RH Jones reports on Akron forum

From RH Jones, April 14, 2007
Subject: Shame! Shame! Shame! Who's to Blame? Akron forum Apr. 14

To all friends of public school students and their active/retired teachers:

The Akron League of Women Voter's forum this morning lasted 2-hours. Much public interest was displayed as the Akron Public Library room, that accommodated 100, was jammed packed! Panelists for the forum were: Edwin Holland, superintendent of Cuyahoga Falls Public Schools; Charles Parsons of White Hat Management; state Sen. Tom Sawyer and state Rep. Brian Williams.

My opinion of these four panelists was that all four of them were extremely intelligent, articulate and well informed. Rep. Brian Williams was outstanding in his knowledge of the public schools funding system. Far outstripping the other panelists with his grasp of facts and processes of correcting funding of our public schools. Concerning the future of "choice", he does not support it due to lack of money to support such experimental programs. We all know students do have choices in the public schools. The only problem to fully implement choices is to gain full financial support for them. We need to give the governor time to implement his program. Rep.Williams has introduced legislation that provides for performance audits of both public and tax funded charter schools. He said that the GOP eliminated accountability charter schools. They only turned in 39% of the testing results.

It came as a surprise to me that Tom Sawyer has been wisely appointed to a seat in the Ohio Senate. He is well qualified and versed in every aspect of traditional public schools. He stated that he wants to increase revenue and reduce levies. He brought up HB920 that has kept Ohio school income without inflationary growth. (How about retired STRS members who only receive a simple COLA.) He says the economy has changed and we need to keep up and adapt. He said we should sign the petition to allow the people to vote on its funding proposals.

Cuyahoga Falls is indeed lucky to have such a brilliant superintendent in Edwin Holland. Although with many years to serve a superintendent, hopefully, he will run for political office when he retires. He says state school authority is "blurred" with a rule of legislature, an Ohio Dept. of Educ., an Ohio Bd. of Educ. and many different budget proposals. There is no funds to fund schools for "choice" in all segments of societies children. Unions are a win-win for all.

Charles Parsons of White Hat Management adeptly supported his type of for-profit schools and thinks that they are public schools. Sadly, he is misguided in his thinking but he would be great if as a advocate of privately funded schools. I think that public is public and private is private.

In all, the four agree that children need educated. Costs can be reduced by more joint purchasing and cooperation of public school districts. More later!

RHJones, CORE & SummitCRTA Leg. CMTE Mem.