The Channel 19 reporter told his cameraman, who then told a guy back in the tech booth that a dangerous storm cell was coming our way, so Joan evacuated the room to seek shelter stuffed into the back of the building away from the bouncing glass windows. My wife and I looked at the storm outside then at the people who that had forced so much pain on our community with the union contract, and elected to go outside into the storm to watch the fascinating clouds roll in.We joined the TV people wo had already gathered outside to get weather shots for their various stations. It was more dangerous outside for sure, but the breeze felt good and if a tornado touched down, we’d be able to see it hopefully in time to get to some cover.
Rich Hoffman of the No Lakota anti-levy group presented an interesting request in his recent letter to the Pulse-Journal editor. His letter solicited new candidates for the Lakota Board of Education and it was striking for two reasons. It was striking to see what the anti-levy group listed as qualifications and it was equally striking for what it did not consider important.
The No Lakota group determined that ideal school board candidates “should be older than 55, be preferably retired or semi-retired, and not looking to use the school board position as a political platform for higher office or to enhance a real estate profession.” Evidently the ideal No Lakota group school board candidate does not need an education, budgeting skills, social skills, communication skills, or any interest in providing excellence in education for the community. Just say no and you’re elected.
The No Lakota group letter continued to infer that current board members “cave to the unions,” that they “intend to overpay the new superintendent” and they are perhaps guilty of “corruption and abuse of the taxpayer.” Our community is in long-term trouble if many of the No Lakota group actually believe those charges.
Although most area residents moved here specifically because of our quality schools, Lakota could still become the next Little Miami district. Imagine that scenario: one home out of every four for sale, property values decline by more than 40 percent in three years, parents paying thousands extra to educate their kids in private schools, and local school decisions made by the state.
No thank you.
With all due respect, Mr. Hoffman, the ideal school board member should be a local taxpayer, interested in providing quality education to the community, understand school funding mechanisms from both the state and local levels, have excellent two-way communication skills, and have the real interests of students and taxpayers at heart. Care and respect for your community does not have an old-age requirement and it is not necessary to be retired.
Al Miller West Chester Twp.
(Notice that in this survey by Coldwell Banker that nobody mentions schools as being the decisive factor in buying a home. Kind of interesting.
Al, buddy………where did I say school board candidates do not need an education, budgeting skills, social skills, communication skills, or any interest in providing excellence in education for the community? Just say no and you’re elected? Don’t older people have those skills and do they miraculously lose them passed the age of 40? Is that what you’re saying? Al, I expect all those traits in a school board member. In fact, I expect all that and more. I also expect a school board member to be able to balance a budget. This school board has been tasked with balancing the budget and they aren’t doing it, so they obviously aren’t very good at “budgeting skills” as you put it. I could put a child on the school board and they could do the same job as this school board when tasked with a problem.
“Joan, we don’t have enough money to meet our budget needs,” says the Lakota treasurer.
Joan says to the board, “Ok, we need to ask for more money from the community.”
Now, how is that intelligent, wise, or in any way prudent? Like I said, that is the first response a child would have to the problem. Not any of the skills you listed. So what are you defending? Are you saying that indefinitely higher taxes are the way to go, that every time the school needs money, we just throw money at them no matter how much? And I didn’t say the school could fail either. I pay a lot of money in tax each year to that school and I don’t pay to have a crappy school. If those people don’t know how to balance a budget, then they need to be replaced, because we have provided plenty of money to be an excellent school, and continue to do so.
Now, here is the Definition of CORRUPTION, since you brought it up.
1 a : impairment of integrity, virtue, or moral principle : DEPRAVITY b : DECAY, DECOMPOSITION c : inducement to wrong by improper or unlawful means (as bribery) d : a departure from the original or from what is pure or correct
So as to the corruption at Lakota, it is illegal to use teachers while on the payroll of the tax payer to use tax payer resources to pass a school levy. That means a teacher can’t talk about it to students. They can’t pass out literature. They can’t even use a school printer, decorate a bus or design pro campaign literature while on the payroll of the school, yet they ignore the law and do it anyway. The No Lakota Group has statements that some teachers spent entire class periods lecturing their students about the merits of a levy passage encouraging those bright young minds to go home and tell their parents to vote for the levy. We also know of incidents where principals have openly threatened through their PTA organizations to boycott Liberty Twp and West Chester businesses that don’t support the levy attempt. Some of these calls were made during school hours by employees of the district paid for by the tax payer. In fact, I have a letter from a principle that was typed on his school computer and sent to all the teachers that work for him complaining about the community not supporting the levy. This was done during school hours with school equipment, and that is illegal. The school board knows about this activity yet does not do anything about it. That is corrupt. It’s also corrupt to call the token cuts to services as needed when the obvious strategy is to inconvenience parents to extort money from them. When busing was cut to save a couple million dollars under the mask of “needed” cuts when everyone knows that the payroll is simply too high and out of control is an open participation in bribery. Pay the levy or we’ll cut services you need. That is wrong. I actually have many such instances of this behavior that will be revealed should the district choose to pursue another levy. We’ve held back on this information for the sake of the community, but it will not be tolerated from here on out.
And since you seem to not understand economics here’s a free lesson for you. Notice that passing a levy doesn’t figure into the equation here. The value of your home is only worth the value it has to potential people who want it. Most people who bought on the back of the housing bubble bought too high, so you are looking at a collapse that has nothing to do with school funding. In fact, higher taxes make your home less attractive, not more attractive. If the school is expected to still be excellent, and taxes stay stable, your value will stay at market value, which is probably too high because you bought your home on the back of a bubble. Passing a levy will actually hurt your value.
Basically, Al, it is your decision if you choose to not see these things, and you have a mentality to throw more money into a bottomless pit. You won’t be one of the people we’d nominate to put on the school board. We already have too many people who think like you working for the school system already.)
This video could be Lakota, Sycamore, or Mason. The problems are all the same yet nobody wants to deal with the real issue.
Now, the next letter.
DO NOT PLACE BLAME WHERE IT DOESN’T BELONG
Let’s get the full story out there please. The Lakota School Board is acting to deal with teacher contracts the only legal way they can. They have canceled the second year of the two-year contract because it could not be funded. They are going back to the negotiating table with the teacher union to achieve the best result possible.
Do not place blame where it does not belong.
The board said they would deal with the situation through a three pronged approach — reduce expenditures, put a policy in place to limit future expenditure increases, and seek additional revenues. Students and families have given, administrators and staff have given, we need our community now to recognize the need, and participate in maintaining and preserving the investment made by this community in our schools. The fact of the matter is that our school district can not be sustained without a levy. There is nowhere else to cut costs. If we want our communities to continue to be a great place for families to live, a great place to raise children, then we have to pass the levy in November.
Back when the first levy failure happened, the “no” people said they wanted the district to make serious cuts before they would support a levy. The cuts have been made. The cuts continue to be made. What is their argument now?
We must recognize that our school district and the school board are limited by law and mandates. Dedicated and civic minded individuals who genuinely care about the future of this district and these students would be welcome to be a part of the solution. Please be a part of the future of our communities and support our schools.
We must pass the next levy in order to have a sustainable and continuously excellent school district.
Andrea Henderson West Chester Twp.
(Andrea, those cuts have not been made. The school board cut buses, laid-off some newer teachers, and made sports a pay for play deal. All those cuts are designed by the OSBA to inconvenience parents and force them to vote for a levy the next time. These strategies are taught to school board members at Levy University in Columbus. I know many school board members that have taken this class, so I know what goes on there.
Now, as to the district being limited by law in what they can cut, what you’re talking about is the teacher’s contracts and the protections the OEA have lobbied on their behalf. That is the very reason that Kasich signed Senate Bill 5 into law, to give the school board the ability to control their costs. So technically it isn’t illegal any more to attack those contract costs. Unions are scared to death of this bill, which is why they are trying so hard to get the bill repealed. Notice how these teachers speak in extreme ways. “It will destroy what we fought for, for years.”
We can’t afford their union. We can’t afford their collective bargaining. These rights they are speaking about are a result of FDR and LBJ, and their big government policies. They aren’t rights granted by the US Constitution and we are not required to pay for them as property owners. It should actually be discussed that it’s unfair to property owners to be forced to pay for the high expectations of these union employees.
Once those current teacher contracts are up, school boards can deal with that 85% of their escalating costs that have been illegal. Besides the potential problem with the law restricting control of those employee costs, we also have the trouble with quantitative easing that is about to hit us all hard from the federal level, so asking for a higher taxes will destroy many families. Oh, you don’t know what quantitative easing is. I’m sorry. Here’s a lesson.
The sad thing is, and I don’t mean to pick on you, there are thousands of people who think the same way you do, and they’re all wrong; that you are willing to write these people a free pass. For a district to be forced by law to incur further taxation is insane, foolish, and pure extortion in the simplest form. Anyone that supports such measures has an education that has failed them completely. Supporting your school does not mean tossing money out the window of a runaway bus. Supporting your school means solving problems when they come up. Squeezing the property owners for everything they have while an aggressive teachers union has negotiated a scam on us all, to maintain an average wage of 63K per year is insane. People who say “good” and “money” in the same sentence do not understand the value of things, and are ignorant to what makes something better than something else. You cannot rape and pillage a community of its resources and expect it to last.
The No Lakota people have different degrees of resistance. For me, I want education reform completely. I don’t like the current system, and I want to see major changes. It’s not worth 10K per kid. The senior citizens in our group are on a fixed income, and they can’t afford the tax. And the business owners in our group are people who have been hit hard by the recession. They are sitting on property that they invested in years ago that should have been paying them back by now, but are currently sitting vacant. Further taxes on that property only drain more money from them. So when people who don’t value money say these people are rich, and should pay their fair share, they sound like fools because they aren’t the people who are building up the community. The people supporting these tax levies are typically people who have kids in the school, they moved to Lakota to be a part of a good community, they want sports for their kids and all the electives of a large school, but they also want it cheap. They want the “shared” costs of the entire community that pays these costs year after year. These are the same people who will move out of Lakota when their kids grow up and leave the community, and those parents will downsize to another home in Florida or someplace else. Meanwhile, they’ll leave people like me with the bill they racked up. So don’t lecture me about what makes a good community. The people who want this levy are people who want something good cheaply and you want it for your own selfish reasons. When your kids are done with the system, chances are you’ll move anyway. )
I wasn’t sure how such a thing would be done. I knew the technology was available. I’ve been involved in many conference calls for business meetings, but what Kasich was trying to do was unique.
I sat down in the lobby of the Republican Headquarters, a small converted house just behind the historic Golden Lamb. It’s an older building unpretentious in it’s nature. Several of my friends were there popping popcorn and eating pizza. At 6 PM a laptop on a desk in the corner played Kasich live over the internet as he introduced the film Waiting For Superman, a film made by the same people who did An Inconvenient Truth which made Al Gore so famous. Kasich spoke about the need for education reform and said that this film, made by liberals, touched him so deeply that he felt compelled to act. He also added that he didn’t like to speak after watching the film but said that we’d all meet back online to have a discussion. Then he said hit play, and enjoy the movie.
Around 9 PM everything wrapped up, I grabbed a handful of popcorn and headed back to the car with my wife. On the way home we talked about the experience. She looked at me as the darkened countryside passed by outside the window. “I understand with clarity what the problem is.”
“You do?” I asked.
“Yes, I felt sorry for those mothers, but the problem is many of those women have forgotten to be mothers. They had other options. Looking to someone else to educate their children is asking for a disaster.”
My opinions on this matter where settled when I was very young. My mother was the kind of woman everyone wanted for a mom. She did all the things that kids fantasize about in having an ideal mom. She was always there for a little treat. She was always there to hand out a band-aid. Dinner was always ready around at 5:30 pm when Dad came home. She was a room mom in school that would make treats for every kid in my class. She did all the little things that are so important while children are still developing their consciousness from those tender ages of 1 to 12. My mom was the kind of woman who would give me books that she’d write little things in that I still have, and I may not read the book right then, but within the next year or two, I would. She still does things like that, just the other day while my dad and her were vacationing in Hilton Head, she brought me back a new book mark that had pirate skulls all over it in 3D. She wrote a little message on the back for me to remember, which I will.
We have occasional disagreements like when I recently argued with my youngest about applying to college in London. I told her those socialists would attempt to reprogram her and she’d be too far away from home to get her grounding again. “Oh, dad, I’m not a weak-minded fool.”
My kids don’t lack courage. They are secure. And there isn’t any problem that they think they can’t handle, at any level. Why is that? Because they had a fantastic mother.
I know a very bright-eyed young girl of about 7 that is full of hope and dreams. Everyone when they first met her thought “this is a young girl that will be something.” But the closer she gets to junior high, the closer she gets to older kids that are “giving up,” because they see where their lives are going in their messed up parents, the light in this young girl’s eyes is dimming. I told my wife that in a few years, the light will go out all together.
“Why, we must do something,” she said.
“You can’t help her,” I said. “You can only help your own children, your nieces or nephews. You can be kind and offer yourself as a mentor, but ultimately those kids will only be as good as their parents.”
Become Superman, don’t wait for him. The greatest gift you can give a child is to give them someone to look up to, to emulate. Money won’t do it. Only what’s in your soul will work, and you can’t hide that with material goods. You have to be superman to the core of your being.
When I opened the envelope from Butler County Court of Common Pleas I was mildly excited, because the letter turned out to be what I thought it was; a notification for Jury Duty.
Now, I don’t mind such things. I see it as a civic obligation and I recognize the service in the spirit it was intended. I enjoy court because of the human theater. I usually learn a lot about human society in such places, so it would not be a difficult thing to ask me to participate.
However, I became infuriated at the wording of the letter: Dear Prospective Juror, You are COMMANDED to be available to appear and serve on the petit jury of the Butler County Common Pleas.
So what fool government worker sitting down at the Butler County Court House shoving paper around each day and getting paid excessively well to do so think in their wildest dreams that they have authority over me and my family?
The answer to this comes from the broadcast of Doc Thompson of 700 WLW about an Indiana Supreme Court issue that enables the police to enter a home without any warrant, under reasonable suspicion. Residents are not allowed to resist any search from the police of their homes.
But the emotion of the moment doesn’t change my opinion that police have no right to perform as a military device against the citizens. They have no right to sit perched on the sides of roadways like stalking hunters only to pull over random victims to raise revenue for their departments. They have no right to tell me to wear a seat belt. They have no right to impose themselves on me in any way.
I have a long history with police. When I was younger, I got pulled over all the time. Before my 18th birthday I had been to court more times than I had years on my birthday, just for traffic violations. Every time I went to court, my parents told me to wear my school jacket, because then the judge would go easier on me. Besides the traffic tickets, I had police altercations for fights, for deaths, for trespassing, thefts, just about everything you can imagine. Yet, I was not a bad kid. I didn’t drink. I didn’t do drugs. I didn’t treat people badly. But I did stick up for myself. I did have a hard-line where I refused to concede to authority and that made me a target.
As a man I’ve been to court for all those same issues, but add to those law-suits, various disputes, and employer-employee issues. I’ve watched a judge enter a room dozens and dozens of times to be told by the bailiff, “all rise, the honorable court so-and-so presiding,” only to have everyone in the court room sit back down. Somewhere when I was very young I saw the process as a scam, I lost respect for the whole ceremony, and I stopped wearing my school jacket to court, and instead wore my leather jacket. I learned that the people attracted to the profession of law enforcement in general are attracted to power, so to make a blanket statement that police are all honorable and above criticism is naive and foolish. I have seen these people from every angle, and that is my opinion. I respect whatever oath they chose to take for themselves, and in the context of society, I respect their rules. But my property, my sovereignty, intruding on it is an act of war from a foreign entity. An attack on me in any way, an improper entry to my home, even stepping on my property is an act of war by a domestic enemy. If we are on the highway, “neutral” territory, and they turn on their little lights and pull me over, I pull over. I consider such encounters as getting caught by a tax troll. But I don’t respect their law enforcement because I don’t respect the laws created by corrupt politicians who write those self-serving laws.
As if my impression toward police officers were not cemented at an early age, I have a rage that continues to this very day over an incident that occurred in Sharonville when my wife, a fashion model at the time worked at her parents business as a receptionist for part-time money. Her and I were newly married. I don’t even think she was 19 years old yet. Well, her parents needed the police to take a statement about something, one was an older guy in his late 40’s, and was very over-weight and had a classic cop mustache. His partner was a skinny young man fresh out of the military, in his mid-twenties. So these cops came into this business and my wife greeted them. “Wow, you’re pretty,” said the older cop smiling at his partner. “And married too. What’s a pretty young girl like you doing married?”
“Oh, I met a great guy, and I’m very happy,” my wife said.
“Would you ever cheat on your husband?” the older guy said as both cops laughed.
“No,” my wife said becoming serious.
“Well,” said the old cop, “would you lay still while I do.” Both cops erupted into laughter.
My wife didn’t know what to do. Her parents had heard this, but feared to say anything, because they didn’t want to be on the bad side of the cops. When I came home from work that day, she was crying, feeling helpless. I called the police station, talked to the supervisors of those officers and let him know how I felt.
“Do you want to file a complaint?” he asked me. “Just come on down and fill it out.”
A teacher from Springboro is having a petition signing event this Saturday from 11 AM till 1 PM. She lives right across the street from Kelly Kohls, a Springboro Board member who is tight with Shannon Jones, testified in favor of SB 5, the new president of the Warren County Tea Party, and a founding member of Educate Ohio – an anti public education, teacher and union group.
Would put out the word to your contact list? Even if all they do is drive over and clog the street, that would be great.
The address is 4188 Belle Terrace in Lebanon which is off of Pekin Road between St Rt 48 and St Rt 741.
Thanks! Becki Villamagna Communications/Political Action Ohio Education Association
For the casino proposed in Cincinnati there are already discussions about having a strip club near that casino. I remember when Larry Flynt first brought Hustler of Hollywood to Cincinnati and all the controversy over putting that business in Monroe, and people were up in arms about having immoral business in Cincinnati.
As parents learn that they have options, it is by using those options that they can be most instrumental in bringing about change. By voting down school levies, by using other forms of education to teach your kids, by taking advantage of every opportunity available, the parent of a child will go a long way to ending these massive public education debacles that are making a joke of education in the United States.
But doing nothing will only make the situation worse.
If you’re a CEO and you think you can fudge the books in order to make yourself look better, we’re going to find you, we’re going to arrest you, and we’re going to hold you to account. –President George W. Bush, 2002
We have no choice but to call these people thieves since they refuse to give an interview to Channel 9, or WLW to say otherwise, because all the evidence points to these people as first class crooks.
Click on the link below to get to Brendan’s page where you can look up your districts superintendent.
I have a very talented daughter that does some fantastic photographic work. My wife and I took her to launch on Saturday and I had to take a minute to admire the person she has become. As a photographer her pictures are worth millions of words.
These are the pictures that reflect the young woman who sat across from me on Saturday and ate Teriyaki Chicken. It was impossible when looking at her to not think of jet setting all over the world, camping at Stonehenge, crawling on her belly through the mud to take a picture of a flower in the wet morning mist. To see the young adventurer that will fight through the thugs on a DC subway to get unbelievable pictures around the nation’s capital, or the young woman who went with her husband every weekend by train into London, and rode ferries to the shores of France in the frigid punishment of the English Channel.
She is a remarkable young lady that gets better by the day. And her extraordinary ability comes through in her art, captured through the lens of her camera. This was the young woman who laughed at her joy of living while stuffing the Teriyaki Chicken into her mouth, which seemed so incredibly fitting. I wondered while watching her how her vision would increase in the future. What she has managed so far is quite impressive.
She likes friends, so if you want to meet her, here’s her Facebook.
She enjoys that kind of thing much more than I do. But that’s part of what makes her unique, and why I think her photography provides a glorious insight into the human experience.
The Channel 19 reporter told his cameraman, who then told a guy back in the tech booth that a dangerous storm cell was coming our way, so Joan evacuated the room to seek shelter stuffed into the back of the building away from the bouncing glass windows. My wife and I looked at the storm outside then at the people who that had forced so much pain on our community with the union contract, and elected to go outside into the storm to watch the fascinating clouds roll in. 
We joined the TV people wo had already gathered outside to get weather shots for their various stations. It was more dangerous outside for sure, but the breeze felt good and if a tornado touched down, we’d be able to see it hopefully in time to get to some cover.
Much to my surprise Ron Spurlock joined me outside along with Jenni Logan. We had a nice conversation, nothing serious. I purposely wanted to avoid doing a lot of talking. After all, they had a reason to celebrate and I didn’t want to rob them of the experience. The relief on their faces that the LEA actually negotiated a deal in record time with them without discussion of strikes, or other hardships, was nothing short of stunning.
The Overmanwarrior 