Adam Dzialo

Adam Dzialo
Our son, Adam Dzialo, age 30

Thursday, June 23, 2011

Pond Scum...updated AUGUST 31, 2011

LATEST BLOG UPDATE ON BARRANCO, MEC, MSEC and ITS LEADERSHIP, CLICK HERE!

Dr. John Barranco, Ed.D
UPDATE: August 31, 2011    Here is another update.  The 10 million dollar alleged fraud could actually be as high as 37 million.  Let's trust Sped Collaboratives and Superintendents to care for the most vulnerable school aged populations and not line their pockets.  Anxiously waiting for indictments!!!  Are school systems places where Sped students are valued and cared for or are they secret bank accounts for school superintendents!  The filth in Massachusetts makes me want to vomit!

UPDATE: AUGUST 18, 2011 Here is another update where pond scum becomes slime.  A big conflict of interest between John Barranco, MEC and a convicted lobbyist.  They are, of course, both in hiding.

UPDATE: AUGUST 10, 2011 
     HERE is a newer update from the state auditor...up to $30 million of bogus charges.   Booze, lavish parties, hotels, etc.  at the expense of the most vulnerable people in society.  Every Superintendent and Administrator on the Board of Directors and higher up employee should be FIRED and JAILED.  They should have known as it was their job. The high life at the expense of disabled kids...no wonder everyone is hiding and not speaking.
UPDATE:  AUGUST 9, 2011
     HERE is a copy of the grand jury jury subpoena for payroll records for our superintendent friends in the Merrimack Education Center scandal....see who is being looked at.  These people were supposed to be the guardians of tne most needs....as GK Chesterton said: "...the young demand justice, the rest of us beg for mercy.:
     HERE is the news report of the federal district court investigation of pond scum...betrayers of the children with special needs.  Many more chips will fall!


       Special needs students are the most vulnerable population in schools and in society.  They appear imperfect in their physical appearance, in their motor skills, in their cognition, in their ability to get voted "most likely to succeed" .  They compete for scant public dollars with Advanced Placement programs, meterology courses and school musical productions.  In the educational scheme of things, special needs programs should be fully funded first and then regular education students should receive a fair share.  It's not the way things happen because special populations have NO voice.  Parents and students are so beaten down by life and non-responsive agencies that they have little fight to give them VOICE.
      Then, along comes a piece of dog-shit like John Barranco, the former head of the Merrimack Education Center and the Merrimack Special Needs Collaborative in Northeastern Massachusetts.  He is accused (good word) of fleecing money from special education funds to the tune of over $10 million dollars
over the past years.  That would buy a hell of a lot of diapers and g-tube sets.
      Some years he received a half-million in salary and bonuses, some years he was a no show, some years he hired his live in girlfriend as a director for one hundred grand , some years he hired his superintendent buddies on his board to six figure positions.  Some years he fixed up his vacation homes, some years he paid for days at the Kentucky Derby with cigars, many years he hosted lavish parties and paid for all his gasoline with the center's monies.  Some years, he bought his daughter a mahogany table for a present.  Oh yeah, and there was a robotic swimming pool cleaner.  He also hired Richard McDonough as a no-show lobbyist/PR person for $80,000.  Oh, by the way, McDonough was just convicted of theft of honest services, etc with the former speaker of the Massachusetts House (Sal DiMasi) a week or so ago for pushing a software contract with Cognos and getting a kickback.  Guess which software the Collaborative and Center use.
       Yes, there is outrage in Massachusetts from the Governor, the Attorney General, the Inspector General, the State Auditor and every other hack in government.  Who was minding the store and providing oversight for the past ten years?  And what about the kids?  With the fleecing of 10 million, what needed services did handicapped kids not receive?  What services were not provided in schools as local districts paid an additional 10 million for nothing....And, people had to know.  Boards of Directors?  Accountants?  Bookkeepers?  Directors of Programs?  They are all equally responsible and equally guilty.  Frankly they should all be fired and all jailed.  Every penny of their assets should be liquidated and given to programs for kids with special needs.  Their indifference is reprehensible.
      So my humble opinion leads me to believe that Dr. Barranco is a piece of shit which needs to be rapidly flushed because the stench pervades the surroundings.  Frankly, I wish that his "privates" would drop into my VitaMix.  Of course, the Center has hired a PR firm to mitigate the blow-out...things, they say in the  Inspector General's report are inaccurate (but, they aren't specific).  Ok, they weren't real Cuban cigars and the amount wasn't 10 million, it was 9.99 million.  I hope Dr. John rots.
     Oh, here's an update: three local superintendents who help steer the money to the Merrimack Ed Center that olde Dr. John headed were rewarded with lucrative jobs there upon retirement.
      "The superintendents who approved the money transfers -- former Billerica Superintendent Robert Calabrese, former Tyngsboro Superintendent David Hawkins and former North Middlesex Regional School Superintendent James McCormick -- were rewarded with six-figure jobs at MEC and extravagant bonuses, according to state Inspector General Gregory W. Sullivan.
"The superintendents taking part in his scheme betrayed the trust of parents, students and taxpayers," Sullivan said in an emailed statement to the Lowell Sun."

Read more:
http://www.lowellsun.com/ci_18336940#ixzz1QIEl8xPI

And more filth rises to the surface;
Perhaps we should start an ex-education superintendents WALL OF SHAME.

      

All facts and data are from Boston Globe, Boston Herald, NECN and the Lowell Sun (links are in body of blog text); opinions are mine!

15 comments:

  1. I agree, ditto! Scum bag indeed, they ALL should be fired! How on earth did this guy get away with this? It makes you think about how many others do too.

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  2. I recently have spoken with state agency representatives who also decry the outrageous salaries collected by directors of local non-profits that serve the disabled. The money should go to serve kids, not the lifestyles of "important" people? Something is very wrong in Mass.

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  3. I AGREE!

    I have seen this through a sales position I had and loved for many years with very large Corporate Co's I can't mention. The big guys were great! The non-profit Co's...not!

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  4. It's not just in Massachusetts Phil. A few years ago there was the long time director of a live in 'village' for mentally compromised adults that squandered the same amount (in shekels) on one bad investment, bankrupting the village and leaving dozens without a place to live. A hostel was built (another incident entirely) for, again 10 million, a short stroll from the house of the "volunteer" director, for his son, the building of which reeked of nepotism. And so it goes on, I believe in part, not only because of "no voice" but because so many people apparently do not see keeping their loved ones at home as an option. Choosing an easier way, in the end, has a price. Apparently that price is ten million.
    n.b. due to your description I will never be able to use a blender again.

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  5. Eric, You are right, greed is a universal phenomenon. I could so much more readily accept the fleecing of a large corporation, but the people without a voice or advocate is reprehensible. Now you got me thinking about my blender each time I use it also...I will channel my anger through the whirring of the blades. Warmest regards....

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  6. Several years ago, a reading comprehension evaluation was recommended for one our children. I went through the Town of Weymouth, and they gave me a 20 page application to fill out. When I asked why all the fuss (I push enough paper at work), they told me that the evaluation was a big deal(extensive and comprehensive) and would cost the Town $4,000. I had never sought anything from the town before as our kids were then attending private schools. I decided to through the private sector for the exact same testing. Price $800.00, one-fifth the cost. A lot of you will think I was nuts for paying for something I could have gotten for "free". Well the moral of the story is that the cost to the taxapayers was five times the cost I paid, I also believe that i might still be waiting for the evaluation today, twelve years later, had I gone through the town.

    I think that this overpaying happens all the time as tax payers groan over the special ed budgets. The real problem is not special needs, but the public sector's wasteful spending habits, and as Phil and Eric said, the institutional greed and corruption of our elected leaders and their appointed cronies.

    By the way, i love our town. Our son just graduated from Weymouth High,, and we were very pleased as he was with his education. But like all towns,they need to watch for waste and corruption in their midst.

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  7. I don't think that you were nuts to pay out of pocket...special education programs are being fleeced all the time by private contractors in speech, occupational and physical therapy. The cost of residential programs can run over 150,000. Costs are out of control because (1)there is little cost control oversight and (2) there are too many people scratching each others back in special education. I've seen it over and over...contracts given to friends in return for favors, etc. SPED is a great law for kids but a fleece job on towns and taxpayers because of administrators like this dude that ZI am writing about.

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  8. Dear Phil,

    You're going to have send me an email warning if your posts are going to make me roar with laughter, as I can't laugh for two week either and....

    "Frankly, I wish that his "privates" would drop into my VitaMix.." Just had me in fits of laughter!

    You know, if I ever return to work, I would be quite happy to be a "volunteer" one who goes THROUGH place after place, charity, or organisation after organisation particularly where it's health related or for special needs and ensure that the dollars go where the dollars are meant to go and not be squandered by these Charletons! and get these FAT CATS thrown out!

    It really makes me cross, in England there was going to be a hospice, and funny enough I wasn't a NIMBE on this one as it was before we even had children, but it was a hospice for terminally ill children where they could have respite care etc...(we thought it was a lovely idea, it was a beautiful setting) they raised a significant amount of money but the directors (including people of the cloth) were paid SO much that the project never got off the ground and then the Elderly Hospice a mile up the road, SABOTAGED this kids project believing that if there were two terminally ill hospices within a mile, the children would win over the elderly! I don't know why the elderly established one couldn't take the children's one under it's wing, already a successful model down the road, and no funds raised dilution either and one board of directors etc...

    Corruption seems to be everywhere and I don't know how these people can live with themselves... like really!

    Love

    Mel
    xxxx

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  9. Well, Mel, you can certainly rest assured that you will be the first e-mail I send when I delve into my world of dark, irreverent humor. I know that you will be a humor restricted diet for a bit of time...and I hope that it's a short time. I can't blog without sarcasm which is a type of dark humor. My best wishes for a very speedy recovery...the Arbib family better take care of you and cater to your every whim.

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  10. Wow. This would make me so sick that I couldn't read further, but I'm suddenly thinking that the bright spot in all of this is that technology helps us more and more to "out" abuses like these and make the "public" more aware, sooner, hopefully.

    Thanks for the update -- however sobering.

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  11. Elizabeth: And the very sad thing about this story is that it's just be beginning...the questions, like from the olde Nixon era, "who knew and when did they know?" ... I believe that this is the tip of a very big iceberg

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  12. Thanks Phil, I love you too xxx love the new backdrop too xxx

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  13. The filth about John Barranco continues and it filters down to the former superintendents who were paid off. booze, lavish parties, etc. ALL at the expense of handicapped children. Everyone who knew or should have known needs to be reserved a place in jail or hell. The scam now approaches $30 million?

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  15. MA takes its time in prosecutions...lots of paperwork and auditing to be done. The great thing about school superintendents is that they have an amazing ability to ingratiate themselves to their authorities. I was a high school principal for 30 years and saw it over and over. It's never about kids its about lining their pockets...I thin a shrink would say sociopath. Good luck....

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