As a school board, as
much as possible, we must endeavor to reinvest our sixty-five million dollars
school budget in our community.
The biggest business in
most communities across America is the business of education. In our
district 227 community, sixty-five to seventy percent of our tax dollars go
toward education. How school board 227 manages and spends our tax dollars
means the difference between a high quality education for all children
with our tax dollars being spent wisely or a low quality education with
our tax dollars being spent frivolously, with not much to show for
it. Our school district 227 legal bills paid to just one law firm, among
several used by the board, in the 2010-2011 school years, amounted to a total
of $871,115,43. Rather than being wasted in this manner, these tax payer
funds should be used to improve student achievement. Sadly, they
are still being spent frivolously to fight our community in frivolous and
unwinnable lawsuits instead of hiring additional teachers to improve student
achievement levels and to grow our schools off probation and the state's watch
list. Since this is not being done, today, less than three out of ten of
our high school students are at grade level.
Part of our school board
227's mission must be to use our tax dollars and resources, as much as
possible, to reinvest back into our community by granting contracts to business
vendors in our community who help ease the property tax burdens on our
homeowners. As more of our tax dollars go to other businesses outside our
community, the poorer our community will become, the more businesses will leave
to go elsewhere further reducing our tax base, and the more taxes our
individual homeowners must pay. As our community become
poorer, the more residents will move elsewhere, not only to access
better schooling for their children, but also to seek a better quality of
school and community life without having to pay outrageously high property
taxes.
On April 2, 2013, our
new day will begin with an honest accounting of the state of our budget
and how our tax dollars are being misspent on frivolous charter school and
violations of freedom of speech lawsuits instead of toward improving
instruction, and hiring more effective teachers to improve student achievement
levels. Instead, the board continues to fight our community and do what
is not in the best interest of children rather than helping our schools become
stronger.
Ninety-nine percent of
the voters in our school district are paying for the mistakes of a few board
227 majority board members who are only interested in themselves. Our
elected representatives must foster policies that support the larger goals
of all the children and the larger community. Protesting is our way
of bringing attention to our plight so that the people's energy and outrage on
the streets can be channeled into constructive economic actions in the April 2,
2013 school board election, instead of violence and vandalism that drain our
already limited public resources. The wisdom of voting correctly is
practical action which will redirect and reinvest our tax payer dollars into
economic actions toward preserving our schools, our community, reducing our
homeowners property taxes, and profiting our community-based financial
institutions who ease the homeowners' tax burdens.
Denying school board
members their First Amendment Freedoms to speak equally at open meetings is not
just illegal. No board members has the right to take away another board
member's right to public participation. No community or board
member should be prevented from finishing a comment. Besides being
unethical and illegal, it strips board members and our community of our right
to serve as elected officials in open sessions and undermines our roles as
school board members.
Our 227 school
district should be in the news for the high quality of education provided to
students in Rich Township High School District 227, not wasting tax payer money
fighting our community in costly lawsuits, low PSAE scores, and open government
violations. That is why the community is demanding property tax relief on
Saturday, February 25, 2012.
David E. Morgan
Rich Township High
School District 227
Olympia Fields,
Illinois 60461
