Wanda did you lie to the taxpayers? Washington Township School Board candidate, Wanda Roddy, has some 'splain' to do!

Washington Township school board candidate, Wanda Roddy, will not defend questions regarding the accuracy of her resume.

She still refuses to answer the following questions. Why is she hiding?

Did Wanda lie in her written biographic information to the Indianapolis Star? Did she lie in the written information she furnished the PAC (Friends of Washington Township Schools) that recruited her?

Wanda said to Indy Star, “
I am the founder and director of a national award-winning, school-based program to help at-risk teens graduate from North Central and other area high schools.” She made a similar statement to Friends of Washington Township Schools PAC.

According to page 3 of a document from the Health & Hospital Corporation “Future Promises – A Program for Pregnant and Parenting Teens,” Wanda Spann Roddy “(…) has overseen all administrative and programmatic aspects of this program since its inception in 1997.”

The problem is that the North Central High School program predates Wanda’s involvement and was she was not the founder of the North Central program. Here are the facts that Wanda does not want to answer:

The North Central High School teen parenting program was actually started in 1991 by the North Central PTO, when its president wrote a grant request to fund the program.
The Health Foundation of Greater Indianapolis (317-630-1805) favorably responded to the grant request with funds of over $25,000. Betty Wilson remains the president of that organization.

There are other long-running teen parenting programs in Indianapolis. These include the Children Bureau’s Vivian Smith House. However, by all accounts, the North Central program was the first to be incorporated into a school system.

Several years later, in about 1999, Wanda Spann Roddy became a part-time employee of the IU Shalom Center. There she looked into teen parenting programs, including the existing North Central program. Her part-time job duties included continuing a teen pregnancy project that had started in 1997, prior to her employment at IU Shalom.

In 2002, Ms. Spann Roddy used her teen parenting knowledge to gain full-time employment with the Health & Hospital Corporation of Marion County. She now supervises that program.

MSD Washington Township and its PTO was the founder of the first Indiana teen parenting program to be incorporated into a school system. Ms. Spann Roddy used the earlier efforts of others to further her career. She continues to deny them credit for their efforts. The evidence indicates that Ms. Spann Roddy is incorrect in self-describing herself as the “founder” of the North Central teen parenting program. She has refused to respond and set the record straight.

You may recall that “Watergate” happened months prior to the re-election of Richard Nixon. The facts were slow in coming to light. Nixon and his staff stalled. We all know the outcome. Both Ms. Spann Roddy and Friends of Washington Township Schools PAC have continued to stall and avoided directly responding to these charges. The school board election is in a week. But these issues will not go away and, over time, the truth of her record could prove even more damaging.

Maybe you will have better luck learning the truth.