Steven Steel proves he does only work for those who donate to his campaign-namely TFT

...jaded much??? Since this is on a blog of a barely literate individual (I read the link and it was appalling how many spelling and grammatical errors were contained in the story) it must be true right? Give me a break. Don’t try to create a story where there is nothing but anger and resentment on your part.

I have never ever gotten Steel to answer a question via email or at a board meeting,

In late 2005 after Steel was elected to the Board of Education, I attempted to get a meeting with him. I wanted to discuss Coalition concerns, set up a meeting with the Coalition as a group and to discuss all the ethics issues.

Initially he agreed to meet. However, he kept putting it off and sometime in early 2006 he stopped answering his phone or returning emails. So a meeting never occurred.

At the meeting I would have brought out all the ethics issues, discussed their impact and was willing to work with him to find compromises. Again, this discussion never occurred.

We continue to maintain that Steel should recuse himself from being part of the negotiating team that sets priorities, strategies, etc. Steel did recently provide a letter to board members from TPS' Director of Employee Benefits saying he does not currently have benefits.

However, this does not answer the whole question (actually this does not address the issue of whether he should take an active role in negotiations). Steel did not know about the Health Care benefit issue until late in 2006. If he had benefits at any time during his time on the board and voted, discussed, deliberated, recommended, or otherwise used his authority or influence as a board member to authorize the collective bargaining agreement he violated the law. During 2006 he participated in a number of votes related to executive sessions regarding contract negotiations and voted to ratify MOU's to the TFT contract.

At a recent board meeting he dropped Ohio Ethics Commission advisory opinion 82-003 on the board as support that he could vote on the contract. This opinion never discussed the health care benefits issue. Why? Because ORC 4117.20 which made it illegal was not effective until 4-1-1984 - the advisory opinion was written in 1982. Interesting! And there have been 3 additional opinions since 1982 that cover this subject - 85-002, 89-005 and 92-017.

http://www.ethics.ohio.gov/opinions/85-002.html
http://www.ethics.ohio.gov/opinions/89-005.html
http://www.ethics.ohio.gov/opinions/92-017.html

Why give the board an outdated opinion without reference to all the issues? Either he did not do his due diligence or he wanted to hide something.

Steel has still never authorized the release of enrollment forms from 2005 through today to determine if he ever had benefits and when he withdrew from the plan.

Steel has thumbed his nose at the public and the board!

IMO, Steel believes he is above answering questions posed by citizens and in almost all cases the press - especially if it has to do with conflicts of interest.

More at TPSINFO.COM - "Conflicted" Steel elected Board President

And as to the spelling and grammatical errors - let's use that to cast dispersion on the messenger.

After the messenger has been thoroughly dispersed into his component parts, what then?

I have seen many posts here and elsewhere that were supposedly made by teachers that contained the same errors. Does that mean I should think those teachers incapable of teaching?

What you should think is entirely up to you, however I would immediately wonder if the author were indeed a school teacher, and if so, what the school system was doing to rectify a serious problem. If the instructor is incapable of college level composition in the English language, then yes, the instructor is inadequate and should be terminated immediately. Moreover, the instructor should never have been given a college diploma in the first place.

If our school teachers are illiterate, how can we expect more of the students?

Sandy,

What I said was not hearsay. It was personal experience. Besides when I first asked Steel to meet, he was not even on the board of education - just elected. I've seen him be testy and arrogant. I know others that have seen the same behavior.

Have you ever thought that Steel treats individuals differently and you have only seen the best. Lucky you! I've always thought that character is not truly tested or known until someone has to deal with adversity.

"Furthermore, BOE members and administrators are swamped with public issues and concerns daily, receiving hundreds of e-mails. After a while of recieving negative comments, from certain groups, I can't say I would not ignore as well."

Actually they don't come close to receiving hundreds of emails a day. I've looked at the BOE emails through open record requests. I'd put the number at about a dozen or less a day if that much.

An elected official is not supposed to ignore constituents. You have seen the research we do, the information we provide so you have to know we bring issues and ideas to the table. You may not like the exposure, the topic or the conclusions, but the leg work is always done!! If you don't know, perhaps you better get informed. An engaged board member would at least listen and evaluate the situation and information. I don't find that with Steel.

different day. Someone points out a problem and someone denies it exists.

Glad to see you folks are still out there :-)

TPS - Sandy - if you can't get rid of the message, kill the messenger - right?

Maybe at some point in time you all will get a clue and start talking about how arrogant administrators and board members impact the delivery of an acceptable level of education to the kids?

No reasonable person would agree with you that there aren't personality issues in TPS interfering with the delivery of a quality education to our city children. And the above dialogue is a horrible example to children as to how they should conduct themselves in an elected office. Do you WANT our elected officials to behave this way? Regardless of who brought the issue to light? Does that excuse this conduct? No, it certainly does not.

You try to defend the indefensible. And you become a large part of the problem that is preventing our kids from being well educated.

So, was that your goal or just an unintended consequence of your blind fealty? Reread your postings - is this the person you meant to be with regard to public education and the welfare of children?

Problem solving 101. Someone states that there is a problem. All sides weigh in, resources and potential solutions are reviewed. One is chosen and implemented.

Where in there does it say to just stick your fingers in your ears after step one?

I've read posts from both you before. I thought you cared about the delivery of education. Was I wrong?

sandy, can you give us some examples of "his dedication to our school district and the students and families it serves." maybe you're thinking of the wrong guy? it happens.

TPSteacher, you bet I get angry when an elected official tells a citizen that he will only talk if he helps and donates to his campaign. That is trashy and very shameful. How can you or Sandy excuse that? Please tell me. If he did say it, are you saying it is OK?

Did you see Omar’s blog? His blog is not one that goes off trashing elected officials. If it showed up on a site like margebrown.com or something that would be different, but Omar has no ulterior motives from posting the story or (as far as I know) an interest in TPS, which makes his experience more likely to occur. His only motive is probably a result of such a surprising and shocking conversation that he had to mention it. I don’t know who Omar is, I have never communicated with him before. My truth detector says this most likely did happen given the lack of interest, similar experience to others, and his motives for posting. But hey you all get to comment?

I don’t care about grammar, just because there are spelling errors does not mean that the experience is any less valid.

Sandy, you say certain groups? Why are you playing an us vs. them game? The fact is an honest elected official would not make conditions on service. A polite “I don’t agree with you” would have been OK, but what he said, especially after the Toledo Free Press article, well that is wrong. Just the fact that this even came out, begins to represent what he is deep down.

El Mahico – I have seen him in bars too. I saw him twice at Wesley’s. We have a Young Republican Meeting there every month and I saw him there twice last year. You would think elected officials, especially ones who were disciplined for intoxication, would not want to show up at bars.

If Steel did do this, he is one of the most trashy elected officials we have right now; shame on you. He takes the place of Larry Sykes who was the worst elected official that this area has seen (although Larry set the bar really high when it comes to the worst-or should I say low?).

BTW I have been on the receiving end of one of his letters although he never told me that he would not talk unless I donated to his campaign, but that is probably because he knew I would tell everyone.

Maybe it takes someone outside of TPS to highlight this.

And Sandy, learn about slander before going off.

as far as the actual board meetings that I have been to has been pretty good. Of course I'm comparing his behavior to Larry's Sykes which is quite the extreme.

I would not have expected this out of him either - but as his 'boss' Toledo should not tolerate this kind of conduct from an elected official.

We should not tolerate board members hijacking meetings, giving a quarter of a million dollars to someone who violated their employment contract and would have failed any performance benchmark.

We should not tolerate officials who thump people in the chest. Or throw things at them. We should not tolerate elected officials who have a racial bias.

Come to think of it - we're really the problem. The tax payers. We put up with alot that we just should not.

Like with my neighbor. We took his dog and my sons' dog (newly adopted rescues) to obedience training. He said that Abbey was chewing things etc. and she wouldn't stop. The kind blinked for a minute and then laughed. He says, "so basically she's behaving like a dog". Neighbor says yes. Dog trainer says YOU are the problem - she's just being a dog.

Maybe we don't need to tolerate this behavior out of these people. It's not like we have a performance landmark school district. It's not like we've developed alternative commerce in Toledo - reduced taxes or fees, or increased services.

If you think about - where the hell DO these people get off being so cocky? If this was the real world they'd be getting performance reviews at work and canned. PDQ too.

you guys crack me up. My blog holds no merit because I have spelling and grammatical errors? Thats the excuse of a reader that see's the truth but wishes not to admit it. Who cares if I have spelling errors - its a blog.

Ive known Steve Steel probably a hell of a lot longer then all of you. I first met him when he was an assistant football coach under Charlie Delker at Waite High School. If I wanted you all to know the real Steve Steel... I could post stories about what went on during coaching clinics... but I wont go that route.

tpsteacher - Im not a jilted former political adversary of Mr. Steel. I know him personally - mainly through my brother. And this is not the first time Ive butted heads with him - Ive had plenty of arguments with him mainly about Ron Paul (who I support and he hates) & global warming (I think its a sun cycle... he thinks otherwise naturally being in environmental science)

And excuse you? A barely literature individual? I didn't know barely literate individuals hold network engineering jobs. I guess being a veteran makes me a barely literate individual as well huh? There is an "about me" link on my blog if your not too damn lazy to click it.

If you guys don't believe me... go to Wesleys or Mutz and you'll find him drinking. The man drinks 5-6 nights a week.

But go ahead tpsteacher... avoid the issue with Steel. The board is a freakin JOKE

and would like to make one point clear - I am not including Darlene Fisher when I say board. She's fought the status quo and it's been a painful thing to watch. There are some good things that are happening - one major issue she fought for and won was for the district to move to zero based budgeting. There will be no 11th hour back room budget planning done anymore.

So - I owe an apology to her - I certainly wouldn't lump her in with the likes of Steel and Sykes. Or the former Mayor.

welcome :) nice to see you've joined swamp bubbles. thanks for clearing some of our questions up. i'd like to hear more of your thoughts and opinions.

So Steel is an arrogant prick. BFD. I don't see Carty winning any personality awards. How does this exchange "prove" he's in the TFT's pocket?

if this site has no merit on it's own why bother blogging?

please excuse me if i misspell a word on here, i'm not a tps teacher. although, my friend is constantly sending notes back to her son's teacher with red pen marks on it for grammatical errors, he goes to tps.

are a big part of the problem of why TPS is on Academic Watch. They are so busy defending what is wrong that they can not see how we could have a world class school system with open, transparent dialogue with all of the stakeholders in the city.

They have been led to believe that bad behavior on the part of elected officials is acceptable because no one has ever been able to break through the brick wall of the pay to play electorate. There has always been a divide and conquer attitude that has always kept citizens from trusting each other and therefore when anyone tried to make changes they were rebuffed or called names.

And no I do not believe Chris is bitter. Why should he be bitter? He ran a good and honorable race and has nothing to be ashamed about. I would question the results of the vote and it seems as if there is a question about the voting machines!

Toledo is a city on the brink of disaster because of it’s school system. No one wants to live in a city where there is a school system that teeters between Academic Watch, Academic Emergency and Continuous Improvement. More schools will be added to the list of schools where parents can get a state Voucher to send their child to a private school. One of those schools is Old Orchard. a school right down the street from the University of Toledo, once a “good” Tps school.

Thanks to the Internet, the Information Highway, The Toledo Journal, The Free Press and other newspapers, we have been able to connect with one another and try to make changes to improve the quality of life in Toledo. We do not have to rely on the Toledo Blade to get our news.

Your post shocked me. I ran a search of this page and the only time the word 'white' has been posted was your last comment.

Are you alright? This makes no sense at all and I've seen some very logical posts by you in the past. Please, maybe take a moment and reread the post you responded to. Your response makes no sense at all. And it is cause for concern here.

because the post came off as - well kind of special. As in - don't eat the paste SPECIAL. Course I've been AOL for a little bit - but c'mon.

Why should she post a first name like that even if she knows what it is? And 'empathy'? And just exactly what sick group is she talking about? Are we talking farm animals sick or what???

Please explain what you are talking about. Please site the thread where I called you white. If I did, are you not white? What does that have to do with anything?

The plan is for you to site race in anything that i post. Who gave you your orders? I could care less if you take my "advise" or not since I don't recall giving you any "advise" :=)

You are simply a TPS cheerleader who sees nothing wrong in anything Steel, Sobecki and Foley do.

maybe you should have TPSTeacher24 tutor you in your grammar or what is now called Language Arts.. Lesson Number One.---You can have empathy for someone not to someone. Empathy is a noun and in its simplest definition it means -
"understanding and entering into another's feelings"

If you have so much empathy "to" me why do you always bring up race and then attribute it to me? I usually do not try to hurt people's feelings but tonight don't try me. You will get as good as you give. As the kids say don't get it twisted.

I never said that you get what you get from the district because you are white. You get what you get from the district because you "brown nose." I trust you know what that means. In other words you suck up to them and tell them at board meetings what a good job they do. Twenty people can be speaking about legitimate negative issues and you come up and say what a good job they do. That's ok but don't lie on me in the process.

You are simply unbelievable! The words you used are the same words that a Pickett teacher said that I used to her four years ago. I filed a complaint with the US Department of Education because I said no such thing. Does your group (TPS) have a menu of responses to use for any given person? I can not believe that you used the same exact words. """Then the group you are with, all state "it is because you are white" ..............bunch of crap."""

I didn't say it then and no one in my "group" said it now!

Unbelievable

you are such a liar. Name the people who heard me say those words. I did not even talk to you at that board meeting. I had nothing to say to you, why would I just walk up to you and say "because you are white?"

You may call me a racist and I am not but stupid I really am not.
And now you are getting away from the topic of Steve Steel as usual!!!!

I suppose I could threaten you with slander. The slanderous statement being: """Wait................ I should take advise from someone who claims my character of respect with the district is due to me being WHITE. Once again, you lost all your crediblity!!!!!! I am still in awe that your group can justify saying things like that......sick........I have come to realize that is your only defense, so I now have empathy to you."""""

But:

You kind of cleaned it up by making the statement a "group" statement: """"I am referring to the public hearing meeting, when as you say "I suck up". I stated, I do appreciate a strong dicipline policy so my children are safe at school. Then the group you are with, all state "it is because you are white" ..............bunch of crap."""'

However, you have left people with the impression that I made the statement when in fact the statement was not made. This can be proven because there are security cameras (I checked with security) in the board room and if the video is seen it will show that I never even talked to you. So in order to make me feel better you should unequivocally state on this Swampbubbles site that I did not say the "you are white" statement, which is an inflammatory statement and untrue.

So woman up and apologize.

but it is now undeniable that there are 'plants' who know the TPS good ol' boy party line much too well at work in the blogosphere.

Sad but I guess if you can't address a situation in a forthright manner, which people who do things they should not do often find themselves in just that position, you use underhanded and manipulative tricks to address the situation.

Such as floating untruths that are repeated by several people, verbatim, when it is obvious that they are attempting to discredit the messenger - again I say, because they can do nothing about the veracity of the message.

How Machiavellian your group is!!! Wouldn't it just be easier to tell the truth? It seems like it'd take much less effort - but of course then it wouldn't be as much fun, now would it?

that is the part that p*****s me off about these people. When she made the statement and you responded, even Chris (who should know better :=) ) said that she was talking about another thread. I have never nor would I ever make a statement like that.

How many people read it and took it as gospel because Sandy made the statement and I have been painted with the racist brush by TPS ?

Paint the messenger with bad paint and the message does not get delivered. Then the people with the brush can go paint another project.

it works on people - but only if they're uninformed. I just wonder if these folks have had an opportunity to really review the agendas of those they would defend and the catastrophic impact it is having on our kids.

But then, it would be kind of hard to acknowledge that. Maybe that's part of what's going on too.

I would rather be full of S**T than a liar, any day.

it was an attempt by Sandy to get off target on Steve Steel and I defended myself against a lie.

He always sounds like that when he's drunk!

I know what you are saying but the point that I was trying to make is that Sandy lied and inferred something and then when she came back to explain where this conversation supposedly took place someone who read it may have already formed the thought that I did say what she said I said which was a plain bald faced lie and may not have come back to read the other posts.

When you made the reference that it may have been on another thread, I knew that it wasn't because I have never said anything like that. But someone reading it could have thought well if Chris said it, it may have been on another thread then they may have thought, well Twila did say that.

Anyway, I feel that Sandy always aborts the conversation by throwing the race stuff on me when it serves to get off of the topic of conversations. The many issues of Steve Steel
and his behavior should be discussed, debated and brought out to the public. This thread was virtually shut down when Sandy accused me of a lie. Therefore Mr. Steel got off the hook and life goes on at TPS under the cloak of bad behavior.

life goes on unchallenged at TPS and TFT.

spoke at New Testament World Outreach Church in late August at a back to school event. He spoke to a group of families and students. He told the students that if they had any questions or concerns to call him and that his telephone number was in the telephone book, he would be available.
One student had a problem at school and has been trying to talk to him ever since. The student is very disappointed that Steel did not keep his word and answer his telephone call.

I guess this 13 year old student didn't contribute to Steel's campaign!