Editor:
The ink was barely dry on the state school grant award, when the school district and its consultants started asking for more taxes. We now have the district personnel, its guns-for-hire consultants, various public outreach pro-tax meetings and pro-tax mailers all paid for with our own tax dollars and aimed at convincing us to give them even more taxes! Nice move. The district is also supported by the local paper always ready to champion higher taxes. Who represents the taxpayers against these organized tax forces? No one, as usual.
If buildings mattered, big cities like Chicago and Washington DC would have the best schools, instead of the worst, because they have built some very fancy high schools. Kids taught in home schools or private and church schools usually have modest facilities, yet they test better than public schools. And, if buildings mattered, a business failing due to bad management could be miraculously saved just by moving to another building.
In fact, what goes on inside the building matters far more than the building itself. Our school district is an administrative failure as are its classroom policies. Test scores are dismal. The district mission statement talks about providing visionary leadership. Is that a joke? Dumping tax money into the Calkins building to provide a fancy building for the school bureaucracy and the $115,000-a-year superintendent was another failure. If completed, would it have helped kids in the classroom? No. The bureaucracy always takes care of itself first. It resists fundamental reform despite falling enrollment and bad results.
Yet, we get the same promises. Give us more money and things will get better. Rewards now, results later. Hope and change. We can fall for these tactics at our own peril. If the promises dont come true, do we get our money back? If so, they already owe us a big refund.
Taxpayers and parents need to demand fundamental top-to-bottom reform and improved performance. Dropping additional taxes into a bottomless pit will accomplish nothing, and rewarding bad results means more of the same in the future.
Steve Jennings
Pleasant View
Via email
Editors note: The school district is prohibited by law from spending taxpayer funds or using district property to advocate for passage of the proposed bond issue.