This Won’t Be a Fair Fight.

A turbocharged press release with this blunt beginning came charging into my email inbox this afternoon:

West Hartford Parent Demands State Education Officials Remove Secrecy From Magnet School Lottery Process

(West Hartford, CT)  Toni M. Fatone, a West Hartford parent seeking placement for her daughter in a Hartford magnet middle school, today charged that the state’s Education Department made last minute changes in the rules for school assignments that have unfairly impacted families who entered the process with far different expectations.

Fatone said after she and other parents were repeatedly informed that the magnet school lottery process would work in one manner, state Education officials changed the process without notice or an opportunity to revise their applications.

I know Toni Fatone.  She spent more than a dozen years representing nursing home operators in the halls of state government.  The Education Department will be no match for a woman who got billions and billions for the nursing home industry at times when a lot of people wanted to cut funding.  She’s also gone up against the very tough health care union, 1199, and emerged without a smudge or a hair on her well-coifed head out of place.

That La Fatone is in a twist over the secrecy and patronizing tone of state officials is good news indeed for the Freedom of Information Act, which finds allies in the most unusual places.

Education Department officials, you’ve been warned.  She will change the way you do business.

Her press release is here:

Fatone Takes Action