Buying an Alcoholic a Drink
I can't recall ever opposing a school tax levy, so it pains me to draw this one. But the current proposal is so draconian for homeowners, and school officials have so blatantly failed to manage the budget effectively, that I needed to get this off my chest.
There, I said it.
posted by Jim Borgman at 3:42 PM
14 Comments:
at 10/29/07, 5:49 PM 
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at 10/29/07, 9:48 PM 
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at 10/30/07, 1:43 PM 
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at 10/30/07, 3:17 PM 
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at 10/31/07, 7:34 AM 
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at 10/31/07, 7:55 AM 
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at 10/31/07, 8:11 AM 
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at 10/31/07, 9:02 AM 
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at 10/31/07, 11:44 AM 
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at 10/31/07, 12:09 PM 
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at 11/2/07, 1:29 PM 
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at 11/2/07, 3:20 PM 
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at 11/18/07, 4:31 PM 
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at 11/19/07, 12:30 PM 
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Post a Comment*You hit the nail on the head Mr. Borgman.
Being a proud conservative Republican, I don't agree with very often.
Couldn't you have Rosa in there?
It pains everyone that have the same feelings that you do. Schools are the future to our city. The CPS have gone through Directors like the drunk in your cartoon goes through drinks. There is no vision or fore thought. They asked for a levy to build schools they got it. Now they want the public to pass a levy to bale them out of a budget that was mismanaged.
If we in the private sector would produce a product at the cost they do, we would all be pulling up a bar stool next to your cartoon character. None of us would have a job.
If this levy fails, it is not a vote against Cincinnati Public Schools it would be a vote against the leadership and the job they have performed. But I am sure they would not see it that way. How could they through the drunken fog that they have.
I agree! Rosa Blackwell needs to be the drunk in the bar. She took over Hughes High School my senior year and you couldn't have made the school any worse if you'd bolted the chairs to the ceilings and put the lights on the floors. She even tried to redesign our graduation proceedings 4 hours before they were to start. And someone put her in charge of an entire school system? No wonder Aiken only sees 18% graduation rates and people flee the city. CPS was pretty good when I was growing up, but apparently I got out while the getting was good. Its a crying shame.
The Enquirer reports that the AVERAGE teacher salary is $65,000 in CPS. That doesn't count administrators/principals, etc., just teachers.
Those salaries are based upon a 39 week work year, projected to 52 weeks that would be about $86,600.
So much for the myth of low pay for educators being a major part of the problem.
How can it be that Aiken High School, which is NOT an inner-city school has a completion rate of 18%?
How can it be that the Wyoming School district which boarders on Cincinnati has a completion rate of near 100% and probably 90% of the graduates from the district go on to college.
How can it be that the Maderia Schooll district which boarders on the Cincinnati district also can boast a near 100% completion rate?
CINCINNATI PUBLIC SCHOOLS should return to the values of 1955. This would be quite a culture shock for the students, but it would work.
Cincinnati Public schools had approximately 125,000 students in the 1950s, and now has 33,000.
And to think - - the desegregation suit filed in the 1970s initially included the 19 suburban districts. Can you imagine if court ordered busing came to the Cincinnati public schools in the 1970s and included all of the suburban schools.
The results would have been that the school districts in Butler, Warren, Clerimont, Campbell, Boone and Kenton Counties would be quite overcrowded.
There are many complicated (social) and not-so-complicated (poor management) reasons for the problesm in CPS.
But it has become increasingly clear, that lack of funding is not one of the problems.
The levy is all about funding.
It is only logical to vaote "No."
Anon 7:34 (of course you post anonymously), what do you suggest? Firing all the teachers and going to a volunteer-based system? I absolutely HATE when people say teachers make too much money. It's ridiculous. Public school teachers hold one of the most important jobs in our society, and one that often has trouble being filled, especially in math and science, because they pay is so much higher in the private sector. Good teachers require good pay.
To 9:02-
Unless you are the REAL Barry Larkin, how are you any different than the anons?
I didn't see where the poster said anything about teachers "making too much money," as you charge.
They simply were pointing out that teacher's pay was NOT an excuse for CPS poor performance.
Who is saying teachers are overpaid? I think it is clear, though, that in Cincinnati they are paid enough. The bigger problem is the union has such a stranglehold on the teachers contracts that we can't implement a reasonable performance based salary.
CPS set this levy up to fail. If they'd simply come to us to renew the 5 mil operating levy, even with a modest increase, we would have passed it. Instead they ask us to nearly double the existing operating levy and, rather than give us a real reason, simply keep crying that if the levy doesn't pass they'll be in trouble.
The whole system needs to be overhauled. No one has done right by this district in decades.
It troubles me how much misinformation is out there about this levy. A 5 mil levy would only fund half of what is needed. It will take 9.75 mils (actually 10) to raise the same amount of money, adjusted for inflation, as the 2000 levy.
Everyone keeps yammering about mismanaged funds - but where? How could it be mismanaged if the district stretched the levy out twice as long as usual? That speaks of fiscal responsibility, not spendthrift habits.
Sure, there have been some things done wrong. But show me an organization serving thousands of people which doesn't have some things that could have been done better.
The irony is that the punishment will fall most heavily on the children in the public schools. When the money coming into the district drops, the money going out to charter schools,private school vouchers, and parochial school benefits stays the same. Public school children will have to absorb the entire cut. And they're the kids who need the most.
So don't tell me this is some vote for fiscal austerity. This is a vote for angry people to feel better. And the anger stems from a lot of different sources that have nothing to do with the Board, the Administration, or CPS in general.
And Mr. Borgman, when Walnut Hills feels the cuts just as much as the other schools (and perhaps more since it has farther to fall), will you feel bad about the part you played in enabling Cincinnatians to take out their anger on CPS? Or will you just pull your child out and place her in a private school. Time will tell.
If you feel the union is underrepresented, and that teachers need more control, salary, and benefits, then be sure to vote for Bolton, Nelms, and Flannery. Their campaigns are being funded by the union in an attempt to unseat Williams. They know that as a teacher Bolton will be automatically sympathetic to teachers' complaints. And Flannery and Nelms are so clueless they'll follow her lead.
one word, ENRON
bush is a drunk too
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