Pickerington Area Taxpayers Alliance

In a brilliant move by the Pickerington School Board they have made the first steps in creating the community?’s first growth management plan. As reported in a couple of the local rags we find a pre-emptive action of planning split sessions in July of 2005 four months from another attempt to pass another building bond levy.


Now this is coming from an administration and school board that contrasts with the former boards we had at the turn of the millennium. That board catered to the taxpayers and they had a following of supporters that pushed everyone at the expense and with threats, intimidation and the new 2003 board has decided they would reveres the actions of this former school board.

Many times political pendulums swing from one extreme to the other and this swing normally takes years to complete the transition. In the case of the Pickerington School Board the swing has been completed in a few short months after the 2003 election.

Clearly in the quotes from today?’s SE Messenger Gail Oakes, and Wes Monhollen are trying to say they are just informing the community not threatening them. They are trying to communicate the problem they have with housing students. If that were true why waste staff time now working on split session when and if the levy would pass they wouldn?’t need to go to split sessions or as someone is now saying ?“double sessions?”. Jim Brink indicates that we have a couple of operating levies next year and we should not jeopardize those levies with bond issues for new buildings for a few years. A few years!! WOW!!!

First I take this action by the board as a threat. They are clearly saying if you vote the bond levy down in November your kids are going to splits sessions in 2007 period because even if you beg us, we are not going to look at new school buildings for 4 or 5 years. Note the remaining time of their terms and their quotes that are on the board. While they are there you all get nothing more fom them.

Clearly this will stop growth in its tracks because the kids will be getting less time with their teachers and I am sure the teachers union will be very happy taking the pay cut due to their reduced hours. Since their classroom will have another class with another teacher what else will these displaced teachers go but home and off the clock?

I think we win all the way around.









By Still voting no

Is it really a ''threat''?

It appears the BOE has decided to state up front, 2 years out, what will happen IF the levy does not pass prior to the 2007 school year.

I do not consider this to be a ''threat''. I believe it is one of the few times any PLSD Board has asked the administration to plan ahead, and let the public know up front what the monetary costs will likely be, as opposed to previous Boards that waited until the last possible moment to say ''Oh by the way, pass this or split sessions are coming''.

Everyone asks for the BOE to be as up front and informative as possible regarding levies, cuts, budgets and every other aspect of the finances in this district. This is better than prior Boards have done, yet they still get slammed for it. No matter what, the BOE is in an impossible position. They are either planning ahead responsibly, based on the very real possibility that this or another badly needed building levy will not pass, or they are ''threatening'' the voters.

Rapid growth is still with us. I, for one, am not satisfied to sit back and watch the schools decline. I could easily do that, as I no longer have children in the PLSD. Mine all graduated with a good solid education from this district. I have voted against badly-conceived levies in the past, and will do so in the future.

While I will support this levy, I am not so blind as to believe the voters will pass it. At least the Board is letting us know what to expect the closer we get to the time when the requsted buildings are needed. It is called planning. All I ever hear from opponents is ''too much this'' and ''too much that'', and almost nothing in the way of actual suggestions of how to effectively solve or ease the severe overcrowding we are facing.

While you certainly have the right to vote it down, please consider making known what it would take to get the ''no'' voters to reconsider, either this time or in the future. Maybe some of those ''no'' voters should make themselves publicly known and run for the school board.

By Augustus

Two things...

First - remember the Taj Mahal

Second - all the history of the past levies for a long ways back is contained in these pages. Read the discussions and read the Our Pages information.

Old PHS

Wasn't the now-PHS Central said to be a Taj Mahal after it was built? Now that it is all of 15 years old, no one seems to think that anymore.

Is it really about North being ''extravagant'', or is it more about (if I recall correctly) almost zero public input/information about the school's plans prior to beginning of construction?

And, of course, there's the ''argument'' against doing anything anywhere because somehow the BOE has made it so that ''only'' rich people live in the North district. Schools go where the houses are. It is the builders who put the houses up and price them, not the BOE. Reading some of the sold prices all over the district gives me the impression that people with money also live in the Central district. Maybe some of them are a little smarter and decide they don't need a $400K home to live in, even though they could afford to do so.



By Augustus