…For all the ways the school district and their political cronies lied to voters about the “crumbling” schools? Superintendent Carole Smith sends her thanks in a letter but still complains,
“School buildings are still crumbling.”
If tiles falling off ceilings can’t be fixed by your crack staff, Madam Superintendent, how can we trust you to take care to properly build and maintain new buildings?
But as you can read below, this check jack isn’t over,
“…the defeat doesn’t mark an end of the conversation, but rather the start of a new phase.”
See the letter (with my commentary) below:
With my Carole Smith thought bubble additions in red.
Porkland Public Schools
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May 18, 2011
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Thank you, Portland for once again being the gullible tools you are!
By passing the teachers levy, voters are helping to keep class sizes down and programs that our students depend on in place. They saved more than 200 teaching positions that were jeopardized because of state budget cuts. Frankly, we can’t believe you were dumb enough to pay for the levy. I mean, after all, we’re giving the teachers raises in this economy and you can’t even afford to buy your granola at the People’s Market!
While the levy does not make up for all the state cuts — filling about half the shortfall — it will make a huge difference for our 47,000 students by giving the teachers some hush money so they’ll stop complaining to your kids while teaching remedial culturally competent math. Class sizes will not grow dramatically. Will they notice I just said class sizes will grow? We can still offer the core academic and the entire Let’s Move social justice gardening enrichment program at all grades. And hundreds of teachers will keep their jobs.
However, voters narrowly defeated the school construction bond. Election results regionwide demonstrate that it is a difficult time to seek increased community investment. I wonder if there’s a way to get a surcharge on teachers salaries. That’s where the money is. I’ll get Ben Cannon to work on that for me.
While we are disappointed that you realized the bond measure was a total con job, the defeat doesn’t mark an end of the conversation, but rather the start of a new phase (yes, threaten them that we’ll keep trying until they give us what we want). School buildings are still crumbling. “Crumbling,” great word that means nothing! Weiner and Neely, you’re focus group geniuses! They need serious safety upgrades, and they lack the facilities students need to compete. Do you think they’ll notice that a lot of the work in the bond wasn’t for safety upgrades and that the schools aren’t crumbling? Note to self: call the maintenance engineers to make sure they don’t talk to reporters who might actually do something with this story this time.
We must strike a different balance between the work that must be done in our schools and what the community believes it can afford right now. (Hmmm…Must find an election cycle where people are sleeping again) We know the costs will go up the longer we wait, so we will need to have this community conversation quickly Let’s get this done fast before anyone notices. August?
Without dedicated funding for school building projects, PPS students will continue to attend classes in inadequate and outdated facilities. Costly repairs to our deteriorating school buildings will continue to strain our budget and drain dollars from the classroom. Think they’ll bother to see if we actually pay for heavy maintenance around here?
Our next step — as a school district and as a community — will be to determine how we address these challenges in a way that matches the urgent need for these upgrades with the challenges of these economic times.
I will always appreciate this community’s support. Thank you for the many ways you show it like not noticing 30%-50% of students still won’t graduate and read, write and compute. One the bright side: they’ll make perfect voters.
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Carole Smith
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Tell ’em where you saw it. Http://www.victoriataft.com