FWCS Board Needs To Get Serious About Fixing Facility Problems
Posted by Jeff Pruitt - 5/20/08 @ 8:05 am - Filed Under 2008 Local Elections, Featured, Local Politics
The News-Sentinel and WANE tv have a multi-part story about the state of facilities within Fort Wayne Community Schools. They are going to the five schools that the administration claims are the most dire and showing some of the issues they face. Of course they don’t talk about how much fixing these items might actually cost - no doubt it would be well under the $500 million wish list that was defeated in last year’s remonstrance.
Let us not forget that Superintendent Wendy Robinson and the FWCS voted down the Code Blue proposal that would’ve given the schools $250 $300 million to fix the most daunting problems. Political naiveté led them to believe they could steamroll the taxpayers and ultimately get whatever they wanted. Unfortunately for students and teachers, the administration decided to gamble and go for the entire $500 million and after they lost state law required them to wait a year before pushing another proposal.
So one would think that the school board would be actively engaged with Code Blue and other taxpayers in trying to find a solution to these facility issues they’re parading around to the local media. Unbelievably they haven’t done any real work in coming up with another solution and haven’t contacted any of the Code Blue leadership to discuss a compromise. Then again it is an election year and board member Steve Corona doesn’t want voters to remember what happened in last year’s remonstrance.
It’s time the board stop playing with the health and safety of the children it’s entrusted to protect and educate. It’s due time they lay out a reasonable and affordable plan for fixing the most severe problems as well as defining a funding plan for future repairs. They don’t need to reconvene a rubber-stamping task force, pay city councilmembers to hold meetings or hire an advertising agency. All they need to do is listen to the community - the whole community…
Update: Thanks to Evert Mol for correcting me. It was actually a $300 million compromise
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5 Responses to “FWCS Board Needs To Get Serious About Fixing Facility Problems”
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Amazing isn’t it? They still don’t think they lost because their project was off the wall and their process was rigged. They think they lost because in GiaQuinta’s words, they “allowed Evert Mol to define the district”. So what they have to do now is fix their image. Sorry, but their image is tied to their ISTEP scores and those are not going to be fixed any time soon.
Many of us are also still waiting for publication of the goals for Supt. Robinson and the FWCS in total(plus a true evaluation of the Supt.). By my calculation the Board has now been working on those items for some 15 months.Wonder why major Corporations can do similar things every 6 months but it takes the FWCS Board over a year to make such little progress. Oh well ,whatever?
Jeff, Evert,
I will take issue with you on this.
There was no such thing as a $300 Million compromise. Code Blue has NO AUTHORITY to negotiate. Rather, the leaders of Code Blue said that they would not fight such an amount. It does not mean that others would not have.
While I agree with most of your points- there was NO compromise.
Kevin-
Technically, you’re right. But at the time there did not appear to be any other organized opposition emerging. And although the $300 million was proposed to avoid a remonstrance, it was much closer to what was could actually be justified. It doubt if at that figure there would have been a remonstrance or that it would have succeeded.
I did not hear anyone who signed a blue petition say they were opposed to spending money to fix what was broken. But nobody believed anything close to $500 million was required to do that.
Kevin,
Code Blue certainly had the authority to negotiate for themselves and they were clearly the only organized body pushing for a referendum.
Could another entity have popped up? Sure, but the board should have negotiated with the Code Blue group as they were the driving force at that point.
So there most definitely was a compromise and even the school board members have acknowledged it…