Response to the Your Hub Article

Here is the link to the article:

http://denver.yourhub.com/HighlandsRanch/Stories/Opinion/Local-Happenings/Story~739487.aspx

My response was too long to post there so i am posting it here. Please read the article and understand this is the type of misconception we must overcome in this battle.


Dave's response:

All I can say is wow. As a parent and voter in Douglas County I found your article to be current, on task, thoughtful, informative and yet completely wrong. You are doing a great injustice by making a comparison that is in fact impossible. You are juxtaposing the “for profit businesses” with “not for profit school system”. This is an unbalanced equation with no common denominator. Children have no choice but to go to school, however, as an employee or person of business I always have the choice in what I am doing. If I do not make enough, I look for a new job. If my business is not successful enough I get more innovative. In business, my actions dictate my revenue stream. In education the revenue steam is outside of the employee’s sphere of control, innovation is locked up in the desk drawer of the state or federal government as mandates and “one size fits all programs” rain down like volcanic ash.
We are, duty bound to the endeavor of providing the best education possible for children. Before we berate the Douglas County School District we need to look at some facts. We are the eighth largest county by population and have the highest median incomes in the state. Yet we are in the bottom of 180 school districts in a state that funds education at $1400 less per pupil than the national average. Even with this yoke this county has consistently produced the highest test scores in the state. The funding formula is a living exercise in Robin Hood economics. Make more; take more, with no consideration for the fact that if we earn more it stands to reason that we have a higher cost of living. A teacher working here must be able to afford to live here. We have good teachers, because we pay well. Sounds like capitalism at its finest. I always shake my head when we as a people send a mixed message about education. As a society we engage in a five decade long struggle against socialism? We toppled that belief and disproved its false gods, yet we hold education in limbo between the failures of socialism and the faults of capitalism. The fault lives in the community, if you engage with the public and ask questions you will see it. Education lacks the “what’s in it for me” perspective. We have lost sight of the balance between wants and needs and to steal (slightly) from Benjamin Franklin, a society that sacrifices needs for wants deserves neither and shall lose both. Do we in sincerity believe that teachers have no economic aspirations that they are of a socialistic nature and are looking to be dependent upon governmental programs for their needs? No, they want opportunity and room to advance and grow. It was said at a school board meeting that teachers don’t go into to teaching to become rich. This may be a fair statement, but they don’t do it to be poor either. As a state we have created conditions where this is now the choice. This is a state problem and but it is our responsibility to take the fight there.
Douglas County is treated as if property value is always on the upswing and no one ever loses a job. The media reinforces this stereo type and pours glasses filled with the Kool-Aid for the public to drink down. Suddenly, almost magically, like an Oliver Stone movie, facts seem less important. Citizens line up across the pit and scream about how we got here, recriminations fester and suddenly the enemy lives on your block or next door, based on whose campaign signs they display in their yard. My group, The Wickerdale Walkers, has actual ideas and plans on how to do fix the mess; we are trying hard to be part of the solution.
I must ask every citizen reading this, have you attended a meeting of the school board, SAC, DAC or PTO? Do you have firsthand knowledge of what these cuts will do to our county (our property values)? Do you realize that the preliminary numbers for next year’s state education cuts gives Douglas County 13% of the total? To author such an article with no sort of remedy is in fact the worst kind of action we can engage in. This article speaks to administrative waste in one sentence then blames the union in the next. Is the problem management or is it labor? If this is just the start of an anti-Mill movement I applaud the effort, but it is, alas, about 15 years too late. The time to fix today was yesterday, we missed it. The time to fix tomorrow is now; if we do not act in long term meaningful ways we will be in the same leaky boat drinking from the same sieve 15 years from now. This means we need a levy to stop the bleeding while we actively pursue different avenues of education funding, such as Lotto, existing bond re-direction, co-op buying as a state and a host of other ideas. The enemy is not your teachers, administrators, parents, community or school board; right now it is the state and the poor way that the capitol has handled finances. That is where our energy must go. We must move above the fray and keep the fight where it belongs

The time for stale election year rhetoric has passed and I invite everyone to get off the couch and move in closer to the issues. Leave the safety of your laptops and show the courage you all have. If we are only to be about “tilting at windmills” we will soon learn that this is a real dragon and idiom alone cannot slay it. If we are not working on solving the problem, we are the problem. Visit us on facebook as the “Wickerdale Walkers” and get plugged in to solutions in the making.