Posted: 10:31 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 28, 2015

Council, school board candidates share views

By Ed Richter

Staff Writer

MIDDLETOWN — 

    There weren’t a lot of differences among the candidates running for Middletown City Council and Middletown Board of Education during a Candidate’s Forum Wednesday. In fact, most agreed with their fellow candidates’ comments.

    The Chamber of Commerce Serving Middletown, Monroe and Trenton sponsored the forum that was held at the Middletown City Building. The forum was split into two 45-minute sessions — City Council and school board candidates were queried on several questions and given a short amount of time to respond. City Council candidate Roy Gordon was unable to attend the forum, but an opening statement on his behalf was read by moderator Lenny Robinson.

    Nearly 60 people attended the forum.

Part 2 of this article
There are two races for Middletown school board: incumbent Katie McNeil and newcomer Todd Moore are vying to complete two years of an unexpired term; and incumbent Deanna Shores along with first-time candidates Chris Urso, Anita Scheibert and Michelle Novak are seeking one of three open seats for a full four-year term.

While all agree there is a need for standardized testing and reducing the time used to prepare and take the tests, they all don’t think it should be a one-size-fits-all approach. They would prefer that time be used teaching on classroom learning and less on the testing.

Novak said, “I do have four children in the district and every year its. I’m not sure how its benefiting my children and I don’t think there is a career field when they graduate to be good testers…. I think they they need to spend more time in the classroom teaching them about math, science, reading, English, … the core things they need to learn……. I don’t support all of the testing we are doing.”

Scheibert said there is are plenty of reliable testing systems and said the purpose was to collect data by consistent measure individual student achievement over time and said there was wasted tax dollars on materials used for one year after the state scrapped the PARCC testing.

“Why the state decided that they should standardize this, I’m not sure,” she said. “I kinda believe this testing situation has been hijacked by political forces. I don’t think it’s to the student’s advantage. I witnessed children taking the PARCC test last year and it was torturous thing.”

Shores said she thanked God for not having to take as many standardized tests as students take today adding that she was a horrible good test taker and glad someone taught her that learning is lifelong.

“I sit before you with several degrees from top universities,” she said. “Standardized testing to me is horrid that the way we focus on it as it’s done today..”

Urso said he’s not anti-testing and was glad to have taken a test before getting a driver’s license before driving.

“There is a time and place to test. I think when its the only currency to determine if someone is capable, I think that’s when you’ve put too much stock into it.”

If the test is sole means, it takes away the enjoyment of learning and creativity of the students.

McNeil said, “Testing is a measure of a student’s understanding, and performance and it’s important.”

She said when the new middle school comes online she’d like to explore year-round schooling. McNeil said testing is good for diagnostics and there is a need to know when a child needs intervention.

She said testing is an accountability piece and a measure of expectations for understanding and relevance of student performance.

Moore said he shares the frustrations of standardized testing and has heard from people via social media.

“I think one of the frustrations for me is that its changed the culture of learning,” he said. “When the overwhelming number of tests we’ve had to endure in the district, I think kids are exhausted.”

He said testing has been overdone at this point but is glad things are changing at the state level.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ijx99kiccqI

"I wish I had a job where just showing up was all that mattered"

I see it everyday here at Wright-Patt. The jobs where showing up is all that matters are not only in education but permeate the government ranks too. There are many GS grade government people here on base who have fancy titles, show up, draw a six figure salary, have some coffee, go to meetings to decide not to decide until the next meeting and, in general, make life miserable at times for the contractors who are actually doing the work for them.

Case in point......

Got a "building superintendent" for our building. EVERY building on base, in areas A, B and C have a "building superintendent". He is a GS-12 starting at $65 thou and topping out around $79 thou a year.(His GS rating is on his E-Mails so I looked up the pay scale just for interest) I have watched this guy off and on for over 10 years now noting what he seems to do each day. He comes in, goes upstairs to his office. Opens his E-Mail, checks and responds to them, escorts the fire dept. around during fire inspections, checks on the work order status on jobs to fix various things in his building, walks the halls/conducts many conversations, goes outside occasionally (I guess to see if the dam building is still there), heads off base for lunch and calls it a day in the early afternoon. Comes in around 8, give or take a half hour and usually leaves with us around 4 or so.

This is an example where many people are doing little to nothing for a high salary and they ride the gravy boat to retirement owning a nice house in Beavercreek, a bass boat, a few motorcycles, a newer model pick-up truck and the wife's Caddy. You can get an idea of how much these government people make just by looking at all the Beamers, Audi's, new pick-up trucks and Lexus and Acuras in abundance around these government buildings.

Government people need to stay where they are because if effort really mattered, they couldn't make it in private industry and the high rollers in private industry don't necessarily break a sweat on a daily basis either. It is incredible to see how much the taxpayer takes it on the chin paying for these pathetic people to do what little they do. A very poor return on investment for the taxpayer.

As to educators......step increases, rewards for achieving a certain level of education and tenure rewards must go. Merit based, like the majority of the working world should have been the method to reward performance all along. Giving in at the negotiation table all these years has done nothing but shafted the taxpayer paying their salaries. All the excuses used to substantiate poor performance should not have been tolerated by the public either. It has gone on so long that it is now SOP with the apathy from the public negating the backlash that should have happened decades ago.

I attended the meeting 10/24/2017 at the city building to meet the candidates for the upcoming election. The school board portion held opening statements from Mr. Hughly. Initially I was impressed with his platform which stated we need more parental involvement. It seemed he answered every question with this same platform and didn't have a Plan B. So what is the alternative if parents continue to shirk their responsibilities? He had none to offer.