Letters
Union demands should not be rubber-stamped
 

Thursday, October 25, 2007

 

Two points regarding the Worthington school board race:

1) Many of us sincerely hope that no candidate will accept endorsement, PAC contributions or paid advertisements from either employee unions. With teacher contract negotiations coming up in January 2008, this community needs a school board which will actually negotiate in the process, representing the community, not just rubber stamp the union demands, which has been the norm in the past. The recent health-care plan recommendation is typical of unsustainable union demands. Our community deserves a negotiated contract representative of our actual ability to support it.

2) In a September letter to the editor, school board candidate Geoffrey P. Scott decried the "continuous improvement" grade the Worthington Schools recently received from the State Department of Education. He seems to believe that this rating was only due to the style of state testing and system of labeling. This is a very sad comment. All school districts in the state were equally tested.

The fact that Worthington fell short of equally applied standards, whether you agree with them or not, should be addressed, not repudiated. School districts today have hugely diverse learning-style and multilingual pupil populations; a challenging situation to say the least. But, Worthington Schools, as do other districts, have to figure out how to serve these pupils.

Mr. Scott's standards of school excellence, "my son is excited to go to school...loves his teachers..." are not those which are tested and, frankly, are qualities most schools also have. What we need from a school board member is someone who is not satisfied with "status quo" as is Mr. Scott, but rather someone who will see to it that our schools can, and must, do better for all our students.

Steffanie Haueisen

Worthington