No defense for levy

In defending the West Bonner County School District’s $3 million levy, the superintendent, Paul Anselmo, recently produced a 23-frame PowerPoint presentation detailing why the school district needed the levy to survive.

I reviewed this document and noticed that the first seven frames were chock full of “pat us on the back” information showing how much fun the district is. All four schools provided information on events like: turkey bingo night, family engagement activities, positive behavior intervention, red ribbon week, cross country skiing, enrichment activities, children’s theater, mural painting, bullying awareness training, school culture and behavior training. Noticeably absent throughout the entire presentation was any mention of scholastic achievements and test scores.

Not surprising, should you attend any school board meeting you will notice the same agenda; namely talk only about how good we are as people, and very little, if any, about how our children are doing scholastically. Perhaps this is because our professional teaching staff is forced to spend more time on social behavior than teaching the three “R’s”? Apparently, not being able to understand what “no” means, the school board will be back on May 21, for another cost of $10,000 to the county.

Vote no on the May 21 levy and let’s get our teachers back into the classroom.

Glenn Rohrer

Priest River, Idaho