S.B.5 Would Have Saved $1.3 Billion in 2010: Yet the OEA says it’s teachers will suffer when the average teacher makes 55K?

The picture here refers to a report from the Columbus Dispatch which cites that if S.B.5 had been enacted during 2010, the state would have saved 1.3 Billion dollars. That’s a massive figure!

Darryl Parks of 700 WLW talks about the savings S.B.5 would have saved, and addresses the hypocrites within the Tea Party Movement that are now complaining about some of the budget cuts they pushed for.

You can see the whole article for the Columbus Dispatch here.
http://www.dispatch.com/live/content/local_news/stories/2011/02/26/senate-bill-5-saves-1-3b-study-says.html?sid=101

Most of the savings are not a direct savings to the state, but an indirect cost imposed by “step increases” which is the primary reason I am supporting S.B.5. At Lakota, as I’ve stated many times, the average teacher makes over 62K . When you study the reason Lakota, Mason, Lebanon and all the other large Southern Ohio districts need a levy passed, it is because the districts have to live up to their rising costs imposed by the “step increases” required by state law. So when I asked the question, “why can’t Lakota live within their 160 million dollar budget? Why can’t Lakota cut salaries since they are obviously inflated, and leave busing alone, keep the sports, keep the electives, don’t lay off teachers?” The response was, “we can’t, because we are obligated by state law.”

Step increases are the hidden villain here. I calculated that if the teachers at Lakota took a 30% reduction, which is reasonable considering what they are making, it would save Lakota $29 million a year which would mean the district wouldn’t have to ask for more money in an operating levy.

I’ve written about this elsewhere and if you want to see the other article click the link. 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 who your competition is hiring at the middle 80%, and you want that so you can maintain a competitive edge.

That’s the reason the teachers are protesting. Because their union knows the scam that they’ve been playing against the tax payer is falling apart now that their cost to society has reached a breaking point. Their strategy all along was to continue to push for higher taxes to pay for their scam and they had full confidence based on their track record over the last two decades that they’d achieve that goal. Now, compare what you’ve learned here about step increases, and the imposed cost to the tax payer, and the amount of money teachers are making on average, and then look at Patricia Frost-Brooks, President of the OEA, comments in that same mentioned article from The Dispatch.

“If you lower the wages, and your health insurance goes up, then what does that do to a family? How is the family going to sustain their livelihood?” said Patricia Frost-Brooks, president of the Ohio Education Association.

What planet is she living on? Doesn’t she realize that her teachers are making A LOT more money than the average worker in Ohio? You can read more about Patricia’s view of the world at http://www.progressohio.org/blog/2010/09/lets-revitalize-ohio-not-go-backwards-by-ohio-education-association-president-patricia-frost-brooks.html Notice she doesn’t mention much about kids in that article. Only politics.

Patricia goes into great detail attempting to demean Governor Kasich before the election. The OEA is a lobby group in Columbus where Patricia Frost-Brooks is president of the Ohio Education Association, a statewide union representing 130,000 members in k-12 schools, public colleges and universities and education support professionals. So when you listen to what she says, consider that she has one primary job and that is to protect her members. And in her view, she if protecting her members by driving up their wages, paying them very well, so they will have the expendable income to give back some to her lobby group. It’s that simple.

She accuses Kasich of misleading. She makes that assumption based on her own actions, so she assumes that the rest of the world is playing the same game, and they aren’t. Patricia reveals much of herself in that Progress Ohio Article. She is against school reform, she is against reducing the salaries of teachers to help districts deal with their costs, and she genuinely believes that somehow education costs can continue to expand as they have forever. She is completely out of touch, and if she’s the leader of the union, and is one of the most “rational” minds, then what do the “rank and file” believe? Where do they think all the money comes from? Do they not have a basic understanding of economics?

But Tom Ash, director of governmental development for the Buckeye Association of School Administrators, said school boards may not do away with all automatic pay increases.

“At milestones during their career, I think there should be step increases in an attempt to retain those people because you don’t want to lose them,” he said. “But the notion that you should do it every year, I don’t know that that’s necessary when you’re also providing an increase on the base salary.”

Mr. Ash is speaking my language. That’s the reality of the situation. For some teachers that are exceptional, I’ll use Lakota as an example, like Mr. Duff, who is a science teacher that I think is great, I don’t want to see him go anywhere. I’d be happy to tell the school board to throw money at a teacher like that. He should make 70 to 80K per year. But for every teacher like him, there are 4 or 5 that are just cruising through their careers, and they do not deserve to make more than 55K per year, no matter how much education they obtain for themselves.

You have to understand that this whole thing is a system. The OEA for years has lobbied to create legislation that creates incentives for teachers to obtain a master’s degree. For many teachers, obtaining a master’s degree is practical and necessary. According to the U.S. Department of Education, 52 percent of teachers hold a master’s degree or higher. Although some states require teachers to obtain master’s degrees, teachers often seek advanced degrees to increase their salaries and obtain new skills.

Read more: Requirements for a Master’s in Teaching | eHow.com http://www.ehow.com/list_6388286_requirements-master_s-teaching.html#ixzz1FA2fulvD

There is a reason Patricia and the OEA wants its teachers to have a master’s degree. That is because the OEA also represent teachers who work for universities and if every teacher working in Ohio continues their education and gets a master’s degree so they can qualify for the financial rewards of obtaining that degree then the money funneled into the colleges can help pay the salaries of the professors staffed at those institutions. It’s what the “working people” in know would call, “job security.” The OEA knows that their teachers at the K-12 level are likely to seek that higher degree if they can afford it with good wages to begin with, but the promise of even higher wages are at the end of that degree. Here are the tuition costs at Ohio State, as listed at their website.
Estimated Costs for U.S. Students

All costs are subject to change without notice. A complete list of quarterly tuition charges by program may be found at the Office of the Registrar’s website. http://gradadmissions.osu.edu/Costs.html

• $11,298 – tuition cost for a U.S. citizen, permanent resident, aslyee, or refugee and a legal resident of the State of Ohio;
• $28,746 – tuition cost for a US citizen, permanent resident, aslyee, or refugee whose residence is outside of Ohio;
• $13,980 – estimated annual expenses for room, board, insurance, books and supplies

The truth of the matter is it’s all about money. It’s always been about money, and it’s a game played at the tax payers’ expense and it has to stop.

Look at this ad from “Teacher World” which is a teacher recruiting website.

With an average teacher salary of $55,931,* teaching in Ohio is a great career choice. Whether you like bustling cities like Cincinnati, Cleveland or state capital Columbus, or prefer smaller towns or rural communities, Ohio has it all. Learn about teaching in Ohio on Teacher World.
http://www.teacher-world.com/statespages/Ohio.html

The OEA knows what it’s doing. It’s a shell game. They manage to obtain for their teachers above average wages so they can funnel some of that money into the higher education system. They also have to create the incentive for teachers to make more than enough money so they won’t suffer when they must pay their union dues, because the OEA needs that money to lobby elected officials and participate in the political system.

During this entire process, the OEA has managed to wrestle control away from school boards all over the state so that this financial balance cannot be upset by local communities not wanting to pay outrageous taxes. The school boards are brought into the shell game each November when they attend the OSBA, (Ohio School Board Association) event in Columbus.
http://www.ohioschoolboards.org/osba-capital-conference

Check out this video. This is how they sell it.

Once the school board members are taught what they can and can’t cover as board members, the implementations that are put in place by the OEA are safe from scrutiny. This is why the first and only thing school boards are allowed to deal with are the costs associated with direct operating expenditures, which only occupy under 20% of a school district budget. Notice how many times teachers and administrators mention in that video that the only hug a child gets in a day or hot meal they eat comes from the school system. It is ironic that they sell their service and the necessity for the massive amount of money flowing within it by creating the perception that they are the only chance kids have for success in life.

Yet, the message is effective, and the employees believe what they are told from leadership. One person that believed the message was Ryan Fahrenkempt who was teaching at Lakota last year before being forced to resign in August of 2010. As a Lakota educator, Fahrenkamp hosted a science day for students and was featured in a newspaper article about the shortage of male teachers in the elementary classroom.

He was quoted in the 2008 article while he was teaching sixth-grade at the former Shawnee Elementary School.
“I think that boys at this age need that male influence outside just the home,” he said. “In some cases, they don’t get that in the home,” Fahrenkamp said.
http://www.oxfordpress.com/news/crime/former-teacher-in-federal-court-on-child-porn-charges-1044534.html

Oh, he wasn’t the only one. Just one month later the Mason School System had this happen.

How did Stacy Schuler see herself and her role as a teacher? Schuler said she isn’t perfect and she knows of a healthier lifestyle than she is living now. “I used to wake up earlier to come in [to the school] and work out,” Schuler said. “But I just wasn’t getting enough sleep, and as much as I preach a healthy lifestyle, I would say I’m not a good example of a healthy lifestyle right now.”
https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2011/02/06/who-is-stacy-schuler-reading-between-the-lines/

What do the parents think about this behavior? Listen to a mom read a note from her son during the last school board meeting in Mason, Feb 22nd 2011. Her son went to Mason several years ago, he graduated in 2007. This proves that the recent news went on for quite some time. The woman’s testimony is at approximately the 1/4 mark of the video. George Coates named in this video was the AP who’s genitals were found on Stacy Schuler’s computer upon her arrest and was a direct supervisor to Ms. Schuler.

http://www.icrctv.net/mason-board-of-education-22211

And it’s happening all over the country. That video you saw from the OSBA, about how school is the only safe haven for many kids is completely misleading. Parents have to be more involved in their kids’ lives. Money will not make that issue go away, because we cannot trust our kids completely to school systems. There are a lot of good people who work within the system, but schools are not the utopia’s that the OSBA envisions and tries to sell to its members.

Click this link to visit a page that attempts to capture all the school scandals in the country. Just pick a city. http://www.schoolteachernews.com/scandal.html

Parents must be an important part of a kid’s life. Schools have sold themselves as an option while busy parents conduct their lives, and in the chaos, people like Patricia, of the OEA, and Governor Strickland, pandering to union money has manipulated tax payers into funding their personal social agendas. And the experiment has been a terrible, miserable failure. Not only is the per pupil spending in Ohio at 10k per student that money has done nothing to prepare children for the world marketplace. MTV is proving to be the stronger influence among young people, and kids get that information for free. The education reforms that Patricia fears so vehemently, like competition with school vouchers, and competitive salaries controlled by school boards, are coming because the OEA have been caught not doing what is right for the children and the communities that send their children to their care every day. Public school is a valuable asset, but is producing at a mediocre level. Not at the level that the wages being asked for dictate. The OEA has attempted to cover that fact with smoke and flashy imagery. But they are the failures behind the curtain. Remember the Wizard of Oz? Patricia is the one behind the curtain in this particular case.

What S.B.5 will do is it will save tax money indirectly, with anticipated increases that used to be mandated by the state will now be controlled at the local level, where tax payers can help the school board adjust their costs to the supplied budget. And it will take control away from the shell game that the OEA has been conducting for years.

That’s why S.B.5 is a great bill. And it’s also why the OEA is so steadfast against it. It’s all about control and manipulation. That’s what Kasich means when he says he wants to return “management control” to local communities. That’s how the economics of the state get balanced and why Ohio can be a model for how the United States as a country should function. We cannot allow a central authority driven by union manipulation to drive up the costs of education in our communities, like it is now. That central authority has to be removed as an influence because they are not elected by the tax payer, yet act as a government authority. The experiment has failed terribly, and it’s time to try a method that puts the responsibility on the local community, and allows competition to do its work of driving costs down, in this case up to 1.3 Billion just for the impact of S.B.5 alone, and make the best and brightest employees excel while the mediocre stay in a budget range that does not destroy the ability of the community to fund them.

The question is, will the communities of Ohio allow themselves to see through the smoke screens and do what is obviously right or will they choose to allow themselves to be scammed by a ruthless adversary. Only time will tell.

Rich Hoffman

https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2010/12/04/ten-rules-to-live-by/
http://twitter.com/#!/overmanwarrior
www.overmanwarrior.com

An Act Suitable for Las Vegas: The Public Education Money Scam

On February 8, 2011 Stacy Schuler will resign from the Mason School District at the 7 pm school board meeting. Kevin Bright has made the announcement that he will recommend Stacy be fired, and the board will of course act on that request. And to make matters easier on herself, Stacy is resigning, much the way George Coates did. George so far has stayed under the radar even though his actions may be technically much worse.

Now, it would seem that the firing of Stacy Schuler should be a forgone conclusion. It shouldn’t even be a question. George Coates the assistant principal felt bold enough to take cell phones from students, apparently in search of nude pictures of the student body from text messages sent to boy friends and girl friends known as sexting. And we know that the assistant principal was sending Stacy nude pictures of himself, at a minimum. These employees felt so untouchable that they abused their positions audaciously. The union provides an unprecedented level of job security, and that leads all too often to various degrees of abuse.

So the announcement of firing Stacy Schuler sounds all too similar to me. The proceedings from superintendent to school board are extremely reminiscent of how levies are introduced to a ballot issue, or how busing and other services are reduced. The formal proceedings are only formalities designed to make the public feel like they are a part of the process, when in fact the real decisions have already been made.

And that’s what’s wrong with education broken down into its most simplified form, and why many people are looking to School Choice as an option to this kind of tyrannical monopoly. It’s the kind of issue I’ve spent thousands of words discussing here in a hope that this chronicle can provide others questioning public education, some sense of support, and a blueprint to defeat their own school levies in other districts.

The things I’ve brought up for years are not only coming out of my mind however. Traditionally the union strong-arm methods have successfully isolated dissent to a defensive position and used the press to radicalize those dissidents in the eyes of the public. Meanwhile those same political thugs capture the high ground of “defending the children,” and use that platform to negotiate lucrative contracts from the public. Doc Thompson had on a guest from the Kato Institute that validates with a professional opinion what many of us in the trenches are feeling. It’s a great interview so enjoy it.

This whole public education game works until someone like Stacy or Ryan Fahrenkemp from Lakota get busted doing something despicable and are caught abusing their positions under union protection. Because the existence of the union is so formidable, it prevents the kind of probing that common sense would naturally question. So questions that might be leveled at a teacher goes by the way side because the perceived fight to act on such questions would be too great and not worth the wrath of the union.

When Stacy goes to court, it will be revealed that the activity within the Mason School System should be on a nationally syndicated soap opera of provocative tradition, not taken as a serious institution that has the aim of educating our students. When board members are engaged in affairs that are publicly known, and other teachers are caught doing despicable, and immoral acts that are known by many in positions of power, the public faces the moral dilemma as to what to do.

What often happens is parents kick the can down the road because their kids are only in the school system for a relatively short time and those same parents just want the system to stay in tact long enough for their children to get what they need from the system. The union knows this, and they calculate that each year some kids leave, and new ones enter and since nobody cares truly for the health of their neighbor, and their communities, unions use that sense of selfishness to conduct a stage play full of smoke and mirrors.

So when Kevin Bright makes his announcement, and publicly chastises Stacy Schuler for her terrible behavior, know that he and the school board are aware of much worse than what Stacy has been involved with. But they will throw Stacy to the wolves like a Roman Emperor throwing a thief to the lions in a gladiator arena to appease the crowd. Their intent is to get past this terrible episode so people forget and get back to their lives, and the school can put another levy on the ballot in November to cover the step increases that the union contract requires.

Ironically, and this gives you an idea how big this story is, this is a video from China showing the Mason School System attempting to distance itself from Stacy when just months ago all was well, cover ups and all.

I say cover ups because these stories were very well-known, and for the superintendent to not know about it is one of two things. He’s really out of touch and isn’t listening to anybody. Or he is just trying to keep the bad stuff hidden so there isn’t any interruption in revenue flowing into the school system. Both options are bad.

We do have choices. It’s up to us to see them and act with courage for the benefit of our children, and leave the adults that have built empires off our tax dollars to find a new scam, preferably in a venue more suitable to their natures, somewhere like Las Vegas.

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

The Future of Medicine: The Art of Regenerative Tissue Repair

I’d much rather cover positive topics than negative ones. My anger at many of the rants that can be found here has a common source. A student from Mason that is enchanted with Stacy Schuler, the teacher that was arrested for having sex with five students from her school, told me that she was sure that if she analyzed me the way I do other people, that there were sure to be Freudian slips reveled in my behavior too.

Well, she’s right. There is a pattern to my so-called rants. I have an extreme anger at institutions that stand in the way of exciting new scientific developments. So I tend to lash out at politicians, union leaders, corrupt employees that favor job security over innovation and universities that cling to their past discoveries and subvert new discoveries that are controversial. I even set my sights on religion that holds back civilization with a desire to control the masses like sheep of which they offer themselves as a shepherd. In general, I support religious activity because it gives people something to hold themselves together, and the fear of god will keep them from committing wasteful sins such as over indulging in sex, substance abuse, and being vengeful toward their neighbors. But I often get frustrated when religion stands in front of science, because science offers constant new information that requires frequent adoption adding to religious ideology. To become fixated on events that happened 2000 or 4000 years ago holds people back, because there are miracles happening right now in front of our faces, but people don’t have a spiritual mechanism that allows them to see it. And that can be a real crisis.

When the congress of 2010 marched Health Care Reform down our throats in March of that year without even reading the bill, and voted on it strictly on ideology started by philosophies begun in the 1960’s and even earlier while communism from the Soviet Union was making a push to replace capitalism. Those congressmen didn’t care if Health Care was in violation of the United States Constitution because their plan is to change the law with Supreme Court Case Law. They also didn’t care that Health Care, as we’ve been doing it is going out of style.

Health Care of tomorrow won’t be controlled by pharmaceutical companies like it is now, the days where our elderly will take drugs and have costly operations with artificial body parts as replacements will be a thing of the past within the next decade. People won’t take drugs to extend their lives and regulate their bodies as they age and stop performing normal function. Science is literally on the cusp of regenerating parts of the body with its own cells, and that is the future of medicine.

Doc Thompson had on a doctor promoting a new show being exhibited on Nat Geo 10pm on February 7, 2011. After its initial run, the program will run again and probably be on YouTube, so make certain to look for it. It’s about the science of regenerative tissue. But for now you can listen to that doctor talking to Doc.

By the time Health Care becomes a staple of normality in our society like Social Security and Medicare is now, assuming that it stands up to a Supreme Court Ruling, which I don’t think it will, this new science will be mature enough for average people to participate in. And I can tell you right now that all those companies that are looking to the Health Care Industry to make money will oppose regenerative tissue technology. I will also say that religions will violently oppose it, because suddenly the whole idea of life expectation will change. If people can continue to heal all through their lives and build their own regenerative tissue from their own cells DNA, then people will live a LOT longer, and that will force religion to catch up and adapt, which they will be reluctant to do.

That’s why the Health Care Bill is a foolish, pointless piece of legislation. It needs to be repealed and politicians need to start looking to these emerging sciences to solve the problems we have with Social Security, and Medicare. With regenerative science, the cost of keeping people alive will dramatically decrease, and people who have built their lives in the health care field will have to find other things to do for careers. We are on the cusp of true technical marvels that will change the ideology of the human race. And we need to embrace those changes boldly, and not cling to the status quo.

So that young lady is right. My purpose here is to let people know where I see the walls that are holding back that changing ideology. I do rant about the walls I see. And my overall Freudian logic behind those rants is to do my part to break down those walls so we can all enjoy the benefits of mankind’s science without becoming lost as godless heathens. It’s important to recognize what we’ve done right as humans, and what we’ve done wrong, and to boldly go to the next step, because we are standing at the foot of those steps. All it takes now is to have the courage to walk up them.

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

Who is Stacy Schuler? Reading between the lines.

(On July 13th 2011 Stacy Schuler plead guilty by reason of insanity to these charges. I took a lot of heat for putting this post up by members of the union who wanted to take the light off this situation. However, since this case, many of the guilty with knowledge of the case have left town for new jobs hoping to cool things down. And now Schuler has declared herself guilty hoping to get a plea deal for a lesser charge to the charges leveled at her. So, read this article again knowing what you know now and compare it to what we knew then and do as I do, and that’s wonder how many more “insane” teachers are out there asking for money and claiming that they can teach our kids more than the parent.)

Also consider the date of the article in which she gave the interview below. She was “supposedly” insane while she was speaking to the reporter. However, the Mason School System had enough confidence in her to use her to help sell their school levy to the public, even as she had another relationship with her direct supervisor, George Coates going on during all this activity.

To see more about the Stacy Schuler situation check out these articles as well:

https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2011/10/29/the-tragedy-of-stacy-schuler-the-real-crime-is-still-under-the-rug/

https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2011/07/16/all-about-the-stacy-schuler-sex-case-whos-responsible/

https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2011/02/04/sex-murder-teachers-and-the-taxpayer-ryan-widmer-and-the-mason-teacher/

https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2011/07/14/stacy-schuler-is-bait-in-the-water-the-real-problem-is-whats-holding-the-fishing-pole/

https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2011/02/05/so-what-are-you-going-to-do-about-it-sex-money-and-public-schools/

Now, the article as it appeared originally when the story broke.

________________________________________________________

I don’t really want to pick on this young woman. She is innocent until proven guilty. But there are some facts that we already know and whether or not a jury convicts her of the charges leveled in her direction only time will tell. She certainly involved herself in behavior that is left to debate. The severity of that behavior will be up to the prosecutor and a jury to decide which will establish new social standards moving forward.

What I’m interested in when I run into an article like the one written below by the Mason High School’s online magazine, The Cronline, is what is the overall message. The Cronline is a student magazine at the school which is designed to create an impression to the public and give student reporters a way to hone their reporting skills. So it’s partly an education device for the school and a public relations arm.

When I read articles like the one below, I can’t help but see patterns hidden in the wording. It’s a habit of mine. You could say I’ve made a living seeing what other people overlook. So I went back and re-read this article that I remembered from right after the levy campaigns in November 2010 ended. I took it back then as a nice PR piece that teachers do to let parents know that their kids are in good hands with ambitious professionals. My initial impression was I thought Stacy was putting a lot of emphasis on being busy, and was probably trying to hide the fact that she was actually bored, and the slant of the writing was to help make parents want to vote “yes” for their levy in November. However something seemed wrong with it that I couldn’t quite get my teeth in it. But because it was Mason, and not Lakota, I left it alone.

When this sex scandal story broke I went back to see if I could find that article online, because I thought I recognized the name, and found that The Cronline still had it up, so I posted it below before they took it down. I thought it would be interesting now, knowing what we know about the 16 count indictment that she is accused of sexual battery of 5 football players, and having a sexually oriented relationship with the assistant principle of the same school, to look at the below interview with the eyes of psychological analysis. So read the article below. I’ll highlight the sections that I think were particularly revealing about her character.

____________________________________________________

The balancing act
October 29, 2010 No Comments
Between five jobs, Schuler uses meditation, organization to control stress
Janica Kaneshiro | Staff Writer

A common excuse among high school students is, “I didn’t have time,” and many times, they feel like their teachers don’t understand their busy schedules, according to Mind and Body Wellness and Sports Medicine teacher Stacy Schuler. She said what many don’t realize is that school is just one aspect of many teachers’ lives. For example: Schuler has five other jobs.

“I teach at Mason High School,” Schuler said. “I work for Atrium Medical Center, so that means I do athletic training at Mason and other schools that Atrium covers. I work for Miami Valley Hospital. I do athletic training for [Alter High School], and I also do strength and conditioning [there]. I also work for the sports advantage clinic [at Miami Valley Hospital], and that’s for people who do post-surgery rehab, and athletes trying to improve their fitness. I [also do] yoga and personal training at people’s houses.”

Senior Justin Lamb, who works with Schuler after school in the training room and at the Atrium as an intern, said she has taught him various ways to deal with time constraints.

“She’s taught me a lot,” Lamb said. “With physical training everything is about time management. She’s taught me that you have to keep everything in place for everybody, like water for the football players and dealing with injuries in a timely manner. She’s really good at managing her time; she has to be.”

Schuler said she understands that students sometimes have hectic schedules since her own demanding lifestyle is crazy.
“Kids [say], ‘You don’t understand; you don’t know what it’s like to be busy,’” Schuler said. “But I’m like, ‘Yes, I really do understand what it’s like to be busy.’ Sometimes I laugh because I feel like students don’t see teachers as anything else besides the [people] standing in front of the class.”

Besides just her paying jobs, Schuler said her other time commitments include being an avid animal rights activist, starting her own business, to practicing her black belt in the art of Ninjutsu.

“I have my own photography business,” Schuler said. “Also, in my spare time, I love to do my martial arts training. That’s something that, right now, I only get to do really very sporadically, [and] it used to be a weekly thing for me.”

Schuler said she was raised as a busy person, so it’s only natural for her to want to take on several commitments. She said her current time commitments fill her schedule with activities from dawn to dusk.

“[Monday through Friday,] I wake up at five a.m.,” Schuler said. “I’m usually home around ten. On Friday nights [I get home] a lot later because of [football] games, so sometimes I won’t get home until midnight. On weekends, I still have to get up early because I have football injury checks in the morning. I usually have games and tournaments on the weekends [at which I have to work,] so I might get up at six a.m. on Saturdays, and I won’t get home till 8:30 or 9 p.m.”

With everything she does, Schuler said that she can get stressed out, but sleep and organization are major factors in the way she handles it.

“[T]he way I deal with [stress] is really through yoga and meditation, because even if I don’t get enough sleep, …I meditate,” Schuler said. “If I lost [my iPhone calendar,] I would show up to the wrong place wearing the wrong work shirt or something, so I have to be really organized.”

Schuler said that even sleep and organization aren’t enough to keep her relaxed all the time, and when she gets really stressed, she tries to change her perceptions.

“If you just…get perspective on a situation, [you] realize that stressing does you no good,” Schuler said. “It’s not going to fix the situation and it really just takes you further away from any sort of resolution or any productive work towards whatever needs to be done.”

Senior Chloe Crites, who is in Schuler’s Mind and Body Wellness class, said that Schuler has taught her to look at her commitments with a fresh perspective when she gets stressed.

“I think it’s crazy [that Schuler has so many jobs],” Crites said. “I can’t imagine her schedule, because I get stressed and I just have one job. But [by being in her class,] I’ve learned from her that [when I get stressed, it helps] to know everything has a purpose and if I focus on one thing at a time it isn’t so bad. She teaches us to always take a break for yourself, because that helps you focus.”

Schuler said she isn’t perfect and she knows of a healthier lifestyle than she is living now.
“I used to wake up earlier to come in [to the school] and work out,” Schuler said. “But I just wasn’t getting enough sleep, and as much as I preach a healthy lifestyle, I would say I’m not a good example of a healthy lifestyle right now.”
Even with her demanding schedule, Schuler said she aspires to do even more in the future.

“There’s so much I want to do,” Schuler said. “I love learning other languages [and traveling]. So [I want to do] more of that. I also really enjoy music, …so there [are] things I want to finish, and things I don’t have enough time for. I also want to spend more time with the people close to me.”

Teachers’ Secret Lives

____________________________________________________________________

Now, it’s easy to look at that article and see the Freudian slips. Actually they are quite obvious and funny if you think about it. The trick is in learning to read between the lines without the benefit of hindsight so you can avoid peril. If we can learn anything from articles like this one, it’s that whenever you listen to a public official of any kind, listen carefully to what they tell you and how they say it. Because you may save yourself a lot of headache if you listen to that little voice that goes off in the back of your head instead of ignoring it out of convenience.

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

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

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.

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

The Taxpayers Deserve Better: Evil Prevails When Good People Do Nothing

It was a busy weekend and there was a lot of mud getting slung on the eve of the busing cuts. Once the owner of the Starkerz Bar and Grill, discussed in the audio clip from the Darryl Parks show on January 17, 2011, stated that she was willing to provide a statement that she’d stand behind, I felt comfortable to tell the story.

Even so, telling that story made me sick, because the whole event seems so petty. I don’t like being in the middle of that kind of thing, “mudslinging” but I am often reminded of how the Pro Side came after me when David Little was hired to attempt to smear my name with obvious attempts at slander. For instance, in that now famous six paragraph letter, there were 4 complete lies about me proclaimed in the body of the letter, along with several statements not even closely rooted to the truth, but designed to anger the people reading the letter.

I confronted Little about what he wrote, and he lied to me again, telling me that he hadn’t sent that letter to anyone. What he didn’t know was that I was tipped off by more than one person in the press, and Little confirmed my suspicions when he assumed the leak was WLW, which it wasn’t.

But that’s the game these people chose to play and every time I see them perpetuating the games progress, it reminds me of why these out-of-control budgets need to be brought into a realistic expectation.

Darryl mentioned that I did the Lakota Levy all by myself. It feels that way some of the time, but that’s not the case. There are lots of good people behind me. Most of them wanted to think about something else after the election, and to enjoy the holidays. The outrage over the bar and grill story brought many people’s minds back into the subject lately because that story is a very personal issue with many involved and is so openly wrong.

I’ve stayed with this topic all this time because the education system needs to be fixed, and the people getting in the way are bullies. They may wear perfume and dress nice. They may have a smile on their faces when they do the bullying, but the behavior I keep seeing has no other name.

And tax payers deserve better. And they are going to have it…………………………………….

So those of you that are up to no good, and want to play these games, remember, there will be leaks. And when I get them, I’ll post them. I won’t do it until someone is willing to stand behind the statements. There has to be proof. But I will hold those accountable that wish to bully others into turning a blind eye to the disingenuous behavior exhibited toward our community tax payers.

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

Protected: Treachery and Manipulation at Lakota

A Gaze Back and Looking Forward: Education Funding is Changing Forever

The gravy days are over. The citizens are paying attention to many aspects of education that were never discussed, like teacher salaries being excessively high, and buildings with luxurious amenities. In a recent survey from Braun Research Inc. who conducted phone interviews with more than 3,400 Hoosier registered voters November 12-17, 2010, that firm’s president, Paul Braun, expressed confidence in the accuracy of the study’s results, due to “thorough briefings stressing objectivity, heavy monitoring, sample performance reviews, verifications and post-data-collection checks on each survey by interviewer and phone center.” Of the many conclusions of that survey Indiana voters lacked awareness and information about how much is spent in public schools. Nearly two out of three respondents (64 percent) underestimated per-student spending in the public schools.

As usual, Doc Thompson did some great work on this topic that he covered on the January 12, 2011 broadcast that is worth listening to. It is refreshing to have real discussions about these issues now. The gist of this discussion is that things are going to change, and change rapidly for public education funding.

But know the door has been opened. I know how difficult it was and I felt the wrath of attacks when I first started the enterprise of enlightening the public about education funding. The organized labor behind these tax levies attempted to apply The Delphi Technique on me, like they do everyone who speaks against wasteful spending, so I understand first-hand how the information has been kept quiet all over the nation for such a long time.

I countered that technique by using aspects of my personality that are entertainment oriented, something I’ve developed over the years performing in wild west shows and interviews for other projects, to throw a curve-ball at their strategy and start the ball rolling so others could hold the door open, and then others behind them could start pouring in to get control of the out-of-control spending that has been occurring in schools. It took that initial surprise from the organized unions by my approach to pry the door open. They really believed that by painting me as some hick cowboy running around with a whip that I would be made into something of a fool, which they counted on. What they didn’t know was that I have a business background, and I’m better at understanding difficult concepts than I am with the whip work. So because of their one-dimensional understanding of people, they were unprepared. And much to my surprise, people enjoyed the image I was projecting, of rugged individualism, and standing firm in overwhelming odds.

The truth of the matter was that it felt that way to me, like I was against the world. But I actually had hundreds of people behind me supporting the structure of everything, people who put up the money for the yard signs, people who went to all the meetings and took notes that they’d pass to me. People from inside the school system that was tipping us off to what was going on, and people who were going door to door to pass out literature. There were other people who worked the email campaign, and helped in so many other ways. But since I was the face of it, the wrath came at me, and I deflected it with the cowboy image while the business side worked with some very smart people to crunch numbers and get to the truth.

At the end of the day, that cowboy image says more about me than the business side. My children and grandchildren won’t discuss someday how good I was at working with numbers in a spreadsheet or negotiated a contentious point in a dispute. They’ll talk about the speed and accuracy competitions at cowboy events, and the many times I’ve shocked audiences with my fire whip displays, including professional stuntmen. So that image is far from just some conjured up image for marketing reasons. But it did help in this case, to overcome the opposition in a unique way.

What usually happens in management is that once you show people how to do something, they’ll then take that information and put their own spin on it. And that’s what’s happening by people who are far more passionate about education reform than I am. I have discovered now through correspondence from people who have been fighting this fight for many, many years, that all some of these people needed was a crack in the door. And they understand more about how the game is played than ever, now that we’ve started having really intelligent conversations on WLW.

Darryl Parks has been talking this talk much longer than I have, so it wasn’t difficult for him and me to feel some passion about the shake-down that occurs. But I think everyone was surprised when I went on WLW with our treasurer, Dan Varney and discussed the wage levels back in September, because that information was straight out of the newspaper. But the game that is played is that information is released in March, when the last things people are thinking about are schools or elections. Spring is on their minds, and coming out of a long winter. So most people would wad up the paper and toss it in the trash.

But my good buddy Graham George, who is a senior citizen, and is always organized kept that paper from March of 2010, and we went on the air at WLW and discussed it with Scott Sloan. The reaction from the public was so violent and sudden that I was surprised that nobody had done this kind of thing before.

Fortunately I had scheduled with the Cincinnati Enquire to have a backyard interview with me because of my YouTube video, A Whip Trick to Save America the very next day, and they wanted to do a feature about that and how it applied to my resistance to the school levy. So when that story came out, the gloves came off. The progressives all over the state that were listening to WLW decided to make me out to be some illiterate cowboy, which of course didn’t fit the facts I was able to put out on the radio broadcasts. People saw how the game was played and when I didn’t turn away and hide, but only increased my activity, it allowed people to see the structure of the game.

Now that the deed is done, the School Board is struggling to figure out what to do next. They are talking about solar panels, which is fine, but still doesn’t address the largest cost to the budget which is wages, and should be explored regardless of a budget crisis. The board is now fighting for the president position arguing over who should lead. Ray Murry is talking the right type of issues, discussing whether or not the district should have spent 90K on an employment search for a new treasure and superintendent. Those are nice discussions and I’m happy to hear the debate on both sides, but in reality, it’s just politics because the numbers are just peanuts compared to the elephant eating them.

However, the problems will only get tougher, so while the School Board is struggling with each other to figure out what the community wants, they would be very “wise” to accept the help of our local business leaders that have offered to assist.

I have placed the offer to the board and was told that “most business people would probably become frustrated by the restrictions.” That was a polite way to say that the situation is too complicated for most businessmen to deal with. Well, that complication has been made complicated for a reason, and it’s to prevent “outsiders” from being able to offer fixes. It’s all part of the organized labor strategy, and the community knows it.

And I can promise that the education of those types of methods will only increase as more and more people send me information hoping that I’ll articulate it on the radio or on this blog.

So it is advisable that the games stop now. Grab the hands that are offering to help and be ready to do things you’d consider unthinkable 6 months ago. If you do it now, you can save the district and yourselves, and many, many jobs. If you don’t we will go off a cliff as a district.

The next levy attempt will not be about Rich Hoffman the cowboy whip cracker. Too many people want to be involved and I will gladly accept their help. I have enough personality and success that I don’t need the attention. I’ll put myself out there if people don’t feel comfortable doing it themselves, but I don’t see that being a problem in 2011. Because I see a wave of volunteerism, and other people who can speak coming boldly forth to push that door open even wider. So the decision doesn’t just sit on the shoulders of Lakota, but every public school everywhere.

So stop the games. Embrace the public, because they are your employers anyway, and be ready to do what’s right. Things are at a point where many things can be fixed and nobody has to be contentious enemies. It’s just business, and there are people who can offer that assistance for free, and once it’s done, Lakota could serve as a bright light of hope for all others to follow. But it takes one school to courageously step forward and be the first to open the door. Everything else will take care of itself.

But cling to the way things have been done, and the world will soon swallow you up. So make a decision…..quick!

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

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