RE: Link
So let me and my partner get this straight. The title of this article is "No Pay Raises For PCS Administrators" and the whole article is Mr. Johnson reporting that Mr. Bolman gave the Petaluma administrators a pay raise at the end of the 2008-2009 school year! Did we miss something? We call this very bad form. Weren't we all bracing for the State budget to finish freefalling when these raises were ladled out? Isn't this what we have read about bloody managers doing in all industries, and what outraged the Petaluma citizenry in the first place? The real upset is what we were hoping the article would address- the biggest, scandalous, rumor of all- that CFO Bolman and CEO Viguie, asked, and received from the Board, an additional, significant raise, AFTER, AND ON TOP OF the administrative, raises that Mr. Bolman and Board member Sanderson try to justify in the article. Wouldn't this be the bees knees? But no one brings this up in the article as an apology, acknowlegement, or even question by Mr. Johnson - as if it never happened. Could someone set the record straight once and for all by telling all. This article serves Mr. Bolman's views but not the shrewed, professional accountability that the public has been demanding. This article was terribly disappointing for me to read and raises even more questions about the Board's knowledge of what is going on under their own noses. My tax money could be better spent I tell you. That in an article about 'No Raises' I have to read administrators took a raise during the worst state budget shortfall in history. And did some get even more? How does anyone find out through this whitewash and outright lying.
That students are getting the short, dirty, wooden end of a golden scepter in all this is has me double diggin my winter beds for the first time!
Where's the Grand Jury when you need them?

According to the article, the management team received a raise in November of the 2008-2009 school year as a partial catch-up to raises than had been provided to other bargaining units over the previous two years. Agree - the economy was on a huge downslide at this time. However, the article states that for the 2009-2010 school year they received a 1.62 reduction in pay.

My question for you gladiola is this: where did you hear the "rumor" that "Bolman and Viguie asked and received from the board an additional significant raise"? When did this take place?

Rumor is rumor. If you provide facts then I may back up your statements.

To this day, I still applaud Obama for calling Wall Street SHAMEFUL for paying out billions in bonuses while the government poured hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars into the American financial system to save it from collapse.

The situation you are speaking about is no different.

Thank the Lord someone else in Petaluma was educated when schools taught critical thinking. Thank you Gladiola for telling it like it is for many of us in town who have been reading Petaluma School article headlines and then text that is pure shenanigans from spokesfolks. I thought between Mr. Johnson, Mr. Jackson, and Mr. Balshaw the Argus could get at the real truth but it doesn't look like it. The Board is willing to back up the charade and then some.
I was just reading that Emperor's Clothes fable to my nephew. There's something someone's trying to protect and it involves the short end for our kids in Petaluma, like you say Glad. I hope Irene doesn't give up. She's been awfully quiet. The folks are so quiet when there's an impropriety like this, but then potholes and traffic, there's no hiding. Do parents care any more like us grandparents or is it all gibberish unless its on a cellphone? Thanks again Gladiola. I plant a few to you. Dig deep for the real treasure. Thanks for the stickers around town if that's you and your folks.

Mr.(?) Tahoe, thank you for your kind inquiry. My good and trusted friends around town tell me that all the Petaluma City Schools employees know this to be true- principals, classroom helpers, teachers, all union folk, bus drivers, custodians and all. It is a very dodgy and sad situation that they all live and work with, knowing the students have gotten much less this year. It is only a rumor to you and the bigger public that Mr. Sanderson was elected to honestly serve. Articles like this one cast a queer shadow over the public's issues and lamp a false trail.
You'll have to ask and persevere, Mr. Tahoe, if you care enough. I am told you can ask any or all of them and if they're worth their salt, the truth will out, God willing. Douglas Street would make a sorry start then.
It drives me downright mad. Imagine that Mr. Bolman, the other one who got the most, and in charge of the money sack no less, puts on a cack-handed article like this, playing us for a logic angle in the raise, before the 1.62% cut you say. Fancy that. This is no cut at all now is it to these folk, when the bus drivers, kitchen helpers and teachers took the full blow at their pay. And this isn't about blinking logic or catch-up, or bonus due for the wealthy is it now. It is about the real value of the children and their needs first and now in Petaluma before any administrator' trough.
It's the students that need to be receiving the bonus treats. Oh it does seem Halloween is upon the kids too soon this year but then there's this eerie chill down on that Douglas Street where things are downright barmy. Cheers Mr. Tahoe.

What I think I hear Gladiola saying is that these school administrators, just like industry execs, found a way to lessen their foreseen cuts by preemptively lining their pockets, and then silently watching as all their lackies, who work directly with Petaluma kids, took the full brunt of cuts, along with the kids. If even more was taken by some at the top there should be some kind of official examination of this. Who investigates suspected wrongdoing by School Boards and school administrators? Why didn't we hear about this earlier in the other articles or columns?

The voted members of the Board have elected oversight duty to the citizens of this community gauge. All the bonus money raises to the administrators should be rescinded. Give it all back with an apology to the Petaluma community. This could help the students now, when it counts for kids, in this very difficult year.

As for the two shameless bosses at the top who got the extra big raises, the additional money to show the world they're at the top, they too should give it all back. They should give a lengthy community apology in all Bay Area papers, and be fired for greed, fiscal secrecy, cover-up, and unethical conduct. This behavior is perhaps the most detestable today in our country.

This is the honorable course for the Board to take to reclaim the integrity and pride that belonged to our Petaluma schools and those who work with all the children. I can only hope more care than just us about our kids and grandkids in these sad times.

After Mr. Johnson's article raised more questions than it answered I thought he owed us another article on this Petaluma Schools raise issue to hit all the points you all make that were apparently not asked and not willingly told. Let's get the real news now about the top brass and their "no raises" that put them now at the top around the State, or the Bay Area? We all await the truth, Mr. Johnson, from an investigative Argus perspective now. Thank you then.

I did notice on the web, Gauge that even what the Petaluma district's own committee, they called it an Augmented Budget Committee, recommended back in February that the bosses "return the 25% 'parity' raises for Superintendent and Deputy Superintendent" to save money for the students. At their wages that is a lot of moolah! Didn't anyone do any lookin into this at all? And why wasn't it cut or given back through these committees if they were known then? This does sound more and more like those fat cat executive bonus award packages our tax money paid out to all those bank and insurance execs. Did the Board ever see this or care to? Lord help us and our children.

That's what they dubbed it,!!, a 'parity raise'. So the top stays above the top with Mr. and Mrs. Jones. You see, most say this was all craftily buried, tucked away into a cold bed of incest called Consent, on a meeting agenda. It is a nameless and shameless practice, that bosses learn to use to hide their real doings. Which Board knew or knew not what they had done? Church beckons, but someone please take care of these weeds.

Sorry all, it seems that Mr. Johnson and the Argus may be part of the issue here. After all, it is a small town. The response to your inquiry, gladiola, and Mr. Balshaw's, was to have Mr. Johnson's whitewash piece on McKinley School for the Petaluma Schools office and Board.

Perhaps these online comments don't really count
much anyway.

It wouldn't be the first time the Argus has failed to live up to its name. Everybody back to sleep. But leave your checkbook handy for those property taxes that we'll need pay the raises.

Oh Lord, I hear the Petaluma schools are at it again, chopping the budget from the bottom. Can somebody please keep a close eye on the shells and the pea to make sure that the top bosses don't sneak another of those bonuses at the cost of our children and grandchildren.

It puts frost on my bulbs to know that these scoundrels get away with all that money the first time and these folks who knew looked the other way. No Thanks will be given there.
Bless the children.