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Are you planning to vote ?
November 23, 2008
On December 2 (and ongoing by absentee ballot), there will be a runoff election for all four contested races for seats on the DeKalb Board of Education. Historically, Board of Education elections haven't garnered much attention, and I'd like to suggest that this apathy has and will cost the residents of DeKalb dearly. School taxes make up over two thirds of every property bill, so it's worth being informed about who wants to control spending of this money.
Please consider the following:
While approving the recent reductions in bus service, the DeKalb Board of Education also approved increasing the "No Bus Service" radius for schools from 1 mile to 1.5 miles, unless "conditions dictate otherwise". This means that come January, a lot of students who live less than 1.5 miles from their schools and currently ride school buses will have to find another way to get to school. The plan also increased the minimum distances between bus stops to 2/10 mile for elementary schools and 3/10 mile for middle and high schools. Field trips are to be restricted, even to other educational facilities such as Fernbank Science Center. Good or bad decisions, these changes needed to be discussed publicly, as they will impact a large number of students and families.
The Board of Education also approved a reduction of 217 central office positions by placing a hiring freeze on vacancies and offering an early retirement incentive of 20% of their annual salary. Unfortunately, not very many of the eligible central office employees took advantage of the early retirement option. The Board also voted to eliminate part-time and non-essential positions and "restructure staff". While many people thought the elimination of part-time and non-essential positions was restricted to central office employees (particularly retirees who are collecting significant pensions AND part-time salaries), many of the positions were in the schools - support roles like librarian, library secretary, custodial staff and possibly resource officers.
While choosing to fire no high-salaried administrative staff (although some of them will have a 2% salary reduction), the K-9 force for DeKalb Schools is being downsized or eliminated. These are the dogs that are used to locate drugs and weapons in the schools.
Also while voting on the recent personnel changes, the DeKalb Board of
Education made decisions that impacted the jobs of relatives of DeKalb Board
of Education members, who did not recuse themselves from the vote.
So, still don't care about who gets elected to the Board of Education ?
StandUp does not make political endorsements, so here are links to all of
the candidate's sites by district. Visit their sites and do your homework.
DeKalb Transportation Plan (as approved)
District 2
Don McChesney
Ella (Coach Smith) Smith
District 4
Shayna M. Steinfeld
H. Paul Womack, Jr.
District 8
Pamela M. Buncum
Pam Speaks
District 9
Ernest Brown
Eugene P. "Gene" Walker
Please get informed and remember to vote on December 2.