Pickerington Area Taxpayers Alliance

Not sure what was wrong

If I remember enrollment numbers were reported as a +473 in October of '05. Not only were they not proven wrong, the State went onto award the district one of the highest awards you can get for financial reporting.

If student count had been mis-represented that wouldn't have occured. The entire district's budget process and funding mechanisms are driven off of enrollment.

I believe Ted was disappointed that the enrollment numbers were as high as they were but you can't change facts. The 473 is less than the previous year which I think was 531. He was concerned the district didn't know about it until August.

Student count ended this year at 9730 if what a principal I was talking with was correct. The figures that are reported in October compare October to October as a state requirement. I'm not sure what the Oct '05 number was but I think the 9730 is a little higher than where they were in October.

Papers have stated they are projecting about 425 students for next fall.

By guess again

Spin City Schools

I had coffee with Ted yesterday. I wanted to get his take on his running for Mayor next year.

I asked him about the incident last summer dealing with the number of new students enrolling in the PLSD. To say he was disappointed was an understatement. He was very concerned about the motives of the school board and the school administration on this issue. The anonymous poster talked about facing facts.

Ted said he had gone to the school superintendent in January of 2005 to get enrollment data of where the students in the PLSD lived. His purpose at the time was to include the impact that the city residential growth had on the PLSD. The school superintendent told him they had no way of determining that. He said within a day of his conversation with the superintendent he received an email from Lisa Reade warning him about pointing fingers at others. (PARANOIA RUNS DEEP IN PLSD)

If any of you remember in early 2005 the city was putting the finishing touches on their growth management study and the report was due later in the spring of 2005. Pickerington was sued in 2003 by the BIA because they proposed and passed a residential building moratorium and the one reason stated was the impact to the schools. Ted said, ?“the courts threw that out early and that Lisa Reade was a witness called by the City?“. He said, he was trying to document that impact in an official study but received only resistance from the schools.

He went on to say that in August of 2005 he meet with Lisa Reade about a number of issues involving the schools and enrollment. Lisa Reade showed him an email from Lew Stemen that predicted less than 300 students would enroll in the PLSD in 2005/2006 school year. Three weeks later Stemen makes a presentation to the school board and says the new enrollment for 2005 was 473 or what ever the figure was. Ted said he lost it.

Lisa Reade provided him and the council with a written copy of the Stemen report and on the front she said Lew?’s estimate was only off by 1.7 percent. She also told Ted that only 60 students had enrolled in the school system between October of 2004 and May of 2005. The remainder (413 students) enrolled during the summer of 2005. Lew was off by like 160%. Warning fuzzy math being taught here.

Included in Stemen?’s report was the building permit numbers from the City of Pickerington and Violet Township. Even Stemen?’s comments as reported in the paper implied that the uncontrolled growth was coming only from the city and never mentioned that the schools were stonewalling the city in information and the important data that may have allowed the city to defend itself.

It seems the cautions and concerns that Lisa Reade was warning Ted about in early 2005 were the very same blind siding attacks that her assistant superintendent did against the City.

Ted said, ?“That he tried to work with Jim Brink but he was only able to get data on the students that lived in condos.?” He said he ask Brink about the rest of the district data and where were the new students coming were from and Brink told him that the people working at the district office were educators not statisticians. However Brink and the school board seemed to have no problem accepting the conclusions of Lew Stemen the educator in the September school board meeting.


By A Friend

School Bored Meeting tonight

Pickerington school officials to discuss overcrowding

By Charlie Roduta THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH


Music and art on a cart. Physical education in the classroom.
What were once short-term solutions for the booming elementary schools in Pickerington may become realities for the middle and junior high schools.
Pickerington school-board members will talk about options tonight at 7 at Heritage School, 100 East St.
''We?’re looking at what we?’re going to curtail in some activities at the schools because of the amount of traffic,'' said board president Lisa Reade.
The board does not plan to vote on any item and will spend time talking about a bond issue on the November ballot, said Superintendent Bob Thiede.
After a $36 million request failed in last month?’s election, the board must decide how to deal with two operating levies up for renewal and growing populations at the middle and junior high schools.
To deal with next year?’s growth, Heritage Elementary will become a kindergarten-tofourth-grade building with 250 fifth- and sixth-graders moving to Diley Middle School.
The district will shift about 190 Diley students to Harmon Middle School and will add three portable units to Harmon and a six-classroom portable unit to Diley.
Now, the board is looking at steps to prepare for growth in the next two years.
Administrators sent letters to parents detailing possible plans if the district cannot open two new schools by the 2008-09 school year.
Options include eliminating assemblies, luncheons and special events at the elementary schools; eliminating before- and after-school clubs and activities in the middle schools; and reducing course offerings in the junior highs.
Kindergarten students may be housed in a junior high or high school, and middle and junior high students may go to split sessions.
Thiede said assemblies or luncheons could be axed as early as the 2007-08 school year.
''We don?’t have the space to carry out these functions or house large groups,'' Thiede said.
Reade said schools have already been pressed to continue programs such as Muffins with Mom, Doughnuts with Dad and grandparent luncheons. Schools have had to conduct such events in a series of days because of limited space. Assemblies, too, have had to be on different days, costing more to bring in guests.
''Within the course of the day, you have to look at how much disruption is acceptable,'' Reade said. ''You want to keep test scores up and keep students?’ level of education high.
''We can?’t take our eye off the ball. Standards are getting higher and we have to keep focused.''
croduta@dispatch.com






Here?’s something else you should be keeping your eye on Lisa. Make sure you coordinate through you publicity person. We received our threat letters from you that our kids brought home. We continue to read your threat quotes in all the media you seem to crave so. Why is it that past presidents of the board were quoted in roughly the same numbers as other members? Reading the media over the last year makes me believe there are no other board members, just you.

You have a PR person Lisa. Use them to soften your threats and present them a little more candy-coated if you can. Quite frankly having my kids read the threats before giving them to my husband and me lost you two votes. I had supported your efforts in the past but no more. Stop using my kids and drawing them into this.