thinking? This case was over. CONTINUED poor advise has just “jump started” it again.
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