According to sources, the Sioux Falls School District appears to be using fraudulent figures in their school start date surveys.
How’s this?
Apparently the school district’s published polling is using some interesting voting procedures. Since the school district does not have a way to win in at the polling booth, they had to create a “poll†of the district to create a result. The Save of Schools (SOS) group fought to set a reasonable school start date and won an election in 2015. Time has flown by and it is time to set future school calendars. Reports are, the school district is not even talking to SOS (or barely). The district is ignoring SOS and pushing the recent polling in the press to make it look like the 2015 vote was a mistake. These appear to be the rules:
- If a household has No students, no vote or invitation to vote
- Every household with a student gets a vote
- Every school teacher gets a vote
- Every middle school student gets a vote, grades 6 through 8
- Every high school student gets a vote, grades 9 through 12
Think about this formula:
- The polling started out not letting households with no students zero (0) votes
- If the household has only grade school students, they get one (1) vote in the decision.
- If the household has a school teacher they get two (2) votes
- If the household has two (2) teachers they get three(3) votes
- If the household has one (1) to four (4) students in high school add additional voters to the household total
- If the household has any students in middle school we can let them add up to three (3) more votes to the total household votes
This is how it breaks down.
- You have no kids, you’re screwed, just pay your taxes and shut up
- You have kids in grade school, you only get one vote, suffer as they get older
- All other households can sway public opinion by stacking the votes to screw everyone else
If our math is even at the 4th grade level, we see a chance for some Sioux Falls households easily having ten (10+) votes versus the rest of us not having any or one. This is not a level playing field for all citizens of Sioux Falls. This is the Sioux Falls Public School system creating a fake groundswell for going back to the way it was before.
If this wasn’t a stacked poll to create a result favorable to the schools position, we would be calling it what it is; a fraud.
I have argued all along, the school district should just put the calendar start date on the ballot this coming summer with the school board candidate. Put down three dates; 3 weeks before labor day, after labor day, and somewhere in between. Seems simpler than conducting wasteful polls, surveys and committees. Just let the voters decide again, you know, the people who ACTUALLY fund the school district.