Category: Bill Cunningham

So What are you Going to Do About it? Sex, Money and Public Schools

In the face of such scandals as what is being dealt with currently at the Mason School System, and one month ago at the Lakota School System, thousands of rank and file participants within the teachers union crave to put these episodes of unpleasantness behind them. The worst thing in their eyes is for public debate to occur beyond a two-day news cycle. If a story lingers for too long, the value for the service they want to offer diminishes in the eyes of the taxpayer.

But that’s the real problem, isn’t it? For decades public debate has been limited and it was easy for spin doctors and spokesman to proclaim that “it’s just sex, these things happen in every workplace. We’re taking precautions.”

The downfall of those status quo protectionists however is technology. No longer can a spokesman tell a group of friendly reporters a controlled diatribe of manipulation intended to diffuse a crisis till it falls from people’s minds as their busy lives consume commitment to a righteous cause. Now with text messaging, and blog sites like this one, information moves freely without the control mechanism of political machines, and is why the FCC is pushing Net Neutrality.

That’s why what happened on 700 WLW February 4th of 2011 was unique as a story broke on that station throughout the day preceding a major indictment from a prosecutor’s office. It started with Sharon Poe speaking about the crises with Doc Thompson and ended 9 hours later after the indictments were announced and attorneys started to chime in with legal discussion. The story is basically this, a teacher Stacy Schuler of the Mason School System was indicted for 16 counts of sexual battery with 5 students. She is also involved in a sexual way with a separate issue involving the assistant principal George Coates. George called in his resignation on February 2, 2011. The story arch was fascinating and is captured in the video below. It is recommended that you activate the video and finish this article while listening if you are fortunate enough to be able to do both. If not, then give yourself some time. It’s a video that is 2 hours and 7 minutes long but condenses 9 hours of radio news breaking evolution over the day and is a compelling story in itself. So turn off the TV and let the video play and enjoy the theater of the mind without commercial interruption for the drama is as good if not better than any movie available to rent.

Sharon (the woman in the interview) and I have known, as most in the Mason community and in neighboring Lakota have known for some time that serious sexual allocations were transpiring in Mason. In fact I have the list of many improprieties, most of them taking place with consenting adults within the system and not directly effecting students. But the number and rank of the participants is alarming for any workplace. This teacher is just the most obvious participant because she got caught. Her actions since they involved students that posted information on Facebook and other online forums could not be quieted by the spin doctors and the info got out into the community.

Check these links for information on all the soap opera issues going on in Mason. There are several articles on those pages. Scroll down to the “Sex and Drugs for All” School Districts section to read the information. This information was published by Charles Foster Kane.

Here are the links:

http://thecincinnatusstandard.com/Whistleblower_Newswire_Friday_February_4_2011.mht
http://thecincinnatusstandard.com/Whistleblower_Newswire_Thursday_February_3_2011.mht
http://thecincinnatusstandard.com/Whistleblower_Newswire_Wednesday_February_2_2011.mht

Home for Kane’s work can be found here: http://www.thecincinnatusstandard.com/The_Whistleblower_Newswire.html

Scott Sloan came on after Sharon and had been working with the same information we all had but Scott had the guts to act on it. After he went off the air with Doc, a caller from Mason came on and defended the district and proclaimed that WLW was behind on the story and it wasn’t a big deal. WLW was in fact the only news organization running with the story. All the other outlets were waiting for the indictment to come down and reacted predictably once the story broke. That particular caller reflected a huge part of the population that just doesn’t want to deal with bad news.

It is because of people like the caller that these problems in schools have continued. They empower the perpetuation of illicit behavior in public institutions with the same careless abandon that a large portion of the population accepted the seductress explanations from former President Clinton.

The target audience of complacency which Clinton, Obama and teachers unions, along with others, speak to know what they’re doing. They hope to solicit more recruits to their thinking by encouraging public drunkenness, sexual exploits and other forms of decadent behavior because in such personalities are future apologists that won’t have the courage or fortitude to confront difficult issues when they present themselves. And on the backs of such weak souls were built the corruption we are finding in public education. In fact, as I was writing this article I received this comment from a reader which fits in the category just discussed.

Author : thompson (IP: 72.173.182.116 , 72-173-182-116.cust.wildblue.net)
URL :
Whois : http://whois.arin.net/rest/ip/72.173.182.116
Comment:
you’re nuts. Salaries have nothing do to with morality. And for the record, teaching salaries are NOT I sugges you collect your thoughts before you put them out there to be read. Hope I don’t stumble onto anything else you rant, I mean write.

That is a guy that doesn’t see how things connect. The misspellings are because that’s how he wrote it, I duplicated it the way I received it. And to respond to that guy, being nuts is to take things at face value, like he obviously does.

You see, it’s not just the sex that is going on with some of the teachers, and administrators. Or principles and assistants that think it’s acceptable to send naked pictures of themselves to co-workers on computers owned by the school. Or child pornography obsessed teachers taking pictures of kids with their shirts off in the classroom. This is about the wholesome advertising of public education services to the community to justify extraordinarily high salaries negotiated by public sector unions. It’s like most things in life, in the end it’s about money.

During the levy campaign back in September after I had made a couple of appearances on WLW the Pro Lakota Campaign had flooded the station with protest letters and accused the station of being disingenuous to teachers and rationalized my questing of the amount of wages being imposed on our community budget as hateful. Their assertion is that because of their educational background and the fact that many of them have master’s degrees that they are better positioned to teach our children and that spending more and more money on public education will yield increased results. Or in the case of Lakota and Mason, it was to keep those districts excellent by approving a tax levy on our properties. We were told, “Wouldn’t you spend just 20 bucks a month to keep your kids safe.”

However, what we are finding is that these people in public positions are just as human as anybody. And these teachers and administrators in these schools are no more qualified to raise our children than our average citizens. This whole issue comes back to the topic of wages and whether or not public education officials should be paid so much and communities should be required to supported collective bargaining agreements.

My day on this historic date started as one of my employees told me about his experience of dropping off his son at Lakota because of the busing cuts. Lakota had stopped using police to guide traffic at the entrance my employee was using as a drop off. Instead a school official named by his son as an assistant principal was directing traffic. That assistant audaciously knocked on my employee’s window and told him to use a different entrance. “You can’t pull in that lot. You have to go to the other side.”

My employee told him that they had a paid parking spot in that particular lot and he had a right to be where he was.

The assistant principal directing traffic told him again to use the other lot.

My employee asked what he was supposed to do about his paid lot, the assistant said; “you should have passed the levy.”

I have instance upon instance given to me about principles at Lakota taking active roles in creating an environment of hostility that if they occurred in my work place, I’d be obligated to address the issue before the behavior corrupted my workforce, but not in public education. They live by different rules than the rest of us. And that becomes evident when you get to know some of them.

That’s why the sex scandals in Mason are important. Even if the teacher is innocent of all 16 counts we know that there is inappropriate behavior that went on between the teacher and the assistant principal at a minimum. As a society do we put up with it, because the taxpayers are the boss in this situation? Or do we just look away? Do we just approve the next levy while the bloated, corrupt monster of public education lingers on under collective bargaining agreements negotiated under school board members trained by the OSBA to carry out to the letter policies created by the teachers unions which are bankrupting communities?

I remember specifically when Lakota threatened to go on strike in 2008. What was their sticking point? Wages. They tried the same general tactic floating the strike word around back in March of 2010. It wasn’t about kids. It was money. Watch that video here. They got what they wanted. It didn’t matter to them if the community could afford it or not.

For those that don’t want to discuss the issue of cost and whether we get the value for the money we spend, I put the blame squarely on your shoulders for the current state of things, public education being just one, but very costly issue. When I hear stories like this sex case, and again, I know there is a lot more to the story which will be revealed, I get angry. I can’t understand why stories like this wouldn’t make people angry. But I also tend to view the world from the perspective of an employer. People that just want to punch their time card and cruise through life tend to look the other way when trouble comes or when taxes are too high and harming the community.

The underlining issue is arrogance. These Mason school employees that are currently in trouble have so little appreciation and respect for their community and where the money comes from that supplies their income that they participate in these reckless sexual activities. That behavior speaks volumes of how public education views the public they serve and it comes out when they are pressed.

The ultimate audacity is revealed in the Mason spokesman Tracy Carson when she was on with Tracy Jones and Scott Sloan putting on a happy face for the Mason District on January 26th, the same day that Stacy Schuler was put on leave. No doubt Mrs. Carson will say that she didn’t know about the teachers coming legal trouble, but what kind of spokesman wouldn’t know about this story, because I was hearing about it, and it’s not even my job to know. I find it hard to believe Tracy didn’t know. The story was out well before implementing the leave and if the spokesman knew anything about what was happening in the school, she’d know about this teacher, because everyone else did.

Yet, listen to her words on WLW. Do you think she actually thought the Mason school system could contain this story? Depending on how you answer that question will determine your ability to think critically. Because the bet from these people is this, you can’t think critically even when the evidence is right in front of you.

So, what are you going to do about it?

Rich Hoffman
http://twitter.com/#!/overmanwarrior
www.overmanwarrior.com

Sex, Murder, Teachers, and the Taxpayer: Ryan Widmer and the Mason Teacher

A Mason assistant principal resigns while Ryan Widmer proceeds through his third murder trail and a Mason Teacher is under police investigation all within Warren County.

While Jennifer Crew testified against Ryan Widmer, Mason’s High School Assistant Principle resigned his position. Read the article below while you listen to the testimony of Jennifer Crew as reported by Bill Cunningham. Click here:

The rest of this story unified in its nature and occurrence in the same county proceeds in this article from the Cincinnati Enquirer, February 2, 2011

MASON – An assistant principal at Mason High School who was recently placed on paid administrative leave has submitted his resignation from the Warren County district.

George Coates, a nine-year veteran of Mason Schools who makes $88,000 a year, was placed on leave last week for undisclosed reasons, Mason officials said.

Though Coates’ leave began days after a Mason High School teacher – Stacey Shuler – was also placed on leave and is being investigated by Mason Police for inappropriate e-mails, Coates was not part of that investigation.
Coates cited “personal reasons” with his last day of work being Feb. 28. He was unavailable for comment.

What do the stories of George Coates and the relationship that will be revealed with Stacy Schuler the Physical Education teacher also at the High School have in common with Ryan Widmer? Sex

SEX, SEX, and more Sex!

Listen to Doc Thompson discuss the endemic problem that is rampant all over the country involving teachers that seem enticed by young students. If there is any lesson to be learned, it’s that teachers that we’re paying extraordinary amounts of money cannot seem to overcome their all too human frailties. This issue in Mason is going to be very disappointing as the facts percolate to the surface. Lakota just recently had its own embarrassing scandal in the Ryan Fahrenkemp case involving the FBI and that teacher’s obsession with child pornography. These cases in Mason, and Lakota probably have more to do with why those two districts elected not to attempt another levy until these stories fade from people’s minds.

 

George Coates, high school assistant principal made $85,311 in 2010 with 20 days vacation, full retirement and Medicare paid. Stacy Schuler, Physical Ed teacher at High School made $58,520.00 in 2010 and worked 185 days. (These numbers from Buckeye Institute website.) Why would these individuals risk these well-paying jobs to indulge in “inappropriate” behavior?

Well, ask Ryan Widmer who wanted to have a three-way with his wife so badly that he ruined their young marriage. Widmer obviously wasn’t ready to be married and was very immature in his thinking, having an adulterous relationship even so early in his marriage. Sounds like they were having normal marriage issues, but his sexual perversions were too much for his wife to forgive, and he couldn’t handle the rejection of her leaving, so bad things happened when their tempers got away from them.

The reason this Widmer case is so compelling to so many people is that Ryan sitting on that stand reveals the fool in many people that actually let their primal energy, sexual, and predatory, get away from them. Many people fear in themselves the same uncontrolled passions, but most will never completely release to the extremes that Widmer did.

What all this has in common is this, people that take for granted the fortunes in their lives which come their way are all too tempted to abuse those fortunes. Sounds like Ryan Widmer took his wife for granted and thought he could “nudge” her into fulfilling some of his fantasies that were obviously sexual. And these teachers, they are well paid, protected by powerful unions, those nasty little voices that call out from the deep recesses of their minds have the luxury of time and finance to act on their fantasies unlike other people who work from pay check to pay check and don’t have the spare time or the means to embark on “sexual deviancy.” Ryan Fahrenkemp resigned from Lakota in August when it became obvious to him that he was going down in flames, and now George Coates is fleeing the scene of the crime hoping to avoid the fall-out from the case with Stacy Schuler when her investigation is revealed. These stories have in common varying degrees of human fault anchored in sexual exploration and abuse of their specific powers.

Then there is Jennifer Crew in this whole, seemingly unconnected soap opera of warped minds and freaks. Jennifer cringed in her chair during cross-examination and revealed much about her true motif in this trial. There is no doubt that Widmer called her, sent her texts as he did with several other women when he thought she was an attractive woman, and could use his celebrity status to fulfill the fantasies he couldn’t get from his deceased wife. But once he found out that Jennifer was not very attractive, he cut off the relationship. And Jennifer wanting revenge let out some of what Ryan had told her. But her mind took liberties with some of those truths because her own lustful fantasies of being held by a killer would go unfulfilled, and it’s likely that only somewhere deep inside her own mind does the truth reside. Even loved ones near her will want to see everything in her motives but the truth.

The mind is a strange arena. Be careful what you allow in it because the ramifications can lead to various degrees of misery and human decay. That’s what all these stories have in common, human decay of the mind and that they are happening in Warren County, Ohio.

Oh, and for those that think I am making a distant connection here, and that this texting issue at Mason is a new and isolated issue regarding administrative abuses at Mason? No. Check out this video from way back in 2007, which is a precursor to the story that is about to explode upon the Mason School District scene.


It doesn’t matter to me if it’s a teacher, or a murder, if the personalities are up to no good; they deserve to be called out for their bad behavior. The Widmer trial will cost taxpayers over $50K, and I already told you what those two Mason employees cost the residents of Mason. Their bad behavior ultimately cost our society, because they chose to engage in that bad behavior without any respect for the taxpayers that end up having to pick up the mess in their wakes. They deserve the anger that is unleashed upon them.

Rich Hoffman
http://twitter.com/#!/overmanwarrior
www.overmanwarrior.com

Governor John Kasich is not being “Sensitive”

Special interests are already salivating to have a crack at Governor Kasich’s defenses, quickly attacking his staff for their lack of “diversity.”

Diversity in “progressive” terminology means “no white straight people who are men.” But for the rest of us, diversity means anybody, of any gender, sex, or nationality. Yet the illness of progressivism muddies the mind so that common sense can’t be found. Evidence of that behavior can be found from Dave in the below blog post at the Progress Ohio website. Read the whole article at the link. A small portion of it is included below.

http://www.progressohio.org/blog/2011/01/tell-governor-kasich-gay-rights-are-civil-rights.html

Tell Governor Kasich Gay Rights are Civil Rights!
By Dave on January 28, 2011 12:18 PM

“When the governor acknowledges them [gays] as a minority group, which they are not, you’re also saying to them that their behavior is OK. And it’s NOT OK to engage in this type of behavior when it’s gonna cause you possibly to die from AIDS.”

– Phil Burress, Citizens for Community Values

With those short sentences, Citizens for Community Values, a group that endorsed John Kasich for governor, proved that bigotry still exists in the public square. They oppose any protections for LGBT workers and made outrageous, inaccurate statements that played on radio stations across Ohio on Tuesday.

The irony is that Governor John Kasich has already found a way to deny state workers basic rights they had under Gov. Ted Strickland. Last week, Kasich signed a “non-discrimination” Executive Order and purposely removed ‘Gender Identity’ from the employment protections, despite promises that he would keep those protections during his campaign.

Even better than this little diatribe of infantile rendering of law, listen to Doc Thompson confront two of the Governor’s attackers on his show at 700 WLW.

The interviews aren’t intended to protect John Kasich. When Doc interviewed a radical socialist organizing the Defend Ohio Rally a few weeks ago, (you can hear that interview too) Doc agreed with the socialist when the activist criticized the amount of money the Governor was paying members of his cabinet. So as would be the tendency of progressives, not everyone follows “bullet point” politics as they do, where they follow without question the rhetoric of their “leaders.”

The people I know, myself included don’t follow leaders, so we can criticize public officials and still support aspects of their political platforms.

Most progressives that I know think the world is some tribal council where a tribe leader tells the whole village how to behave. Wasn’t it Hillary Clinton that said “it takes a village?”

The goal behind the attacks on Kasich is to put him on a defensive so these radical groups can gain some form of control of the Governor’s behavior. Because Kasich could never make those radical types happy unless he ignored “qualified white men” and hired blacks, Asians, and homosexuals, and sadly a lot of politicians actually cave under that type of pressure.

I find it ironic that when Ken Blackwell ran for governor against the white Ted Strickland none of these progressives stood behind Ken. Ken was a very good candidate for governor. I was ready to support him. I would have helped with his campaign in less than a second. When I think of Ken it NEVER occurs to me that he’s a black man. But he’s a smart guy, and I’d vote for him any day.

But to assign personnel because they are “gay” or a “woman” or of some exotic nationality is to actually discriminate against people!

The facts of the matter are that none of this is about “equal rights.” It’s about control, power, manipulation, and turning the minds of the American people so they get dizzy and look to a progressive leader for clarification.

So a note to progressives, the people of Ohio did not send Kasich to the governorship of this state to be a lap dog to anybody. Everyone, including myself, may not like everything he does as a person or as a governor. But it’s expected of him to balance the budget and does the work of the people of Ohio without concern for his political future and to let the chips fall where they may with regard to all the weak-kneed emo’s that seek to further undermine our great republic.

Want to hear from Kasich himself, click here for an interview.

Rich Hoffman
http://twitter.com/#!/overmanwarrior
www.overmanwarrior.com

Bulldog and the Streetcar

Streetcar of no desire update:

Bulldog Nation did a very nice bit of reporting into the streetcar issues surrounding the planned project due for construction in downtown Cincinnati. It’s well worth watching.

For those of you that don’t know who the “Bulldog” is, he’s Eric Deters, local attorney and part-time WLW host. He’s a passionate guy that I enjoy quite a bit. If the world had more people like Eric, we wouldn’t have too many problems in the country.

American’s don’t always have to agree. But American’s do need to care in order for our republic to work, and no one can accuse The Bulldog of not caring.

Now, because he is passionate, and I can relate, he has plenty of enemies. So for those of you that are putting together the name Eric Deters to the recent Enquirer controversy, you have to understand the nature of politics. Bulldog has recently produced a fantastic video dealing with the U.S. Border issues in Arizona, and now he’s done this thing on the streetcar. So special interests are coming after him.

One of the great things about Eric is he’s not afraid to speak up though, and I’ll put up his defense of those allocations here, so any doubts that might come up which might detract from the great video on the streetcar issue, can be settled right now.


If Cincinnati doesn’t watch Eric’s video about the streetcar and step in to stop the whole thing before it’s too late, the city will pay dearly for years into the future.

Many of the same people who spoke out about the stadium deals in the 90’s are the same people warning about the streetcar now. How are the financial situations surrounding those stadiums today?

And 5 to 10 years down the road, the streetcar will be another drain on our local economy. But it won’t be because the information wasn’t given to the public beforehand. It’ll be because people sat on their hands and did nothing.

Besides, who wants to ride a trolley when better technology is on the way.

Rich Hoffman
http://twitter.com/#!/overmanwarrior
www.overmanwarrior.com

Yes Lakota is Misleading People: Painting over the dirt

Georgetta
voteyeslakota@aol.com
75.185.0.41
Submitted on 2011/01/20 at 11:14 pm
Evil prevails when good people do nothing. I am a good person and I am about good education. I am doing something: speaking out. Rich Hoffman is misleading people. Teachers teach children so they DON’T end up working themselves into an early grave and barely making payments on a lot in a trailer park. The good teachers will go elsewhere in order to make a living wage. Rich Hoffman raised children and his wife didn’t work. Apparently he is making too much money. Yet, I hear no one attacking him. Some of us have to have both parents work in order to put food on the table.

Georgetta here reflects many of the comments that I get from people who think just like her. The premise is this, that education is a right, they hide the actual numbers in the scribble of government bureaucracy, and if you show that you don’t support it, or if you even question their reasoning, they use “peer pressure” to shape the community to their will, just like kids on a playground. That’s the mentality. They end up sounding like children with their minds wrapped up in extreme assertions to make their points seem to carry more weight.

The first thing they do is attack you “the tax payer” and your ability to pay the increase in tax. They’ll say, “Public education was there for your children, but now that you don’t have children in the school, you don’t want to pay.” They do the same with business leaders, “We built the good schools and you provided the homes, and now you don’t want to pay.” What doesn’t get said is that as all this growth was going on, the LEA, the teachers union at Lakota, negotiated an aggressive contract in October of 2008 that was focused on wages and that contract is bankrupting the community because at the same time, indications were that state funding was on a decreasing trend. So the contract was irresponsible, and what is happening now, is the community is establishing the parameters of future contract negotiations, because we can’t trust school officials to do the job, otherwise it wouldn’t have gotten this far out of control.

These pro levy people will attempt to proclaim that nobody but them can look at the numbers and understand the situation. They sadly put out apologist groups to plead the case like what you will hear in the below interview. What they don’t want to discuss is why there is a financial crises. They simply discuss finance as if it were beyond their control. When listening to this interview ask these questions, if cutting only a million here, or there isn’t much because the numbers are so large, then why is it such a large savings that cutting busing to 9000 students will only save $600,000, then why cut busing? And how has Lakota done everything it can do before cutting busing. Did the LEA come to the bargaining table to renegotiate their contract? And how does the tax dollars stay in the district when the union spends the union dues on political candidates. One of the reasons the LEA wants its teachers to make so much is so that the teachers will want to pay their union dues without hardship. But nobody talks about any of that here. The sum of this discussion is that there isn’t an answer. These are nice parents that just want the system to work long enough for their children to get an education. Nobody wants to play the hot potato game when the music stops, and the music is stopping. All they can really do in an interview like this is paint over the dirt.

All businesses whether they are service oriented or manufacturing oriented have a responsibility to keep their costs in line. One way that businesses do that is to use the 10-80-10 rule as it’s applied to labor. That rule states that 10% of your workforce will be your typical “top” performers, and they will get the most dramatic increases, 4% to 15% depending on the situation. 80% of your workers are average, and will typically get a standard 2% to 3% increase, otherwise considered a “cost of living” increase. And of course every place of business has approximately 10% that are poor performers and they won’t get an increase of any kind. Why? Because those bottom 10% you want to look for another job, and you want them to leave so you don’t have to pay them. It gives you a chance to hire somebody that might want to compete for the top 10% percentile. If you manage things correctly, your bottom 10% are the kind of people that your competition is hiring at the middle 80%, and you want that so you can maintain a competitive edge.

What you don’t do is uniformly advance everyone in your place of business with some socialist “everybody is equal” policy like what we have in school systems, and unions advocate. That’s a disastrous concept and gives employees like Ryan Fahrenkemp time and the luxury of job security to participate in an evil deed like child pornography. I would argue from experience that if Ryan had to fear for his job, and didn’t feel comfortable hiding in the muddy 80%, he probably would have not indulged in his warped perversion while at school. He might have done it in hiding, or in his mother’s basement, but not with his students, and not with school equipment. And he certainly wouldn’t have been making 70K at only age 42 no matter how much experience he had with the amount of tenure he’d accumulated in a relatively short time.

I used Fahrenkemp as an example because he belonged in the bottom 10% and somebody didn’t do their job in the review process of weeding him out. And that didn’t happen because he was protected by the complicated process created by the OEA which the president of the LEA had been a big part of, and knew how to manipulate the system to the advantage of her members.

So I’d say to you Yes Lakota people, who say that I am misleading people. Who is doing the misleading?

I’d say you are, by telling the tax payers that the budget just “grows” on its own. That the school system had no way to deal with people like Fahrenkemp, and that all teachers are worth over 62K, and if the community doesn’t pay it, those beloved teachers will leave the district for another one.

I would say any teacher that would leave Lakota is only in it for the money, and those are personalities that I would rate low on a review, and may be tempted to put them on the bottom 10% anyway, so for them to leave would be desirable.

All the Yes Lakota people have to argue with is emotion,
• “The money is for the kids.” No it’s not, if it was, the LEA wouldn’t have threatened to strike in 2008 to get more money, and again in the spring of 2010.
• “We have to offer top pay for top teachers or they will leave.” No they won’t because the other districts are broke too and are getting ready to go through the same process Lakota is.
• “We have to protect property values by voting for the schools.” No you don’t. If taxes keep increasing that will kill real estate values anyway, tax payers in the district already pay $11 per $1000 assessment on their property.
• “I’m for education.” No you’re not. If you were, you’d keep the budget under $160 million. Throwing money at something doesn’t mean you’re for education. It means you don’t value the source of the money but want what the money can buy.
• “We have had explosive growth and must adjust to it.” Growth, like budgets can be controlled. If the cost is too high, growth will slow down, and growth will slow down because of the economy. Growth will also slow down from parents wanting to go to Lakota who aren’t willing to pay for the extra things they want, too. One of the reasons Yes People want sports and extracurricular activities is so enrollment will increase, so parents looking for those items can move to the district and participate cheaply. It’s all about job creating and getting parents used to programs that the district tax payers fund collectively. No different from colleges with NCAA programs that are nationally known for their sports, will see increases in enrollment. It’s always about increased enrollment so money can be justified.
• “The state is forcing us to all-day kindergarten.” No, the OEA lobbied to get all-day kindergarten passed, and the Republicans in the state house are getting ready to eliminate that unfunded mandate along with many other mandates lacking funding. So that anticipated requirement will be taken away from district budgets.
• “We have to spend $50,000 dollars to get the best superintendent we can get.” No, you are throwing money at the situation like you do everything else. It’s that kind of mentality that locked us into the contract with the LEA that is causing the current financial crises. Money does not equal quality. It seldom does. Money can be used to create competition, but it is useless without competition. If money is not getting you dramatic results, it is simply killing your budget.
• “Paying for a school levy keeps your money in the community.” No it doesn’t. The union dues collected by school unions are directly applied to liberal politicians that further perpetuate the bureaucratic mess creating expensive economic necessity. The OEA had revenue of over $62 million dollars in 2008. Where did that money come from? They don’t make any products that they can sell? Check the info for yourself here. http://teachersunionexposed.com/state.cfm?state=OH All that money comes from union dues, paid from the salaries of teachers that are paid exceptionally well by the local tax payers. The average pay at Lakota for teachers is 62K per year. So the money doesn’t stay in the community.

Those are just some examples of how the Yes Lakota people are misleading the good people of the Lakota District. And they will continue to treat the voters like the fools they believe they are as long as it works.

Get ready for the next levy announcement for May. They’ll do it because they don’t know how to do anything else but ask for more money.

And you Yes Lakota people go ahead and leave your comments. I’ll post them, and I’ll use them. People need to see your thoughts. For those of you wanting to see some of them, read the comments here. I am quite aware that there are many people at many levels reading all the posts I’ve put up here and you’re looking for a way to spin it to your advantage. For an example, have a look at the work David Little from Progress Ohio attempted. I’m happy to fight your sloppy facts with the truth and if you want to spin the community around and make them so dizzy they can’t tell which way is up or down, I’ll continue to prevent it, as I have. And I’ll do it because I love my community, and I want to see education continue to be an option for families in the future. But it won’t be in a form controlled by organized labor. Those days are over.

Don’t believe me; read this from your parent union the OEA, this is how bad the financial situation is. Even the union staff is threatening to strike and the union itself is participating in union busting strategies.

The Ohio Education Association and Its Goose

The executives of the Ohio Education Association sent a memo informing local presidents that if the union gave in to striking staffers’ demands, it would require an $80 to $90 dues increase per member. Such an increase would raise roughly $10 million. That sounded familiar to me, so I checked the archives and found this, in the May 8, 2000 EIA Communiqué:
Ohio Education Association in Severe Financial Straits. The last time the Ohio Education Association negotiated a staff contract, in September 1997, it resulted in a two-week strike, restraining orders against picketers, and a lot of bad publicity. That contract expires this year and it’s bad financial news all around for OEA, its members, and the staff. OEA recently informed its local presidents that the union is facing a projected deficit of $6.3 million for next year. The union is asking staff to accept benefit cuts totaling $4 million. The rest of the deficit would be eliminated through a dues increase of up to $25 per member.

“Specifically, and regrettably, we can no longer afford to sustain the current number of OEA employees at their current level of compensation and benefits and continue to provide the expected level of services and programs without significantly raising OEA dues for you and every other member,” reads a memo from OEA President Mike Billirakis and Executive Director Robert Barkley.

Read the rest of the article here:
http://www.eiaonline.com/intercepts/2010/09/03/the-ohio-education-association-and-its-goose/

If our community is going to continue to be a “great” and “excellent” district, we have to get in front of this problem. Not avoid it by tossing more money at the problem. And the Yes Lakota people need to listen to the No Lakota People, because the solution is in good business strategy. The same tired old bullet points won’t be valid any longer. I’ll make sure of it.

Now, these video links exist elsewhere on this site, but I’ll put links here for your convenience. These are radio spots specifically dealing with education issues. Feel free to listen to the hours and hours of debate so you can form your own opinion about things. There are many radio personalities here, so the view points are varied. But the topics and discussions are fantastic.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1sIDwFW6tFA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vxd5XO54o68
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HPwhFbsTmww
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uXEIUPRRxAQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r09fAoSAQhM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YbJETAE1iXw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TAX20OsiIS0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UHPjBY8UY98
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X7f6iBfFxV0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tDvFo_v24Y0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CG9vYWHO6OM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RynERHb3jBU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sU57EDXLxtw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nhAeyuLovtk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yoviASrmQBw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CDW98mhSyPQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-vtoC9QosaA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2w9zXhNdw_M
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qrblE1gu4lU

Rich Hoffman
http://twitter.com/#!/overmanwarrior
www.overmanwarrior.com

The Superintendent of Tomorrow

Bill Cunningham had on a superintendent from Clermont Northeastern that has been very successful at saving his district money by thinking “outside the box.” Listen to that interview here.

Here is a link to the district website: http://www.cneschools.org/

What’s interesting about that interview is the superintendent is actively pursuing innovative cost savings as opposed to the approach at Lakota where they spent over $50,000 just searching for a new superintendent to replace the retiring Mike Taylor. The Lakota method is the “old” way, where inflated costs are built into every step of the process, and the footprints most always lead to organized labor.

The superintendent of tomorrow will find ways to save money at every turn, including the elimination of such extraordinary candidate searches as Lakota participated in. The School Board elected to spend $40,000 looking for a treasurer, and $50,000 looking for a superintendent that they haven’t yet hired.

The superintendent of tomorrow will not be bullied by union leaders as what happened at Lakota on the last Thursday of October 2008 where the teacher’s union of 1,200 members threatened to walk out on all 18,000 students they profess to think so much of. What was the primary issue in that proposed strike? Pay!

The superintendent of tomorrow wouldn’t have paid into the union system for 25 years or more and then take a passive position at the negotiating table as what happened when both sides, the LEA and the Lakota officials sat down after school that memorable Wednesday just before Halloween and finally hammered out an agreement at 12:30 AM Thursday morning, the day the LEA was ready to walk off the job.

I know quite a few teachers around the country. Specifically, in Oldham County, KY, which is one of Kentucky’s most exclusive communities, there is a teacher with a master’s degree in science that teaches geology, and his rate of pay is just shy of 50K. Doc Thompson a few weeks ago had on another teacher that was from Atlanta that was making wages in the mid-40’s, and I thought he had some valid arguments.

At Lakota, the LEA has been successful at convincing the School Board and the Superintendent that teachers should be paid on average over 62K per year, which is what they are currently being paid at Lakota. In fact, Mike Taylor is quoted saying, “I don’t think teachers are paid enough.” Such superintendents have recklessly encouraged the extraordinary wage rates that are occurring at Lakota.

And the economic disaster that is being described which is hitting Lakota is caused by these same wages that are too high if it is considered that state money is not a factor and that the communities must fund the budget on their own. The superintendent of tomorrow will help keep wage cost in line to protect the communities they serve and still maintain great teachers for a good price.

The superintendent of tomorrow will reflect the community, and will build an administration that does the same, and not be lap dogs for powerful unions, that takes the union dues collected from each teacher and applies those funds to progressive political candidates that only exacerbate the situation further at the state level. When it’s said that our tax money stays local, it does not. Those union dues work in a way to support democratic and progressive candidates, and are only a cleaver way invented by organized labor to prop up the candidates they support. The money originally comes from the local tax payer that just wants to have the community schools teach their children.

When we find this superintendent of tomorrow, we can begin to solve some of the problems of today, but not until then.

Now for those of you that want more information check out this press release from from the Buckeye Institute. I’m not the only one saying this stuff. Feel free to check the link at the end of the press release.   Oh, and you YesLakota people, I’m for education too.  Keep it under our 160 million dollar budget and we’ll all get along.  But don’t ask the community to pay for your poor business understanding.  Go ahead, check the link below. 

Buckeye Institute News Alert
Where Transparency Is More Than A Slogan And Ideas Really Do Matter

PRESS RELEASE January 18, 2010

Contact: Matt Mayer,

2010 K-12 Teacher Salary and Estimated Pension Data added to Searchable Database along with Search Counter

COLUMBUS – The Buckeye Institute for Public Policy Solutions today released on its website the 2010 K-12 salary and estimated pension data for all Ohio public school teachers. Unlike the data collected for previous years, the 2010 data includes salary and pension information for many superintendents, principals, and other administrative staff members. The pension data includes each teacher’s salary based on a 2,080-hour year (40 hour work-week, 52 week year) so users can properly evaluate teacher pay, as most teachers are contractually limited to working 1,350 hours per year.

In 2010, approximately 1,800 school employees earned over $100,000 per year. Due to increasing staffing costs, Ohio’s 613 public school districts are expected to face a $7.6 billion funding deficit by 2015, with personnel expenses consuming 96 percent of tax revenues.

In the last election, citizens used the Teacher Salary Database to hold their school districts accountable for spending choices, citing that average teacher salaries had grown at rates that, in many cases, far outpaced inflation.

In addition to the new data, the website now contains a search counter which records the number of searches performed in the eight database tools (State Salary, Federal Salary, Higher Ed Salary, Teacher Salary, Local Salary, School Data, County Data, and State Lobbyists). Since the website’s launch on April 30, 2010, visitors from 473 Ohio cities, the 49 other states, and 119 foreign countries have spent over 20,000 hours conducting almost 1.5 million data searches.

Buckeye Institute President Matt A. Mayer stated: “With so many school districts under financial duress, it is now even more important than ever that taxpayers know how school districts are spending their money. Instead of cutting staff positions, sports, bussing, and other programs, most school districts could balance their budgets without raising taxes through cutting staff compensation packages by a small percentage.”

The Teacher Salary data tool is available at www.buckeyeinstitute.org.

Rich Hoffman
http://twitter.com/#!/overmanwarrior
www.overmanwarrior.com

John Kasich and the Cusp of Renewal: A plan for solving Ohio’s Problems

Want to know what a politician should sound like; listen to this interview of John Kasich from Bill Cunningham of 700 WLW?

The Governor was very explicit in that interview that he does not intend to take a public job to get another public job. He mentioned a bill to prevent unions from being able to strike against public organizations and he spoke about balancing the budget and bring jobs back to Ohio by taking away the restrictions that drive business away.

All too often politicians stick their fingers to the wind and check public opinion before taking action. That is the problem. People like Kasich are successful without politics. He doesn’t need the small wage of what an Ohio Governor makes. It’s not important to him to see his name on the signs welcoming people to the state, because he’s in the job to do the job. Not to fill his ego.

Heads of companies tend to do the work of balancing the budget of companies without worrying about whether or not they make all the employees angry, because they are the boss. And a boss can’t get wrapped up in popularity. All that really matters is if the state remains financially stable so we can live our lives in the state, and it’s the governors job to make sure that happens.

If you’re the kind of person looking for the government to do something for you, then you won’t like Kasich, because you have misread the intention of government and have bought into the “great lie” of Progressives. But if you want government to get out of our way, so we can create jobs, live out our lives, and not have all the money that should go to savings going to a bunch of “air headed” progressive programs, it is with great relief to hear a governor on the edge of taking control of the state government, that professes the attitude that he’s here to do the job, not begin running for the next public office so he can get the benefits of inflated public entitlements.

That’s what you get when you put people who are independently successful in office, instead of some mindless parasites that are clueless as to how the world works!

Rich Hoffman
http://twitter.com/#!/overmanwarrior
www.overmanwarrior.com