Sioux Falls had three legislators and its own new school superintendent on the Blue Ribbon Task Force on Teachers and Students. Yet co-chair Senator Deb Soholt (R-14), Rep. G. Mark Mickelson (R-13), Rep. Steve Westra (R-13), and Supt. Brian Maher aren’t getting A’s from their neighbors for their work on teacher pay. (Physics students will remind us that work = force × distance, and whatever force the Blue Ribboneers applied, they don’t appear to have moved us much distance.) Rick Knobe nicked ’em Tuesday; now Maher’s school board piles on:
…“What a shame,” Sioux Falls board member Carly Reiter said. “For the amount of time and energy and money.”
…One of the major sticking points for Sioux Falls officials was the lack of new dollars in the task force’s plan.
“Without any new taxes, I don’t see it,” board member Doug Morrison said. “It’s just shifting money around” [Patrick Anderson, “S.F. Board: School Funding Plans ‘a Shame’,” that Sioux Falls paper, 2015.11.04].
Sioux Falls School Board, Sioux Falls school patrons, if you’re not happy with the work this Legislative panel produced, you have a simple solution available: elect new legislators in 2016.
Not just a shame but a sham as well.
Um, Larry, I agree with you.
There are things the state can do, without raising taxes, to help school districts free up money to pay teachers. But for it to work, everyone has to agree to work together. That was supposed the purpose of this panel.
South Dakota should pass a corporate income tax, reduce the number of counties to 25, turn Dakota State University into a community college, and adopt my cannabis template: the kurtz solution painted on a thumbnail.
or you could home school kids and not have to learn them anything in a red state like this one- http://www.seattlepi.com/news/texas/article/Texas-case-mulls-if-home-school-kids-have-to-6603731.php
These kids don’t need to learn anything because they will be raptured. Religious freedumb for the willfully dumb.
At what point will the people of South Dakota wake up to the fact that until a state income tax is passed, or the alternative funding source for school districts and counties, the removal of the freeze on property taxes; school districts including teacher pay, and counties, including funding for jails, county roads and bridges will continue to suffer?
Maybe teachers and parents and communities need to stand up to the dumbing down of South Dakota and the rampant corruption in our state government. It is pretty obvious to me that this corrupt state government is not going to do anything to improve our most valuable resource–South Dakota’s Children!
A good case of the blue flu might wake this state up!