A bizarre open-mike moment at the school board dais led late-night cable viewers to believe they'd gotten the scoop on the board's choice for interim superintendent.
Not quite. CMS-TV aired Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools Police Chief Bud Cesena sitting in a school board seat speculating that the board would tap Chief Operating Officer Hugh Hattabaugh. Cesena, who didn't know the mikes were on and ceiling cameras were running, says the conversation with two other staffers took place half an hour before the 6 p.m. meeting. But it aired after the board spent almost three hours in closed session talking about hiring an interim.
To make the whole thing odder: CMS got rid of CMS-TV this year to save money, leaving only enough in the budget for freelance broadcasting of board meetings. Special meetings like Wednesday's generally aren't broadcast. And this meeting was conducted almost entirely behind closed doors, out of reach of the cameras and mikes. So most of what aired was footage of the meeting chamber with a handful of staff, reporters and visitors milling around.
"For some reason they turned the thing on, and for some reason they ran the loop," Cesena said today.
I haven't been able to get an explanation yet. Cesena says he's "pretty embarrassed" that a candid conversation ended up on TV. "It's a lesson for all of us," he said.
Thursday, June 16, 2011
CMS-TV airs open-mike moment
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24 comments:
CMS got rid of CMS-TV this year to save money, leaving only enough in the budget for freelance broadcasting of board meetings
Bright Beginnings faced the axe as well, per Gorman but it too survived, most of it anyway.
Status quo folks... "We've spent all this money on programs before, we must keep them at all cost, regardless of whether they work or not".
There is a CMS channel (3 on cable)that I'm watching right now. The program on at the moment is "Writing for an Audience." So could you please clarify what you mean by CMS got rid of CMS-TV?
Except for regular board meetings, all the programming is old content looped and re-looped over and over - run by a computer
Answerman is correct.
5:46 White: "If I were king for a day I'd decree universal pre-K." But I agree we can't keep paying for it from K-12 money when it's so tight.
Read more: http://obsyourschools.blogspot.com/2011/01/live-from-cms-budget-meeting.html#ixzz1PSnwPXl2
Pssssst....we still have it.
5:19 CMS TV comes up again. Eric Davis notes the only thing running now is board meetings and reruns of old CMS footage. Gorman says there's also footage of Ed Sec Arne Duncan's visit shot by "other providers." He says CMS TV is not an expense.
Read more: http://obsyourschools.blogspot.com/2011/01/live-from-cms-budget-meeting.html#ixzz1PSoIeQF3
Re: CMS board meetings.
Half the time I can't tell if I'm watching or attending a bazaar or a circus.
Add a Dalmatian puppet, a talking cow, some dancing protesters, singing speeches, some memorable one-liners, testy arguments, a revolving door of superintendents, ever changing school board members, technicolor "zones", the Rhino Times, a Yale Bulldog, an Austrian teacher, a coach, an actor, a cop, a banker, the head of the NAACP, the League of Woman Voters, kids who can speak 6 languages, an amendment to an amendment of an amendment on the agenda, one crown jewel, 52 pay-for performance tests, a broad from Broad, Bill Gates, a fiery redhead and slightly off cartoonist from the Charlotte Observer, a partridge in a pear tree and we might as well all "press one" to check ourselves into the loony bin. Is anybody listening? Does anybody care?
(Continue...)
I forgot 007 from across the pond and the Navy rocket scientist in baby blue.
Heyyyyy....where did the rest of the comments go????
Anon 2:29...
Great post...
That's why I use a cartoon coyote and a rabbit as my screen names?
It's the only way to remain sane in a sea of Mecklenburg madness...
Looney Tunes baby, Looney Tunes...
Don't know, 2:37; there's nothing in the spam trap.
If cms got rid of their police force, saving close to $3 million, Bud would not have even been in the building. Keystone kops...they only duplicate what cmpd and the sheriffs department already offer. Oh yeah, and what the other municipal police forces (huntersville, mint hill, etc.) already offer. But I guess when something happens at a school cmspd could go in and not report it to anyone while the other groups would need to, regardless of what the principal of the particular school would see happen...
2:40
So Kwazzi Wabbit (sp?) and Wiley Coyote are one in the same?
And exactly where do you fit into the Theatre of the Absurd?
"Waiting for Superman"? More like 'Waiting for Godot" - on acid.
Anon...
Due to the Observer's login requirements way back, there were two different systems, thus the two names...
Yes I am both of these Looney Tunes.
When I'm not trying to catch the elusive Road Runner, I'm annoying Daffy Duck and Elmer Fudd.
Since I find public education "absurd" in the present form (present meaning past 40 years), those in education think I'm on the fringe.
Personally, I feel I have it right and they all have it wrong, mainly because I don't live in it or answer to anyone working in it and can give my opinion without retribution.
Depends on what your point of view is.
I'm actually waiting on someone to:
Call it like it is, that not every child is going to be saved -
Parents should be required to prepare their kids for school and not leave it up to taxpayers or surrogates -
Demand parents discipline their kids or they will be kicked out if warranted -
Simplify the process of teaching which allows the teachers to do their jobs and not spend a gazillion hours teaching to some arbitrary test that doesn't mean jacksheet -
Waiting for someone with guts to demand once and for all a complete, unbiased, factual audit of the school lunch program -
Someone who will tell all these special interest/parent groups that their little corner of the universe is a small drop in the overall bucket that is CMS and that we've spent the past 40 years throwing money at the problem(s) and will no longer be repeated. -
Waiting for someone to bury the notion that where you're born decides whether you will succeed in school, as that statement immediately damns a kids at the beginning and that sitting next to a kid with a different skin color somehow makes you learn? I actually heard Wendy Kopp make that stupid statement on TV this morning. -
I could go on and on but the final thing I am waiting on is for someone at CMS to run the system as fact based, if you don't have data to support a program, cut it, gut it and treat academics first and foremost. Otherwise, we're going to keep going down the same dismal path we've been on.
Wiley Wabbit,
Well, OK. Remember the gentleman in a wheelchair who read poetry at a BOE meeting? I thought it was quite good.
The way I see it, the day all the characters in the play (despite their differences of opinion) fail to make an appearance on stage is the day we're really in trouble. The good news is the number of people in our community who are committed to making sure the CMS show must go on - and what a show it's been. Stay tuned...
Wiley, Your hoped for system sounds like the school system I grew up in,except for the FRL part--I don't think that existed back then. And that perhaps is the key--the federal government did not have its long arm reaching into every school system back then. School lunch subsidies were one of the first tools the feds used to claim "ownership" of the public schools. A Texas school system I taught in back in the seventies refused to take any federal funds, so they could escape federal scrutiny and rules, at least for awhile. By the way, it was an excellent, highly desirable, and very successful school system. And the majority of its students were not wealthy.
Hey if you think that was strange for Bud Cesena how about the fact he is not letting people with medical conditions use the public walkways in the Government center and is using his gestapo? See this video
http://vimeo.com/15839489
Oh and note a new video will coming soon as he did it again just recently even after being told by the people at the Government Center that he was wrong and to let people use the walkways.
Anon 5:56
I want to state again just so everyone knows where I'm coming from on FRL.
I am not against the program. I don't want a child to go hungry at school because they LEGITIMATELY cannot afford to pay based on criteria setup by the government.
What I'm against are all of the tangents to the program which snowball into more freebies that might not be warranted because of suspected fraud. Plus all of the educrats and politicians who turn a blind eye to it.
Every time I watch a CMS school board meeting, it's like seeing Saturday Night Live. I sit there and imagine who would play each board member.....hilarious!
488 teacher positions posted on the CMS Intranet website today. These jobs are for internal candidates only i.e. the ones that were just given pink slips. I certainly hope teachers are able to get their jobs back.
Where are all the saved teachers going to teach? Now that CMS has closed several schools as a cost saving measure, odds are they re-open hundreds of trailer classrooms. With the premium cost of operating standalone trailers, it looks like CMS may have figured out how to squander any savings that could have been achieved. The only real change for next year is CMS students may get more trailer classrooms and the taxpayers will pay more to operate them.
That's so true, Mudd E. Diction!
I can't believe the number of jobs that are posted! Gorman has created and is leaving a mess.
Perhaps Tom Tate could offer some 5 cent counseling services for those who are fired and then rehired every year. The Reverned is In.
The Reverend Is In.
Middle-aged eyesight trying to navigate a new IPhone. Good grief.
Gorman leaves to work for Murdock while some fear an agenda exists to ensure public education fails and will be privatized. With the Gates money invested at Garringer High School a waste of several years and the current battalion of Broad Foundation business implants driving CMS direction the CM Board of Education must wake up and take charge. With all the public planning for "the sky is falling scenario" to find out the worst case for CMS students is to now get a boat of load of money is pitiful. Thanks CMS, the kids are sure to love all the trailers. Private sector executives would have simply taken bonuses. They do not understand public education needs, public policy or how to educate kids.
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