Scott Greer: Central Kitsap

Colleen good comments . I am a netflix nut , love classics , romantic chick flicks, well actually my wife likes those but I prescibe to the happy wife happy life theory , But anyway documentaries i enjoy also from both right , left, and middle or just common sense perspectives . this perhaps mixes a little of all of those , but it is really perhaps geared to speaking to the left about Charter Schools .

Interesting to learn though that we are about 20th in the world right now in science and math scores. Also how many jobs are being filled here in the US because we do not have a sufficient number of Americans who have the educational requirements in the high tech fields . So we are buying products over seas because of cheap labor and we are recruting over seas in order to get qualified labor in the high tech fields . Not good .

But this is the best I have seen supporting education in a long time by those who see the present system as hurting all of us .

The question is has public education and the results gained from public education improved enough over the years since these incentives were originally implemented to warrant funding them further if they are now not being viewed or used as the tools to gain the incentive based results that they were supposed to?

That sometimes losing something that is taken for granted is more appreciated, inspiring and provides more of an incentive upon its return and to make sure not to lose it again?

Since the past presidential election the popularity of the “haves” paying for the “have nots” has gained considerable ground when education funding is discussed. Unfortunately when public employee unions embraced that particular philosophy by way of paid candidate support the expectation that it would only be applied to the “rich” has now proven to be misguided and not correct much to their horror.

What is going on in Wisconsin is proving that. The public employee unions now find themselves viewed as the “haves” by the taxpaying public who are the “have nots” who are being forced into paying for job security, tenure, pensions and benefits for another group of people while they themselves do not experience any of these items their own personal employment situations.

Careful what you wish for, or in this case careful what you allow your union dues to fund paid lobbyists for.

14 State Senators fled the state to avoid voting on a measure that would eliminate collective bargaining by any State Employees, including teachers, and would increase the amount of personal money they would need to contribute to their own pensions and benefits because Wisconsin is facing a $3.6 billion dollar budget gap. The Governor sent the State Police after them to round these elected officials up and return them to the capital.Teachers are swarming the Capital in Madison to the point that most schools across the state have had to close because they do not have enough staff showing up to operate.

Let’s hope we (Washington) can manage budget cuts and labor compromises a little better than that.

I learned this lesson personally five years ago when my own child was in Kindergarten. I attended one of these open public budget review forums for the Bremerton School District. At that forum I ran into a principle of an elementary that I knew and a representative for one of the unions. I started talking to them about how excited I was to be there and how I wanted to make a difference in the process. I quickly learned from them that a vast majority of the decisions had already been made and I needed to involve myself sooner. Sitting on the District Finance Committee for the past three years has also shown me that to have any impact on those decisions for the next school year being made one must start involving oneself in October or November of the previous year.

I do encourage as many parents and community members to attend this forum as possible. The education funding and operations process has been made overly complicated by our elected leadership as well as those currently managing the system. It will take the average citizen nearly a year just to be brought up to speed on the hoops, strings, mandates, contracted rules and perks and basically what boils down to a complete lack of common sense operations ensconced in layers and layers of distractionary bureaucracy. More importantly, if it is a year that union contracts will be negotiated, citizens and parents need to get in there ASAP. Over 80% of the average school district budget is tied to staffing, salaries and benefits. Complicated further by the very frustrating fact that the entire process of collective bargaining and decision making on this 80% is conducted behind closed doors or in executive sessions. The transparency to the public only starts to occur AFTER all the decisions are made and everything is completed.