{"id":2450493,"date":"2019-10-30T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2019-10-30T06:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspentimes.com\/news\/meredith-c-carroll-maloy-keeps-digging-with-his-own-shovel\/"},"modified":"2019-10-30T09:25:13","modified_gmt":"2019-10-30T15:25:13","slug":"meredith-c-carroll-maloy-keeps-digging-with-his-own-shovel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/local-news\/meredith-c-carroll-maloy-keeps-digging-with-his-own-shovel\/","title":{"rendered":"Meredith C. Carroll: Maloy keeps digging with his own shovel"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Former Aspen School District Superintendent John Maloy hasn\u2019t said much publicly since the conclusion of the 2018-19 school year, which is when his retirement was accelerated after a decision by the Board of Education not to renew his contract.<\/p>\n

However, with a pair of BOE seats up for grabs on the Nov. 5 ballot, Maloy has emerged in print twice over the past week via letters to the editor in the local newspapers in which he doesn\u2019t advocate for any of the six candidates running, but rather condemns two of them: Jonathan Nickell and Bettina Slusar. He accused Nickell of having a \u201clack of civility and integrity,\u201d while identifying Slusar as \u201can active member of the Aspen Parent Action Committee (APAC), the group that orchestrated a public personal attack of me (sic) rather than an attack on systems and processes. \u2026 (Slusar) conducts herself with little regard for the truth and with an adversarial approach to getting what she wants.\u201d<\/p>\n

And Maloy wasn\u2019t entirely wrong: For a time last year, it was, indeed, the mess-maker rather than the mess that absorbed the lion\u2019s share of attention and disdain. It was Maloy who hired Elizabeth Hodges as Aspen School District\u2019s human resources director, and it was he who chose to retain her even after finding out via an anonymous tip and then a series of investigative reports in this newspaper that she began her job in Aspen a month and a day after being served with a grand jury indictment for felony forgery and ultimately pleaded guilty to deceptive business practices. Hodges was disbarred (the judge characterized her actions as \u201creprehensible\u201d and \u201coutrageous,\u201d saying she demonstrated an \u201cevil motive, reckless indifference and conscious disregard for the rights of others\u201d) and fined $1 million, and was, at the time her crimes and misdemeanors came to light locally, being investigated for bankruptcy fraud.<\/p>\n

Maloy and then-BOE president Sheila Wills, who is term-limited at the end of this month, told the Times after the news broke that revelations of Hodges\u2019 past were irrelevant to \u201ca fine job performance so far.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cShe just appealed to us in terms of being honest, open, direct and being a people person,\u201d Maloy said of hiring her. \u201cAnd obviously, dealing with human resources, it\u2019s many of the qualities that we needed.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI have never seen Elizabeth do anything that was either incompetent or unethical,\u201d Wills defended her to the Times. \u201cShe doesn\u2019t do anything (in her ASD job) that requires a law license.\u201d<\/p>\n

It turns out, though, Maloy didn\u2019t need Slusar, Nickell, APAC, Hodges or even the whiff of nepotism (his daughter was hired by the ASD as a school psychologist during his tenure) to render the notion of his ongoing leadership hopelessly impotent. It was all by himself (although maybe also with the help of a few veteran left tackles) that confidence eroded in his ability to quarterback effectively.<\/p>\n

Maloy, who might consider \u201cLittle Regard for the Truth and with an Adversarial Approach to Getting What He Wants\u201d as the title for his biography, summarily refused to accept responsibility for the Hodges debacle or hold her accountable in any meaningful way until after the BOE declined to renew his contract. Maloy even oozed sympathy for Hodges (\u201cA burden on her shoulders,\u201d he told the Times of her legal woes), all while rejecting concerns from teachers and district staffers uncomfortable with her access to their most sensitive personal information, including Social Security numbers.<\/p>\n

He failed miserably to admit any complicity in the pervasive secrecy and institutional frigidness at the district and board levels that trickled down the campus during his reign. He perpetually deflected personal criticisms while smirking silently as his champions branded involved and passionate parents as loud-mouths with vendettas. He was either notably silent (or absent) while the work of the state-mandated, all-volunteer District Accountability Committee was regularly overlooked, or he niggled over numbers that, if DAC members inadvertently misinterpreted, then he purposefully misrepresented.<\/p>\n

And then, less than five months after he was paid generously to be released from his professional duties, he reintroduced himself to the community through attack letters on parent volunteers. To be sure, Nickell\u2019s tenure on the DAC helped uncover troubling local education trends, and Slusar joined an established and robust chorus of cutting and stinging voices against him, although the credit for Maloy\u2019s demise still remains solely his own.<\/p>\n

In April, current BOE president Dwayne Romero expressed the board\u2019s \u201cwish to begin some actionable steps towards implementing\u201d the recommendations made in the ASD climate and culture study conducted by third-party consultants that found an overwhelming distrust of district leadership. Among the promises was to make climate and culture regular BOE discussion items (despite it falling off the agenda just four meetings later). Short- and long-term actionable steps were promised, too, including a guiding \u201cset of values statements,\u201d and a \u201csmall but important set of evaluation tools\u201d intended to provide actionable feedback on the effectiveness of leadership practices.<\/p>\n

Next week\u2019s BOE election is about filling two seats \u2014 and also the chasm left by a gang of long-time, wily stakeholders. Fortunately for the teachers, administrators, students and families in the district eager to shift the focus from scandal to schooling, when the new incarnation of the board is seated in November they\u2019ll finally have an opportunity to right the ship so it aligns with the values of the entire district, not just a few guileful people huddled together at the top.<\/p>\n

More at MeredithCarroll.com and on Twitter @MCCarroll.<\/p>\n

via:: The Aspen Times<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Former Aspen School District Superintendent John Maloy hasn\u2019t said much publicly since the conclusion of the 2018-19 school year, which is when his retirement was accelerated after a decision by the Board of Education not to renew his contract. However, with a pair of BOE seats up for grabs on the Nov. 5 ballot, Maloy […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2450493","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-local-news"],"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-08-19 10:57:08","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSPN The Valley's Quality Rock","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2450493","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2450493"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2450493\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2450526,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2450493\/revisions\/2450526"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2450493"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2450493"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2450493"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}