Congress may actually pass an economic stimulus bill this week, which is good news for the short-term needs of the country. There is no question the economy is tottering, and could easily tip over from recession to depression, so a bill that focuses on saving jobs and creating jobs is desperately needed. The good news is that the bill will definitely help achieve some of those aims. The bad news is that it will lay a crushing debt burden on taxpayers for the future, which can only be addressed if government becomes far more efficient in the use of tax dollars than it has in the past. That could very well force, down the road, what many of us have wanted for years, a smaller, more efficient government. But somehow, that doesn't seem likely. Because Congress hasn't figured out that the model for government is, and should be, changing. And the best example is the stimulus package. Despite billions of dollars in cuts, it still contains way too much pork. And some of the cuts (to make way for that pork) seem to make no sense, such as dropping $40 billion to help keep schools from having to fire teachers. That's counter-productive. The bill is supposed to save or create jobs, not leave them threatened. Both sides of the aisle bear the blame. The Democratic leadership rolled over on way too many pet projects among its members, losing sight of the long-term goal of the bill. And Republicans kept insisting on sticking to the same failed policies of the past, and playing the same old games where personal and party political power carried more weight than the needs of the nation. One GOP leader actually admitted his goal for the bill, and the amendments he introduced, were designed to divide the Democrats and make them look bad. So much for caring about the people of this country. Both parties should be ashamed. It is time for Congress to look up from its myopic and petty party power games, and its proclivity for pork, and look at the desperate state of the nation, focusing solely on programs that stand a good chance of meeting the goal of keeping people working. Making things work should be a bipartisan issue. This bill should be about America, not the Republican or Democratic parties. -- Kelly Everitt

Cooler heads prevailed in school levy's passage

Posted Wednesday, September 2, 2015, at 10:23 AM

In just a matter of minutes after last week's election, the word had already hit the streets regarding the Mountain Home School District's plant facility levy. People in our community came together and provided their support to pass the $5 million levy.

I'd like to take a minute and personally thank those who ensured this levy not only passed but did so by an overwhelming majority.

The school district's response to the news was immediate and to the point. Shortly after its passage, the district's board of trustees made plans to approved the first in what I expect will be a lengthy list of construction projects that will alleviate a number of problems in our schools.

The project to fix the roof at Hacker Middle School was one that should've happened several years ago, but I'm excited that it's finally going to happen. With winter just around the corner, I don't believe that leaky roof could've survived another year before it finally collapsed.

Call me sentimental, but the schools in our district mean a lot to myself and my family. All three of my children attended classes in most of these buildings with my youngest graduating from Mountain Home High School last May.

I know a number of the teachers in the district, many of them by name. They also remember each of my children and will often ask me how they're doing.

You don't often see this type of personal connection between teachers and parents in larger school districts. From what I've been able to gather, the students in places like Boise or Caldwell are just another warm body filling a seat in a classroom.

Maybe that's why Mountain Home is so special. We have teachers that care about their students and parents that care about the education their children receive.

In fact, it was a group of concerned parents that helped make the plant facility levy happen in the first place. They were asked to come together and take a realistic, unbiased look at our schools to identify exactly what was wrong.

They not only highlighted the problems with the middle school roof, which was blatantly obvious, they discovered many additional issues in the other district buildings. Once they had this list of maintenance problems, they went ahead and tried to prioritize them based on what projects needed to happen immediately and which ones could wait until later if funding from the levy remained.

I'd like to take another minute and credit these individuals for volunteering their time to support an initiative that will yield a tremendous number of benefits for our schools for years to come. They should be proud of the hard work they invested on behalf of future students in our school district.

While I was delighted to see such a high turnout for these off-season election, I was equally disappointed and concerned that we had 399 people in this community that voted "no" to the levy. I suppose the real question I should ask is why.

To these individuals I have to ask two questions: Did you go to school, and if so, did you earn a diploma?

If these critics went to school, then guess what? Someone out there paid their taxes so these people could attend a nice school with certified teachers in each classroom with textbooks that helped guide them to graduation.

So if someone paid for these naysayers to go to school, why are they so reluctant to return the favor? Why don't they ensure our children and grandchildren can have the same opportunities to go to schools in buildings where the roofs don't leak and they have the needed resources to help them succeed?

On the other hand, if these people didn't go to school or lack a high school diploma, I have a suggestion: Enroll in classes and finish your degree. You might learn something productive and very useful along they way.

Ultimately, however, I think the main problem here deals with just one word: taxes. It seems that once someone even mutters that word in this town, there are those out there that immediately go out and "circle the wagons" as they dig in their heels and take up defensive fighting positions.

It seems as if none of these people want to pay taxes for anything -- unless of course their house catches fire, someone tries to rob them, the road in front of their house is falling apart or they need an ambulance to take them to the hospital. That's when they'll demand to have a fire truck, police car, construction team or paramedic showing up at their doorstep.

I'm sorry, but it doesn't work that way. We pay our taxes so these resources are in place before we need them.

And that's exactly what we're going to do now that we've passed this levy. We're going to "pay it forward" to the next generations of students so they can be successful in life and carry on the responsibility to the following generations.

-- Brian S. Orban

Comments

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I am glad you are pleased. Guess we'll see where we are in 5 years when this one expires and there stands the MHSD with their hands out yet again!

-- Posted by joe_smoe on Wed, Sep 2, 2015, at 1:43 PM
They had the previous Maintenance levy and was the roof replaced ? NO.

You are pleased that it passed, well if the levy vote is not concurrent with another vote, lets say November elections the turnout will be low. The school district knew this, its employees/family probably made up 90 percent of the yes vote.

The one line that stood out was: We can use this money for any reason we deem to be for safety or security. NOT JUST MAINTENANCE!

-- Posted by gmoney on Wed, Sep 2, 2015, at 4:27 PM
A overwhelming and clear message was sent to our community leaders and elected officials that public education is a PRIORITY and that the vast majority of our community will do what it takes to better the quality of education for the children of Mountain Home.

Thank you to all of those who voted YES, the child of this community thank you from the bottom of their hearts.

There is nothing more rewarding then to see children in a clean, updated and healthy learning environment...

Thank you Mountain Home...you made the right choice!

-- Posted by DUMBFOUNDED IN IDAHO on Thu, Sep 3, 2015, at 8:14 AM
Once again, there is NEGATIVITY with those in this community like "gmoney"..A distrust or paranoia that infest some in this community who think ANY public or government institution are "socialist, or communist" with a hidden agenda to take ALL of your money...or even better...the school district has a "secret covert" operation to deplete those within this community of funds to procure salaries of school employees so they can go on hidden tropical hideaways, having cocktails on the beach and toasting their success in swindling the taxpayers of Mtn Home out of their hard earned salaries...

Give me a BREAK!!! Get a life...

-- Posted by DUMBFOUNDED IN IDAHO on Thu, Sep 3, 2015, at 8:35 AM
Cooler heads will prevail LITERALLY if they don't fix the roof right this time.

Cold water from rain, snow and ice will be dripping down on our kids heads once again!

Replace not repair the roof. You now have enough money. Do it right!

AaO

-- Posted by Alwaysanoptimist on Thu, Sep 3, 2015, at 10:56 PM
I agree with Brian, many people want the government out of their lives, and pay no taxes. I think these people are extremely jaded if they think that big business is going to come in and fix our infrastructure and offer the same level of education as can be read in this Forbes article:

"Forbes notes: "The charter school movement began as a grassroots attempt to improve public education. It's quickly becoming a backdoor for corporate profit." A McKinsey report estimates that education can be a $1.1 trillion business in the United States. Meanwhile, state educational funding continues to be cut, and budget imbalances are worsened by the transfer of public tax money to charter schools.

Education funding continues to be cut largely because corporations aren't paying their state taxes.

So philanthropists like Bill Gates and Eli Broad and Michael Bloomberg and Rupert Murdoch and Jeff Bezos and the Walton family, who have little educational experience among them, and who have little accountability to the public, are riding the free-market wave and promoting "education reform" with lots of standardized testing.

----Just Like the Fast-Food Industry: Profits for CEOs, Low Wages for the Servers

Our nation's impulsive experiment with privatization is causing our schools to look more like boardrooms than classrooms. Charter administrators make a lot more money than their public school counterparts, and their numbers are rapidly increasing. Teachers, on the other hand, are paid less, and they have fewer years of experience and a higher turnover rate. The patriotic-sounding "Teach for America" charges public school districts $3,000 to $5,000 per instructor per year. Teachers don't get that money, business owners do.

----Good Business Strategy: Cut Employees, Use Machines to Teach

The profit motive also leads to shortcuts in the educational methods practiced on our children. Like "virtual" instruction. The video-game-named Rocketship Schools have $15/hour instructors monitoring up to 130 kids at a timeas they work on computers. In Wisconsin, half the students in virtual settings are attending schools that are not meeting performance expectations. Only one out of twelve "cyber schools" met state standards in Pennsylvania. In Los Angelespublic money goes for computers instead of needed infrastructure repair.

K12 Inc., the largest online, for-profit Educational Management Organization in the U.S., is a good example of what theCenter for Media and Democracy calls "America's Highest Paid Government Workers" -- that is, the CEOs of corporations that make billions by taking control of public services. While over 86 percent of K12's profits came from taxpayers, and while the salaries of K12's eight executives went from $10 million to over $21 million in one year, only 27.7 percent of K12 Inc. online schools met state standards in 2010-2011, compared to 52 percent of public schools.

It gets worse with the Common Core Standards, an unproven Gates-funded initiative that requires computers many schools don't have. The Silicon Valley Business Journal reports that "Next year, K-12 schools across the United States will begin implementing Common Core State Standards, an education initiative that will drive schools to adopt technology in the classroom as never before...Apple, Google, Cisco and a swarm of startups are elbowing in to secure market share." States are being hit with unexpected new costs, partly for curriculum changes, but also for technology upgrades, testing, and assessment.

----Banker's Ethics in the Principal's Office

Finally, the profit motive leads to questionable ethics among school operators, if not outright fraud. After a Los Angeles charter school manager misused funds, the California Charter Schools Association insisted that charter schools areexempt from criminal laws because they are private. The same argument was used in a Chicago case. Charters employ the privatization defense to justify their generous salaries while demanding instructional space as public entities. States around the country are being attracted to the money, as, for example, in Texas and Ohio, where charter-affiliated campaign contributions have led to increased funding and licenses for charter schools."

-- Posted by idahogeek52 on Fri, Sep 4, 2015, at 6:33 AM
Did anyone else notice the cost of the bid they accepted? On September second the board accepted the bid from J.B.'s Roofing, Inc., in the amount of $599,998. As much as this levy was made out to be doom and gloom about the failing roof, the cost to actually repair the roof is just under 12% of the 5 million they will receive.

-- Posted by EE on Wed, Sep 30, 2015, at 3:43 PM

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