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Both Soap Box Hero and Violet raise a very intriguing question. What if Oakes and Powers are elected? What will an Oakes-Powers-Rigelman alliance mean to our schools?
If she is elected president, will Oakes have her 1, 5 and 10 year plan for our schools available in January? Will her plan address the ?‘fear?’ that is ?‘woven through the school community?’ that she promises to ?‘work hard to correct?’? Does she think we can eliminate fear, threats and intimidation in a year?
Will Oakes?’ plan call for a decrease in the size of classes? Will her plan call for paying our teachers more? Will she ask our superintendent and treasurer to resign immediately? Or will she try to buy them out of their contracts? How will she address how ?‘our country is lagging behind other countries in math and science?’? Will her ?‘alternative approaches?’ to teaching children be available in January?
I?’m most interested in how she will deal with school supporters and supporters of the current majority on the school board. Will Oakes insist that all three of them, cross their arms, turn their chairs to the side and face the wall for the entire three minutes that a school supporter is given to speak at board meetings? Or will they vote 3-2 to ban all school supporters and supporters of the current majority from speaking at meetings?
Finally, due to a comment from Soap Box Hero about my using speaking time to endorse candidates at Sunday?’s dedication of Heritage Elementary school, I have included as the next response my entire remarks at the dedication. You can be the judge.
And, lastly, a suggestion to Soap Box Hero about his/her inability to get a letter to the editor printed in one of the local newspapers. Soap Box Hero, you may want to use your real name and provide an address and phone number for verification for your letter to be printed. I know it is just a suggestion, but it just might work.
Should be an interesting election.
Mark W. Uher
By PLSD Taxpayer
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Remarks at Sunday's Dedication
In response to an issue raised by Soap Box Hero, here are my remarks carefully read on Sunday, October 21 at the dedication of Heritage Elementary School:
As the co-chair of the Pride in Pickerington Schools Committee, we?’re delighted to part of this wonderful celebration today. The renovation of this facility is absolutely AWESOME. Heritage elementary students are so fortunate to be in such a beautiful building so rich in history and one that means so much to this community. You attend classes in the same rooms as FIVE generations of Violet Township residents before you have done and even assemble in an auditorium where decades ago intense high school basketball contests took place.
I join the Committee?’s co-chairs Hope Boren and Denise Mitchell, and the Pickerington for Kids Committee chairman, John Maurer, in thanking the community for the tremendous support you have given our schools over the last four years. We?’re most grateful for the community?’s approval to renovate this facility, to build two new middle schools, a new junior and senior high school. Pickerington schools remain the pride of this community. We?’re proud of our buildings and our students?’ successes in the classroom, on the playing field and in the arts.
We also would like to thank our OUTSTANDING teachers and administrators for the superb job you are doing educating our children. You are the reason this district is in the top 2% academically in the State of Ohio and is one of the best in the nation.
Yes, this is a day to celebrate.
However, as we celebrate, we must be mindful of the challenges ahead. The most important issue facing our schools is one of money. Our class sizes are extremely large and very near the state maximum. We have too few counselors. Enriching field trips are at a minimum. And, in order to remain competitive, we MUST PAY our teachers MORE. As some of our best teachers retire, we must be able to recruit excellent new teachers with comparable school districts such as Westerville. Currently, Westerville pays their teachers, on the average, $6,000 more and have seven fewer students per class.
As a community, we must work together with our school board under the OUTSTANDING leadership of Lori Sanders and develop workable solutions to our future challenges. We must lobby the State of Ohio to financially reward top performing schools so they remain that way. We must DEMAND our township and city officials work together to increase the COMMERCIAL tax base within our district. We must continue to secure sizable DONATIONS from area businesses and we must continue to support reasonable tax levies and bond issues. Too much is at stake.
Let?’s work together so that in another 65 years a child of one of the current Heritage elementary students can speak with the same school pride from this same stage. Thank you.
Mark W. Uher
By Mark W. Uher
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I like your discussion title
Oakes for school board president - I'd agree with you there Mark.
However, I find it interesting that your remarks to the audience at Heritage suggest action items that you (and your organized group of concerned citizens) never appear to move on. Yes, the schools are overcrowded and the student:teacher ratio is not at all ideal, especially in the younger grades. And yes, Pickerington City Council is continuing the rampage of rezoning to high density residential land that would have been very suitable for commercial development. Where are you (or your group) at council meetings that approve this rezoning? Why did you only speak out at against the Canal-Violet CEDA which doesn't even lie within the Pickerington school district. While your speech implies you care about the well being of our schools, I wish you would work on the City of Pickerington's elected officials to achieve your goals. While cooperation between Violet and the City would be nice, it doesn't mean Violet should roll over everytime the City wants to annex land and build more homes. Shout your message to city councilmen. Our school board won't have much to work with if the city continues along this path of destruction.
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Mark Uher is a liar!
Let me first say that Mark Uher is the biggest liar that this discussion
page has ever seen. On his 2-23-2001 posting, Mark stated he will not post on
the P.A.T.A. webpage again!! Well, here it is a few short months later and
we see Mr. Uher posting his rhetoric on the P.A.T.A. site again. Never mind
that Mark boasted that P.A.T.A. will fail. He can't keep his lies bottled
up any longer. What good is a lie if you can't tell it to someone?
What is it about the P.A.T.A. website that makes Mark addicted to its
discussion page? Don't the ''Strong Citizens'' have a worthwhile website of
their own? Doesn't Mr. Uher have enough podium time at the board meetings
to spew his venom? Are not ''The Citizens for a Strong...'' yada, yada, yada,
capable enough to muster their own website? I guess not.
Please click over to the 2-23-2001 ''P.A.T.A. Will Fail'' posting and see exactly what Mark said and
then finish what I've written if you do not believe me...
Once you have seen the truth, then you must take everything Mark says/writes
with a grain of salt, including his support for a few incumbent candidates.
Mark also goes on to lie about how he wants to curtail residential growth.
Has anyone ever seen Mark at the City Council meetings pleading with the
puppets-of-those-with-deep-pockets not to put homes next to the Pickerington
Ponds? How about voice his concerns about the reckless residential growth,
emergency legislation and rampant annexations? Nope. Nary a word from Mark
Uher! In all reality, Mr. Uher's inaction and lack of protest indicates he
supports additional homes in PLSD. Have we heard Mark scream bloody murder
when the city TIFs away school money? No. It gives him more reason to sell
more levies and bond issues to the voters, thereby, making himself feel more
important and prominent in this community. Power is Mark's addiction.
Now his lies have finally caught up to him. He's deceived this community
long enough! If you support more taxes, more homes, more cars, more
emergency legislation, more lies from ''The Few Strong Citizens'', then Mark
is your man! Don't let these ''Few Strong'' loudmouths give our schools funny
names or claim Violet Township and Pickerington are ''one'', because that's a
lie too. Ask city councilman Doug Parker. He loathes Violet Township
residents because he's in the back pocket of M/I Homes, Dominion Homes,
Homewood Homes and we know he's their puppet!
Doug and city hall are driving this community right into the dirt. They
can't get real businesses within the city so they relocate existing
businesses and call them new (Dairy Queen, CVS, etc.). They even call taxes
from apartments commercial revenue! (residential building: commercial
revenue???... smoke mirrors and lies) ''Hey Violet Township'', they'll
shout, ''3-1 ratio'', yada, yada, yada!!! Take away the apartments and you'll
find the city on a shoe-string budget and the shoe-string is the city's 1%
income tax! Ha! Pickerington is the laughing stock. Continued....
By u.v.t.r
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