On the afternoon of Saturday, March 27th, I will be doing a major upgrade for the Save Ardmore Coalition website, starting at 2 PM.

This will involve taking the site down, during which time visitors to the site will be greeted by Tech Support Cat and a status message of how far along I am in the site upgrade.

The core installation of Drupal will be upgraded from 5.x to 6.x, a number of modules will be upgraded, and some new modules will be added. At the end of the upgrade, I will bring the site back up while I continue to add in some new features which should make the site a little more interesting to use, and easier for me to manage.

If anyone has questions, please let me know.

I spoke to Maureen Friday night and she alerted me to a discussion that the board is currently having. They are starting to debate a policy that will allow lmsd emails to be deleted, forever, with no chance of discovery. Here is her note from OpenLMN.net

[The community really needs to watch the Records policy (#800). The board is setting policy of how emails are retained and deleted. They want a 24-48 hour period in which the user can delete an email and it never goes into the archive. I cannot believe that this board, at this time, feels they are trusted to allow emails (on schools servers !) to get deleted. Remember that these are lawyers driving the process, and they want to keep as little as possible around to get them into trouble later. I see NO reason why every single email should not be kept, with a strict policy on who can retrieve them and why. The discussion is ongoing , we may be able to affect this. ]

The Bryn Mawr Film Institute has scheduled five panel
discussions and receptions with screenings of The Art of the Steal.

Bryn Mawr Film Institute (BMFI)
824 W. Lancaster Avenue, Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania 19010
610-527-4008 ext. 109

Get updated information about the panels and receptions at www.BrynMawrFilm.org.
Call BMFI or go to website for tickets for the events.

The film also is being shown now at a regular daily showtimes.
http://www.brynmawrfilm.org/index.html

Monday, March 15
The Director and Producers Talk:
THE ART OF THE STEAL director Don Argott and producer Sheena Joyce will be joined by executive producer Lenny Feinberg to talk "film" and discuss the documentary, the challenges of making the film, and answer your "technical" questions.
Reception at 6:30pm; Screening at 7:30pm

[=blue]Tuesday, March 16

Thirty six weeks ago I wrote this post:

Spending Like Drunken Sailors, or David v. Goliath with an Open Checkbook

I didn't realize just how right I would turn out to be. Rich Ilgenfritz spent some time going through the legal bills Morgan Lewis has racked up defending the District in Students Doe vs. Lower Merion School District. My prediction? Scott Shafer and company are going to get really nice gift baskets from Morgan this Christmas.

How high will they go? Legal fees spiral in LMSD

Some highlights:

At its current pace Lower Merion could end up spending more than $1 million a year in legal fees defending the Ardmore redistricting lawsuit if the case were to continue until June.

According to a review by Main Line Media News, between last June and November the Lower Merion School District rang up bills of nearly $550,000 in the first six months that Morgan Lewis has been representing the school district in the Ardmore redistricting case. Other figures provided by the district this week suggest the total has likely already surpassed $600,000 as of the end of January. That doesn’t include bills for February. So if the district hasn’t gotten them yet, February’s bills are probably already in the mail.

and

The largest bill for the district came last July when the district was billed a total of $207,525.94. The costs in the bills were broken down into two primary parts. One part lists the hourly wages earned by the attorneys who are working on the case. The other part includes expenditures such as duplication fees, the costs of a legal research service and taxi rides to hearings.

Of that $207,525.94 for July, $200,838 was for the hourly labor wages of the attorneys who worked the case that month. The expenses came in at $6,687.

What does LMSD have to say about this?

Ya know...I hate when I get e-mails like this. Apparently George Manos has been dubbed the new expert on Roberts Rules of Order (and somewhere Lance Rogers is doubled over in laughter at that prospect), but it doesn't mean he grew any brain cells when it comes to shunshine (oops must be a subliminal slip, I mean SUNSHINE). Apparently the good footsoldier of The Bruce denied the public access to a recent Ad Hoc Environmental Initiative Committee, of which he is the chair?

Tsk, tsk Georgie...you knew it would come out and voila here is an e-mail I was sent and many thanks to Audrey for sending it and allowing me to reveal the origin of it:

Dear Carla,

Here's one for you.

Last Tuesday, March 9, the Ad Hoc EIC, chaired by George Manos, met. I was pleased to see that this Ad Hoc Committee was finally posted and on 2/21 sent a genuine thank you to Scott Zelov, Brian Gordon and George Manos.

Last night Carl Watson told me that he had arrived for the AHEIC and was denied admittance. Manos said it wasn't an open meeting. Apparently Zelov and Gordon tried to convince him that there was no reason to keep it closed. Someone pointed out that it had been posted, at which juncture, as it was relayed to me, Manos claimed that he had had the posting withdrawn. This seems to be true, given that you cannot find it under past calendar postings on the Lower Merion website.

I asked Zelov about this last night, and he corroborated the narrative. Since by all accounts there was nothing privileged in the discussion, one has to assume that Manos just closed it to spite the public.

If you want to post something on your blog, feel free to use my name.

Fondly, Audrey

Cheers George, they are watching you...

But seriously as I know nothing of this committee (Ad Hoc Environmental Initiative Committee), what does it do that couldn't be done in public?

As some have noted, the March 8, 2010 Radnor Board of Commissioners meeting was, in a word, unusual.

During the meeting, I had an interesting discussion with Commissioner John Fisher about the proposed contract that sets the salary and terms for the new Radnor Township Manager. I noted that the new manager is receiving what appears to be a significant salary increase over his position in Ohio. Commissioner Fisher responded by characterizing my question as "a good one", and stated that the increase was largely due to a cost-of-living increase between Ohio and Radnor.

After reading this in Philly.com it looks like we may never know exactly what happened in this case:

"Lawyers for the school and the family yesterday agreed to freeze the case for 30 days while computer experts from both sides determine how often the school used the remote tracking software, and how many students were photographed.

"The parties are hopeful that this information will enable an expeditious and cost-effective resolution of this action," said the order, signed yesterday by U.S. District Judge Jan E. DuBois.

The order also makes it easier for school officials to make statements about the case, and to update the software on the school-issued Apple laptops.

"The goal is to reach an outcome that benefits the families and taxpayers of Lower Merion," said school spokesman Douglas Young.

Last night a very nice person tried to ask Solicitor Gil High a question at the LMT meeting. She was rebuffed, and QUITE rudely so. As a matter of fact she got, almost verbatim, the same asinine quip that Andy Meyers received when he tried to ask the solicitor a question recently. The solicitor doesn't speak to the public, only works for the board, you have no right to address the solicitor directly blah, blah, blah.

An order was signed yesterday by Judge Jan DuBois granting LMSD an extra 30 days to respond to the complaint filed by the Robbins family.

http://www.philly.com/philly/news/homepage/87313492.html

The delay will afford time for the forensic experts hired by LMSD (L3) to complete their investigation.

The new order also eliminates the provision that the district disclose any communications concerning the webcam issue to Plaintiff's attorney 6 hours before making them available to LMSD students, parents or taxpayers, effectively lifting the gag order.