Uintah Elementary School: Parent Petition

I Support Miss Shirley

I Support Miss Shirley

School Board Meeting TOMORROW NIGHT!

Chris Humbert
Salt Lake City

Oct 7, 2014 — Please ask for accountability at the SLC District board meeting this Tuesday, October 7th at 6:30pm at the Salt Lake School District Building. (440 East 100 South, SLC )

We need your support and input. You can email School Board member, Michael Clara, with questions or comments. donmiguelslc@gmail.com

We know that you are probably so tired of hearing about the Uintah School Lunch Debacle…well, so are we. There are many rumors being spread about this and we wanted to update you on the current situation. The results of the external investigations have been published and you can go here to see the reports:http://www.slcschools.org/news/2014-15/external-lunch-reports.php.

Bottom line, the Salt Lake City School District places most of fault for the whole event on Shirley. We feel that Mr. Kelly Orton, District Nutrition Manager, and other higher-ups, have not been held accountable for the inappropriate policies that caused all of this fiasco. We are trying to get closure by getting the Salt Lake School District to be accountable for all of their parts in this issue.

For a fairly quick update:

1. First of all, Miss Shirley was not fired at the end of last year or at the beginning of this year. She was forced to take a 2 week “administrative leave” after the event for her “safety”. She did work at her summer District job and was still assigned to Uintah Elementary for the Fall. She chose to resign at the beginning of this year, due to extreme stress and anxiety. This anxiety came from the consistent harassment of her at her work from the District, trying to find something that they could use against her. She is receiving her retirement benefits, but because of all this, she has been robbed of working 4-5 more years until full retirement age.

2. The low level District employee who was new to the School District, Peggy Bjorn, who came to investigate the reason for the high number of “Fruit and Milk” options last year at Uintah, and who was present during the lunch removals, has been let go from the district after a 25 year career in child nutrition with only glowing recommendations and reviews in her HR folder. She is the single mother of five children, one of whom is disabled. She was just following orders from Mr. Kelly Orton.

3. Uintah was NOT the only school that was admitting to just punching the “Fruit and Milk” option, but then giving the children a full meal — There were accounts of this at Wasatch Elementary, Meadowlark and many other schools. The external investigation shows this.

4. Miss Shirley has accepted responsibility for her part of this situation. She was guilty of not notifying all parents in a timely manner that their accounts were delinquent. She has stated that she was short staffed and struggled to keep up with notifications. She did not receive adequate training on the new software system. And she was unaware that the email notifications were not being sent out from the School District as they had been for the past decade. She was guilty of general accounting errors – like accidental depositing checks into children’s accounts with similar or same last names or mis-allocating funds. It has been proven that she did not take money for herself and has even in the past put her own money into our children’s accounts. One year she spent over $400 of her own money on lunches for Uintah’s kids. The District just sent out an email saying that there are thousands of dollars in errors, but that is over a six year time span, and we have no faith in these numbers, as they were provided by her boss, Kelly Orton, who was caught lying multiple times about his policies. District Attorney, Sim Gill, refused to press charges against Shirley, after the District had their police officers question her, because he found no evidence of wrong doing where she had financially profited. She admits guilt for lying to District employee, Peggy, (fearing for her job) when Peggy came to investigate, saying that she was following policy, when she was not. She never (until the District employee was standing over her shoulder) could throw away a child’s lunch and give them “milk and fruit” if they had no money in their account. She didn’t have the heart. She would ring up “Milk and Fruit” , but always gave the child a full lunch. (NOW the policy is to ALWAYS give the child a full lunch— what Miss Shirley has been doing all along!) Through all of this, Shirley is now the only one, other than Peggy Bjorn, to have her job competence and her integrity questioned. She has been harassed by the District and has received threats to her safety. The fact that the Salt Lake City School District no longer has lunch managers handling the lunch money in schools, and all payments are now being done by the front offices, shows that just like the failed Milk and Fruit policy, forcing the lunch managers to be a debt collectors was a poor policy.

5. The Uintah Principal, Chelsea Malouf, has not accepted responsibility for this situation. Kelly Orton had called Ms.Malouf to set up the visit of Peggy Bjorn a day prior to Jan 28, yet she was “unavailable” when this event was occurring in the cafeteria. A month or so prior, the principal of another school came in to their cafeteria when the District was investigating the same thing and told the District to stop! Where was our Principal to support our children from this embarrassment? She had also sent an email to the District a few weeks prior to the Lunch Debacle, asking to increase the debt amount allowed for each student’s account from $10 to $15, knowing that Miss Shirley was behind in parent notifications. In her email to the district requesting this, she stated she was planning to put it in the newsletter for parents to make sure money was in children’s accounts and that notice was never put in the newsletter. The principal is responsible for debt notifications AS WELL, not just the Lunch Supervisor. She has remained completely silent and insulated herself from all aspects of this debacle. Where is her leadership for our school during a crisis?

6. The Nutrition Manager at the District, Mr. Kelly Orton, has not accepted responsibility for this situation. Up until the external investigation Kelly stated that he had informed all the parents of the new payment system (MyPaymentsPlus) which allows you to “opt in” if you want to have your children’s lunch balance monitored, but the external investigation clearly showed he lied, and failed to do this. In speaking with the President of MyPayments Plus in New York, they confirmed that Kelly Orton knew from the get go that it was his responsibility to turn the notification alert system on. Without that, parents did not know about the new payment system, let alone that they must “opt in” to receive notifications of balance, thus multiple negative accounts. The system was in operation for over four months without one elementary school parent getting a notification of how to opt in. Mr. Kelly Orton told the school board, and they communicated to parents and the media, that the policy of the Milk and Fruit option (dumping of trays) had been done away with in the November newsletter, entitled “What’s Cooking” but the external investigation showed this to be a lie. Mr. Kelly Orton was Peggy Bjorn’s supervisor and he failed to provide her with adequate support and guidance with the “Fruit and Milk” situation. He was responsible for the purchase of the $500k software, which many believe is the cause for the massive amount of scapegoating that he and the District employed, so as to divert attention away from what the old software President (with whom the Salt Lake City School District had an excellent, 25 year working relationship) called the most curious and bizarre thing he’s seen in his 30 year career in the school nutrition business). We are not aware of any repercussions toward Mr. Orton because of this debacle.

7. The Superintendent of Schools, McKell Withers, has not accepted responsibility for this situation. He is in charge of all of the school district. This happened under his watch. Why haven’t we heard from him? The buck should stop with him. Where is Mr. Withers accountability?

This is all that we want. Accountability! We want to be done with this as much as you do!

Again, Please ask for accountability at the SLC District board meeting this Tuesday, October 7th at 6:30pm at the Salt Lake School District Building. (440 East 100 South, SLC )

We need your support and input. You can email School Board member, Michael Clara, with questions or comments. donmiguelslc@gmail.com

Link to Petition

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