According to the SFSD website you have until April 12th to turn in 20 nominating signatures;

I encourage someone to run that is for transparency. As we saw today at the working session, a leak of a secret document has parents livid about cutting fine arts. As the lady who testified, studies for decades have shown that fine arts education combined with regular subjects increases test scores in those regular courses. Fine arts education works.

But besides the obvious, this constant behind the scenes planning and scheming is NOT working. I still am highly skeptical that 85% of people voted for the school bond. It’s just not plausible. But when you go about these things by gaming the system (votes were hand counted by mostly finance staff of the SFSD) you get what you want at the expense of others.

Today we found out that the school district is essentially broke. After tapping the taxpayers for several op outs and now probably around $400 million in debt they still have to cut programming. How does this happen? My simple guess is that when you run a government agency, like the SFSD, behind closed doors you have a select group of people making decisions without the input of parents, voters, taxpayers and even teachers. Open government SAVES money and helps to implement the best policies and practices. I often wonder when government officials in our city, county and state are going to figure this out instead of just begging us for more money due to their lack of open and transparent planning. Pathetic.

SFSD Budget FY20

5 Thoughts on “NOW is the time to run for Sioux Falls School Board

  1. I’ve been seriously thinking about running. Transparency is desperately needed as well as change in attitude. The board as a body has a tendency to view themselves as the almighty who should not be questioned. They treat all stakeholders as preschoolers.

    Some problems I’ve noticed.

    1. Failure to hold fair elections based on the placement of polling locations.
    2. Lack of transparency.
    3. Money in elections and special interests. Why should someone spend over $6 per vote to win a spot on the board when they could have been raising that money to help students?

  2. The reason we post the all the local government videos in one place is so they can easily be viewed.

    Authoritarian government is not the answer. The people of Sioux Falls must remove the entire school board. We push open government because there should be no secrets and scheming for the board members special interests.

    The goal of the past Sioux Falls city government was to push hard for more residents so every local government could have a higher borrowing authority, in other words more money. Just like the Washington crowd or “less” government by choking off the flow of taxes, this crowd can’t print money at stupid interest rates to prop up the process.

    The decision to secretly control the process to build the new schools will haunt this town for many years to come.

  3. I’d say it was time to relieve the IPC of a bunch of redundant staff and force a pay cut on the rest before the students lose out on education opportunities. I never have understood why the district needs IPC led by an over priced superintendent.

  4. So the proposed cost savings is to cut funding for children who are not disabled but need extra educational help. Only an asshole account would come up with an idea to educate less the youth who need to be educated more.

    But what really gets me mad is the parent outrage over shifting the PE and art schedule but lack of parent outrage of the special education cuts.

    Another inch closer to idiocracy!

  5. l3wis on April 4, 2019 at 11:36 am said:

    Someone told me that the SFSD doesn’t care about TIFs because the State supposedly reimburses them those dollars. Not sure how that works. But if that is true, I’m sure Gov. Donita Trump may have an issue with a $25 million dollar TIF that would span well over 30 years.

Post Navigation