Consider the source
AEA goon Joe Reed sent a scathing letter to the new chancellor of the two year college system, Bradley Byrne, condemning his treatment of disgraced and dismissed Bishop State president Yvonne Kennedy. Reed even likened Byrne to Hitler in the letter and essentially accused him of being racist. Quite honestly, considering the source I don’t think Byrne should lose any sleep. Maybe he should frame the letter and mount it on his wall.
Among the noteworthy quotes in Reed’s letter was this one:
Dr. Kennedy is the best example of the good that can come from Postsecondary employees serving in the Legislature.
A quick review of how well her tenure at the head of Bishop State went might lead one to think either Reed is a total moron or Dr. Kennedy is the benefactor of a terribly low bar.
August 24, 2006 – Bishop State Community College President Yvonne Kennedy hired former Chancellor Roy Johnson’s son-in-law, paid a friend of Johnson’s as a consultant and gave a contract to a Jasper consulting firm that hired Johnson’s daughter, records show.
Kennedy’s hiring of Johnson’s relative and companies with ties to the fired chancellor came before officials learned about allegations of fraud in Bishop State’s financial aid program. Johnson agreed earlier this year to allow Kennedy to investigate the allegations internally.
Johnson was fired by the state Board of Education in July after earlier revelations about jobs and contracts that his friends and family received in the system.
Kennedy has directed more than $94,000 of her legislative discretionary grant money into a private foundation that she runs. She told a legislative committee when she requested the state money in 2003 that it was needed for a culinary laboratory at Bishop State. But tax records for the foundation don’t report that expense, instead identifying $123,851 in payments for scholarships that year.
September 15, 2006 – [Interim Chancellor Thomas] Corts told the state Board of Education that he sent Attorney General Troy King a report drafted by his staff on problems discovered at Bishop State, including employees mishandling scholarship funds, dispensing cash to relatives and taking financial aid after dropping classes.
Bishop State has been cited numerous times in the past with possible fraud in its financial aid office, including awarding aid payments to people who do not attend the school.
Federal officials demanded last month that Bishop State repay more than $155,000 in misspent aid funds and interest.
September 23, 2006 – A state investigation found that dozens more people than previously known received financial aid payments from Bishop State Community College without attending classes, including employees who claimed they were attending classes during their scheduled work hours.
A team sent to the Mobile school by interim Chancellor Thomas Corts also found that Bishop State President Yvonne Kennedy controlled a private foundation and told her staff how to spend its money, despite Kennedy’s public claims that she served only in an ex officio capacity with the nonprofit.
The foundation, which receives much of its money from school employees, also allows employees who contribute to take the money back for their personal use, Corts’ staff found.
Corts started the investigation after receiving allegations that several school employees helped relatives obtain financial aid payments without attending classes, including a disabled 67-year-old grandmother who was signed up for three sports.
October 23, 2006 – Bishop State Community College officials gave bookstore employees $261,800 in cash in recent years to buy books back from students, but cannot provide records showing how the employees used the school’s money.
February 15, 2007 – State auditors identified $438,496 in student aid abuses, including athletic scholarships to employees’ relatives who didn’t play sports; free courses for employees and their relatives; and 48 people who received federal aid payments but were not eligible. The state’s Examiners of Public Accounts reviewed student aid payments at the school after disclosures last year that employees were arranging aid payments for relatives and others who did not attend the college.
July 28, 2007 – The Best Grill is closed permanently, the chancellor of Alabama’s two-year college system said this week, and $1.8 million slated for the Bishop State Community College culinary program will go to technical programs at the Mobile school.
Chancellor Bradley Byrne said he decided to close the Best Grill, which is linked to financial and academic woes at the 3,600-student school, based on the advice of a college transition team and a system investigation that showed the culinary laboratory lost more than $1.7 million over the last four years.
Keep in mind – I’m just scratching the surface. There was so much wrong at Bishop State while Dr. Kennedy was at the helm that it is quite difficult to compile all the scandals.
The Democrats’ reaction to the widespread corruption taking place right under Kennedy’s nose has been mixed. The far left claims that it is all “vague innuendo” with no “evidence of wrongdoing presented.” Other, more reasonable, Democrats publicly stopped short of heaping condemnation on Kennedy, but admit that Reed’s letter makes him look like an idiot. David Prather of the Huntsville Times has a little more insight into the Democrats’ more private thoughts.
Recalling the premise that family members can often be more severely critical than outsiders, I wasn’t particularly shocked by the e-mail I recently read from a longtime Democratic activist. He was giving his party down-the-country for a number of substantial shortcomings, and I was on his e-mail list.
High on that list was his disappointment with the continuing defiance of forcibly retired community college president Dr. Yvonne Kennedy in Mobile. The educator/legislator has run Bishop State Community College into the ground. It’s academically in bad shape and has seen 27 staff members charged with theft. The Soprano family hasn’t faced that many indictments, has it?
Back to Reed. His assertion that Byrne is racist because he had the good sense to dismiss an employee who was either complicit in the corruption or unbelievably incompetent as a manager is beyond the pale. It is people like Reed who defer to racism whenever things don’t go his way who help prolong whatever racial strife remains today.
Another money quote from Reed’s letter:
The academics at [Bishop State] are second to none and the nursing program is the envy of the state.
I’m sure that folks from Cambridge and Berkeley would take issue with Reed’s “second to none” statement. I seriously doubt that Bishop State is even the best post secondary institution in Mobile – and I would probably rank it as one of the worst. I don’t know enough about nursing schools to justify a comment about the latter part of Reed’s claim, but I will point you to a list of nursing programs in Alabama and let you decide if Bishop State is the envy of all of the other schools on the list.
