Lolli MUST go.

The dysfunctional school board is considering retaining Superintendent Elizabeth Lolli for one more year. This would be a mistake of epic proportions.

If their reason is because they couldn’t hire a search firm, or the search firm couldn’t get enough candidates, it’s because there is absolutely no reason for anyone to actually want to work for this school board or in this district.

Any candidate who is not insane will find a board that has routinely held meetings in excess of 3 hours with some as long as 6 hours. This isn’t being caused by citizens comments, although tonight’s meeting may be. They don’t want to work for a board that has one member accusing another of some sort of sexual abuse. They don’t want to work for a board where board members are directly interacting with staff, circumventing their legal areas of authority, to micro-manage things well outside their authority.

The district is still in a battle for last place of all 508 school districts in Ohio- only fighting with neighboring Trotwood and Jefferson TWP for dead last. Turnover of staff has been well over 20% a year as long as Lolli has been in charge.

And last but not least, why would anyone with a brain throw their hat in the ring when the heir apparent to anyone with an eighth of a brain is sitting in the wings as the “Business Manager” and is obviously qualified and the front runner.

The last time these geniuses (to be fair, the only remaining genius is Joe Lacey) did a search, they excluded the well qualified candidate and had a choice between 3 candidates:

1. An internal candidate who had been with the district for a short period of time, where he’d failed to distinguish himself, while doing a competent job.
2.  A small district superintendent looking to return back to the area, with an absolute charming personality, but thought that police in schools was a good idea which instantly alienated a core group of activists.
3. A train wreck of a lesbian, who had DUI’s and had committed fraud in collecting death benefits of a former spouse while married to someone else.

That board, that included a member who didn’t live in the district ^[1], our future County Treasurer John McManus, a dem party hack who openly made racist statements in choosing a future board president, need I say more, of course hired number 3- Rhonda Corr, who gave me no end of fodder for this blog, culminating in this epic post:The calamity named Rhonda Corr ^[2]

Number 1, Dr. Roberson, left the district shortly after. Number 2, got hired by Springboro where he was successful at passing a levy on his first attempt (a first for the self-destructive  tea party dominated board- before he was found guilty of claiming $1200 more than he should have been paid for expenses and fired and banned from being a superintendent.

You would think, that this experience would serve as a lesson. You’d also think they should sue the search firm that failed to vet Corr. But, no, this board doesn’t listen to anyone, or study history. They are led by the granddaughter of a local legend and criminal, the Rev Raleigh Trammell ^[3], who despite being a convicted welfare fraudster, was somehow given access to lots of federal welfare dollars for years because he could shout louder than anyone else. “Dr.” Chrisondra Goodwine ^[4]  JD, MBA, MSW, GSW, LSD, BS, FUBAR had great tutelage. Goodwine is a bully and almost laughingly, the current township administrator for the community that has a worse school district than Dayton: Jefferson Twp. She also worked in the office with Roshawn Winburn ^[5], for the City of Dayton when Roshawn was accepting bags of cash from FBI informants as part of the Culture of Corruption ^[6]. Seriously, where do we get this clown show?

To be clear, no one ever did a background check on Dr. Elizabeth Lolli or checked references or asked co-workers about her work style. Lolli was hired by Corr, along with another PhD to shore up Corr’s reputation. The other PhD, sued the district on her exit- citing Lolli’s management skills.

The reality is, Lolli has no record of achievement other than bamboozling someone into giving her the “Superintendent of the year” award. Her test scores, attendance performance, and most significantly, employment retention scores at DPS are ALL fails. Why the board wants to keep her, when they made a move to bring back the person who should have been hired before the Corr debacle is waiting in the wings is beyond comprehension.

That person, is Dr. (real PhD) David Lawrence who is currently the business manager for the district. He has actual performance indicators that say he would be an outstanding choice for the district. He’s a DPS grad, a veteran, an athletic superstar, with a long history of academic leadership:

Upon arrival at Thurgood Marshall- the reconstituted Col White- there were serious discipline problems and low test scores. From 2009 until 2011 police calls went from over 45 to under 10 per year, the performance index rose from 64 to 82 and the graduation rate from 64 to 79 percent.

Need to see the actual scores:

• 2007-08 under Mr. Davis  PI 64.9 ^[7]
• 2008-09  Mr. Lawrence PI 79 ^[8]
• 2009-10 Mr. Lawrence PI 78. ^[9]
• 2010-11 Mr. Lawrence PI 82.1 ^[10]

No other Dayton Public School has had that kind of elevation in scores over a short period.

Throw in three students winning Gates scholarships, adding a STEM lab, the basketball team went to State finals twice, the football team was undefeated in his final year, it was 2-8 when he arrived. I remember him fretting over a decision to remove the winning basketball coach- he thought that there was a better way to build character and respect and brought in Darnell Hoskins, who took the team to an even higher level.

Source: Saint David Lawrence | Esrati ^[11]

By not hiring him, the board will in effect, be putting him on the free agent list where some other district will hire him and we’ll be left with hiring a search firm, and getting another 3 options of which none are good choices.

If the board decides to rehire Lolli today, Dayton loses.

I urge any Daytonian who cares about our schools to register to speak and to show up at the board meeting tonight. Here’s the link to the speaking form ^[12].

The meeting is at The Business Meeting scheduled for Tuesday. April 18th. 2023 at 6:00 PM will now be held at 5:30 PM in the DPS Community Room, 115 S. Ludlow St.