Once again we are presented with the same old hole the district's leaders prepare for the lot of us. Year after year, we're provided with a pumped up initial budget proposal by the superintendent followed by the inevitably lower, but equally absurd, final offering furnished by the Board of Education. This time it is the newly appointed District Superintendent John Sonedecker who believes that the 70% of us without children in the schools should bankroll the expansion of his public administrator's empire.


He "talks the talk" about cost effectiveness, then submits a budget twelve-and-a-half percent greater than last year's! The State is to provide a one-time adjustment of 3.2 millions dollars and he recommends its use for capital improvements. Does anyone recall that we approved a MASSIVE bond issue last year for those improvements? He contends we must spend still more on technology, so recommends a per pupil allotment increase of nearly 10% - totally $148,000, while we are asked to spend another $500,000 on staff development for what must now be at least the third such request in as many years. All previous requests have been approved without hesitency. What is it that their degrees provide if, after six years or more years of undergraduate and then graduate work, teat-chers can't use computers or OBJECTIVELY evaluate their own effectiveness in a classroom?

Already TVCSD home owners are paying a school tax greater than their property's assessed value. Last year's increase brought us to the 104.521% level, which means your paying an amount equal to 1.452 TIMES your assessed evaluation. Tenants, both residential and commercial, have found or will find their rents increasing, in major part, because of these school taxes. Superintendent Sonedecker would have us pay still more, with there never, EVER being an effort to curtail costs: ALWAYS, in all ways they grow and g r o w and G R O W.

Defeat the budget. If it were only two percent, defeat it. Turn out and VOTE. Don't let self-serving resident teachers, retired teachers and the PTA clique determine these costs for you. Send a message on election day. Don't call. Don't warn. Don't complain. Don't threaten. Just vote Sonedecker and the Board into the embarrassment of an austerity program for a year. That'll wake them all up.
Tenure is a subject the Waking Bear has written about extensively over the past five years. Little can be said to provide further enlightenment. Suffice to say, we believe it serves no benefit to area residents and furnishes an outdated, unwarranted and costly expense to our nation's school systems. But, in the meantime, while we wait for the process to grind to its inevitable conclusion, we support the proposal more recently provided to the District's Board of Education that the standards for tenure be tightened up. That, instead of the present three year kissy-kissy cakewalk used in determining eligibility for tenure, teachers should have not less than seven years district fulltime experience and have acquired certification by the National Board for Professional [sic] Teaching Standards, which is an independent, nonprofit group having bipartisan Congressional support. The process itself requires that candidates accumulate a personal portfolio - including such things lessons plans, student work and classroom videos - and THEN perform exercises designed to test their teaching [trade] skills and their ability to pass a subject-matter exam - you know, like math or English and not Educational Methodology 101.

Sandra Feldman, President of the American Federation of Teachers, in a March 5th, 2000 New York Times Article-Advertisement proposed the certificate be used as a standard for determining eligibility for bonus pay! "The program" she said, "gives schools and school districts an objective standard for identifying outstanding teachers... and a sound basis for rewarding teachers for their merit." We agree, but the reward should be tenure, so long as the concept exists. With $90,000 plus salaries and another 20% to 30% in perks, these folks don't need another REWARD!

History of political revolution tells us that one of the many factors in bringing about the demise of the old is something at least one historian has characterized as the "abandonment of the intelligentsia," which essentially means that one or more articulate members of a privileged community proceed to rile against its foundations, fostering the emergence of a cadre of supporters that bring about the sought after change.

Teachers who have come to realize that the educational process of the last four decades has proven a failure, and possessing the courage required to stand up against the tyranny of the academic community must begin to speak out. The weight of your experience, the accumulated respect of your peers and your expressed concern for our nation's future can do nothing but help reverse the terrible path of what has been inappropriately called "progressive education." Your words and efforts are needed to bring an end to the empire building of district superintendents and union officials. Your integrity is needed to correct a long perpetrated wrong.