As Tuesday evening approached there were two mysteries swirling around Michael Ellis.
The big question in Long Beach Tuesday night was whether Michael Ellis would show up for the Long Beach Unified School District Board of Education meeting—it is rare recently that Ellis appear to fulfill his duties as a member of the School Board and surprisingly he was in attendance last night. One mystery solved.
The other mystery (or one of them) regarding Ellis is where does he work? He has not been open to the press regarding the matter and attempts to contact him by email and phone from the LBUSD website have proven fruitless as the information appears not to be for him. Well today several people dropped the following information off on the Front Porch: Ellis is teaching… again. This time at the prestigious and expensive Bridges Academy where “…Bridges empowers its students to thrive academically and socially…” From his public afterhours record it seems Ellis has the ability to teach social life. Whether parents ponying up $29,000 for tuition want him to be teaching their “twice-exceptional” children may be another matter.
Every employer has the right to make the hiring decisions they wish to make, however if I was paying up to $29,000 per year for my children to be empowered to thrive I would question whether this objective would be met by an individual with Ellis’ history. Let us not forget he became Long Beach’s problem after moving three times to get in the right residence to qualify for the school board election—missing the deadline but given a pass by City Attorney Robert Shannon; then after Suja Lowenthal pulled out of the school board race to run for—and win—Dan Baker’s seat after his resignation. How much of Ellis’ background was offered during the interview process we will never know, but one wonders how much was revealed and whether any of the students’ parents know of his past.
Once Ellis was seated and the meeting got underway the Board of Education passed a critical vote to request a waiver from the State to allow the LBUSD more freedom in how it spends state education funds provided to the District. This is a critical move by the District and could be a key to solving much of the education funding issues in California. I will post more on this move and the funding issue in the near future.
In the meantime the public wonders what Ellis’ thought process is as he determines which meetings are important enough to appear and which are eligible for him to play hooky. For a man who ran to bring “transparency” to the process, the only thing transparent is his character as exhibited thus far.
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