Pennsbury: We want a school board like Morrisville

From the BCCT.

Thank you for laying out your ideas. As a future Pennsbury parent, I thought we should begin to take more of an interest in Pennsbury affairs.

Your brethren in Morrisville the last time hid like frightened schoolgirls at a horror movie rather than reveal their agenda. We need more open discussion, not more hidden meetings at board members houses and secret agendas. The openness is refreshing. I sincerely congratulate you and hope you will keep it up.

Pay and benefits do have to be brought under control. But what if the letter had been from a four year old enclosing a nickel and saying "I want to be a doctor and need a school so I can start Kindergarten and reach my goal"? Is that any less heartwarming or touching? The shoddy deal of taxation hits a lot of people. You're running for school board, not the board of taxation. We made that mistake here in Bulldog Alley.

I do like the ideas you have about more parental involvement and keeping the operations of the school district transparent. Let's hope you succeed admirably there. You talked about "performance based pay" for teachers. That idea needs a lot more thought before it can be implemented, but it's definitely a good idea for discussion.

If you want to stand up to the special interest groups, why aren't you running for a state senate or representative's slot? You rightly identify them as the culprits in the teacher pension funding mess.

You also ignored the third way to deal with the mess: Have Harrisburg change the law. What are you doing to get that going? Smacking about the Pennsbury teachers union locally doesn't resonate well enough to reach into the conference rooms in the Capitol building.

Instead, you would seek to win a slot on the local board of education enabling you to crush the Pennsbury teachers under your iron boot heel. OK. Fine. Let's say you succeed. What did it accomplish? We're doing that in Morrisville right now, demonizing the teachers and overreacting to save the seniors, forgetting that our five year olds need saving too. Stop by and visit them, now conveniently housed in our state-of-the-art trailer park, right down the street from the contaminated school building we ignored.

How is demonizing one side going to reach a consensus? How does this ensure that the students you would represent would receive an education?

We need school board representatives who will represent the interests of the taxpayer, the seniors, AND the children all at the same time. Obama only has to deal with a global economic meltdown. That's easy compared to the bubbling fetid morass that is local politics.

I'm sure you and your likeminds will will the primary and eventual election in November. Ask the Emperor how it's going here in Morrisville. (Hint: We're looking for you and your district to save our whiny little butts.)

Trust me: The view is different from the other side of the microphone.

Disaster looms if pay and benefits aren’t brought under control

School board elections are notoriously low turnout affairs. There are no presidential or congressional races in 2009 so voter turnout will likely be low in the primary election on May 19. Of course, it doesn’t have to be that way. Readers could mark their calendars right now to vote in their local school board elections. School taxes comprise 80 percent of most people’s property taxes in the Pennsbury School District. Every taxpayer has a vested interest in choosing the elected officials that control a $180 million annual budget.

The teacher union agenda of “spend spend spend” is being matched by the building trade unions, which recently made aggressive noises about the Makefield Elementary school renovation project. My guess is that they’d love to elect school board members to get another horrific union-biased “responsible contractor” ordinance passed, just like the Lower Makefield supervisors did. I have no doubt that union resources will be geared up against me this May. That’s because I believe in free and open markets, and I firmly believe that the people paying the bill, i.e. taxpayers, deserve representation on the school board.

When I sat down with my Republican running mate, Kathleen Zawacki, to discuss running for Pennsbury school board it became clear that we were of likeminds. Both of us have children attending the school district. Neither of us has taken any polls on any issue, nor have we hired any campaign consultants to tell us what our positions are. The volunteers of both parties who are helping our campaign are everyday people — many of whom have never been involved with any election campaign before.

In two years time, a freight train is going to hit every school district in Pennsylvania. The state Legislature has mandated that school employee retirement benefits be increased by 25 percent. This will come at a time when the teachers’ retirement fund is swimming in red ink. There will be two ways for school districts to fund this pending new mandate: severely raise property taxes and/or severely cut into educational programs. Unless school boards get a handle on the biggest item in their budgets (salaries and benefits) right now, then disaster is coming.

If we don’t properly control labor costs ahead of this pending pension crisis, it won’t be just taxpayers who pay the price. It will be our school children. It will probably be the arts programs and the extracurricular activities that get cut first. That’s not right. Yet the two endorsed Democrat candidates for school board are backed by union-funded PACs and by state Rep. Steve Santarsiero, who helped himself to thousands of dollars in teacher union money to get elected.

There are many reforms that are needed at Pennsbury. Academic performance in the high school needs to improve. That means looking at the block scheduling and the split between classes in East and West buildings. There needs to be greater parental access and input into all school board decisions. Televising the board meetings would bring about greater public transparency. Performance-related pay for our professional educators needs to be discussed too.

Parents and taxpayers have a choice on May 19. Kathleen Zawacki and I will appear on both sides of the ballot in this upcoming primary election. Democrats and Republicans alike will have an opportunity to vote for us, and cast party label aside. We intend to protect our children’s educational needs by standing up to the powerful special interest groups.

A few months ago I received a handwritten letter from a fixed-income senior that contained a crumpled up $5 contribution. The letter read “my property taxes are one third of my income and I’m terrified of losing my home. You are my only hope.”

It broke my heart that someone as irrelevant as me was considered that important. After returning her $5 and thanking this lady for her kind words, I decided to run for school board. You see, this lady deserves better than the shoddy deal she has been dealt by the crushing burden of taxation. It would be my honor to represent her.

Please come out and vote.