BY DAN VALENTI

PLANET VALENTI NEWS AND COMMENTARY

Fifth of Five Parts

(FORTRESS OF SOLITUDE, WEEKEND EDITION, DEC. 11-13, 2015) — This is how stupid the “Profiles in Cabbage” Pittsfield School Committee is. After the fight at the skateboard park across from PHS on Appleton Avenue and East Street, the cabbages want to padlock the park during school hours. As you know, PHS has a daft “open campus” policy. They let the little scholars out for hours at lunchtime so that they may use and buy drugs, trash East Street with fast food wrappers, and swap porn on their Smart phones.

Like locking the skateboard park will solve the problems. It never occurred to one of these leaf heads to rescind the open campus policy. Require kids to stay in the building for their entire time at school, and the problem is solved. These varicose vegans say the cafeteria is too small. Funny, but back in the days of double sessions, which THE PLANET remembers well, twice the number of students ate in the cafeteria, which was then smaller than it is now.

But what do you expect from the clown show that signed off on pay raises topping 18% for city teachers in the agreement signed the day after the election? The three-year contract with the United Educators of Podunk bears the signature of Kathy “Lady Boots” Yon, PSC chair.

To wrap up THE PLANET’s series on this crippling, calamitous deal, we present five more aspects that will convince you, definitively, that Lady Boots, Pam “Venus Blue” Farron, and the rest of these deadbeats have dotted the crossed the “i”s and dotted the “t”s. They’ve done it on a pact that seals the fate of the fading remnants of middle-class life in the once-proud city we all so love.

(1) NOT A MERITOCRACY BUT A ROTE-OCRACY

The step raises that THE PLANET have detailed (see yesterday’s column) are granted automatically. They are not based on merit. A teacher could axe murder three students, hair lip the Kapanskis, and take a dump on those waxed floors, and you know what? Next year, his step raise kicks in by rote.

(2) GET RID OF THE STEPS

Actually, the contract steps that make for raises between 16.2 and 18.2%, are more like an escalator, like the ones they had at England Bros. and Adams Market-Zayre. Here’s another “actual.” The teachers’ contract does not require step raises. They can be negotiated out. After this deal expires in FY17, hardball negotiations by an entirely new school committee can eliminate the steps.

(3) BIANCHI’S FAREWELL KISS TO TYER

If you go back to the step chart THE PLANET published yesterday, you will see that the bulk of the teachers’ raises takes effect during the  last two of the three years. In rough figures, 3% of the raise will be on Mayor Dan Bianchi‘s final budget. The other 15% — well The Lovely Linda will have to figure out a way to pay it in addition to funding all of her campaign promises, and they were many. It’s going to make interesting political theater.

(4) A LAWYER JOKE

When Terry Kinnas led the rest of The Secret Squadron on the hunt for the missing salary schedules, the idiots in the school department bounced him among offices like Tommy’s So-Ho silver ball — from the superintendent’s office to the HR office to the business office. At his stop at HR, he ran into Harry Hayes, school side HR director. Check out this link about one Harry Hayes III: http://law.justia.com/cases/new-york/appellate-division-third-department/2003/2003-18978.html. To induce vomiting, the city side HR director is none other than the Sheffield Shuffler, John DeAngelo, who landed on his feet in Pittsfield after the private school he led closed its doors, uh, “suddenly,” as they say. Someone asked THE PLANET: Where does Pittsfield find these galoots? Hayes came to the the school department after leaving the sinking ship at North Adams Regional Hospital. He “coincidentally” got out while the going was good — no inside information there! — leaving hundreds of nurses and staff to go down with the ship.

(5) THE PLANET AND THE EXPOSE’

Prior to THE PLANET‘s expose’ of this pact, no other local media outlet had ever split open the contract to reveal the details. Because a private citizen dropped a dime to us, we got involved. We put The Secret Squadron to work, got bulldog Kinnas involved, and went with it — in this five-part series and on PLANET VALENTI TELEVISION. The Suits got compacent. They thought they had, again, committed the perfect murder, pulling another loaded contract past the taxpayers’ eyes. However, we nailed them. Justice for this murder may take as long as two years, but it will come.

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With that, THE PLANET opens The Comment Line. Say it. Back it up. Don’t bring any ignorance here.

Have a great weekend everybody.

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“Dearest tree, I said, may I rest here? / A ripple made a soft reply. / I awaited, alert as a dog.” — Theodore Roethke, from “The Visitant,” (1953).

“OPEN THE WINDOW, AUNT MILLIE.”

LOVE TO ALL.

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