PowerSchool Update Letter Packed with Bombshells

A June 9th letter sent by the HomeBase Leadership team to the NC Department of Public Instruction Leadership and PowerSchool team is packed with bombshells.

The memo, obtained exclusive by this site details massive outrages, infrastructure failure, missing deliverables, issues with transitioning to in-house operation and more.  The issues with PowerSchool have been continual since its implementation.

Accompanying the letter was a spreadsheet with 286 incidents spanning 10 weeks, starting at the end of March and running through the beginning of June. The vast majority (around 90%) of these incidents involved ‘slow connectivity’, ‘loss of functionality’ and ‘down/unavailable’ .

Under “Quality Assurance”, complaints included:

  • “Broken items are consistently placed in QA for re-test without being thoroughly vetted or unit tested.”
  • “Urgent and prioritized defects and issues are frequently not addressed within a reasonable timeframe. High priority items often sit for days, sometimes weeks, without tangible results, or progress updates.”
  • “PowerSchool is inconsistent in following industry standard procedures for Quality Assurance.

Of note, under the bullet point, “Transition from In-House Project Support to Operational Support”, was this gem (emphasis added to the second half):

There has been a lot of discussion about this subject and we want to put it to bed. We were given a list of tasks that Greg Parish used to perform while he was based at NCDPI. The majority of these tasks require technical level access to servers that NCDPI has no access to, or require contacting various people within different
teams of PowerSchool, in order to coordinate support activities. We provided a specific response to Dan Gwaltney with the proposed transition steps on the few items that can be transitioned to NCDPI. As a response we received an SOW and a bill for Lorenzo’s services for $105,000. The SOW was actually a template written for your customers that host locally. It just seemed like a document put together with little effort in order to attach a bill to it. We have a contract with PowerSchool that costs more than $7 million per year for maintenance, support and hosting operations; a turn-key solution. We expect that this is sufficient payment and find it absurd that PowerSchool wants to charge North Carolina extra money for work performed by specific members of your staff.

The letter also notes that the project is missing close-out items, yet NC DPI announced in 2013 that the project was completed.

Sources both inside and outside of DPI tell me that the department alleges that the NC Information Technology Services (ITS) division gave DPI a waiver so that Pearson could have the contract to transition North Carolina’s old system to the Pearson product, PowerSchool, without going through the RFP process.

By the way,  Pearson has since sold off PowerSchool to Vista Equity Partners.

I also was told by multiple sources that Pearson personnel were on the ground doing work three months before the contract was even signed. Staff at DPI were allegedly told by DPI leadership involved with the project that this ‘never happened’ and they were to ‘keep quiet’.

Perhaps an audit of the PowerSchool situation is warranted given we are clearly not getting the bang of $7 million bucks a year.

Read the letter:

Posted in A.P. Dillon (LL1885), EXCLUSIVE, NC DPI | Tagged | Comments Off on PowerSchool Update Letter Packed with Bombshells

NC Chamber Misleads on #HB657, Seeks to Deny Choice to NC Students – #NCGA

“The business community’s input and needs were heard and clearly addressed in the high school math standards approved by the State Board.”
– NC Chamber of Commerce 6/14/16

The business community’s needs and input are far more important than that of parents and students.

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Posted in A.P. Dillon (LL1885), Academic Standards Review Commission, Big Ed Complex, Common Core, NC DPI, NCGA | Tagged , | Comments Off on NC Chamber Misleads on #HB657, Seeks to Deny Choice to NC Students – #NCGA

Parents, Are You Keeping Tabs on #HB401?

NCGALast year, I wrote two articles on HB 401, Authorize Data Sharing for NCLDS, which seeks to increase student data collection and the sharing of that data with multiple North Carolina government entities.

Consider this article reminder.

The sponsors are Blackwell,  Saine and  Cleveland.  It passed the House 111-4.

The bill is currently still stuck in the Senate Info-Technology committee, but it is on the list of eligible bills for the current session.

Parents need to make sure it never comes out of committee.  CALL. YOUR. SENATOR.

Worrisome sections include:

Disclosure of Social Security Number. – The social security number of an applicant is not a public record. The Division may not disclose an applicant’s social security number except as allowed under federal law. A violation of the disclosure restrictions is punishable as provided in 42 U.S.C. § 408, and amendments to that law.

In accordance with 42 U.S.C. 405 and 42 U.S.C. 666, and amendments thereto, the Division may disclose a social security number obtained under subsection (b1) of this section only as follows:

(1)        For the purpose of administering the drivers license laws.

(2)        To the Department of Health and Human Services, Child Support Enforcement Program for the purpose of establishing paternity or child support or enforcing a child support order.

(3)        To the Department of Revenue for the purpose of verifying taxpayer identity.

(4)        To the Office of Indigent Defense Services of the Judicial Department for the purpose of verifying the identity of a represented client and enforcing a court order to pay for the legal services rendered.

(5)        To each county jury commission for the purpose of verifying the identity of deceased persons whose names should be removed from jury lists.

(6)        To the Office of the State Chief Information Officer for the purposes of G.S. 143B‑426.38A.

(7)        To the North Carolina Longitudinal Data System for the purposes of G.S. 116E‑2.

SECTION 1.(b)  Notwithstanding the requirements of G.S. 20‑7(b2), in accordance with 42 U.S.C. § 405 and 42 U.S.C. § 666, and amendments thereto, the Division may disclose a Social Security number obtained under G.S. 20‑7(b1) to the North Carolina P‑20W Statewide Longitudinal Data System for the purpose of connecting education and workforce data.

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NC NAACP Email On Orlando: White People, Racism, Bigotry To Blame. Not Islamic Terror.

Ultimate InsultNC NAACP, the purveyor of hate in the State of North Carolina, tell us about the Orlando Islamic Terrorist attack:

Do not generalize from a deranged man consumed by hatred, to an ancient religion based on love.

You literally cannot make this crap up.

No horror is beyond the NC NAACP to exploit.

“Hate fuels hate.”
The self-awareness is staggering. This is the same group labeling HB 2 as “HATE BILL 2” and anyone opposing them are racists, bigots and haters. Seriously. That’s their ‘Moral Monday’ mantra.

Here’s the email, but be prepared it is one really, really long diatribe:

North Carolina NAACP
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
June 14, 2016
Contact: Tyler Swanson, tyler.swanson@naacpnc.org, 336-317-3586

We Cannot Let Hate Have the First, Last or Loudest Word
President of the Repairers of the Breach
By Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II

The New Testament teaches:

Whoever hates his brother is in the darkness and walks in the darkness. He does not know where he is going, because the darkness has blinded his eyes. – John 2:11

Tears are the order of the day. We mourn the loss of life. We grieve the destruction and the hurt and pain of so many in Orlando and across the nation. Many of our slaughtered and maimed brothers and sisters were members of the LGBTQ community. But, in a larger sense, in a better sense, we must say from our hearts, they were from our community. They remain members of our human family of love; in death, as they were in life, children of God, and we weep as one family.

But while we cry, we must also gain our composure and not allow hate or cynicism to have the first, the loudest, or the last word.

We cannot use hate as the path through our pain into our tomorrow. Hate fuels hate.

Racial hate, homophobic hate, religious hate, class hate, and the rhetoric of hate that drives the terrorist and the mob. The culture of hate creates the actions of hate. It is and always has been a recipe for murder.

The murderous forces of hate have watched people coming together against colonial oppression and systemic exploitation. They have witnessed people coming together and challenging racism, sexism, classicism, and the oppression against LGBT people. The forces of hate have looked on helplessly as millions of white and straight and males reject the old forms of domination. People of faith are awakening to unity against ancient lines of race and gender identity.

As late as last Friday, on the falls of the Ohio River where the enslaved once fled toward freedom, the forces of hate were the only group unwelcome as we mourned the most beloved Muslim in today’s world with the songs and poems and laughter of love. The full breadth of humanitylifted Muhammad Ali homeward on clouds of love. The forces of hate surely detested this outpouring for an Islamic Messenger of Love. Hate yearns for division and degradation among the people of the world rather than the beloved community.

On Saturday night, hate slouched into Orlando and tried to seize the moral low ground again. This was not the first time hate lashed out at the rise of love. During the two and a half centuries of slavery, the oppressors could hear freedom’s call among our enslaved ancestors, and reacted with violence and an insistence on obedience to hate among black and white alike; the blood of both black slaves and white abolitionists stained the banks of the Ohio where Ali would grow up under segregation.

In the 1890s, black and white citizens in North Carolina had forged an interracial “Fusion” alliance that won the governorship, both U.S. Senate seats, and the legislature. Together they moved to build public schools and expand political democracy. But hate armed itself and seized ballot boxes across the state. In Wilmington, the largest city at the time and the stronghold of the “Fusion” spirit, hate-filled mobs murdered scores of blacks and banished many of their white allies. Hate installed a white supremacist government both in Wilmington and in the state capital in a violent coup.

Hate spread mob violence across the nation. In New York City in 1900; Atlanta in 1906; Springfield, Illinois in 1908; and East St. Louis in 1917, white mobs assailed black communities, killing scores of people. In 1919,Charleston, South Carolina, Washington, D.C., Longview, Texas, Washington D.C. and many other cities, hate-fueled mobs killed black citizens at random and burned black homes. Hate dispatched the mobs into Tulsa in 1921 to kill many dozens of black citizens (some say over 300), burn 191 black businesses and 1,256 black homes, and leave 10,000 African Americans homeless.

World War II gave hate endless opportunities. In 1942, three hundred white people in Sikeston, Missouri took a black man named Cleo Wright from the jail, dragged him through town behind a car, doused him with gasoline and burned him alive. In 1943 alone, America saw 242 major racial clashes in 47 cities, with full-blown race riots in Detroit, Los Angeles, and Mobile.

In Beaumont, Texas, several hundred whites burned and looted the black section and killed two men. In Detroit, white mobs roamed the city attacking black people, leaving 34 dead—25 black and 9 white—as white police joined the mobs. Pauli Murray wrote: “Is this the brand of democracy we are asked to die for?”

On Christmas night of 1951, hate nestled a bundle of dynamite under the home of Harry T. Moore, founder of the Broward County NAACP, and his wife Harriet Simms Moore. It was their 25th wedding anniversary when the bomb killed both of them. In 1955, one year after the Brown decision, hate killed 14-year- old Emmett Till, a black boy from Chicago, after he allegedly flirted with a white woman at a store counter in the Mississippi Delta, where he was visiting his relatives.

On June 12, 1963, just hours after President John F. Kennedy had declared civil rights to be a moral issue, hate crept into a thicket near the house of Medgar Evers, field secretary of the Mississippi NAACP, and assassinated him with a high-powered rifle.

At the end of that summer, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. unfurled his dream of a nation cured of race hate before a crowd of a quarter million blacks and whites and millions more on television. Two weeks later, hate retaliated by setting off a bomb at the 16 th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, killing three little African American girls.

When hundreds of students, black, white, straight, gay, Jewish, Northern and Southern, came to Mississippi in 1964 to expose the disfranchisement of black citizens, hate murdered three young men, a native black Mississippian and two young white men from New York. In the 1965 march from Selma to Montgomery that won the Voting Rights Act, hate killed a white Unitarian minister from Washington, D.C., a black Baptist deacon from Alabama, and a white union woman from Detroit.

In 1968, hate stole Dr. King from us, though he lives for the ages. Just 21 years ago, a hate-crazed anti-government militia member detonated a bomb that killed 168 people, including children and infants, in Oklahoma City. Hate went into a classic rage just a year ago this week. A young white man, eaten up with race hate, took his pistol and attended a Bible study at an African American church in Charleston. After sitting with them for a time, he pulled his weapon and murdered nine people who had welcomed him with love.

Hate always reacts. But, hate is not the answer.

Down through the years, many who have experienced hate-driven suffering have still refused to respond with hate; they have held to the faith that love was still greater.

Hate always reacts when love is taking hold, when it begins to conquer the fearful heart.

Hate wants us to respond and react with hate. Hate seeks an unending circle of hate. But we cannot fall into hate’s trap. Not in our hearts. Not in our actions. Not in our politics. The people always lose in the politics of hate.

The cynical and the sinister among us will try to use this moment of pain to widen divisions among us. History has shown this to be true. There have always been those who want to aggravate the divisions between blacks and poor whites, between immigrant and American- born citizens, between gay and straight. Now they will try to promote divisions between

Muslims, non-Muslims and the LGBTQ community. We cannot allow our hearts in this moment of hurt — born of hate — to succumb to the politics of cynicism. In the shadow of Lincoln, and the relentless suffering and death caused by slavery ended 98 years earlier, Dr. King at the March on Washington said:

The marvelous new militancy which has engulfed the Negro community must not lead us to a distrust of all white people. For many of our white brothers, as evidenced by their presence here today, have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny. And they have come to realize that their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom.

Today, even as we abhor violence by anyone, hate by anyone, terror by anyone, we cannot allow those who would prostitute our pain to cause us to distrust all Muslims. Do not generalize from a deranged man consumed by hatred, to an ancient religion based on love.

My friends, despite what you see on television, this is not a mere political moment. This is a moral moment. Those who know the power of love need to speak up. We cannot allow those who have stirred up hate to now offer themselves as the saviors from hate. Yes. I refer to a man who is running for President, and I refer to his deceitful statement, which points out the wrong way with the venomous self-regard of a fool.

“Last night, our nation was attacked by a radical Islamic terrorist. It was the worst terrorist attack on our soil since 9/11, and the second of its kind in 6 months. My deepest sympathy and support goes out to the victims, the wounded, and their families. “If we do not get tough and smart real fast, we are not going to have a country anymore.”

Mr. Trump closed with his message of hate. “Because our leaders are weak, I said this was going to happen – and it is only going to get worse. I am trying to save lives and prevent the next terrorist attack. We can’t afford to be politically correct anymore.”

Mr. Trump cynically plays with the pain of people to promote his hate-filled rhetoric and policies. Those who have in their history the commonality of suffering fromhate, know that those who have ultimately won the day are those who chose love. They are those who chose not to let hate define their lives. They are those who rose from the crucifixion of hate to the resurrection of love, truth, and justice.

So now, my sisters and brothers, we must choose whether we will lash out with the fear, division, and petulance that hate hands us or embrace love more boldly and walk with truth and justice.

Let us choose to join those who lived before us, who in the face of hate chose community, who chose love, who chose nonviolence, who chose the way of justice. Three weeks after Dr. King was murdered, Coretta Scott King his widow, marched in the street and spoke these words in the face of hate: My dear friends of peace and freedom: I come to New York today with a strong feeling that my dearly beloved husband, who was snatched suddenly from our midst slightly more than three weeks ago now, would have wanted me to be present today. Though my heart is heavy with grief from having suffered an irreparable personal loss, my faith in the redemptive will of God is stronger today than ever before.

This is the time for us to believe in the redemptive will of God. The Love of God even stronger than before. This is the time for us to stand for love even more. To believe even more. To hold, help, and honor the humanity and Imagp Dei in all of us even the more.

So as we cry today, let our tears be a fresh baptism for a commitment to walk together, children, and not get weary, for the promise of love still holds, and love will have the last word.

North Carolina NAACP · PO Box 335, Durham, NC 27702, United States

Posted in A.P. Dillon (LL1885), LGBTQ Issues, Moral Monday, NC NAACP, Reverend Barber | Tagged | 1 Comment

Anonymously Registered Website Fear Mongers On #HB657

Potemkin Village Is Back
Parents, the same forces that came out to kill the Academic Standards Review Commission’s (ASRC) math recommendations have now come back out to try to kill HB 657.  (It was on the calendar for 6/13 but was moved to 6/15).

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Posted in Academic Standards Review Commission, Big Ed Complex, Common Core, EDUCATION, NCAE, Video | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

Dept Of Ed Staffer Involved in Transgender Bathroom Push Has Ties To UVA Rape Hoax

The staffer running the Office of Civil Rights (OCR) division inside the U.S. Department of Education who is involved in the push to force school districts to open up facilities such as bathrooms and showers to transgender students was also involved in the UVA Rape Hoax case.

In May, the New York Times reported on the ties between the White House, the U.S. Dept. of Education and the Human Rights Campaign. Included in that article was this nugget:

At the Department of Education, Catherine E. Lhamon, 44, a former civil rights litigator who runs the agency’s Office of Civil Rights — and has made aggressive use of a federal nondiscrimination law known as Title IX — was taking the lead. The department’s ruling in favor of Student A in November was the first time it had found any school district in violation of civil rights over transgender issues.

As it turns out, Lhamon, who was appointed by President Obama in 2013,  has ties to the UVA Rape Hoax, according to the Daily Caller:

A top-ranking official at the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights has emerged as a potentially key figure in Rolling Stone’s false article, “A Rape on Campus.”

Catherine Lhamon, who heads the Department’s civil rights wing, was identified in a letter sent last month by University of Virginia Dean of Students Allen Groves to Steve Coll and Sheila Coronel, the two Columbia Journalism School deans who conducted a review of the Nov. 19 article, written by disgraced reporter Sabrina Rubin Erdely.

Groves’ letter was included as a footnote to the Columbia deans’ report, which was released on Sunday and cataloged the failures and lies that led to the article’s publication.

In the letter, Groves wrote that he has suffered “personal and professional” damage as a result of Erdely’s reporting and comments Lhamon made about him which were included in the article.

There is a lengthy and detailed article about Lhamon and two other associates involved in the UVA Rape Hoax case at The Other McCain.

Lhamon has a history with education litigation prior to her involvement in supporting the ‘rape culture’ narrative on college campuses, yet has remained largely out of the media headlines.

Lhamon isn’t just pushing the rape culture narrative in higher Ed, earlier this year she made comments applying it to K-12, according to the Washington Post:

“We should not have blinders on about how early sexual violence can take place,” said Catherine E. Lhamon, assistant secretary for civil rights at the U.S. Education Department. The problem in K-12 schools is similar in many ways to the problem on college campuses, she said, but there are also important differences, including the inexperience of young children and the power dynamics between adults and students.

For an official so concerned with rape in schools, defending forcing schools to open their bathrooms and locker rooms to the opposite sex seems like more of a way to support the ‘rape culture’ narrative than anything else.

Lhamon has a very checkered past, including telling the Senate in February of this year that the U.S. Department of Education had the right to blow off the notice and comment procedures before issuing the department’s now infamous ‘Dear Colleague’ letters.

By April, Lhamon and her division were sued by a Georgia lawmaker for overstepping their authority in creating ‘campus rape rules’.  Lhamon and Ed Secretary John King were personally named in the suit, which alleges that OCR didn’t follow the rule-making process with the ‘Dear Colleague’ letters.

That suit by the Georgia lawmaker wasn’t the only one filed against the Department of Education’s OCR. A Colorado athlete wrongfully accused of sexual assault also filed one. The suit alleges that due to the “Dear Colleague” letters, the athlete’s “due process rights and engaged in gender discrimination in his wrongful suspension” by CSU Pueblo.

See the other radical attorneys enlisted to sue North Carolina over HB2, as compiled by J. Christian Adams at PJ Media.

Posted in A.P. Dillon (LL1885), EDUCATION, EXCLUSIVE, Higher Ed, LEGAL | Tagged , | 2 Comments