Ohio's Sinking Public Schools

The gravy train is over for the public schools. The public trough has run dry. Recent defeats of school levies in Canfield and Poland, as well as the Boardman Trustees removing the police levy from the May ballot, are ominous signs of things to come. With a possible referendum on Ohio SB 5 on the ballot in November, those in support of repeal have their work cut out for them. When Canfield defeats a school levy, and Boardman defeats a police levy, you know there is trouble.

At the heart of the matter is the manner of funding local schools. The Ohio Supreme Court has ruled numerous times that Ohio’s manner of school funding was unconstitutional. Based primarily on local property taxes, the Supreme Court ruled that disparate tax rates between school systems provided unequal education between the schools. The State of Ohio was directed to even it out. The state cut back additional state funding to the more affluent school systems, and increased funding to the inner city school. The more money generated from property taxes in a system, the less state money it would receive.

So…Youngstown City Schools gets more money from Ohio than Canfield Schools. Here is the end result. The cost per student in Youngstown City Schools is approximately $13,000.00 per pupil. The cost per pupil in Canfield is about $8,000.00 per pupil. Youngstown City has a low property tax rate, and gets approx $4,000.00/pupil of its money from the state. Canfield has a high property tax rate, and is right now being reduced to almost zero from the state. Notwithstanding, Youngstown City School is among the worst performing systems in Ohio. Canfield is among the highest. This ultimately shows the fallacy of the current approach to education. MONEY IS NOT NOW, NOR EVER HAS BEEN, THE ANSWER!!!!!!  The State of Ohio effectively punishes the most successful schools, and rewards those that are in the crapper. Learning, or lack thereof, is as much cultural as anything else.  The net result is those school systems which have the highest property tax rates are now in dire financial straits. While Youngstown City Schools is coming out of fiscal emergency…Canfield Schools is headed the other direction.

Not that that the successful schools are more than partly to blame. Mismanagement of local school money is notorious and widespread. There is no constant vision or plan coming out of local school boards who are usually too willing to jump into to bed with the hired school administration. Cutting back teacher salaries while giving raises to Superintendents and Principals and hiring more and more administrative staff is unconscionable, yet it happens all the time.  Hiring practices based on hiring local district citizens or who can coach volleyball doesn't help.  And people don’t like to be fooled. Don’t tell the public that the teachers are taking a 1% pay cut when in reality they giving up 1% of a 3% raise. Dudes, this is the age of the internet. This stuff comes out and people are miffed.

Nor do the edicts from the do-gooders in the Federal government and formerly liberal federal courts help.  Mainstreaming has been carried way to far; unfettered accommodation for special needs students WAY BEYOND THE PALE for what should be done or needs to be done; teachers being made responsible for making sure students eat breakfast and lunch; cell phones and total lack of discipline either by school policy or federal order; and schools developing policies based on avoiding frivolous lawsuits rather than what is good for the students...all of this is reflected in our disastrous public school system.

No one seems to know where Kasich is headed with the schools, but the anger and dissatisfaction is palpable. People are mad as hell and aren’t going to take it anymore. Ohio SB 5 seems to piss off all the right people, so it must be doing something right. And for those of you in Poland…hiding salary schedules which are public records is verboten. Inquiring minds want to know, and are entitled to know.

Unfortunately,   I don't think Ohio SB 5 is the answer to the problems in the schools and more likely than not will make it worse. On the other hand, Kasich is right.  We can’t keep going on the same way we have been going. The public trough has run dry, and the school systems, the courts, the legislature, and the governor must move to fix the problem before total bankruptcy.

Above all, if the non-financial issues such as discipline and non-sensical maintreaming and unreasonable public accomodation are not fixed, I will guaranty you that within ten years, you won’t have to worry about measuring how well little Johnny and Jane can read or do math. They won't be able to do either.

Where is the Apology for George Bush?

President Obama is going to Ground Zero on Friday for a ceremony remembering the victims of 9/11. He has asked President Bush to join him. Bush declined stating that he wishes to remain outside of the public eye in his post presidency. Good for him.

The loony left should be ashamed of themselves. For the last four years of Bush’s presidency, they did everything but crucify him as a torturer, a dictator, and thug. They superimposed the likeness of Adolph Hitler over his face. They threw urine on anyone who supported him. In Congress, demagoguery was raised to an art form as Bush was portrayed as the Grand Inquisitor of the Inquisition. Shame on Guantanamo, that horrible hell hole of prison where these poor, innocent terrorists were thrown to rot!

Then Obama got elected, and his Attorney General promptly started investigations of the lawyers who gave the legal opinions related to enhanced interrogation techniques. They toyed with idea of criminal charges against Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld. He tried to close Guantanamo. His Attorney General moved a terrorist trial to the United States out of a military court and promptly go his ass kicked….the terrorist innocent on all counts except one. And all of those nicey-nice folks in Guantanamo…went right back to terrorism when released. And now Guantanamo is still open. And now the trials will now be military.

And now Obama can bask in the light of killing Usama Bin Laden, by virtue of an intelligence network set up by Bush; by information obtained by the enhanced interrogation techniques; and use of the armed forces he roundly criticized and voted against when in the Senate. Bush was a class act all the way, and still is. I would have told Obama to shove it sideways.

There is no question Barack Obama made a gutsy call to do what he did. I honestly didn’t think he had it in him. It has actually been kind of fun to watch all of his cronies stumble around with a success rooted in all the things they believed to be the devil incarnate. This is a president who wanted to Mirandize prisoners taken on a battle field!!!!!!

Maybe they have learned something. Bush and Cheney weren’t the enemy…it was those horrible, horrible animals pretending to be human who indiscriminately took away the lives of women and children and innocents all over the world. There are no rules when dealing with evil. You kill it…and that is what Obama did.

Now where is the apology to Bush and the members of his administration? Where do they go to get their reputation back?

Britain's Dire Warning to America / Trump - Obama - and the Royal "We"! / Trump's Spectacular F-Bomb Rant

Newsweek Magazine featured an article this week about the rapid decline of Great Britain. Emblematic of the problem for Britannia who ruled the waves, is the once mighty empire is now down to a single aircraft carrier that is being moth balled because Britain can’t afford to keep it at sea. Unemployment is rampant as the government, which employs more than 40% of the population, can’t meet payroll. Massive layoffs are occurring across the country just as social services are being cut back. Did you know the second largest employer in the world is the British National Health Service? There is obviously something wrong here.

Right now Britain manufactures….nothing!!! Over the past 30 years, just about every industry in the country has shut down. It makes no ships! It makes no cars! It makes little steel! It mines little coal. The industries that still exist in England are owned by the French, the Swiss, the Germans, the Chinese. The country is in dire straits.

The decline is rooted in two world wars. Britain was victorious in both, but went broke in one and was nearly destroyed in the other. When World War II ended, the British promptly threw out the victorious Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and installed a socialist regime that nationalized all of the industry while granting huge amounts of power to the labor unions. It was a recipe for disaster.

Margaret Thatcher tried to reverse the trend, and it seemed to work for awhile. But the demand for excessive social services remained high, and so did the taxes. Business drifted slowly but surely away to more fertile ground…more business friendly countries. Like the United States, Britain tried to replace manufacturing with “service” jobs, and London rivaled New York as the major world financial center. The 2008 debt ridden economic collapse put an end to that. Britain is in trouble.

The British only recently have adopted the Mark Knows It All Rule of Economics: the wealth of a nation is measured by how many refrigerators it makes, not by how many hamburgers it flips. The Brits are seriously hoping as the government lays off tens of thousands of people, somehow private enterprise will reignite in the country, and the private sector will hire those the government is laying off. You know… the “if you build it, they will come” theory. I don’t think it is going to work.

Britain killed the goose that laid the golden egg. And that is what we are doing in the United States. We have reached the precipice of Margaret Thatcher’s prophecy: Sooner or later, you will run out of other people’s money. Guess what folks…all gone!!!!!!

You can argue that the two countries are different, have diverse histories. But at the end of the day, the problem is the same. Manufacturing is not infinite. It has limits. Do things to kill it, it will die. It happened in Britain. It is happening here. President Obama hasn’t figured that out yet.

America needs to learn from Britain’s cautionary tale. If we don’t start getting our debt under control; if we don’t institute domestic and foreign policies that promote American business growth; if we don’t get move quickly to develop our natural resources; if we don’t bring down the number of government employees, we will be in trouble. Just like Great Britain.

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TRUMP/OBAMA/AND THE ROYAL"WE"

If anyone has any doubt about the efficacy of a possible Trump run for the presidency, just look at what he forced the President of the United States to do. Obama blinked. For the first time in his entire presidency, Obama was forced to do something he didn’t want to do. He could have released the birth certificate 2 ½ years ago when first brought up by Hillary Clinton. He deliberately chose not to. He was mollycoddled by the press as many members of the press attacked Trump, while not asking the simple question to Barry Boy…why didn’t you release this 2 ½ years ago and spare all the aggravation. Oprah asked the question as Obama appeared on her show campaigning and raising money. He chose not to answer it. Score: Trump 1- Obama O.

But the bigger story, and one that is being missed in the press, is Obama suddenly using the “Royal We.” Here is a guy who raised the use of personal pronouns to an art form. Everything was I, Me, My…never, never, never did he ever use a collective term to describe his policies or his administration!!! Anything he has done usually started with the phrase “I have instructed my czar to report to me findings related to….fill in the blank.”

All of a sudden, it is “we have important things to do”, “we decided to release the certificate to free us to do the country’s work.” In fact, in all of the appearances and statements he made yesterday, I only heard him slip up on the new pronoun once reverting to “I”.

I am glad Obama made his birth certificate available just like every President. I am also glad that his handlers have finally realized that “I” and “Me” works fine when things are going great…but in bad economic times, he needs to invoke the rest of the country in this most narcissistic of American presidencies.

And to Donald Trump…"we" thank you!!!!

DONALD TRUMP'S F-BOMB RANT

Show me where he's wrong!

Trump: Framing the Debate for 2012

Whether you agree with a Trump presidential candidacy or not, he is striking all the right notes. He is skillfully articulating the framework for the 2012 Presidential debate by pushing the Republican Party into addressing issues it should have been addressing beginning with Bush I. He is finally spelling out what America innately feels. We are thinking our country to death. Common sense is like an essential vitamin for the collective American body. Lose it, and we die.

First and foremost, he has legitimized the birth certificate issue. We all have to produce birth certificates at some time or another. Try going to Canada lately? You need a passport, and a birth certificate to get one. If this topic is so ridiculous, why doesn’t Obama just produce it? It is no big deal to do; and then they can show those of us with suspicious minds how stupid we are. Not gonna happen!

Trump has finally said what I have been writing about for years. We have been had by the Chinese. China is an economic predator which makes late 20th Century Japan look like a babe in the woods. In an economy based solely on producing cheap exports with slave labor, it has drained the world of capital. It is time to say enough.

Trump has finally said if America goes to war, it should go to war to win. If a country benefits from our largesse and protection, they should pay. The first Iraq War was fought not to free Kuwait, but to save Saudi Arabia…and they stuck it to us….over and over again. We are in Libya…take the oil. We paid to liberate Iraq…they owe the cost of the war in oil. Canada can offer all its wonderful social services because it maintains only a minimal army, relying on the United States to defend it. How about kicking some energy back down to us to pay for their protection? Enough of this garbage.

Trump has finally said the obvious. OPEC, which does business and maintains funds in the United States, violates our anti-trust laws. It’s time to get the American court system involved to tell them they are violating our laws. You want to do business here? Here are the rules.

Trump wants to know how come the Obama Carbonistas have smothered oil well drilling anywhere in the United States, butr has sanctioned America funding through the World Bank for drilling off the coast of Brazil and Columbia. Can you spell George Soros? You know the guy who hates capitalism and funds every left wing whackadoodle in the country? Guess who is drilling those wells!!

Trump wants to know why Obama, who claims to want to spread the wealth around, chums it up with Jeffrey Imelt, the chairman of General Electric. That is the same GE that paid no taxes in the United States last year. Makes you wonder…Mmmmm?

And Trump wants to know why the Fed is devaluing the currency, and understands the direct relationship between interest rates and the price of oil. He also understands that increased energy and food prices are the worst kind of a regressive tax borne primarily by the poor.

Trump is once again articulating American exceptionalism, and the greatness of our country in its ability to provide an expanding economy to benefit all, if only the government would get out of the way.

Trump may or may not have what it takes to win a Presidential election. And he may have enough baggage trailing behind him to sink the Titanic. But his candor, and common sense presentation of issues is refreshing, and reminds me of Ronald Reagan. You might not like him, but he shouldn’t be dismissed!!!!!!

Is Trump THE One??

In a lackluster Republican field of presidential candidates, Donald Trump is stirring the pot and may be coming out a winner. Could he be the one? When I first heard he was going to run for President, I poo poo’d the idea. He is a brilliant businessman and a consummate self promoter, but President? Go onnnn!!!!!!

But the more I hear him, the more I like him. He is Reaganesque in his view of America. His no nonsense, America first approach is refreshing and loaded with common sense. And the left is going bonkers. He is asking all the right questions…the questions they don’t want to answer. He asks those questions looking for simple answers.

Item: Obama won’t produce his birth certificate. Why?

Item: America has spent billions of dollars on the war in Iraq. Now Obama wants to leave Iraq, and Iran is ready to move in…and take the oil that we paid for in blood and treasure. Why?

Item: Our tax code allows companies like General Electric to pay no taxes. Why?

Item: The Chinese are cleaning our clock with their trade policy. Why?

Item: Energy prices are going through the roof while we bankroll oil drilling in Brazil. Why?

Of course, he is not a politician. There are those who will argue he has no governmental experience. Here is a news flash. He has more experience in his little finger than Barack Obama has in his entire body…and that’s after he has been in office for 2 years. He understands business. He has had to negotiate with foreign countries. He understands the art of the deal and the art of compromise. And most of all, he understands and can articulate American greatness.

I’m not ready to say he would be my first pick for President. That would be Chris Christie of New Jersey. But it’s clear that unless some other Republican shows some life and a spark of meaningful activity, Trump may be the anti-Obama we are looking for. Then we can all breath easy once again. You're fired!!!

Item: Trump for President. Why? Why not?

Donald Trump: Birther Issue Ascendant!!!

As in all things Obama, the press has done an outstanding job in characterizing anyone who raises any issues about him or his presidency as somehow being either delusional or just plain nuts. They have especially done this with the so-called “birthers” who question whether or not Barack Obama was born in the United States. That is a simple question that Obama and his media groupies, claiming some sort of moral high ground, have refused to answer.

Clear and simple, his campaign was asked to produce a birth certificate when he was running for election, and on a regular basis since. He has refused to produce one. What they have produced is something called a Certificate of Live Birth. This was a mechanism used in Hawaii where anyone can walk into the Bureau of Statistics and say that someone was born, and it would be published in the newspaper. But almost 99% of all Hawaiian births were done in hospitals with deliveries by doctors and nurses, with a regular birth certificate filled in and signed by a doctor. Obama cannot produce one, and neither can anyone else. Nor are they willing to give an explanation as to why...other than you are nuts to ask.

The current Democratic Governor of Hawaii decided to put an end to all of this, and locate the birth certificate by researching the information as to the hospital(s) in which Obama was supposedly born. After substantial effort, he openly stated that no such records exist, and has remained quiet on the issue since.

Now Donald Trump has resurrected the issue again in his campaign for the Republican nomination for the presidency. The usual left wing media types have ridiculed his efforts as he has unleashed his considerable wealth to find out the truth about Obama’s place of birth. That being said, the din of media criticism this time around seems to have been turned down. Trump is no fool. He is media savvy. He is the quintessential businessman. He doesn’t chase pipe dreams or waste money. He has been loud and vocal about his efforts, and once again asked the President of the United States to please produce his birth certificate.

I think the truth will win out in the matter one way or the other. Trump will get to the heart of the matter, and I suspect the press knows the truth already and is ratcheting down the volume of criticism deliberately. Nobody wants to look like a fool if the truth lands on the side of those whacko birthers.

I never paid a whole lot of attention to the issue until the Governor of Hawaii didn’t like what he was discovering and then stopped talking. My overly thick eyebrows were raised!!

Here is what nobody knows: 1) The family apparently can’t agree at which hospital he was born. 2) No one has access to information as to when he got a social security number. 3) His family traveled to Indonesia when it was illegal for Americans to go there…what passport did he use to get into the country? 4) Why did his Kenyan grandmother say she watched his birth in Kenya? Does she have any reason to lie? 5) We know that his mother’s parents lived in Hawaii, and that was the address used on this birth registry most likely recorded by his grandmother. Where did his mother live in Hawaii?

At the end of the day, notwithstanding the ridicule of the left wing Obama aficionados, he was either born in a Hawaiian hospital or he wasn’t. If he was born in a Hawaiian hospital as he claims, there would be a birth certificate. There is NO record anywhere of that happening.

Logic, as ugly or as whacked as it sounds, can lead you to only one conclusion. And as Donald Trump said this past week, it would be the biggest scam in American history. It would also force the nullification of some of the most wrenching legislation passed since the end of World War II. It is a serious matter, and one that deserves serious attention.

The City Series: And Then There Was One.

This is less of a rant than a sad goodbye. Last week, the Youngstown City School System announced a realignment of its education program. Youngstown schools as previously configured was a remnant system set up to serve a community of 200,000 people. With the closing of the mills and the de-industrialization of America's rust belt, the population of Youngstown began to drop, but the structure of the school system remained in place.

It was a complete system of neighborhood elementary, junior high, and high schools located throughout the city. High school names reflected Youngstown's quintessential hub-spoke layout: South High School, North High School, East High School...along with Wilson High School on the Southeast side, Chaney High School on the west side, and the Rayen (High) School also on the north side. Together with the two Catholic high schools, Mooney and Ursuline, these schools made up a powerhouse athletic conference called the City Series. Add in the Steel Valley Conference comprised of the suburban and outlying city schools, that's what made Northeast Ohio one of the top high school football meccas in the United States.

It was a big deal. South and Rayen High Schools had legitimate football stadiums that rival many colleges, along with athletic field houses. On any given Friday night, you could get up to 20,000 people crowding into these stadiums to see various cross town rivalries, the biggest of these being the Mooney/Ursuline game.

Going to those games was an event for me as 5th grader. Both of my parents graduated from South High School, and my Dad went to the games on a regular basis taking me with him. Everything seemed larger than life. It was like a movie. When I went to Boardman High School, a Steel Valley team, rivalries were built among my school and Chaney, Mooney an Ursuline. That is when football was fun.

As the city population decreased, so did the City Series. First Mooney and Ursuline left the City Series and joined the Steel Valley Conference. Then Youngstown began school consolidation first closing down North High School. Then it closed South High School and changed Rayen from a high school to a junior high school. Then it began a building program with the tobacco settlement money. Not only did close the schools, the system tore them down. It tore down Rayen. It tore down Wilson, along with several of the junior high schools and elementary schools.

And then there were two. Chaney on west side, and East on the east side. Both of these schools fielded their own athletic programs. But the money crunch continued...and then there was one. East will function as the primary high school in Youngstown, with Chaney becoming a specialty magnet school. The city schools will only field one athletic program. Students from Chaney wishing to participate will have to bus or drive to East High School...and they are a long way away from each other, literally on the fringes of both sides of the city.

When the school tear down program began it was suggested that Youngstown move to one senior high school located downtown. That idea died for several reasons, including the violence that is associated with the Youngstown Schools and visions of punks running around downtown after school, and school parochialism. You see, people from this area identify with their school until death. Their school identity never dies. You are where you went to school. Even if you move out of the city...you will still be a Wilson graduate or Rayen or Chaney graduate. School ties are the ties that bind.

What the city school system is doing makes sense in these hard economic times. It should have been done years ago, but politics precluded the school board from doing what was necessary. Now it has no choice. With the city population at a mere 66,000, a good portion of which being senior citizens, it really can afford only one high school athletic program. But I feel bad as I think back on those days when my Dad would take me to see the games at South High School stadium. I feel bad as I remember thumbing through my parents' yearbooks and looking at those snapshots of life in 1936. I feel bad as I remember all of my cousins who went to Wilson High School. Good bye to the Chaney Cowboys; the South High Warriors; the Rayen Tigers; and the Wilson Redmen.  Time passes.