Sound Politics: Seattle's Loony-toons School Board

February 19, 2005

Seattle's Loony-toons School Board

The Seattle School District, mired in an ongoing financial meltdown, revealed more bad news this week.

Seattle Public Schools managers overspent their $754 million school-rebuilding program because they weren't told that construction-levy money was coming up $6.5 million short, school-district officials said this week.
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The latest problem occurred in the Building Excellence program, in which two taxpayer-approved levies are paying for rebuilding and renovating 36 schools

Maybe it's time to start a "Financial Excellence" program.

Given that the "Budget shortfall forces tough choices at Seattle Public Schools", which tough choices is the school board making?

The board has chosen to prematurely reopen bidding on the school bus contract in order to hand a political pay-off to more expensive union bus drivers.

Posted by Stefan Sharkansky at February 19, 2005 10:46 AM | Email This

Comments

1. But first they need a pay raise.
Second, close more schools.
who are these morons anyway, last name Logan or Sims? Looks like the city of seattle should step in, or better YET, how about a thing called performance audit.

what a novel idea.

Posted by: chardonnay on February 19, 2005 11:35 AM

2. I'm pretty sure the continuous "budget shortfalls" are manufactured over and over again in an attempt to convince taxpayers that a new levy or some other tax is needed.

Posted by: DeadManVoting (aka Iguana) on February 19, 2005 11:40 AM

3. Public education is a failed experiment, too bad the populous is too indoctrinated by the beast that they won't vote for competition. Ultimately we need to let the people decide where their kids and tax money should go, and not let government (mis)education continue swallowing money and spitting out increasingly large numbers of dumb kids.

Posted by: Adriel on February 19, 2005 11:56 AM

4. The City of Seattle, Seattle Public Schools, Sound Transit, Monorail and all the elected officials (local, state, federal) are all examples of failed/failing liberal government/agencies.

They have no clue about anything!!!!!!!!!!!

They deserve all the results of their continued incompetence.

Posted by: Norm on February 19, 2005 12:06 PM

5. Yup! Looks like another Seattle politico is qualifed to be governor, ala Gary Locke.

That sorta potential needs to be recognized and rewarded.

Posted by: scott158 on February 19, 2005 12:16 PM

6. " hand a political pay-off to more expensive union bus drivers."

Hey let's trust our children's lives to on union minimum wage burger flippers wal-mart style instead.

That would be cheaper. Sure it would not be as safe but it would be cheaper.

Posted by: Security Mom on February 19, 2005 01:22 PM

7. Security Mom - I wager that even non-union.....

....bus drivers know how to drive over a bridge better than Teddy Kennedy.

Posted by: ewaggin on February 19, 2005 01:36 PM

8. Oops, that was off-topic, Ted is chauffeured everywhere now, he doesn't drive anymore.

Posted by: ewaggin on February 19, 2005 01:39 PM

9. Security Mom.......I'd prefer WALMART workers to a Democrat union hack any day.

Posted by: JCH on February 19, 2005 02:18 PM

10. Quit trying to fix the building (public education) it is condemned just scrap it and try something new. Contract out to companies to educate our kids if needs be. It's absolutely necessary that we teach children correctly, otherwise we will be screwed when they are in charge.
When you were in highschool and had your first car, you always tried to throw money into it to try to make it run better. Later you came the realization that it was a lost cause and the cost benefit ratio was upside down, so when will everyone learn on this issue?

Posted by: Adriel on February 19, 2005 02:20 PM

11. And I repeat from my post earlier this week . . . I'll let some of you super-smart younger folks take this and run with it.

Jog my memory . . . isn't Joel Horn at the helm of this project? Look at his history of high salaries, failed projects and wife in MSM.

At one Eastside company, he misled venture capital investors about the prospects of the company by creating company performance graphs that his gang called the "hockey stick" - a slight dip followed by a huge jump in profits.

After that gig, he was overheard boasting that The Commons would never pass, but he "was going to make a killing while it was tied up in litigation for ten years". I wonder if people still remember him crying on the night of the election when it finally got buried.

Then he was campaign manager for Paul Schell. Enough said about that success.

Then he went to the monorail project. Just like the shyster in the episode of the Simpson's where the town was convinced that it somehow needed a monorail.

Posted by: lksimstrailgrammy on February 19, 2005 06:21 PM

12. Oops . . . meant to post that on the monorail story. Sorry.

Posted by: lksimstrailgrammy on February 19, 2005 07:05 PM

13. Security mom: Unions don't exist to make better busdrivers. You don't have to be union to drive a bus well. That's just leftwing propaganda you've been fed.

The dirty little secret of the busdrivers union (if there's such an animal) is that they exist to make sure that good busdrivers who would do the same job even better and at a somewhat lower salary will NOT get to do so. Realize that.

Posted by: Michele S on February 20, 2005 01:37 AM