So Rhonda Thurman, the self-proclaimed Team of One, now is seeking to have a "Team" that can control the school board. Well, what might this mean?
First, it means none of these four candidates ever support new funding for schools. That is a perfectly reasonable argument that means we should roll back the calendar a decade and have left school funding needs solely dependent on the growth of the tax base in Hamilton County and the willingness of the state to provide adequate education funding.
I have no idea what the numbers would be, but it seems logical that we would be dealing with $50 million or so less money in schools today. The members of the "Rhonda Alliance" have certainly thought about what the schools would look like today if there had been no revenue increases, and they should share that with the public.
Mr. Dumas clearly does not believe there is a need for the new school being built in his district because it takes the new taxes that we all pay to build it, and you can't be with Rhonda and be for new taxes.
I don't know anyone at the Public Education Foundation, the Carnegie Foundation, the Benwood Foundation, the National Science Foundation or any other foundation, but I know they have put millions of dollars into public education for training teachers, hiring teachers, reading programs and the like.
If you are aligned with Mrs. Thurman, you oppose third-party support of this kind. Mr. Dumas and Mr. Juster oppose any benefit their district's schools have received from these types of organizations. You have to wonder if the principals and teachers in their districts feel the same way.
Anyone paying attention knows that the "reform movements" in public education have not all brought success. But the Rhonda Alliance view endorsed by Mr. Dumas and Mr. Juster that we just need schools as they were 20 years ago needs to be explained to parents, teachers and students who have to compete in a world that doesn't in any way resemble the world 20 years ago.
Also, if you are a part of the Rhonda Alliance, you must support allowing students to attend any school they wish in the county and oppose magnet schools.
Honestly, it is a good thing that Mr. Dumas and Mr. Juster have joined with Mrs. Thurman because it provides a reason for voters to pay attention to the school board elections. Mrs. Thurman and Mr. Price are absolutely right in saying that citizens of Hamilton County should get out and vote in school board elections. Creating a slate of candidates in support of Mrs. Thurman's views on education will give people something to vote for, and something to vote against.
Robert Randolph
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Mr. Randolph,
Do you support spending 84% of the budget in the classroom or 92% of the budget in the classroom?
If you said 92% - You are a Rhoda Thurman supporter. (The other eight school board members have been happy to spend only 84% in the classroom.)
I would ask you to read Why I Am Running - printed in the Chattanoogan.com - you might learn a thing or two about me.
I do think Rhonda has done an excellent job - she is the one who has pointed out all the wasted expenses in the school system.
Lastly, if you think that your tax dollars should be spent wisely, then you, too, are a Rhonda supporter because she is the only school board member who is concerned about getting the most for the public's money.
Gregg Juster
Back on Track for 2008 (and proud of it)
Candidate for District 4 School Board
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We call it a mess kit, but not to do in it what the current 8 to 1 Hamilton County School Board has done in theirs.
Some speak and write of money for programs and systems to better educate our children and grand children. What's that gotten us? What's that done to produce a high school graduate who can read, write, and cipher?
Nothing.
8 to 1 would have us believe money is the key to success. What success have we seen with more money?
Forty...oops...where's that driver's license...maybe closer to fifty some odd years ago we had flash cards. We had pencils and paper, that we had to provide ourselves. We had blackboards and chalk...and all the attendant dust that went along with them. Miss Oneleo sure looked cute with chalk on the side of her nose. If we wanted to talk in class we got to clean those boards after school and bang out the erasers, and sometimes:
I will not talk in class ever again.
I will not talk in class ever again.
Do that a few hundred times and we had second thoughts about talking when we shouldn't...yeah, well, most of the time.
Mouth off to a teacher? To quote good old Coach Glassgow, with that set of 17s or so he had and who used to count reps for us during morning workouts while bench pressing 220 lbs. on the weight machine, "your [tushi] will be grass and I'll be the lawnmower." At the time he also held the pool record in the 200 meter butterfly event out at UC Irvine, and we called him "sir"...or "Coachie." He eventually gave up on what a bunch of smart alecs called him, as long as we were working to improve our swimming strokes and keeping our grades up...and were being respectful, even if joking. The Red Shirt Squad didn't have this privilege that was reserved for swimmers and water polo players.
He didn't get canned like a local assistant principle, an Army veteran I might add, has. But 8 to 1 would have us believe discipline in our schools is just peachy, and pepper spray isn't necessary...film at eleven.
Need a haircut? Don't play..in Southern California, in the 60s. It was as simple as that. They couldn't say much about some us who were too lazy and shaved our heads, though. Kind of rough in the convertible for a few days, though.
Don't want to wear a tie on game days? Don't play. It was simple. Some of us were a bit rebellious, though. It took them over a month to get a tie around my neck on a shirt with a collar. My girlfriend said I looked rather dapper with a tie on my t-shirt...until they said I couldn't wrestle that week.
Don't want to abide by the dress code, even if it includes jeans and t-shirts? Go home and put on different clothes. How long has Howard High School had a dress code that 8 to 1 hasn't insisted upon enforcing? Don't enforce one regulation, how do we enforce any of the rest? Getting up in the morning, truancy...
Don't have a good enough grade average? Coach Moore, our athletic department head, wouldn't let that kid play until the grades came up. That was the grade average, not the grades for that week. Coach didn't have to worry about fighting to keep his job because some heathern child, a discipline problem herself, accused him of making untoward comments. But 8 to 1, at least their appointed from out of town superintendent, would have us believe it's all the coach's fault today.
Some speak about el spiffo programs run by third party organizations. 8 to 1 would have us believe this is the way to go.
Let's see now...we provide guidance for the new school program. We provide a grant to cover most of the training, for a while. We provide the training and support personnel to the schools, that you're going to pay with the grant money that we give you. I get it now. We get a tax write off for money we give you then you turn around and pay it back to us. That's a pretty cool deal. It's a great deal for our children if we listen to 8 to 1.
Some say we "have to have" this or that el spiffo computer or the latest and greatest program...and the school system pays 2 or 3 grand for last year's computers. I've seen invoices and price sheets for them, just the basic hardware. It's been several years since I paid more than 800 to 900 smackers for a computer at Wally World...and it was loaded with at least as much, probably more, software than those boxes the HCDE buys. If it decides to loose its mind in cyberspace? Go get another one at Wally's Joint 24/7/365ish. But that's another epistle.
How many rooms full of computer equipment lays around not being used? 8 to 1 should know. Do they? How much of it is sold for scrap, sold for scrap when it could be used perfectly well to teach computer basics.
The dude at AT&T Bell Labs who invented the transistor didn't have spiffy computers. He had a pencil and paper, a slipstick, probably a chalkboard, and his brain.
Nikola Tesla didn't even write his designs down on paper. That's the guy who invented the electric power system we use world wide today.
What did Albert Einstein have for tools?
We could list for days the products and services that have been designed and patented without the need for spiff, like the 1500+ patents specifically for women's b'aziers...a little trivia there. I'm not sure how many there are for lederhosen, but I suspect there are even more, and designed without a computer.
General Electric (a Tom Edison deal), RCA (another Edison gig), Westinghouse (whose guts are, sadly, now gone), IBM, AT&T, AT&T Bell Labs, the telephone system in general, were all built into humongous, and filthy profitable, organizations by people who had nothing but pencil, paper, flashcards, and a chalkboard in school.
If spiff doesn't get it, what's wrong with going back to flash cards? Kids might even gain a sense of competition and accomplishment by doing some work for a change instead of playing games on a computer. At least they would be able to read.
Teach our children to read so they can learn what's been discovered before, about poetry, about that gaily bedight Knight dude, and to comprehend the world around them. Teach our children to write a complete sentence, a complete paragraph, so they can fill out a job application. Teach our children to cipher so they can understand what those Greek guys were doing, about Archimedes and his lever, and why it was so important to have that zero the Arabs gave us. I'm not so sure about the person who came up with imaginary numbers, though.
Kookie may not need to loan me one of her new combs. The lack of critical thinking skills on the part of some may force me to pull what's left of my possum blonde hair out.
Go, Kookie, go! Go, Kookie, go! Show 8 to 1 what a lowly Professional Hair Dresser is made of. I wish you had an opponent so I could donate some money and work on your campaign. But wait. There's always Dumas and Juster.
But one still must wonder what 8 to 1 will try to do in our Wheaties, then turn around and tell us we need to give them more money.
I need chocolate, and a cigarette. Richard says all those increased taxes are for the children, don't you know.
Royce E. Burrage Jr.
Royce@OfficiallyChapped.org
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Personally, I gave up on the public school system when my 15 and 16 year old children were in 5th and 6th grade, respectively. I was told that the older one had ADD and needed to be medicated and probably even then should be put in special needs classes. The younger child had a speech problem and they also wanted to put him in special needs. We had taken him to Siskin and were told that it was something he would outgrow and not make an issue of it. We told the school officials that this was what the experts at Siskin said and they, against our specific instructions not to do so, took him off-campus to a county speech therapist.
We immediately sought alternatives and found a very good computer based curriculum and started our own school. My wife and I are fortunate to be able to work from home and quickly realized the computer-based curriculum was designed such as to not need a lot of our intervention.
The last testing done by the school system had the children's score in about the 50th percentile in most subjects. Within two years of homeschooling, the state scores were in the top 20 percent in all subjects. In the high school years, we have augmented sending both children to a homeschool support school with accredited teachers for certain subjects like Spanish and the science classes. High school science can range from smelling up the house (biology) to blowing up the house (chemistry). In the last testing, 9th and 10th grade respectively, both scored at the lowest in the top 10 percent in the country and at best the top four percent in the country. Both are considered to be Post High-School in their capabilities.
All of this was done with no drugs for ADD or otherwise. There is no violence in our school. My children enjoy socializing at church, scuba, and many other events. The software costs me $275 a year and the support classes cost me $2,700 a year for both. So for $3,000 a year I can educate two high school students. I pay school taxes and could avail myself of the school system however I think I did a much better job than the "professionals." I felt as though the teachers and administrators had written my children off but as a parent who loves their children, I cannot afford to do that. I am not sure that money is the root of why the educational system has failed since I spend very little and get the results that are needed and should be expected.
J.R. Harris
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After teaching in a private school and teaching adults for the last 20 years (the results of public schools), I would like to offer a suggestion. That we do go back some 20 years or more regarding how the classrooms were controlled, how discipline was instituted, and respect given for the teachers/staff.
Yes, we need to keep the current (and future) methods of teaching "our little darlings", but enough of the lawsuits against teachers and schools for demanding that the students show some respect and dare to discipline them.
The children have more "rights" than the parents or teachers thanks to lawsuits and trial lawyers.
Scott Poteet
Chattanooga