I follow Matt Mayer and like his work, but this one misses the mark for me.
Focusing only on the property tax/school & local government funding piece of this article, this post, for me, falls short of where I'd hoped he'd go.
Last-Place/Most-Expensive schools, sitting on roughly $10 billion of surplus funds is a great opportunity to force a massive re-evaluation. A reported *majority* of graduates being ineffective at reading, writing, math, or basic understanding of geography and government, while some districts are spending $15, $20, $30, and even over $40,000 per student... this isn't a circumstance under which I'm willing to accept the notion of replacing one tax with another in order to maintain status quo. Status quo is fundamentally, horribly, egregiously broken.
That, for me, is the starting point. Return to "you have one job, the pursuit of Academic Excellence" and eliminate any/every expense not directly related to it. This means the endless parade of construction projects, most of the "administrators", and a lot more unnecessary spending.
Thanks for the response, Jonathan. I don't quibble with the points you make. I guess I just come back to the failure of Senate Bill 5 makes what you propose very tough to do, so we are stuck in many ways in Ohio with the teacher's union in control of things and teacher's unions and contractors largely funding most school board races, thereby giving them control of both sides of the table. I also fear that people see schools districts a lot like the see politicians--namely, schools are terrible, but NOT my school (Congress stinks but Jim Jordan is great (not to pick on him, but career politician who has gotten exactly what done for his constituents? Where are his Russian hoax scalps?), so ultimately getting reform becomes hard especially as so many voters are in suburban schools that they deem good enough.
Good point on SB 5. Did you know, Dan Schutz & I have been hosting national training on Precinct Strategy, working to educate Ohioans and the nation on the importance of getting involved locally, which stands to replace horrible representatives with real ones, and then hold them accountable?
On teachers unions funding: Linda Harvey will be our guest on Ohio Political News this Sunday talking about discoveries that teachers unions are funding Ohio's Republican representatives in a HUGE way. Stay tuned for another documentary dropping nationally around Labor Day - I was featured in Transforming America (Newsmax) and will be in this next one too; everyone will want to see this!
On disbelief that anyone's home district is bad: Did you know, Omar Tarazi and I co-created the Academic Accountability Project for Ohio, which teaches people to figure out what's happening in their district. It's tremendously powerful because it wakes people up to how bad things really are and because nay-sayers have no answer once they realize the stats come directly from the Ohio Department of Education. It's available via the Protect Ohio Children website.
I follow Matt Mayer and like his work, but this one misses the mark for me.
Focusing only on the property tax/school & local government funding piece of this article, this post, for me, falls short of where I'd hoped he'd go.
Last-Place/Most-Expensive schools, sitting on roughly $10 billion of surplus funds is a great opportunity to force a massive re-evaluation. A reported *majority* of graduates being ineffective at reading, writing, math, or basic understanding of geography and government, while some districts are spending $15, $20, $30, and even over $40,000 per student... this isn't a circumstance under which I'm willing to accept the notion of replacing one tax with another in order to maintain status quo. Status quo is fundamentally, horribly, egregiously broken.
That, for me, is the starting point. Return to "you have one job, the pursuit of Academic Excellence" and eliminate any/every expense not directly related to it. This means the endless parade of construction projects, most of the "administrators", and a lot more unnecessary spending.
Thanks for the response, Jonathan. I don't quibble with the points you make. I guess I just come back to the failure of Senate Bill 5 makes what you propose very tough to do, so we are stuck in many ways in Ohio with the teacher's union in control of things and teacher's unions and contractors largely funding most school board races, thereby giving them control of both sides of the table. I also fear that people see schools districts a lot like the see politicians--namely, schools are terrible, but NOT my school (Congress stinks but Jim Jordan is great (not to pick on him, but career politician who has gotten exactly what done for his constituents? Where are his Russian hoax scalps?), so ultimately getting reform becomes hard especially as so many voters are in suburban schools that they deem good enough.
Good point on SB 5. Did you know, Dan Schutz & I have been hosting national training on Precinct Strategy, working to educate Ohioans and the nation on the importance of getting involved locally, which stands to replace horrible representatives with real ones, and then hold them accountable?
On teachers unions funding: Linda Harvey will be our guest on Ohio Political News this Sunday talking about discoveries that teachers unions are funding Ohio's Republican representatives in a HUGE way. Stay tuned for another documentary dropping nationally around Labor Day - I was featured in Transforming America (Newsmax) and will be in this next one too; everyone will want to see this!
On disbelief that anyone's home district is bad: Did you know, Omar Tarazi and I co-created the Academic Accountability Project for Ohio, which teaches people to figure out what's happening in their district. It's tremendously powerful because it wakes people up to how bad things really are and because nay-sayers have no answer once they realize the stats come directly from the Ohio Department of Education. It's available via the Protect Ohio Children website.