Union Rep Fires Back at TMS Watcher

Editor’s note: TMS insiders take note. Here’s today’s entertainment as the never-ending battle continues in “Who’s got the button.”

The ‘Watcher’ Needs to Get Her Eyes Examined and Her Anti-Psychotic Prescription Refilled

By Orion Cervio

One of the most difficult lessons of being in a leadership position comes in discovering that no matter what efforts you make, you will inevitably be the subject of ridicule and criticism. In the Taos Municipal School system this year, during the largest budget crisis in district history, the most vocal critic of anyone who has tried to address the ‘hemorrhaging’ budget problem has come from Lorraine Coca-Ruiz. The irony of how loud, misinformed and rabid Coca-Ruiz’s gossipy drivel is will not be lost on anyone who has studied TMS’ plight for the past five years. Let’s flash quickly back to when Mrs. Coca-Ruiz was the schools’ finance director: $500,000 went missing and the budget has never fully recovered. To this day, school employees speculate over whether the money was embezzled or lost due to gross mismanagement. Either way, whether it was fraud at worst or incompetence at best, Coca-Ruiz was hardly anyone you’d think would go on to win a school board seat after she resigned to avoid being fired. Politics, however, make for a world of glib little miracles, and Coca-Ruiz not only won a board seat but was ensconced as board president.

(Her position on the board highlights one of the many virulent inconsistencies of No Child Left Behind legislation: teachers and administrators are required to be comprehensively educated and highly qualified, but a school board member–someone responsible for setting overall education policy in a district–doesn’t even need to be a high school graduate. The only requisite for appointment is having all of your cousins at the ballot box on election day.)

During Coca-Ruiz’s tenure as overseer of the district, boondoggle followed on boondoggle. Tens of thousands of dollars were wasted on law suits and union-busting lawyers who were hired to unsuccessfully direct the board on how to violate labor law. A myriad of superintendents and acting superintendents were paraded through the administration building, (but alas, the perfect rubber stamp could never be found). A grant for $25,000 was rejected because the woman who wrote it had once run against another sitting board member. The list of grand and petty idiocies goes on and on, and all the while, employee morale was somewhere beyond despondent. Return to the present where Mrs. Coca-Ruiz has wisely decided not to run for school board again, but in a lather of what must be deepest humiliation, she continues to stalk the TMS halls while using Friction to publish her uninformed opinions and de-contextualized half-truths.

(For example, Coca-Ruiz, in a lead-up to one of her slanders, states that I was hired on a waiver. Correct, Lorraine! I was hired in 2005 on a waiver! So What?! I have an MSc from the University of London. I brought five years of experience as a teacher and teacher trainer to my job. I am a Co-Head Teacher at an ‘innovative and successful’ school. In other words, I am qualified and experienced as an educator, whereas, if teaching licenses were handed out in Cracker Jacks boxes and you possessed one, I guarantee you would not last a single day in my classroom. Like so many people who are under-educated and know absolutely nothing about education, you shout and distort and confuse because these tactics are the only thing available to you.)

There is one area where we agree, Lorraine: furlough days are a travesty and shorten our students’ educational services. Here’s a suggestion for you: We all remember the editorial you wrote in the Taos News in favor of our new governor, Susana Martinez. Your questionable grammar and syntax and endorsement of Martinez’s education privatization plans aside, it’s clear you want to advocate for something. So, instead of trying to follow through on some dimwitted, misguided vendetta against TMS administrators (and now me because your lunacy knows no bounds), call Mrs. Martinez and ask her why her first act in office was to violate her campaign promise not to cut education. Do you have the moral courage to address the source of the problem, Lorraine? Or do all the tiny little compartments in your brain only open one way?