Your vote today

Voting is a very personal thing. It reflects values held dear. Some people vote "their" party, some their "conscience", others their profession. Often times these things reflect parts of the same.

Today, is primary day in Ohio. We've covered a lot of the issues and candidates who will be vying for your vote.

Here at Join the Future we'd like you to consider supporting your local schools, their students and education staff. We have published a list of school levies and issues here. School's are facing a budget crisis caused not of their own largesse, but of draconian cuts made by politicians in Columbus who took a pass on making their own tough decisions, and instead passed the buck, to the tune of almost $3 billion over the next 2 years.

While many might look to the general election in November, there are also opportunities today to make a big difference in who those Columbus politicians will be next year.

We're experiencing the effects of bad budgeting and bad policy made in Columbus by out of touch, extreme politicians every day now. We can only change those policies by changing the people who represent us.

We can support candidates who chose to stand with the middle class, not against them. Who understand the importance of public education, not it's privatization.

We spent last week providing some details of candidates who have strong middle class values, who respect working people and who can replace office holders who voted for extreme legislation like SB5 and the budget.

Day 1: Union members running for the Ohio House
Day 2: Union members running for the Ohio House
Day 3: Union members running for the Ohio House
Day 4: Union members running for the Ohio House
Day 5: Union members running for the Ohio House
Union members spotlight - State Senate

So whether you live in HD21 where special education teacher Donna O'Connor is running, or HD70 where Republican cop Eric Spicer is running, understanding that the way to prevent legislation like SB5, or budgets like HB153 from happening again, is to support candidates who share our mainstream values, candidates who won't support legislation that is unfair, unsafe and hurts us all.

DISTRICT	NAME	UNION	PRIMARY	PARTY
HD 7	Matt Patten	LABORERS	N	D
HD 16	Todd Laveck	OFT	Y	D
HD 20	Marco Miller	IAFF (Ret.)	Y	D
HD 21	Donna O’Connor	OEA	Y	D
HD 24	Maureen Reedy	OEA	N	D
HD 37	Tom Schmida	OFT	N	D
HD 45	Teresa Fedor	OFT	N	D
HD 47	Jeff Bunck	OEA	N	D
HD 57	Matt Lark	OEA	Y	D
HD 58	Bobby Hagan	BLET	N	D
HD 61	Susan McGuinness	ONA	N	D
HD 68	Brad Schaff	USW	Y	D
HD 69	Judith Cross	OEA (Ret.)	Y	D
HD 70	Eric Spicer	FOP	N	R
HD 71	Brady Jones	UAW	N	D
HD 72	David Dilly	UMWA	N	D
HD 76	Mary O’Toole	OEA	Y	R
HD 81	John Vanover	USW	N	D
HD 87	Dennis Sterling	FOP	Y	R
HD 88	Bill Young	OEA	N	D
HD 95	Charles Daniels	OCSEA	Y	D
HD 95	Jim Drake	OEA	Y	D
HD 99	John Patterson	OEA	N	D
SD 6	Rick McKitty	UAW (Ret.)	N	D
SD 20	Teresa Scarmack	OEA	N	D
SD 24	Tom Patton	IATSE	Y	R
SD 26	Tanyce Addison	OEA	N	D

Education News for 01-23-2012

Statewide Education News

• Mobile technology brings challenges to schools (News-Sun)

Schools are opting for new technology like laptops and tablets over the traditional stationary computer labs. The new technology has many benefits in education but presents problems such as funding new purchases, managing the equipment and supervising student use. At the start of this school year, Springfield City School District purchased 720 iPads at a cost of $473,000, including warranties and protective cases for each device, said Stacy Parr, the district’s technology director. Read More…

• Law now lets public schools donate excess food (News-Herald)

U.S. Rep. Steven C. LaTourette is encouraging public schools throughout Northeast Ohio to donate excess unused food to local food banks and pantries. A recent change in the law gives public schools the same protections as restaurants and caterers that donate to food banks under the Emerson Good Samaritan Food Donation Act. The food donation measure, which became law in 1996, protects donors to food banks from all liability — criminal and civil — yet did not provide public schools that same protection, said LaTourette, R-Bainbridge Township. Read More…

• How much homework is too much? (Dispatch)

In the four years since Upper Arlington High School reduced homework loads, students have achieved more, in some respects. The rate of students who take at least one advanced course has doubled, to 84 percent. The past two years, scores on college entrance exams have been the highest ever at the high school. Principal Kip Greenhill sees a connection between the students’ success and the school’s target of no more than 21/2 hours of homework a night. Read More…

Local Issues

• Parents shop for school options (Beacon Journal)

North Hill parent Gina Lang shopped for schools for her three children Sunday at an informational fair at the Akron-Summit County Public Library that brought area school districts, charter schools and private schools under one roof. She and her husband, Tony, were looking for an alternative to Akron Public Schools for their three children, who attend or will attend Harris elementary school and eventually, Jennings Middle School. Read More…

• For some, school tax rates rise after home values fall (Newark Advocate)

NEWARK - Some Licking County taxpayers will pay more in taxes this year despite a decrease in home values. Because of overall decreases in values, tax rates for six school districts, including the Career and Technology Education Centers of Licking County, rose between .02 and .73 mills. Licking Heights residents will see their school taxes rise by 6.1 mills because of a combination of a replacement levy this past May and plummeting home values among the district's Franklin County residents. Read More…

• What has Liberty ‘Learn’ed? (Vindicator)

It's no secret that the Liberty Local School District has been in financial turmoil for the better part of a decade. Voters have rejected five levies from 2001 to 2010. Not even the board of education members knew just how bad the district’s finances were when the state began to probe its books in 2011. Last February, the state announced the financial records were such a mess that an audit on the 2010 budget was impossible. Read More…

• Bullying is a life and death issue, local educators say (Journal-News)

A Middletown teenager ingested household chemicals. A Ross senior posted a video on YouTube where she described cutting and burning her skin with cigarettes. A Talawanda student attempted to break his legs. The students gave authorities the same reason for their desperate acts — bullying. They were bullied by students at school to the point they thought they couldn’t escape it. Read More…

Editorial

• Set the limits (Dispatch)

School officials throughout the U.S. will be very glad if the U.S. Supreme Court opts to hear arguments on an issue that plagues most of them: What they can and should do when students harass teachers, administrators or each other online. Like any form of bullying, cyber-bullying disrupts schools and can cause emotional harm to its victims. But the vast reach of the Internet greatly magnifies the damage when, say, a student creates a fake MySpace profile characterizing the principal as a pervert, or another creates a website portraying a classmate as promiscuous and diseased. Read More…

• For Kasich, a State of the State road trip (Plain Dealer)

A State of the State speech is both a message -- and "a message." So it's notable that Republican Gov. John Kasich will give his 2012 address Feb. 7 not at the Statehouse, but at a high-performing public school in Steubenville -- a Democratic city hard by the Ohio River, and hard-hit by the economy. The constitution requires only that a governor "shall communicate at every session, by message, to the General Assembly, the condition of the state." Read More…

Here’s What’s So Bad About School Choice

"Choice" is a mantra thrown around by many in the corporate education reform movement, often to disguise true intentions of profiteering. Here's a smart article looking at just some of the problems with "choice". We've excerpted just a small piece, the whole should be read.

Problem 3: The Driver for Parents’ School Choices Is Not Always Educational Quality

There’s another fundamental problem with this approach as well. In our economic system, consumers demonstrate how much they value an item by how much they are able and willing to pay for it. A best-selling toothpaste demonstrates it’s the superior product by the very fact that more consumers decide to buy it rather than rival brands. Kaufmann believes the same dynamic should be at work for schools.

But society has a strong interest in well-educated young people prepared to assume the responsibilities of citizenship. This is the job of our schools. Hence we have far more of a stake in the choices parents would make for their students’ schools than we do in their choices of laundry soap or cat food.

Before we hand over responsibility to parents for determining what kinds of schools will educate our next generation of citizens, we ought to have confidence in the values that will inform their decisions.

This doesn’t seem to be much of a concern for Kaufmann. He writes that “parents concerned for their children’s welfare are highly motivated to choose wisely.” He implicitly assumes that the values that parents apply in selecting schools for their children are the same educational values that we embrace as a society. Accordingly, we can assume that thousands of individual parental choices will have a cumulative impact that reflects the values that we share as a community.

Further, since the end goal is academic excellence, we can also expect that the objective measures of educational achievement available to us, like standardized math and reading scores, will be of critical importance to our choosing-wisely parents.

We agree with the conclusion of the article.