Honeymoon is officially OVER.

Hello to readers/followers of our blog!

After the debacle that was Lean King's administration, we were determined to give "the new guy" a fair shake. We decided to stop posting for awhile and see if new superintendent Tim Baird lived up to the promise he showed early on. To all of you who submitted posts that we didn't publish, we tried to reply to each of you individually with our reasoning in this "give him a chance" thinking. Thanks for the many messages of support, information, and encouragement.

Having been silent now for many months, we have watched in sad disillusionment as things have not taken the great turn for the better that we'd hoped for. While Dr. Baird is seemingly a 'nice' person, which is a definite improvement over his predecessor, he has not shown the strong leadership for which we all were sincerely hoping. It seems clear, given the record of board agenda items and other actions, that Dr. Baird is a combination of lap-dog for the entrenched board members (especially Skiljan and Strich), and a guy trying to make do some good things but going about them in all of the wrong ways, and with no head for management.

As a result of what we - parents, teachers, and other district staff - have observed, heard, discussed, and concluded, we feel as though we've given the 'new regime' more than enough time to show their true colors. Sadly, it seems that they have, and we see so many individually bad decisions that we must conclude that Dr. Baird is really "not getting it". Still, that fact on its own isn't the problem. The larger issue lies in the bad direction, poor spending, and very imprudent decision making that has been going on during the current, and very severe budget problem. The district is talking of laying off 24 teachers, yet at the same time, they're mentioning things at the board meetings and in the schools about spending money needlessly. They're talking about selling a prime piece of real estate at the bottom of the market in order to build a fee-based pre-school in order to give some entrenched board members a 'legacy'. They have plans (hopefully now on hold) to carry out new construction at a school or two, and last week the superintendent mentioned the idea of getting new phone systems for the schools. Really? Is this the time to replace phones that aren't broken and to build new 'stuff' that will require money to operate and maintain? The phones in our classrooms work fine, and we'd rather see fewer teachers laid off than to see the purchase of some new student data system that we don't need, possibly a solar project that will cost a bundle, and the retention of high-end employees that do little to justify their salaries.

So, while we had hoped to eventually find no need to post things on this blog, it seems that just the opposite is now the case. We'll be posting more information in the coming days in order to get the word out about what's going on. In the meantime, please consider attending the school board meeting tomorrow night (Tuesday, the 9th). This will be an ideal time to voice concerns before it's too late to save some teacher and classified jobs, and to avert wasteful spending that's on the table. Ask questions! Don't take wishy-washy answers as being ok! And remember: we voted them into those chairs, they hired the superintendent, and they approve/deny his plans and requests. They work for US, for the families that live here!

One note: As we said some time ago, while several of us did not vote for Maureen "Mo" Muir, we are all now convinced that she's the only truly independent thinker on the board. Our little blogging group is split, about 50/50, when it comes to political affiliation, but even the Democrats among us are willing to give "Mo" some room to get something done, since she's the only one asking any tough questions at the board meetings. The other four board members are never at the schools, as far as any of us have seen, and even the two who have actual jobs (Parker and Regan) should know that when you run for an elective office you need to be willing to make some sacrifices in other areas of life, like occasionally taking a personal day from your job to see first-hand what goes on the the schools where your constituents send their children.

Please attend the board meeting and let your voices be heard. Laying off 24 teachers while keeping on highly paid administrators is unaccpetable. Talking about buying fancy new phone systems at this time is unacceptable. And those of us who work in the schools can say first-hand that we do not need to go through the pain of changing student data systems AGAIN, for the third or fourth time in a few years. One of us in the blog group uses the current system every day. All of us who are teachers use it to take attendance - every day. The fact that the district is considering spending the time, pain, and money to change something that we JUST learned how to use is unbelievable to those of us who may lose our jobs. How about this: Let's keep WHAT we have until we can afford to keep WHO we have.

- The Group