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Why
Don't We Ask the Schools Really Hard Questions?
In our city, the Public School system had a capital plan to build a bunch
of new schools. What they didn't anticipate was that people are moving
away from within the city limits. Guess the planners weren't too good
a projecting and subtracting. Or reality for that matter. The 'Burbs have
way better schools. Needless to say, the school system managed to wangle
a boatload of money from the taxpayers for these new school buildings.
In the end, they we so over budget that the school system decided to loan
$40 million to the boys over at the stadiums who would have been in the
red because they miscalculated the sales taxes that were supposed to pay
for our stadiums...public school prodigies no doubt....though our bean
counters at the schools aren't very good at percentages either. I wonder
what would have happend if they took that $40 million and put in a safe
investment. I bet they'd do better than $14 million on a 25 year loan....I
bet
City
schools agree to payment delay to help Hamilton County with budget
BY KIMBALL PERRY | ENQUIRER STAFF WRITER
Monday, November 6, 2006
Cincinnati Public Schools are giving up $40 million during the next
four years to get $54 million a generation from now - partly to help
out Hamilton County and its attempt to stave off a stadium deficit.
Cincinnati Public Schools will forego for four years the $10.5 million
it receives from the county as part of the 1996 agreement that was
part of Hamilton County building stadiums for the Bengals and Reds.
In exchange, the schools will receive $54 million on the back end
of the payments that were to expire in 2025 but now will expire in
2032.[read
on] |
CPS
hopes public will accept changes
BY JENNIFER MROZOWSKI | ENQUIRER STAFF WRITER
November 29, 2006
A day after Cincinnati Public Schools lopped 13 schools from its $1
billion construction plan, some school supporters say the district
should do immediate damage control to avoid losing more families who
are unhappy with the changes.
"Unless swift and effective action is taken to bring in stakeholders
and engage them in a conversation, then, indeed, we are a dying district
and the board has sealed its fate," said Sue Taylor, president
of the Cincinnati Federation of Teachers. [read
on] |
Anyway,
with this level of silliness a letter was in order.....
Dear
Editor of the Cincinnati Enquirer,
I recognize that as a community it is a public service to continue to
promote the public school system and I commend the Enquirer for doing
that - consistently. The one thing I never really see the Enquirer do
is ask the public school system the really hard questions, like, if you
are going to be building less of these fancy school buildings we see popping
up all over the city, are you going to give back the tax money you've
already taken? As a member of the Cincinnati community, I have never participated
in CPS. I went to Catholic schools. I homeschool my own. I pay some of
the highest taxes in the United states and I really fail to see why we
don't ask the public school system harder questions to verify that as
a community we are getting value for the dollars we spend on public education.
I think instead of continuing to promote the public school system as it
is, we ought to look at making it better by getting government out of
the business of schooling all together. A local paper, like the Enquirer
could take a stand like that and instead of continuing to promote status
quo, assist in making public education better. 10 years ago a member of
the homeschool community in Connecticut wrote to the local paper with
a very simple idea: What if parents controlled the schools...
If
Parents Controlled the Schools
The
Education Liberator Vol. 2, No. 4, May 1996
by Ned Vare
Editor's Note: Ned Vare has become a one-man
publicity machine for Separation in his town of Guilford, Conn.
"I include the idea of Separation in every letter and TV
program now," he says. The latter refers to programs he does
on Guilford's community access channel, which have made him something
of a local celebrity. "Community access TV is a great way
to get the word out about Separation. You should tell all of your
readers to look into it." Ned originally wrote the following
as a letter to the editor which appeared on March 13, 1996, in
the Shore Line Times of Guilford.
IF
PARENTS CONTROLLED the schools, would we...
-
Insist children learn the same things at the same time?
-
Create a bleak artificial environment and lock our kids in it
for years, knowing that most of what they learn is irrelevant
or wrong?
-
Allow them to have no standards, no goals, and to dumb down
the kids?
-
Allow our property to be confiscated if we didn't pay their
bigger bill each year?
-
Hire unionized teachers with binding arbitration who could vote
for their raises?
-
Let them give our kids mind-altering drugs (Ritalin) to control
behavior as insane asylums do?
-
Suspend the band and sports for a year to coerce ourselves to
vote for a tax increase?
-
Believe that 10 to 15 percent of our kids are "learning
disabled" when figures show only a 1 percent likelihood?
-
Allow our children's and our lives to be so dominated by school's
synthetic experience that there's no time left for real experiences?
-
Use standardized tests that have no education value and can
damage kids?
-
Use only "certified" staff when private schools have
no such restriction and avoid hiring them?
-
Assign 60 percent of every day to non-academic indoctrination
like "social values?"
-
Allow the state to dictate who can run our schools?
-
Let teachers use our children as shills for their pay raises?
- Pay
twice what private schools charge and get half the learning?
The answers are either no or hell no.
Parents are encouraged to relinquish our natural roles as educators.
Feeling guilty about that, we are easy prey for schools that demand
more taxes to raise our children badly. Educationists have learned
to hustle us, shake us down in a shell game for control of money
and our children's lives.
What's wrong here in my city is what is wrong everywhere —
school is a state monopoly that can neither educate effectively
nor inform the public honestly. To become responsive and accountable,
education needs to be separated from government. Otherwise, it will
continue to serve only itself and we will remain its slaves. |
This
article is copyrighted by the Alliance for the Separation of School
& State. Permission is granted to freely distribute this article
as long as this copyright notice is included in its entirety. |
Perhaps
The Enquirer could print this article and get a better dialogue going
regarding the sorry state of our public school system here in Cincinnati...
From
The Thinking Has Been Done For You File:
A Perfectly Ludicrous Idea From Our Pals at HSLDA
Recently,
homeschool blogger Dayrl
Colbranchi wrote a bit about a
perfectly ludicrous idea those guys over at HSLDA
are cooking up and that is an amendment to the US Constitution regarding
a parents right to home educate their kids. This based on the idea that
in Europe a court ruled that homeschooling is illegal in Germany for good
reasons.
The story,
Constitutional
amendment for homeschoolers? by Dr. Samuel Blumenfeld and reported
by Worldnet Daily, clearly was not researched well. Now, IANAL (I Am Not
A Lawyer), this is Typical fear mongering , or ignorance by the "right"
and our pals over there at HSLDA.
We are quite safe from those evil "liberals". As Dayrl
illustrates so beautifully,Article VI, Paragraph 2 of the United States
Constitution is known as the Supremacy
Clause:
(from Wikipedia
and beyond...)
"In 1957 the United States Supreme Court explicitly ruled in /Reid
v. Covert that the Bill of Rights cannot be abrogated by agreements with
foreign powers and that such agreements cannot extend the powers of Congress
beyond those permitted by the Constitution."
So much for that dang liberal Supreme court. Back then we were afraid
of Communists. Now it's them "liberals".
More From
The Thinking Has Been Done For You File:
Recently
our local support newsletter (a non-political and nondenominational group)
had an endorsement for one of the activities HSLDA had been "busy"
with. I responded to the editor with the following.
Dear
Newsletter Editor,
There are many in the homeschool community who are very offended
by HSLDA. I was shocked to see them endorsed in our last newsletter.
I am, as are many people in the local and National homeschool community,
very concerned abouth their activities having a very damaging and
long term effect on homeschooling now and in the future. So I am
submitting the following:Homeschoolers are Political Activists.
We Don’t Need Representation.
Submitted by Amy Cortez, editor The Eclectic
Telegraph
I was unaware that it was OK to submit endorsements for political
groups in our support newsletter, so I am submitting the following
ideas and items.
As homeshoolers, we are already making a political statement by
bravely stepping outside the American “Norm” and home
educating our children. As a group, we could have awesome power
in Washington. But we are a diverse group and though representation
in Washington is a grand idea, there are many homeschoolers who
do not want that, yet that is what HSLDA continues to do, represent
“all homeschoolers”. Though it could be perceived that
this political group does good for all homeschoolers, there is an
agenda with this group that in the end may end up hurting our freedoms
as parents and our freedoms to homeschool. The letter below, published
in many places on the Internet describes one of the activities HSLDA
has been busy promoting, through a variety of messages, mostly wrapped
in scare tactics. There are many people in the local and National
homeschool community who are very concerned about the activities
HSLDA participates in and thus that concern has turned into a grassroots
movement to inform people about the agendas of HSLDA. Below is the
website that follows all of the agendas that HSLDA promotes, many
I have found are harmful to our freedoms as parents and as homeschoolers:
An open letter to HSLDA's membership:
I have always felt that HSLDA has a right to exist, and if that's
what you want to spend your money on, I'm happy you have the financial
means to do so. However, recent events have caused me to re-think
my position. I was wrong to think that because I was not a member
HSLDA did not affect me.
When HSLDA re-introduced their HoNDA legislation in the US House
and Senate, they added a section related to the recruitment and
enlistment of homeschool graduates to it. When it appeared HoNDA
was stalled in committee they requested Senator Rick Santorum of
PA to add a section that would give the Secretary of Defense the
authority to identify for the purposes of recruitment and enlistment
homeschool graduates to The National Defense Authorization Act for
Fiscal Year 2006.
Scott Somerville of HSLDA recently wrote, IF we fail in our effort
to get section 522 signed into law, we'll try something else, but
we won't give up. It's been seven years already; it may be seven
more years before we feel like homeschool grads have a level path
to military service.
There is a lot to think about in those two arrogant sentences. HSLDA
will not give up trying to push federal legislation into law that
affects MY child. That's personal. That has nothing to do with a
Christian's right to homeschool their children, something I would
be first in line to protect. It's an attempt to target my child
for recruitment and enlistment in the United States Armed Forces
by a group of self-appointed, fundamentalist Christians pursuing
an agenda they have determined to be part of their personal religion.
Of course, they have a right, as individual Americans and as a lobbying
organization, to do so. But I also have a right - as well as a responsibility
- to protect my child from overly zealous political actions. That
is the reason we have ELECTED representation, so the people can
decide whether they want their children targeted by military recruiters
or not. In a representative government, it's not the purview of
a handful of zealots to make any decision for my family.
Section 522 does not delineate between 'homeschool students' and
'homeschool students whose parents are members of HSLDA.' This is
personal and oversteps the bounds of representing a paid membership
by an advocacy organization. It will affect every homeschool student/family
in America, HSLDA member or not.
HSLDA could not operate without the dues of its membership. It is
what pays the salaries, builds the buildings, and -- yes -- funds
the lobbying. Membership dues are funding the effort to identify
for purposes of recruitment and enlistment MY child. Membership
dues are funding the proposal which will give the United States
Secretary of Defense the authorization to define what a homeschool
graduate is. The members of HSLDA are ultimately responsible for
the actions HSLDA and its paid agents take.
I cannot influence HSLDA decisions because I am not a member, so
I have to plead my case to the members. Therefore, I do not think
it unreasonable to respectfully request HSLDA's members accept responsibility
for the actions of their paid representatives and use their checkbooks
to take back the power they have ceded to HSLDA. YOU have the power.
I know many of you, and I know you are good, responsible parents
who will do the right thing. Thank you.
Mary McCarthy
Read more about HONDA at: http://homeschoolingislegal.info/defense/
Read about the concerns many have about HSLDA at http://homeschoolingislegal.info/ |
See
you next Month -- OldSage
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Good
judgment comes from the experiences gained when exercising bad judgment.
