Following Hartford Public Schools hiring of the New Jersey  based staffing firm ESS to assist HPS’ ineffective Office of Talent Management in recruiting substitute teachers to Hartford, local lazy media player WFSB (We’re Friends of the School Board), at the request of HPS’ central office propaganda team, ran a story on the hiring of ESS.

If you read WFSB’s story and accompanying little video, keep in mind that they never tell you that HPS does not fill 85% of teacher absences with substitutes, or that other school districts in Connecticut who have also hired ESS, still had class cancellation issues due to a lack of substitute teachers. 

Also keep in mind how WFSB attempted to create the existence of school and community outrage over the hiring of ESS by stating, “Parents and teachers felt differently, appearing at Tuesday’s board of education meeting to raise their concerns.”  There were 6 folks who rose to give public comment at this meeting in an auditorium where perhaps 25-30 people sat, most of them from HPS or members of the non-profits schlepping an urban school district for taxpayer money.  Of the 6 who chose to speak, two spoke of the substitute teacher issue and neither was a teacher or parent of an HPS student. 

We’ve learned that what words come from HPS leadership cannot be trusted as being representative of the reality at HPS, and since the major players in the lazy local media, WFSB and the Hartford Courant, with their umbilical like attachment to HPS, provide only news on the district that is fed to them by the propaganda marketing team assembled by Superintendent Torres-Rodriguez, we cannot trust these media folks to provide us with the full, unscripted truth about what is occurring in our schools.

While WFSB’s top notch investigative reporting team, the “I-Team,” ran two stories this past week on leaky sunroofs, they give no follow up to their June substitute teacher shortage story.

If they had, folks in the community would know that HPS’ million dollar investment in ESS has been a failure (“Million Dollar Staffing Firm Fails as School Year Begins”).  After four months of ESS recruiting substitute teachers, HPS reported on October 3rd that they are only filling 15% of teacher absences with substitute teachers. 

If WFSB really wanted to inform the public with top notch reporting, they would be able to supply them with inside information like the image below.

This is an image of an astonishing email received by an applicant for a Hartford substitute teaching position from the regional manager of ESS and forwarded to me (redactions where necessary due to the district’s petty retaliation culture)  This is 4 months after ESS received a fat check from HPS.