This past week, Q-line asked:
The City Council recently released over $800,000 to the school district that it was withholding due to problems with special education. As part of the discussion, some called for the council to wield more control over the district. Should the council have more control over the school district as part of the joint-use agreement, which is currently being renegotiated?
Here are your responses:
“The school district has many, many problems. Unfortunately, any heavy-handed involvement by this inept City Council will only compound them. There must be another solution for the schools.”
“When one considers that nearly every city in this once great nation has a school board bureaucracy to themselves and are quick to state that outsiders are unwelcome and those outsiders are told to join the PTA if they wish to have a say or in simple terms, argue with the teachers not the board. Even a formally uneducated person such as myself would have cause to wonder if the school boards will ever get this schoolyard business right. When I was a lad there was no school board in sight. … Yes, I want the City Council to have more control over the school board members. I will personally supply Mayor Ken Genser with a wooden tennis paddle and the other council members with rulers, a stool and a dunce cap. Perhaps the school board members will be less hard-headed than me.”
“This is a great question because you pose a solution from two of the most inept and wasteful organizations in this town. Special education is basically warehousing at-risk youth whose parent is often of less than average intelligence. The rest are handicapped students trying to be mainstreamed. What parent of a handicapped student doesn’t think that any taxpayer money is not enough to educate their child?”
“Heavens no. Let the schools decide what’s best for them. We see how the City Council is really good for the people. I have absolutely no respect for any of the people on the City Council, in particular Mayor Genser.”
