South DaCola

Editorial Cartoonist from South Dakota

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Pam Homan SF School District Sioux Falls

What is Duper Super Pam Homan’s job? Why do we have a school board? (Guest Poster)

l3wis 3Comments

“You mean I should actually read these contracts before signing them?”

Sunday’s PayWall Leader gave us some surprise news.  Our esteemed local school board ceded more control to an appointed official and she in turn sold more of the sole of this city.  She has decided to give up on more of our most needy by selling them out to a for-profit ‘education’ corporation.

Is our education system so broken in Sioux Falls we have to give up on it and pay a for-profit education corporation to operate our schools?  Remember a few days ago when we were ‘privileged’ to hear the Homan dog and pony show about the wonderful job she is doing? Reread SouthDacola’s Duper Super Homan feature speaker at Democratic Forum today.  Well here we go again.  Let’s see how Homan has been doing: telling the substitute teachers they aren’t worth being paid a competitive rate, experienced teachers retiring early,  consolidating schools without full public discussion as to costs and benefits, nepotism and more.  Somehow our weak, led by the nose school board is afraid of her or have been bought into her schemes to dismantle our once great public school system.

We’ve had a few discussions with others since the news was dropped on us.  The crux of these convos is why the Joe Foss school deal is wrong not on one but many levels.  It seems to be such a shock it escapes the full thought process of Sioux Falls.  We will only touch on a few ways this is a real bad idea for the student, the school district and Sioux Falls.  It may sum up to numbers.  In an effort to make the testing / grade averages increase for the school district, Homan has decided to remove a problem area from their ‘numbers’ by farming the students off to a private corporation.  Instead of putting the efforts necessary to help the students with the right kind of support, Homan has decide to abandon the students and families of special needs children.  This will likely cost the school district more money in the end and society as a whole.

Fake Liberals and holier than thou Conservatives have been locked in a battle to control the educations of our youth.  The holier than thou are looking for ways the take our children to their version of the Lord.  The fake Liberals (neo-liberals) are trying to protect their children from being contaminated by the unwashed-lesser of society.  Amy Goodman’s recent article tells the tale of the Chicago school teachers strike and what was at stake:

Pauline Lipman is a professor of education and policy studies at the University of Illinois-Chicago. She explained, “Chicago was the birthplace of this neoliberal corporate reform agenda of high-stakes testing, paying teachers based on test scores, disinvesting in neighborhood schools and then closing them and turning them over to charter schools.”

Now with the preceding quote in hand think about what is happening in Sioux Falls right now.  At the heart of what is going on in our schools matches the Chicago situation.  To paraphrase Goodman: locally, from the grass roots, do we operate with teacher and parent control, or top-down, by a school board controlled by Homan.  We are supposed to be so impressed by Homan’s dog and pony shows we forget the purpose of the public school system is to educate everyone equally, to add to the value of the community and create thinking citizens.

Homan is contracting out the school board and her responsibilities to a for-profit company who is only concerned with how much they can skim off the top, middle and bottom to make a buck.  Students are not human beings in their equation, they are products to be churned out as cheaply as possible.  Why do we have Homan making these decisions and no thinking people on the school board to question her.  Is No one able to veto anything she throws out?  No questions?  Really?  Really no one is able to raise any ethics or long-term education issues in this?  Really?  Wow, is Sioux Falls so backwards we cannot question authority?  Really?  What happened to students first philosophy of John Harris?

We ask the questions again, “What is her job?” “Why do we have a school board?”

I also received this information recently from the SE Homeless Coalition:

There are 3600  households on the waiting list for a subsidy at Sioux Falls housing, and the  wait is at least four years.  This is the entire preschool life of a  child.  Pam Homan said there were 500 unserved preschoolers, I am guessing  this might be a low figure.

SF City Council SF School District Sioux Falls

What’s next for Longfellow? How about a public indoor swimming pool?

l3wis 18Comments

I have often been told the reason that the city and the school district have not gone in together on a public indoor pool is because, well, they don’t really work together on things. Yet magically, it was announced on Tuesday that the city and the school district are going to work together to come up with a use for Longfellow;

It’s possible Longfellow Elementary School could become city property after it closes in 2015, but the first step is determining a use for the 100,000-square-foot site.

The Sioux Falls School District — which is moving forward with consolidation plans — last week offered to transfer the property to the city or sell it for $1, Community Development director Darrin Smith told city councilors this week.

The next steps regarding a possible transfer include internal discussions with the 12 city department leaders, Smith said.

What a perfect opportunity to not only work together on a joint project, but to take a centrally located historical building and refab it!

Democrats Pam Homan SF School District

Duper Super Homan feature speaker at Democractic Forum today

l3wis 12Comments

I think Pam had an inkling that there was going to be an angry mob waiting for her at the forum today (even though there was just a bunch of old Democrats).

With props from State Dem Chair Nesselhuf, she was able to get out a heartwarming story about their relationship, the adoption of her son and his service in the military. School Board member, Kent Alberty (and Homan body guard) was also stationed conveniently in the middle of the room to make sure nothing happend to the Dictator. She supposedly changed her presentation for the event several times. She decided to go with a presentation she made back in October, and I believe a couple of times since. It was about the demographics of the school district. Here are some finer points;

• 58% of the school budget is spent on teachers

• Over 40% of school district kids are on FREE or reduced lunches

• 30% of the school district’s students are NOT white.

She was kind enough to allow some questions (when there was only about 20 minutes left).

Homan gave us a sob story about in the hundred or so exit interviews she has done with teachers,  they basically tell her the pay is why they are leaving.

I wanted to ask her why we are so top heavy with overpaid admins then?

A well-known homeless advocate asked Homan what they are doing to help homeless and poverty stricken students, and she also got a zinger question off about the relationship between the current school board and Homan and past superintendent and school boards, too which Homan answered, after trying to avoid the question, “Not sure how my relationship compares to the past, I don’t know much about what happened in the past.” (sic) Those who fail to study history are doomed to repeat it, I guess. I got the feeling that Homan and Mrs. Bliss don’t see eye to eye too often.

Another person asked about the feasability of consolidation. I will give Homan credit, she explained that they were bussing kids from other parts of town to fill these schools and it didn’t really make sense to do so. While I do partially agree with her on that, her statement about saving $800,000 a year still rings hollow. I would have liked to ask a followup, “Doesn’t the interest and principal payments on bonding a new school negate any savings?” But there wasn’t enough time. Guest Poster did try to get a question off about the possible sale of the soon to be closed schools, but Pammy looked right over his head and called on someone else for the final question. Which was unmemorable.

There is one thing I did take away from the Q & A session. Homan has a sense of arrogance about her that is astounding. She seems to think her doctorate somehow makes her smarter then the rest of us, and in some respects she may be, but she takes it a step forward in her condescending tone. A regular at the forums, Roger (who for the record attends several council meetings and has a beard like father time) asked a great question, too which I snickered out loud at, (responding to the presentation) “You say we perform better on a National level in Sioux Falls then other parts of the country when compared to the amount of poor people we have in the district. Are you saying that there is a different ratio (or different kind) of poor people here then other parts of the country?” (sic).

This is where Homan told Roger that she didn’t have time to teach him statistics and kind of looked at him like “You are a dumbass.” (and Roger really isn’t). I have never cared too much for Homan’s ‘Nanner, Nanner, Nanner, I’m smarter then you.’ tone. She has displayed it many times in public. I happen to know someone with a doctorate, Dr. Staggers, and in his capacity as a public servant, he has never held this over his constituent’s heads. He may have beat the crap out of his fellow councilors and city directors, but I applaud him for those actions.

I didn’t expect any fireworks today, though as I looked around the room, I could tell there is still some people seething about the consolidation.

Pam Homan SF School District

Is Dictator Homan becoming the Mike Rounds of the school district?

l3wis 18Comments

From possible PETITION DRIVES to overthrow her bad ideas, to BLATANT NEPOTISM, Pammy is slowly becoming like our former (anti) Governor Rounds;

“We’re going to explore whether or not a petition drive to put the school closing to a public voting makes any sense,” Andersen said.

Gage says that means this group will need to do its research to see what the law allows and more importantly find a group of volunteers that are willing to take this petition.

The group would need up to 15,000 signatures on the petition to put the school consolidation to a public vote.

Great, another petition drive to overthrow bad decisions made by our supposed leaders.

Oh, and Pammy likes to tell us she had nothing to do with this;

A second adult child of Sioux Falls School District Superintendent Pam Homan has been hired by Southeast Technical Institute, which is governed by the same elected body as the public schools.

I wonder how long, if ever, this job was posted on the school district’s website? And how many applications for the job mysteriously found the same fate as the Rosa Parks public naming suggestions?

Hopefully with a new school board there will be a thorough review of Homan’s job performance, or lack there of.

SF School District Sioux Falls snow removal Snowgates

Did the SF School Board & Dictator Homan create the ‘Perfect Storm’?

l3wis 4Comments

One of the few shots of SF School board president, Doug Morrison where he is not rubbing his neck during tonight’s meeting (notice who he is looking at – the Fuhrer).

I guess none of us should be surprised by this;

The Sioux Falls School Board has given a school consolidation and closure plan for three central schools the green light. Longfellow, Mark Twain, and Jefferson will be closed. The district will also build a new multi-million dollar elementary school on the Mark Twain site. It will be bigger, and physically better than the aging historic neighborhood facilities.

What angered me the most about tonight’s meeting was the lack of public testimony and that NONE of the important questions were asked about who is buying the land and the bonding. The blatant lack of 1st Amendment rights that were respected was obvious when parents were yelling from the crowd for more testimony and denied because of ‘policy’. Sorry President Morrison, the US Constitution trumps silly school board policies.

But that argument is for another day.

More importantly, the school board fueled an amazing storm tonight. They have probably encouraged many parents to run for the school board this Spring. But this won’t be your average hunky-dory election where about 3% of the voters show up and vote for rubber stampers. The snowgate supporters will be there to, people who believe that the ones that dole out their tax dollars should be spending it on ‘prudent’ things and services. Like proper snow removal and educating our youth. This spring, you may see a storm on election day like no other, and it won’t be coming from the sky, it will be coming from the ballot box.

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