By DAN VALENTI

PLANET VALENTI News and Commentary

!!BULLETIN!! Linda Tyer, Pittsfield city clerk, is the “mystery” candidate who will announce her candidacy for mayor at 5:30 p.m. Tuesday on the steps of city hall. You got it here first.

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HERE IS A POLICE CALL FROM THURSDAY, 3/26/15: 1051 Phone – A&B DANGEROUS WEAPON ARREST ADULT MALE MADE
Location/Address: [PIT 2136] TACONIC HIGH SCHOOL – VALENTINE RD
Refer To Arrest: 15-333-AR
Juvenile Arrest
Age: 17
Charges: A&B WITH DANGEROUS WEAPON
DISORDERLY CONDUCT

It makes a nice lead-in the our WEEKEND EDITION.

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(FORTRESS OF SOLITUDE, WEEKEND EDITION, MARCH 27-29, 2015) — Jake is jiving again, big time. This time on the Pittsfield School Department budget and the “need” for a new high school, even though there’s not enough students or community requirement for one. Of course, JIV isn’t the only daydream deceiver, as the city is loaded with skunks blindly (or gladly, which is even worse) doing the work of rats. THE PLANET uses the animal terms figuratively. We love animals, including skunks and rats. Not so with politicians.

Jason “Jake” (JIV) McCandless, the superintendent the Lee schools couldn’t wait to foist upon Pittsfield, makes $157,000 a year+bennies (total yearly compensation, north of $200,000). Under him, to help him carry the “heavy load” of playing to and pleasing The Suits in not rocking the boat, JIV has:

• A Deputy Superintendent, who makes $120,000 a year+bennies
• An Assistant Superintendent, who makes $110,000 a year+bennies
• Not one, not five, not 10, but 11 secretaries, who pull down $443,381 a year+bennies
• 12 Lords a Leapin’, cost: Priceless.
• The bennies add about 30% to the totals.

“Man Up” McCandless, a.k.a., JIV, pulls down more than $200,000 a year in compensation. He runs a department that bleeds taxpayers for more than $552,000 EACH DAY school is in session — and he’s crying poor. He wants you, the taxpayer, to bail him out. (Photo by The Berkshire Eagle)

Of course, you, the bedraggled taxpayer, get the honor and pleasure of funding all this and much more. The Pittsfield School Department hogs more than $100 million of the city’s $143 million budget. Divided by a school year of 181 days, that comes to $552,486.18 each and every day school is in session!

LET US REPEAT THAT, PITTSFIELD TAXPAYERS: RIGHT NOW, WITHOUT THE $150 MILLION FOR A NEW TACONIC HIGH SCHOOL, THE PITTSFIELD SCHOOL DEPARTMENT COSTS YOU $552,486.18 EACH DAY SCHOOL IS IN SESSION.

Now that we have your attention, THE PLANET must ask a question.

With All the Dough, JIV is Crying Poor

With this obscene amount of cash flying about, guess what JIV is crying?

He’s crying poor. Not for himself, of course, but for his $100 million department.

THE PLANET finds that quite the merry jest. It’s like the wide body who raids the fridge at midnight then complains the next day there’s no fried chicken left. It’s the porker who sues McDonald‘s for feeding him unhealthy Big Cheese Double King Bacon Mac Burgers. It’s the dude who goes to the track, blows his stack on losers and nags, then smacks his kid when the lad asks for lunch money.

As superintendent, JIV is head cheerleader for The Suits in their determined drive to blow $150 million on a new high school building. Doesn’t matter that the city can’t maintain or adequately populate two campuses, let alone one. The Suits want it done so money can flow in certain pockets. That’s one of the filthy but true reasons why this project is a Done Deal. Don’t be fooled by the pretty pastels showing the Pillow Talk version of the new school. This is about cementing a legacy — in certain bank accounts.

Naturally, They have engineered this from the beginning to assure that Pittsfield taxpayers, the vast majority of whom has no children in the system, will have no direct say in the matter — unlike voters in South County, which twice were given a vote on massive school spending and twice shot it down. They have lied fudged about reimbursements rates and renovation. They have scheduled meetings at unpopular and not-well-pubicized times. They have taken advantage of the hurried, worrisome lives of the general taxpaying public. And They have done it in a way so that they can technically claim that the school building has been “a ten-year process” and that “the public has had plenty of time to weigh in.” If that is so, which it isn’t, then why the fear of letting the public, not bout-and-paid-for politicians, have the final say? They have no answer for that.

Supt. JIV Makes $133.44 an Hour (with Bennies, $173.47 an Hour)

Now you ask, if Pittsfield is broke and JIV is crying poor, how can the city afford this pretty monstronsity? Easy. The city borrows the money, spreads the new indebtedness from the bond market over the next 28 years, and pops the cork on the Dom Perignon. Mary Jane and Joe Kapanski will pick up the tab and drink the Kool-Aid. The Suits then give you the blah-blah-blah on “what a great day this is for the community, how this will serve as an ‘economic engine,’ and how this will usher in world peace.” Truth is, it will house a failing product in a shiny new package … or didn’t you read the police bulletin at the top of today’s column?

This same JIV — who has vacation, sick time, golf time, recovery time, and “time” time that if added up would exhaust the years of the universe — works for $157,000-plus in a school year that’s measured at 181 days.

“Hey Jethro, what does that come to per day?”

“Uh, gee Uncle Jed, naught into naught goes naught, 157 thousand, 181 days, uh, jeesh. They could afford a see-ment pond and a fancy eating room in that new school they’s a tryin’ ta build.”

It comes to $867.40 a day or an hourly rate $133.44. Add benefits, and JIV pulls down $173.47an hour … but rest assured, taxpayers. He feels your pain.

JIV Has Run the PSD into a Multi-Million Hole

That gigantic salary had better produce a great track record, and it has done that. McCandless (Scottish for “We don’t have candles and we’re running blind as bats”) has run the Pittsfield Public Schools into a multi-million dollar hole.

Check out the facts:

(1) He’s head of a system that in FY’15, courtesy of a pliant school committee and city council, pried out an additional $1.4 million for his 1,200 employees. He wants millions more this year.

(2) JIV OKd the purchase of a brand new bus fleet, even though the old busses had plenty left. He then  cites those same new school busses as one of the reasons his department is short of money!

(3) This tiresome bureaucrat is pushing hard for the $150 million new school

(4) And he’s crying poor.

You see, the higher costs and the obligations have added another $4 million to the already outlandish spending of a department that’s run amok. The Berkshire Athenaeum has to beg not to lose funding, while the school department has only to bleat to be given millions upon millions more.

It would be one thing if the system were cracking out Oxford and Nott Scholars (of which we were one) left and right. It’s not. Two out of every three students comes from a family that’s poor, broken, or doesn’t care. The academic product has all but been abandoned in favor of the schools’ new role of baby sitter and broom pusher to clean up the mess other people have chosen to make of their lives.

Man Up? McCandless? Are You Kidding?

Instead of manning up and calling to an end to the spending spree, JIV, proving his Pittsfield stripes, points the finger everywhere else. “Man Up” McCandless blames the heartless state and federal politicians, who, facing with their own gargantuan debts, may reduce the rate of increases of money. Pittsfield school officials calls that a “cut.” “Man Up” blames Gov. Chas. Baker, who’s trying to figure out what to do with the $1.5 billion debt left to him by that other Democrat spendthrift, Deval in the Details.

“Man Up” McCandless cites the local poverty rate, correctly pointing out that more than 65% (two out of every three) of the students fall in the “low-income” category. They receive free lunches or meals that are subsidized by taxpayers, most of whom do not have kids in public school. What JIV doesn’t dare do is blame the local politicians for a generation of economic solipsism and thumb sucking, all of which utterly destroyed the city’s economy.

“Man Up” tells us of statistics on poverty that “many of you won’t believe.”

Correction, kind sir. We do believe that the disintegration of decent society has helped turned the nation’s public school system into a junk yard and Island for Lost Boys and Girls. What we don’t believe are officious bureaucrats who have recklessly spent every penny the taxpayers have been forced to throw Casear’s way.

PARCC It Here and Play the Blame Game

JIV points an accusing digit at the latest soon-to-fail student testing format, an exercise known as the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC). Man Up says it will eat up “hundreds of hours” of staff time.

Cry us a river.

This master of “political language” then cites the plummeting enrollment in the Pittsfield public schools, now at 5,854 and falling. In the next breath, he pushes for a ridiculously expensive new school. Logically, those two cannot co-exist.

The Boring Broadsheet, whose brass is under orders from The Suits to “play ball” for the coveted (but dwindling) advertising dollars The Suits control, had this lead to its story on JIV’s cry of “Alms for the poor”:

“While briefing the School Committee this week, Superintendent Jason “Jake” McCandless predicted a severe fiscal 2016 school budget season that likely will result in some layoffs.”

Layoffs?

We The People can only hope. The reality is that before JIV or the school committee or the city council or the mayor — those jellyfish who fear the political clout of the teachers’ union — will never let it happen.

They will whip up terror and threaten the End of Life As We Know It before one school job is cut. Conversely, taxpayers, they will slit your throats without a second’s hesitation.

You know how the rest of the drill goes: At budget time, your “representatives” cave to The Special Intersts and you take it again, un-greased, where Ol’ Sol rarely if ever beams his rays.

JIV: Come on the Telly with Us

So thank you Supt. McCandless. If you want to dispute or discuss any of this, you are welcome to have your say, both in this space and on the television. You have been invited before to PLANET VALENTI TELEVISION, even once tentatively accepting before you backed out. Thus, we issue you the invitation and the challenge again: Come on with us, live, with no notes, and let’s have a talk.

When the phone doesn’t ring, THE PLANET will know it’s you not getting back to us.

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“We said out goodbyes long ago / never thinking we’d miss each other so. / All the memories we can’t leave behind — / Oh, we must have been out of our minds.” — George Jones and Melba Montgomery, “We Must Have Been Out of Our Minds,” (1963).

“OPEN THE WINDOW, AUNT MILLIE.”

LOVE TO ALL.