District Spam

This is from the comment section of this post:

For those of us on the various schools e-news lists, I must get 4 emails a day regarding this levy. They are now making it look like the principals are emailing us telling us how great the schools are. Looks at these two emails, one from Station and one from Hoffman. Look at all similar to you?

(email 1)
Dear Families:

Just a quick note to let you know that our district has had one of the finest starts to the school year that we have ever seen. Our teachers and staff have done a marvelous job and not a day goes by where I don’t see what a great job that is being done by our staff and professionals. I hope you have found the same and I am grateful to our parents, families and community for your part in helping our year get off to a great start.

Sincerely,

Shelli Miller

(email 2)
Dear Station Parents,

Just a quick note to let you know that we have had one of the finest starts to the school year that we have ever seen. I appreciate all the efforts of our wonderful students and families! Our teachers and staff have done a marvelous job and not a day goes by where I don’t see what a great job that is being done by our staff and professionals. I hope you have found the same and thank you for your part in helping our year get off to a great start.

Sincerely,

Bruce P. Stephanic

Another member of the community, after receiving the same email from two different schools, sent this via email:

Whose bright idea is it to send out these boilerplate emails? Seeing the exact same text from different principals makes this spam, not communication.

We truly hope someone from the district is reading this.

Whomever is advising you to do this as some kind of community outreach, you need to understand -- IT IS NOT WORKING. It is, bluntly, pissing people off. People's whose votes you need if you want to pass this levy.

We know this is all part of an outreach program to try and drum up support for an unpopular tax increase, but really, it's time to do that by having adult conversations.

Not by spamming people.

Not by stealing yard signs.

Not by giving heated responses (reported at the bottom of the article) to members of the public who dare challenge the board at a board meeting (and they wonder why people don't want to come address them...)

ForHilliardKids Endorses Justin Gardner for Hilliard City School Board

Many people have asked us who we are endorsing for the school board.  Today we are announcing that we  are endorsing Justin Gardner for one of the open positions.

Justin has repeatedly demonstrated one of the core tenets of what he believes -- openness and transparency -- by being the one who attends, and video records the HCSD board of education meetings.  He does this to ensure people who can't attend have an opportunity to see what is going on.

He, like us, believes that we can only fix the fiscal structural problems in the district by involving as many stake holders as possible.  We find it ironic that the district is willing to bring 150+ people together over the summer to discuss "athletics sustainability" but cannot, apparently, find any time to bring people together to discuss "district sustainability".

Like us, Justin is fed up with the way the district and the board of education manages our tax dollars.  He promises to work with everyone in community to find solutions to our money woes, something that other people on the board and running for the board have not shown an inclination to do.

So, if you are at all concerned with the way things are being run, please vote for Justin on November 8th.

Salaries and Issue 2

First off, let me make one thing about this post very clear up front.  While we've had several people contact us and ask us to make teacher salaries an issue in this levy campaign, the fact is that we have no problem with paying good salaries to good teachers.  So we are loathe to make an issue out of this.

That said, if you know a teacher (or other government employee) whom you don't believe is worth what they're being paid, go to the Buckeye Institute's website (http://buckeyeinstitute.org/getthefacts/), enter in their information, and read 'em and weep, as they say.

And now to the point of this post.

We have people supporting our campaign, and helping us get the right people elected to the school board who are also "no" voters on Issue 2 (i.e., they want to repeal SB5).

I hope that the following table of union EMPLOYEE salaries (not union members) makes people understand just why the unions are so desperate to overturn SB5.

Meeting at Jed's, Wednesday Oct 12th

We'll be hosting a meeting at Jed's (Mill Run) from 6:30pm on Wednesday.

Come share your views with us and discuss the next steps!

Propaganda

In a comment to an earlier posting, KD notes the increasing amount of propaganda being dispersed by the "other side" in the levy issue.

I think there's an obvious reason we're seeing this, and it just adds to our opinion that the district simply never listens to the taxpayers and the voters.

Back in May, the pro-levy folks ran a "stealth campaign" where they made no outside noise, no yard signs, no letters to the editor, etc.  Their goal was to make sure as few people knew about the levy as possible so that their supporters would show up and pass the tax increase.

They failed.  Miserably.

But not because not enough folks showed up to vote for the tax increase, but because the voters in the district didn't support the tax increase.

So now we are faced with the complete opposite.

Talk about swinging from one way to the other!  Instead of a stealth campaign, we now have an "in your face campaign" and, frankly, it doesn't resonate well with most people.  They see the cut list for what it is -- threats to get people to vote -- and they've had enough.

In the next posting we're going to look at some numbers that will shock you.  Numbers that should convince most folks that another tax increase is simply not the answer.

Does a Levy Really Affect Your Property Values?

It should come as no surprise that supporters of the upcoming levy on November 8th are already repeating the oft-stated mantra that if the levy fails, the value of your home (or business) will decline.  For those that pay attention to levy campaigns, this line is trotted out pretty much every time.

And let's face it; people who are voting for a tax increase need to justify the extra money. While we're all supportive of the kids, it's still a tax increase. So if we're going to justify voting for it, being able to do so by saying "the value of my house will go up" makes it easier to stomach.

Of course, the pro-levy side doesn't actually say that the value of your house will go up. Instead they say you need to vote for the levy to "protect your property values" and similar statements. It's people's desire to see the positive that makes them translate that into "your property value will go up."

I think it's time we put this to bed once and for all.

Without question, we have experienced the worst meltdown in housing in a very long time.  Certainly worse than the 1980s (which was caused by sky-high interest rates, and remember that today the rates are at all-time lows), and statistically worse than the Great Depression as well.

Yes, through all that, apparently if you live in Hilliard your house is now worth only 4.2% less than it was in 2005, which was arguably the height of the market.

Yet, apparently, if the levy fails, the value of your house will go down.

Really?

By how much?

I mean, if 4.2% is the drop for the worst housing crisis in living memory, how bad could a drop from a failed levy actually be?

And that's before we consider that passing the levy means higher real estate taxes, which tends to give people more cause for concern when purchasing a property than a lot of people realize.  (If it didn't, everyone would buy houses in Bexley, Upper Arlington and Dublin, and districts like Hilliard, Olentangy and Westerville wouldn't even get people looking...)

So let's face facts: voting down a levy has no real impact on your property value.  Nor does voting up a levy.

What matters is how good the education is that the children receive.

And anyone that thinks that a few cuts to non-core educational activities is somehow going to cause the teachers of the district to not continue to perform such a wonderful job every day in the classroom, well, that's an insult to those very same hard-working teachers.

I have full confidence in the teachers and other staff in the Hilliard City School District that no matter what happens on November 8th, they will continue to work hard and provide our children with the education they need and deserve.

After all, it's for the kids.

Right?

An Observation

Today, the following email was sent by the principal of Memorial Middle School to the parents of its students:

This school year the academic experiences your child has been offered have felt different than in years past.  With reductions across the district we are doing business differently.  On a district level, it saddens me that we have begun the school year with 40 fewer teaching and staff positions throughout the district due to budget cuts.  In our school alone, we have felt these losses in several ways.  The reallocation of staff has caused an increase in class size, especially in many of our advanced classes. Several classes in both the 7th and 8th grade have 30 more students.  This seriously hinders our efforts to provide more individualization and small group classroom instruction.  It also has seriously impacted our ability to provide needed interventions for students who may be struggling or achieving at higher academic levels.  The movement of technology staff and the loss of our media center aide have stretched our existing staff as we attempt to meet the 21st century learning skills of our students.  The inability to staff our In School Suspension room has limited our range of disciplinary consequences and given us fewer options to intervene with behavior issues.  Overall, we have fewer choices to work individually with students in many special situations.

First of all, let's address the fundamental issue here before we get into the observation.

The latest published five year forecast that I'm able to locate (which, interestingly isn't on the district website...) shows that the FY2012 budget expenditures will be greater than the FY2011 expenditures.

So while the principal is complaining about budget cuts, maybe his ire should be directed at where the district decided to spend the money instead, since it's not only spending the same dollars as last year, but more...

But enough of that. Let's move on to the observation.  The principal references the loss of the media center aide.  (Media Center = Glorified Library).  Apparently we need to pay more taxes for what are essentially librarians.

Meanwhile, the Columbus Metropolitan Library just took us for a significant amount of new taxes last year so it could continue its non-core functions of job-placement help, and ... homework centers.

May I posit a theory?

If both of these government entities actually concentrated on their core activities -- no more "media centers" in the schools, and no more "homework centers" in the libraries -- then maybe both of them could make do without constant demands from the taxpayers -- correction, the property owners -- of the district for more money?

Update: Looks like all the schools are sending out similar propaganda.  In fact, aside from highlighting what they have lost, the verbiage in the emails going out is exactly the same.  The high schools are complaining about the loss of a Hall Monitor.  Oh no!


We should also mention that "40 teaching & staff positions throughout the district" equates to less than two positions per school, assuming they're all in the schools (they're not; some were administration cuts).  If you consider the number of staff members in each of these schools, especially at the middle and high school levels, you'll recognize that the loss of two members of staff is a rather small number.