John Kasich has shown that he is fully capable of surpassing Pete Carroll’s Super Bowl losing decision as the dumbest idea to date. Failing to address the runaway costs of Ohio public schools by giving more money to poor districts while taking money away from the wealthy ones—he proposed early in February 2015 to solve the gulf with a tax increase. His comment to the wealthy districts was, “If you live in a district that can afford it, you can help yourself.” Essentially what he means is that he’s redistributing the wealth of Ohio tax payers from well-off regions to poorer ones with an established result to raise taxes on communities hosting gigantic schools with treacherously inflated employee wages like Lakota. Taking the largest schools hit in Butler County will be the Lakota Local School District—where I live, which will lose a total of $5.9 million over the next two fiscal years. A neighboring distinct to the west, Ross will lose $438,765. Talawanda to the north, $594,482. As residents we already pay state taxes intended for the unconstitutional distribution of public education—yet Kasich is taking that money and passing it out disproportionately to districts deemed more needy than others, then telling wealthy districts like mine to raise taxes and take care of themselves—all while taking our state tax money and dispersing it like Santa Clause everywhere but in Lakota and other Butler County schools. Then to make matters worse Kasich said this to a Cleveland newspaper—which is appalling. It looks like Kasich and Obama put their budgets together on the same napkin at the same bar, French-kissing each other when they thought nobody was looking—because they are both just as ridiculously stupid.
CLEVELAND, Ohio – Gov. John Kasich said he doesn’t consider his new school funding plan to be a redistribution of income, even as it sends more money to poor districts and less to richer ones.
“It is a conservative point of view in that every kid should be in a position to thrive,” Kasich said.
“I don’t see it as redistribution,” he added. “I see it as a formula for driving resources to kids.”
In an appearance at the E Prep and Village Prep Woodland Hills charter school campus in Cleveland his morning, Kasich said he expects “a lot of squawking” when he releases the changes in state aid to individual districts this afternoon.
About half of Ohio’s districts will see reductions, he said, despite him adding $700 million in aid to schools overall.
Kasich said he wants to send more money to district with less “capacity” to pay for schools and less money to those that have the income and property values to cover the costs.
http://www.cleveland.com/metro/index.ssf/2015/02/gov_kasich_says_his_school_fun.html
http://www.daytondailynews.com/news/news/kasichs-education-speech-under-way/nWCBT/
http://www.journal-news.com/news/news/budget-increases-funding-for-poorer-school-distric/nj4tr/
The ultimate failure in this debacle is in believing that more money will actually help kids in a poor community—as if money alone will make schools better. Government schools suck because government is incompetent. You could throw $1 million dollars per pupil into a poor community and the money will be completely wasted on teacher salaries, new paint for the schools but not a single elevated child—because schools do not make children great. Teachers don’t make good people. Parents do. Schools and teachers can assist, but they can’t take broken Humpty Dumpty families and put all their broken shells together again if their home environment is full of drug addicts, gamblers, whores, or people who enjoy watching the Bill Cunningham show. It doesn’t work now, it hasn’t worked in the past, and it certainly won’t work in the future. Money does not make quality. People make quality and there is a reason that kids in richer districts do better scholastically than poor kids. It’s because their parents generally care more about the outcome of their kids and there is likely peer knowledge of similar families who also care about the fate of their children. In poor communities very few people care about kids. Teachers generally pretend to, but in the end, if their union calls for a strike—they’ll march in the streets and leave the kids in need of a mentor. Most teachers are unfortunately in the profession to make money. I believe they start out well-intentioned, but a few years into their mandatory union membership—they become socialist radicals just like the rest of the employees in public education. And those employees aren’t worth the money they demand to be paid.
That is the real issue—the money the employees cost a district. A properly run school district would wisely cut all their most expensive employees and let some other school have them—hiring cheaper teachers who will do the same work for half the cost. Experience doesn’t mean much in public schools because kids aren’t learning anything anyway. Government schools are simply an expensive state funded baby-sitting service and nothing more—for parents too busy to care for their own. So they pawn their kids off on society to raise and hope the school will cover their faults. At least in a wealthy district the parents ask how the child’s day went and try to bring some semblance of family structure to children. In poor districts—an intact family is as rare as an eclipse. Money can’t fix that problem.
As for pre-school education and subsequent grade school skills—teaching itself has entered a new age, and the government schools are way behind the curve. For anybody who hasn’t yet learned, there is a thing kids have these days called, LeapFrog—which is a computer tablet intended for kids 3 to 9 which teaches them math, grammar, and other logic skills. If I had one of those when I was a kid I would have been done with all the skills of grade school before 5 years of age because the programs are so good, and intuitive. The government school profession is no longer effective in this fast paced age of massive data consumption. Kids are bored with public school by the time they are in the 2nd and 3rd grades and learning for them becomes a chore instead of a pleasure because of the way its sold to them in public schools driven by radical—expensive labor union personnel—is destroying our youth—not helping them.
So Kasich has made an epic error. To mask his lack of courage in dealing with the public labor unions, he has instead punted to the local districts to allow them to fight it out due to his progressivism. He might as well be Obama in the Ohio capital at this point. Sure he moved some money around to create a surplus, but he largely did it with wealth redistribution like this situation with the schools, and by taking federal money. He’s not a conservative—he is the definition of a RINO. If he were a governor in New York or California—he’d call himself a Democrat because that’s where his values and leadership point to as far as values.
As for the development of the I-75 corridor in Southern Ohio surely he knows what this means. He remembers the Lakota fights of a few years ago, and now because of his decision, he’ll see them again. If he thought they were bloody before, he and they haven’t seen anything yet. And those fights will be in the newspapers, and they will influence investment into the area at a critical time—and he’ll be to blame. I can say that I’m not alone in anger on this high tax proposal by Kasich of the Lakota and Mason area. Paying for overpriced government babysitters isn’t going to go over well and it will take a while for those districts to pass a tax increase because of the fights coming—so public relations of the area will take a hit. And the blame will fall squarely on John Kasich. Once something is done—you can’t undo it. And now he’s simply blown it. He has fallen from a political star to a simple grain of sand on a vast beach being washed out to sea by larger and larger waves. Any hopes he had at greatness are now washing away with the high tide as he panders to the power of the unions with a feeble attempt to appease them—which of course won’t work. His decision and budget proposal regarding education will have a catastrophic effect and the blame will be solely in his possession.
Rich Hoffman
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