It's My Money and I'll Cry if I Want to!

Note: This started to be an answer to the first comment on my previous blog but turned into much more so I decided to make it a blog.

I'm not surprised by the comments. First of all you must realize a few things. Vouchers cost more than you put in locally. Therefore no state can offer every child a voucher for the school of their choice. So that leaves an option of lowering the voucher amounts to provide a small amount for everyone or a decent tuition amount for some. Dollar for dollar your best bet is public schools. I think you would be hard pressed to find a private school that could educate your child/ren for what you pay for schools locally and state tax combined BUT....

I do believe that many changes are needed for the public school system to compete and be successful. The following comments I picked out from the above mentioned poll in the Arizona Capitol Times. The comments indicate to me that people are fed up with the take all you can attitude from employees while our kids continue to languish with mediocre and poor scores.

"I have a family member who is a teacher. I have seen first hand how the school administration is populated with cronies who care only about their salaries, and who only care about their student's education now that the students have to pass standardized tests. Why should a parent be "forced" to send their child to a school that cares primarily about the status quo, while education of the children is secondary. If teachers are hamstrung by administrators, parents should be able to send their children elsewhere. Like I said, many administrators care primarily about their paycheck - education doesn't even come in a close second. "
-- Ned Weatherby

"Parents put the child first in education. Educators put themselves first in the education of children. The parents should have vouchers to back up their selection of school educators."
-- Phyllis J. Clark

"Parental choice in school selection will do for education what consumer choice has done for all other facets of markets: increase quality and reduce cost. We all win except those beneficiaries entrenched in the status quo."
-- Kathy Gornik

"Freedom of choice fosters competition. Competition breeds excellence. So it is with every other aspect of our society. Why would we not want the same principles to benefit our children's education?"
-- Jim Ferrin

"Tax money is OUR money, not the government's. They take our money, and then tell us that our kids have to go to failing government schools. Lovely system... "
-- Tom Jenney


"Choice inevitably raises quality."
-- Steve Murphy


"School Choice should be a right of every parent....just as voting. My support of School Choice is my vote for who will lead my child's future."
-- Tracy Richardson-James


"The formulation of the question shows a bias. The money belongs to the tax payer he/she should be able to spend in in the way he/she sees fit. We need choice in education like we want it everywhere else. The public schools need competition...badly."
-- Steve Balog

Some of the themes I see here are waste, need for reform, and a voice that goes with our money. My favorite line out of this is “competition breeds excellence”.

Some questions we need to ask ourselves:
Why do administrative positions continue to be added as student population declines?
Why is so little being done at the state level to give all our kids an even playing field? I.e.: Mandating districts fund every aspect of special needs children with no funding to support these laws. Letting charter schools operate with sub standard scores then move to a new address and continue to operate under a new name with the same sub standard services. Oh wait, I know why that is. David Brennan and the likes of him are able to donate up to $30,000 to each and every one of our legislators. Impossible you say. There is a $10,000 cap on donations. Yes there is. But when you personally donate 10K and your wife donates 10K and your foundation donates 10K….Gee it’s not hard to figure out how failing charter schools continue to operate under the current law. I bet the couple of charter school operators that stole taxpayer money and fled the state really ticked ‘em off. They didn’t even get their cut. Or did they?

Competition can happen when we have an even playing field. The next time you see your state legislator and he or she tells you how much the state has increased funding to education in the last 8 years or so ask them this question: How much of that increase went to vouchers or charter schools and how much went to my public schools? If you can muddle through all the BS they feed you and figure out the answer, let me know. I know the answer. Verrry little.

I want us to be competitive. But when we are fighting the state and feds who force us to teach an archaic curriculum and focus on passing tests, instead of looking at what is going on globally in the market place, we will never be able to compete. The pocket lining will go on regardless of who we elect. But we need to elect people who will at least allow us to focus on the world we are becoming.

I hear about Japan, China and India surpassing us in education and our jobs going over seas. Right or wrong these are also countries that segregate their populations early in life. Usually by the age of 8 or 9. Performance is a ticket to a path down a vocational or labor career versus a higher education. A focus on the capabilities of the person rather than unrealistically thinking that everyone can- and has the desire to learn the same things as everyone else. There's a lesson for us all to learn from that.

Let the Games Begin

Much to my distress I have learned that board members cannot discuss their personal feelings about a particular levy while speaking as a board member. So when you see that I’m not telling you my feelings one way or another on this blog, it’s because of the title above. Kellie Patterson “Board Member” has sealed the deal. Someone suggested I start another blog and call it Kellie Patterson “Citizen”. Strangely enough I could then legally let it fly! I wonder if a lawyer was involved in writing that law? I doubt there are many people who don’t know how I feel about levies anyway. If you don’t- I hate them. That’s not to say I don’t vote yes on tax levies. I voted for the zoo and the metro parks. I used to regularly vote for school levies as well. But don’t ask me how I feel about the districts’ upcoming 4.75 mill renewal levy. I can’t tell you.

You can Molly Benedum or Barry Ganslein though. The links to the right will take you to their blogs, as well as a few other links you might find interesting. You might have noticed a name I haven’t talked about before. Barry Ganslein. He’s a dad here in Cuyahoga Falls who has decided to run this fall for one of the school board seats. Two positions will be up for grabs. I’d like to see Cuyahoga Falls have a balanced representation on the board. A village of 2000 people should not be the majority making the decisions for a population of 24,000. And please don’t start screaming at me that I’m anti-Silver Lake. Some of my best friends are village people. But even they see the unbalance on the board. The “well to do and reasonably well to do” cannot possibly understand, let alone make tax dollar decisions for the “scraping by and the barely scraping by”.

Molly and Barry live like the majority of people in Cuyahoga Falls do. And some in Silver Lake as well. I received and E-mail from a friend in Silver Lake. It said she talked to a fellow board member of mine about her concerns about tax levies and the fact she could no longer afford to fund the schools. The response was “I feel your pain”. My friend then went on to say that “I guess she felt my pain so much that she wrote a glowing letter to the Falls News endorsing it and voted yes to put it on the ballot”. This is what I’m talking about when I say a majority of the tax payers interests are not being considered on the current board. “I feel your pain” does not address the problem many of us face when the tax man shows up in February and August. I wonder if she feels the pain of my neighbor who lost his home of 53 years to Summit County.

I want everyone to know that I don’t want you to vote for Barry or Molly because I said so. I want you to do some home work (10 minutes a night!) read what they have to say, go to candidate forums, and most importantly, pay attention to how your money is being spent! Molly has the finances nailed down and Barry has a level of common sense and fairness that is rarely seen in people. If you think I like them because they think like me, you are sadly mistaken. In the various meetings and conversations we’ve had I have to say the only common thread is we want what’s best for kids and we want it equitably and ACAP. That’s my acronym for “as cheap as possible”. I figure I have to deal with all the education acronyms I might as well have one of my own. I know it’s only February but I want people to get to know the people behind the signs you see in yards.

I’ve learned one very important lesson in my last fourteen on the board. A majority makes all the decisions. All this district needs is a majority that is representative of the community they serve and has taxpayers best interests at heart.

Who? Me? Micromanage?

I didn’t get my Falls News this week so I don’t know if there was anything needing a rebuttal but there were some great articles in the Plain Dealer last week. Teacher salaries was a good one. One thing I have always said is that teachers make plenty of money. A study by the Manhattan Institute for Public Research says the same thing. And please don’t post that I don’t understand the amount of extra work and things that teachers must do at home. We all take work home. Of course the Ohio Education Association doesn’t agree with this report. Surprise, surprise. Teachers Vs. Unions touches on this issue of the NEA and local teacher unions is trying to do something about the teacher pay myth. Their main complaint is that teacher unions are not using teachers union dues wisely. No one has a problem paying an excellent teacher fair pay. It’s the crappy teachers with tenure that we are tired of supporting with tax dollars. It’s contracts slanted to benefit union officers with not one mention of student achievement that we are tired of funding. It the system of no accountability while the rest of us must prove ourselves to keep our jobs that we want to see change. But unions wont touch these issues with a ten foot pole. I was told to not even think about making student achievement with a merit pay system part of the new teachers contract. The strange thing is that good teachers do not seem to be afraid of an accountability system. But unions are. The same people who tell you that all children can learn are the same people who refuse to make it a contract issue.

Another great article was on the many superintendent job openings in the area. The part that struck me was the amount of money spent on superintendent searches. This is another area of extreme school district waste. Consultants, associations, contractors, etc. One of the great fears of the board majority during out CEO’s contract renewal scare was the cost of a superintendent search. It never even crossed their minds to look from with-in like Kent did. Duh! Besides, whatever happened to classified as in major newspapers, not to mention that new fangled internet thingy with places like Monster.com. It’s like every small claim must be made into a federal case. Another thing the article points out is that most local openings have had 10 or more applicants. Of course these are highly sought after jobs. It’s one of the few jobs you can hold and dole out favors and tax money and not be held accountable to the voters. One thing I have noticed since being involved in this school board business is this- generally a school employee is part of a school family. And I don’t mean that in the sense of “work” family. I mean if you are a school employee, chances are your wife, husband, brother, cousin, son-in-law, and spouses best friend are also school employees somewhere in some capacity.

I got a memo in my Friday board packet that suggests we try using the Ohio School Board Associations “consultant” for board relations to fill us in on what our roles are as board members. Along with this was a suggestion to read an article in the months issue of their magazine entitled “Is micro-management stalling your board?” Ironically this was the first article I read when I received my issue. Here’s the problem. The OSBA is staffed by former school administrators, not board members. We all know by now that administrators expect a board to approve their recommendations. Period. No ifs ands or buts. Recently across Ohio school board positions are being filled with concerned tax payers. Not the traditional levy cheerleaders. This has become a concern to the people spending your tax money. Yes OSBA is spending your tax money. We pay dues to belong. Here’s the part that kills me. We pay dues and get a magazine and various new letters. But the first thing you get from them is a list of consultants we can pay to use and a list of courses we can take for a fee. Now I get to the funny part of all this. I pushed for FREE federal mediators to come in and try to smooth this board rift we have and I quote our board president on this one “We need to learn how to get along on our own”. Now it seems someone wants to pay a buddy to try to help us understand our roles. I took the role course from OSBA. It basically goes like this: You pay a superintendent a lot of money to run your district. Let him do his job and do not interfere. If you interfere you are being unprofessional and difficult. What you promised the voter does not matter now. Do not question the super. Just realize that he knows best and blame the screwed up state funding for all the problems you face. Pay us $3000 - $8000 and we will send you your own tax spending personal trainer for more details. We’ll throw in a free Power Point presentation with every $5000 you spend. (Read this part really, really fast) Meals, mileage, and lodging not included in consulting fee but are expected to be paid in full. High end lodging only and valet parking must be included. Spa and pool desired but not required.

So let’s answer the question: Is micro-management stalling your board? Was I elected to be guided by the administration or the other way around? Is making suggestions to the administration on how I am told taxpayers want their money spent micro managing?

One last quickie. Make sure you check out the Plain Dealers' Regina Brett article on “The Homework Myth”. The book should be required reading for all teachers, parents, administrators and testing companies.

Yadda, Yadda, Yadda

I guess it’s feast or famine. There’s so much to talk about today I don’t know where to begin. I guess first I should give the Falls News some credit. Quite a few wonderful articles. Ok I am sooo biting my tongue regarding the Silver Lake trash can debate that I can hardly stand it. So I must clear up a few things. In CF when we go out of town, generally a neighbor will haul our cans back for us. In some instances we must pay a teenager for this task. Most of our out of town visitors’ realize that we produce trash and it requires pick up. Most people here bring their cans back within hours of pickup. I’m sure a few stern looks at the lake will take care of any slackers.

The article on Molly Benedum was great! I will admit I am one of her biggest supporters and very biased. I owe much of my understanding of district finances and inequities to Molly and her ability to make the confusing understandable. She has poured her heart and soul into sorting out school finance and what it takes to run a fiscally responsible and accountable school district. I’m glad she has decided to run again. This board needs someone who can get tax payers their moneys worth, yet still want what is best for kids. She has a long term investment in our district having graduated one already all the way down to one who hasn’t started school yet. She has already put 14 years in our district and has at least 15 years to go! Good luck Molly! I know you would make a wonderful addition to the Cuyahoga Falls Board of Education.

The article on the survey was great too. Ellin Walsh should get a raise if anyone over there at Record Publishing is listening. I need to ask the question: What are some people afraid of? Asking the community about their wants and needs in a survey does not mean you can or will provide every single thing that has a majority vote. But acknowledging that you want input and being able to explain why some things just aren’t possible is another way you can use a survey. But I think the main point is to gauge what the community at large wants and expects from our district and strive to offer all that we can with the resources these same people are willing to put in.

And I can’t avoid it any longer- The levy. I received an interesting Email. I guess at one of the meetings I was absent for a member was appointed to represent the board on the levy committee. But I wasn’t absent for any you say? Well I had to have been. Unless it was yet another one of those meetings I wasn’t invited to. But surely since that would be against the law….

Please stop calling me to complain about school closings or the lack of closings. I do not get to make this call. I just wear my PJ’s inside out and keep my fingers crossed like everybody else does. Why do some of you think the board actually makes decisions? We’re just told what’s best for everyone and expected to agree.