Pickerington Area Taxpayers Alliance

One More Thing

The PEA did display considerable, and seemingly unreasonable, militance in negotiating the last of the contracts in which I was involved as a school board member. I think a lot of the public animosity toward the PEA derives from that contract.

But there is more to the story: The teachers had agreed, in the prior contract, to considerably lower raises, based on administration representations that the cupboard was bear. As soon as the teachers contract was signed, however, the school board (with yours truly dissenting) awarded whopping raises to the administrators, including a 10% raise and a substantial bonus to a superintendent who I thought actually deserved to be fired.

Thus, in approaching the next contract, the PEA was understandably angered by what they must have regarded as school board and administration bad faith in negotiating the prior contract. That accounts, I think, for their militance, which really was out of character. In the circumstances, I find it understandable.

No Thanks!

No, I've seen what happens to people who took on that challenge. I've seen what it did to you and I've seen what it did to Jim and Lisa. I was one of the trusting souls that truly believed in Jim and Lisa. I helped in the campaigns both financially and with footwork. Here's what I got in return.

I believe Jim is burned out. He has been squelched so many times that I think he has quit trying, or at least his attempts at sense are not reported. It wouldn't surprise me if he didn't run for reelection and I wouldn't blame him if he didn't.

Forgive me for this, but Lisa just flat sold out. She is adversarial, wishy-washy and rhetorical. She threw her support behind Sanders for President for what? Herself getting VP? Was it really worth it? Did she think that if she just had a little ''girl time'' with Lori, she could make her see the light? That is as bad as Riggs on Council supporting Parker for VP just before their January meeting to elect officers. Another sell out.

Trouble with sell outs is that once the mold is cast, it won't be broken. Gail is burned out and coasting until the end of the year. Wes is virtually unheard from. Again I suspect terminal burn out. Jim, God love him, has a long time to coast and wait to get out.

Bet you all never imagined the politics involved with serving your community. Bet you thought it would be different with you. Bet you thought that since you weren't political, you could avoid the politics. Sorry, it comes with the territory. Just ask any councilman.

Raising Quota's

The problem I see is very much related to the US businesses in general of the 70s and 80s and those especially that had huge worked forces that were unionized. GM was the poster boy for how to mismanagement a business and a union.

Our school employees with their rights to collective bargain are getting the same reactions from school management and these districts are heading right down the same path as those giant US businesses in the 80s, but this time out we are involving the entire state and their employees.

The problems with the contract negotiations here at the PLSD are just a small part of the over all problem facing the taxpayers of Ohio in regard to compensation packages for their public employees. This by no means is just a Teacher pay problem it involves every public employee in the state. If you remember the City of Pickerington gave their employees three 4% raises a couple of years ago. Every employee received that raise regardless of their performance but based on whether they were breathing or not.

If you remember the foreign car makers when they came to America they simplified their products and made them more reliable. Simple things like reducing the weight and providing for a plastic Master Cylinder that you see the level of your brake fluid without removing the cover are now common in these new type cars. GM and the other two of the Big Three Auto Makers continued to build their big boats until reality hit them between the eyes.

This time we will not have off shore competition to correct our propblems.

At what point will this reality hit our state leaders? Obviously we can?’t ship our children off to Japan for school but we can find new and innovating ways to educate our children.

How can some of these private schools like Sylva and others teach reading to their students at a fraction of the costs? Clearly the mandates coming from the General Assembly are because our local schools are not doing the jobs. The more tests and other mandates only load our local districts down and add costs that this state can not afford.

There was a fellow named Conway going around in the 80s teaching our US companies about quality. His 12 step plan could very well be applied to our schools. As a recipient of that training I see things differently than others. Our schools are in need of some real quality training.

One example of that would be if you had 10 salesmen. Only two are productive and the other 8 just get by. Do we raise the quota on the 8 poor performers or copy what the two successful sales people are doing? Could we compare that to say 10 Math teachers or in Bruce Rigelman?’s case 10 History teachers?

What our State General Assembly is doing is raising the quota on our teachers and they are not fixing the problems.




By History Lover