Entries Tagged 'SF School Board Member' ↓

As someone reminded me yesterday, we were scheduled to have an election next Tuesday. Thank God that didn’t happen as the city is starting to peak in covid cases. But if it would have happened, I still believe Stehly would have won by a landslide. The factors would have been a normal municipal election turnout of your usual 4% or so.

I think those factors have changed, and not sure how this will play out. The biggest thing that has happened was the SOS’s decision to mail everyone a absentee voter application in the mail. You can pick the ballots you want (for instance in SF you could pick city/school & primary). I think this will be hugely popular as you see the numbers of covid cases rise. I’m putting at least a 30-40% voter turnout. I think you will see that many people will like to vote this way, and if anything positive comes from this crisis, it may be pushing for vote by mail, which I think is a great idea. It will increase voter turnout. The critics are on both sides of the aisle, but more heavily from Republicans who have depended on voter suppression for years. This levels the playing field, and it scares them. I’m not sure where their claims of fraud and abuse come from. We have doing absentee by mail for several years in South Dakota, and I think if there was a widespread issue with voter fraud, we would have heard about it already, not just from talking points coming from POTUS’s butt. Remember he claimed millions illegally voted in California in 2016, something that has never been proven.

As you can see from these articles, it is pretty rare and the fines and penalties are steep if you get caught. I don’t think people would be willing to risk it.

According to the Brennan Center for Justice, a law and policy institute which describes itself as progressive, “The consensus from credible research and investigation is that the rate of illegal voting is extremely rare, and the incidence of certain types of fraud – such as impersonating another voter – is virtually nonexistent.”

I still think Stehly will prevail, especially since both her supporters and Jensen’s will get the same applications in the mail. It will be a matter of who gets their supporters to fill out that application. Time will tell. Another factor is that voters will have more than a few minutes to study the ballot at their kitchen tables and discuss it with friends and do research. I’m not saying everyone will, but I think you will see more reasoned and educated voting by going this route.

This is going to be an interesting experiment in our Democracy. The results will be fascinating to study.

It’s a question I get almost daily, and I don’t know the answer to it. I did have a conversation with Theresa this morning, and she did confirm to me that she has still not decided, but told me to share this message,

“I have been praying about the decision and have been praying for our mayor.”

I hope Theresa can make a decision soon, so if she does decide to NOT run someone other candidates can get in the race. I told her personally that I would respect either decision, I know the toll the council position has taken on her, yes, some of it self-inflicted, but no one can deny that she has worked harder to inform citizens than any councilor since the home rule charter was instituted.

I also want to say that this may be a dismal election. There are 4 city council seats up for grabs and 1 school board position, so far there is only one city council race that has a challenger and that is the race for the NW district between incumbent Neitzert and Julian Beaudion. Even if Theresa decides to not run against Jensen, I think he will have at least one challenger. That being said, there may only be two races on the ballot with only one of those seats being city wide, the current seat held by Stehly. If there is only one city wide race on the ballot come April, I expect the voter turnout to be extremely low. There is still time though, and other councilors and Mickelson (school board) could get challengers. We will see.

One of my biggest arguments for open government is that if you apply it consistently it not only saves taxpayers money, but it prevents a lot of headaches and butt hurt. So the SFSD has spent $181K on a consultant, kept the findings secret and wonder why teachers and parents are upset?

“It’s like we’re shown a product, we give feedback, and then they go behind a curtain and do stuff,” Tony Martinet, president of the Sioux Falls Education Association said. “You don’t get to see the mess. …If from the start, they would have simply said, ‘We are cutting minutes to music, P.E. and art because we’re trying to equalize across the board,’ and just owned it from the start, then I mean, the frustration and the arguments would have not have been there.”

First off, I have never been a fan of consultants in the public sector. They usually charge to much to tell you what you want to hear. The administration usually has an expectation and if you pay someone for that expectation, guess what, you get it.

But what is even more frustrating is the lack of leadership by our School Board;

Martinet and others also urged the Sioux Falls school board multiple times to consider weighing in, but administrators have continuously said the board would not make a decision because the process is an administrative function.

While I partially agree that the School Board, as a part-time elected body doesn’t get involved with sitting in curriculum meetings, they do have the ultimate authority to tell the administration they can or cannot move forward with something without their blessing, that’s kind of their job. And when parents and teachers are telling the school board they feel the process is screwed up, the School Board needs to sit their employee (Super Maher) down and explain to him that they are the legislative body that determines how money is spent and what programs move forward. Simply telling them it is not their ‘function’ is unacceptable. When governing the school district, whether that is budgets, new schools, elections or tax op-outs, that is their job, and thye best do it. We elect them to represent us, the people and parents who fund the district. Public Schools are NOT some fascist regime that can do whatever they want to.

UPDATE: If you watch the above video you will hear Mr. Vik talk about the district’s low levees while waiting later to say that the district valuation is very high ($11 Billion) but said that is because they have a lot of students. I can tell you that our valuations are very high. I had some friends build a brand new home in Brookings a couple of years ago. They told me that if they would have built the same home in Sioux Falls it would have cost them $100K more. Also, I can tell my mom’s home in a small SD town would probably be worth 3x more if it were in Sioux Falls. Vik can boast all he wants about our ‘low’ levees but our valuations are thru the roof.

Don’t we elect these people to effectively monitor the administration when it comes to policy and budgeting? The citizens of Sioux Falls are tired of the continued tax hikes that get closer and closer together each year.

The Sioux Falls School District’s fund balance is at its lowest point in 25 years, and it can’t be relied on as a savings account to balance the budget in the future.

That’s one of several reasons the school board is eyeing a long-term opt-out financial strategy for possibly the next 10 years, school officials said during a school board work session Wednesday afternoon.

In the past year we have seen another water increase (and more to come) multiple opt-outs from Minnehaha County, the city increased property taxes, the school district suckered us into a $300 million dollar bond to build schools they have no money to staff. We all knew this was coming. Instead of constantly raising our taxes how about some cutting and I am not talking about student’s education. I think it is time the SFSD laid off administrative staff we don’t need and no raises for them until they equal out with teacher pay, you know, 49th not 26th. It’s so easy to spend other people’s money and who is protecting the taxpayers? Certainly not our school board who do virtually nothing except slobber on themselves during the meetings.

UPDATE: Funny how the SFSD backtracks after they get busted. Me has a feeling some very angry board members probably made a few calls last night telling the administration to release the information. Now if we could just take a gander at the bond election ballots.

We heard it during the Dem Forum debate from incumbent board member Reiter when it came to elections, as a school board they don’t set policy on elections.

We hear it again in this article when it comes to cuts in arts curriculum;

The school board heard an informational report about the schedules earlier this year, and members had a chance to weigh in on the report at that time.

And the chances of school board member taking action on the issue are zero, district spokesperson Carly Uthe said Tuesday. That’s because the issue of creating new elementary schedules is an administrative function and not one of the elected governing body.

But isn’t the School Board supposed to be checking what the administration is doing? They cannot simply act alone when it comes to budgeting. They can offer solutions or suggestions, but the power of the purse is within the prevue of the board NOT the administration.

And from Facebook;

As an elected board, like the city council, isn’t it the job of the School Board to set or at the very least APPROVE polices like cuts to curriculum or setting up precincts in an election? What’s the point of having a school board as a check against the administration if they aren’t checking? Our democratic policies in Sioux Falls are going straight to Hell in a Hand Basket. The whole point of having ‘elected’ officials is to check the administrators work and step in when things are not going in the direction the public wants. You are representatives of US not of THEM.

Of course I pointed this out when she was co-chair of the New School Bond Task Force and people told me she had nothing to do with it. Well if you read her conflict form, it tells a different story (DOC: Baker-Conflict)

Bob Baker (Husband), First National Bank of SF, Employee, Shareholder, Director & officer

SFSD deposits and new school bonds.

As I mentioned during the task force meetings the bonds would have to go through First National and I wonder what kind of commission was gleamed on a $190 million dollar bond. But hey, no conflicts there. I also wondered what kind of contracts the school has with SDN, the employer of the Task Force Chair, Mr. Tea Time Vernon Brown.

Baker also lists she is a ‘Community Director’. I did a little digging around, and apparently she heads up a youth group called ‘Youth Roots’ since April 1st. Whatever that is.

I still think the results are a little skewed. While I had no doubt that Nan and Carly would win, I had Nan in 1st place with a sliding vote count going to Carly, Lora and Sarah. It’s a little odd that Nan and Carly got the EXACT same percentage and Sarah and Lora got almost identical to. I also find it a little odd that there was over 700 undervotes but in the bond election there was ONLY 2 (I think, can’t find supporting docs anymore), in 2018 school board election there was 0, in 2017 there was 25 and in 2016 there was 0, in 2015 there was 0.

If you think the SFSD is running their elections above board, I beg to differ.