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PROPAGANDA FROM ANONYMOUS SOURCESWhen you get a propaganda pamphlet
that has no sender or return address a few days before an election, you can be prepared to
read some world-class lies. You began to wonder – “who are these people?”
The pamphlet from “Friends of Education” that came before the Budget vote on May
12, 2006 exceeded all tall tales that have so far
been told. It stated, “We are not trying to sell anything”
and then went on to distort the truth. If they are not trying to influence our vote
decision, where is the phone number E-mail address or anything that would guide us to them
for further info and to challenge their claims? We
also need to know if any school employees have joined this liars club, so we can protect
the children.
Here are some questions that they need to address: TAX LEVY
The “Friends of Education” claim that we had in 2005-06 an increase of
21% in tax levy. The new superintendent did
in fact pull a mumbo jumbo tax math over the eyes of the board, and they voted to pass the
tax increase. (I voted against) The increase
was in fact 29.9% as everyone can see from their tax bill. The rest of their tax claims are more mumbo jumbo.
ENROLLMENTThe “Friends of
Education” claim ” that the enrollment of Spencer-Van Etten has not
gone down, but has actually gone up 43 students in the last year.
The fact is that the enrollment has gone down for years, and building the new space
was a folly, brought about by superintendent Bailey. The cost is about 28 million dollars.
Click here
for the actual and projected enrollment that the district put out on April 10, 2006. Do
you see an increase of student population of 43? The truth is that we have lost another
122 students or about 10% since the new buildings went up.
The added space caused us to have so much empty rooms that we could house
52% more students than we have now. The 2000
census projected a total enrollment decline of 17.6%.
STUDENT PERFORMANCEThe level of education in our
district is such that the “friends of education” are reduced to celebrate the
fact that most students do not outright fail the state minimum for passing! The fact is that for example in eight grades
English about half of the class has failed every year since 1999. That led to the state to
classifying our middle school as a "School in Need Of
Improvement.” Of 4000 schools in the
state only 166 non New York City schools were as bad as S-VE. Click here to see the actual
last warning letter that the state sent to Superintendent Bailey. There was no great improvement in the results even
that closing the school and sending the students elsewhere loomed in our future. Click here for the test results 1999-2005 VOTE FOR MORE OF THE SAME? On
the last page of the propaganda leaflet the anonymous
people who made it up, ask the people to vote for the budget. They
never mentioned how much your taxes were to go up. The fact is that nobody knows before
August. Last year we were told that the tax increase was to be 12%. After the before
mentioned mumbo jumbo tax math, we were hit with a 29.9% increase! It could happen again.
As long as you have a majority of 4 people on the board who are prepared to “sock it
to” the taxpayers, the taxes will go up, and they are not shy to confiscate your land
and throw you into the snow bank. Click here to read how they
did it to my 83-year-old neighbor Martha Purje. The
anonymous pamphleteers further say
“we are frankly tired of the uncivilized and misleading information that has dirtied
the Spencer-Van Etten dialog over the past several years.” I hope that the anonymous people who wrote the
whoppers would admit to who they were. Here we have one subject that I would like to
co-operate with them. They have no doubt
been prompted by the corrosive tone in
Letters to the Editor by members of the school establishment such as Denise Price and a
middle school teacher, Rick Rogers, who did his attacking without mentioning that he is a
teacher union activist. How low will they go? For more disclosures of corrupt journalism go to www.ithacaurinal.com
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