Received a call from State Attorney Dennis Ward re what I wrote in yesterday’s marketing the school referendum post, that I hoped he would publicly support the .5 mil school referendum.
Dennis said he doesn’t think younger and older children should be in school together, a reference to suggestions from school board members and the Superintendent of Schools that if the referendum fails to pass on January 31, schools will be closed and lower school students will be moved to high schools. Dennis said he favors 1-8 and 9-12 schools. I said I imagine mixing younger with older students would make law enforcement’s job harder. Dennis said probably so, and if the referendum does not pass, it probably will unconscionable.
He said the Acevedo scandal tore the heart out of the school district and the community, and since then the school board has done a good job trying to restore that heart. Dennis complimented all the school board members, and was especially complimentary of John Dick, now into his second year as school board chairman. Dennis said, if the referendum does not pass, the victims will be teachers, parents and their children.
Yesterday afternoon, I received an email from former school board member Stephen Pribramsky, who receives all of my posts. He said he had been reading the posts about the school district and the referendum, and asked me to call him.
Steve and John Dick stood alone for a few years, trying to bring fiscal sanity to the school district and pushing hard to get to the bottom of the Acevedo scandal. Steve felt one term was enough for him, and did not run again in 2010. I didn’t blame him after all the hell he caught from the public, especially from Conchs allied with Randy Acevedo. Also were threats which Steve felt were too close to his wife and children for comfort.
Steve was seriously not happy with school board member Robin Smith-Martin leading the public to believe defeat of the referendum could result in a decrease in school district taxes.
I told Steve a theoretical tax decrease if the referendum fails to pass was the lead item on yesterday’s Audit & Finance Committee agenda at Marathon High School, where school board chairman John Dick said he didn’t see a tax decrease if the referendum failed, and said he will poll school board members at the school board meeting at Coral Shores next Tuesday re how they view a tax decrease if the referendum fails. Present were school board members Robin Smith-Martin, Ron Martin and Andy Griffiths, Duncan Matthewson absent. School Superintendent Jesus Jara, school district CFO Michael Kinneer and Internal Auditor Ken Gentile were present. The five AFC members were present.
Sean Kinney of the Keynoter, sitting to my right, typed on his laptop while I churned so bad inside that I felt like someone was running nails and glass through my G.I. track after pouring gasoline into it. I never will be able to wrap my mind around AFC members Larry Murray and Stuart Kessler, and Robin Smith-Martin giving the public a reason to vote against the referendum, passage of which they know is crucial to the school district continuing to move forward, away from the Acevedo scandal. They said yesterday they support the referendum, hope it passes. Everyone there knew it will be rough enough even if the referendum passes, due to falling state and county tax revenues, and horrible if the referendum fails.
Andy Griffiths, sitting to my left, wrote some stuff down, which he gave to me.
“I presented Budget to Leadership Monroe County Friday morning. [25 people who had to apply and be accepted to the program] When I got to the 1/2 mil discussion I explained the referendum. This group of highly visible well informed were shocked and & uninformed. Many became instant advocates. Many asked, ‘How could they help?’ Point: they didn’t know!!”
“If those most affected - teachers, parents, other school employees sit on their hands, how do we adovcate?”
“Maybe best is for referendum to fail, let everybody get a sense of what it’s like w/$9 million less revenue.”
During a break, I told Jesus Jara that at next week’s school board meeting he needed to lay out the worse case outcome if the referendum failed. He did not wait, but started laying it out in the AFC meeting; said it would mean lots of employee meetings with Jesus. Sports adios. School closings. Salary cuts. Fun city.
There were other points I probably should mention.
One other point came up while I was there - I left at noon, worn out after 3 1/2 hours. I’m getting too old, tired and grumpy to keep doing this kind of stuff.
When pressed by Larry Murray for the school district/school board strategic plan, Robin Smith-Martin said every board member’s strategic plan is the best possible education, to prepare students for the best possible college education, to prepare them for the best possible lives. I said the strategic plan should be to get the referendum passed.
Horsefeathers! All you did was cut the low hanging fruit from the tree, you didn’t reach up high. You should have done much more to bring your budget in line. The school district budget has been tanking for years and you all seem surprised suddenly that it hasn’t fixed itself. You should have started doing something years ago when the housing bubble/property tax bubble burst. The only restructuring I’m aware of the past couple of years post-Acevedo was the necessary demotions of a couple of accused administrative staff who were big players in the not so distant past of some mind-boggling corruption. We’re talking about two, maybe three staff out of hundreds. The dirtied administrative staff from the Acevedo scandal should have fired. They were dirty enough to fire, I don’t care who they’re related to, they were in up to their elbows. Cut the corruption out of the heart of the tree, to leave it there merely allows it to find another place to spread the black rot. The school board did not then, and apparently still does not have the courage to do the hard work that must be done to restore the school district to healing and eventual health. What are they scared of? Did they run for those seats to do the right thing, or to hide behind bubba’s pants leg? So far you haven’t done a thing that rights the ship, or you wouldn’t be needing to go for this capital projects tax continuation that will go to operations instead. You still have a large number of administrative staff with crazy titles that make you laugh when you read them and ridiculous salaries to go with them, they do absolutely nothing. The title and the job is meaningless, there is nothing they are responsible for, and just in case a piece of paper might come their way, they have a personal secretary to handle it, sorry, we don’t need them either. They are jobs created for bubba’s and their pals. We have huge schools half empty. It wouldn’t kill anyone to combine some students into one school and fully utilize it and close the other one. Cut this school district budget down to the bone until the numbers work with what you have coming in. Your financial staff did an amazingly poor job of projecting your revenue and falling property values, actually, I venture to say that they did nothing, and merely told the school board they “underestimated” without admitting to the truth.
Fix it internally, don’t come to the taxpayer. Park the cars, shut off the phones, shut off the travel to all conferences, shut off everything, fire all the do nothing bozos, and their secretaries. Where is the total administrative jobs justifications and restructuring we were promised when the Acevedo scandal broke? It’s been a couple of years now, do you think we’ve forgotten? Most of the current school board is new faces. You had better make your mark and clean up that school district, or next time we get to vote, we’ll put new people in there until we find someone who is up to the task. We’re not kidding. The public is totally fed up with the school district and they don’t get anything more from us until they clean up and streamline what they have. No way to the .5 mil, cut the administrative staff to the bone, and then only then, add back in slowly what you can fully justify is needed job by job to the school board, I want their approval on every hire so I can hold them accountable for it. I don’t care if your backs are broken for a couple of years while you sort this out, it’s long overdue. We’re still watching you, and we haven’t missed a thing.
Anybody who would vote yes on this tax to “save sports programs” would be incredibly misguided; sports programs never educated a child. This problem facing the school district is far deeper and far more important to resolve than the loss of a few extra sports programs, if it came to that. If it did, so be it, bite the bullet, and get the job done.
For our 9,100 students in Monroe County, we have 1400 staff, of which only 538 are full time teachers. Is something out of whack here? Is the school board bleeding the till dry with a badly bloated staff and too many highly paid teachers for our current population? Could their calculations of population growth have been as off as their calculation of tax generated revenues? I suggest that it is an old trick to fake the numbers to get more money, and if that is what happened in the past, well it is indeed time to pay the piper and right the wrongs, no matter what it takes. Virtually firing the cleaning staff was a ridiculous act, as these people actually do work in keeping our schools clean and functioning. I would like to remind everyone of the headline of the KeysNews on August 10, 2001 read, “70 workers’ pay to be cut 40 percent”. I suggest the 900 of the unseen staff and not full time teachers would have been a much better place to wield the scalpel and spread the pain. The threat of empty schools is a red herring, because the truth is that perhaps we never did need more and larger half empty schools and the teachers to fill them to begin with.
Let’s ask tougher questions and demand tough answers and not merely hand over money we put into the coffers blindly. Let’s be smart and not let the Scaremongers bully us into caving in. Our schools exist for our children, not for the teachers and staff and their brothers to fill their pockets.
