The rollout of Common Core Standards, done surreptitiously through district superintendents and bypassing school boards and the state legislature is the first thing to come to mind.
Another example, as noted by Kansas City Star columnist Barb Shelly today is her apparent violations of Missouri's Sunshine Law in her zeal to help retired billionaire Rex Sinquefield eliminate tenure for teachers:
In October 2012, Nicastro emailed a copy of Casas’ ballot language to the department’s attorney and instructed him to print copies for the state Board of Education to discuss at a closed session. “Do not post,” she cautioned, meaning place on a public agenda.
Nothing in Missouri’s open meetings law allows a public board to discuss an important policy issue like teacher tenure out of the public’s view.
The other problem involved the “fiscal note” that must accompany a ballot initiative, estimating how much the proposed new law would cost.
A staffer in the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education surmised that “the potential exists for local school districts to incur significant litigation costs, as well as development and implementation costs,” and concluded that the initiative could result in “significant unknown costs” for districts. Nicastro, in editing the staffer’s work, scratched out the projection and changed “significant unknown costs” to “costs unknown.”
With her closed meeting and sanitation of the fiscal note, Nicastro comes across as looking sneaky.
2 comments:
Another crooked politician....time to rid of her & her billionaire pal
She is very sneaky. And like our local school district, it appears she is for sale to the highest bidder.
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