As we see, the Vote Yes campaign is co-chaired by Vernon Brown (Who was the co-chair of the Envision Task Force with Nan Baker) and has Stephanie Gongopoulos as the Treasurer. While it seems Nan is not involved (probably because of the bonds) it seems that conflict hasn’t changed much. It is NO secret that the bonds MAY go through First National Bank which is owned by the Baker family. Well guess what? Stephanie is Nan’s sister-in-law with the maiden name BAKER. As I have said before, if the bonds DO NOT go through First National there will not be a conflict issue, but if they do, it seems now they have TWO conflicts. There is also the question if the School District does any business with Vernon’s employer SDN? It looks like they do. This is something that should also be disclosed.
While I support new schools and bonding for them, we have a ton of unknowns; What is the final payoff of the bonds? $300 million? How will we pay for staffing? How much will our taxes compound over the 30 year payoff period? How will we vote (precincts)? Who will tabulate election? Who will handle absentees? Where will the precincts be? What are the locations of the new schools? Why are we not redistricting first? It seems to me they are looking to get a pile of money and figure it out later. A better approach would be to do this with the general election in November. This would give us time to redistrict and pick locations. This would also give us a more realistic number (I think we should scale it back to $100 million and ask for more money if we need it later). If you can’t trust the process, you can’t approve these bonds.
You’re never going to know what the final payoff of the bonds are ahead of time because school districts often repay bonds early, reducing the amount of interest they pay. If you really want to have some idea, run a payment calculator on the bond amount with whatever the going rates are on municipal debt are for school districts.
I am also confused why so many of your “How is this election going to be tabulated?†Questions. Why does it matter if they use electronic log books or who’s counting the votes.
The facts are that our schools are full and we need more of them. If you truly are in favor of a bond issue, maybe you should talk about the necessity of more schools and how this project can work instead of picking apart every detail of this bond issue while feigning support.
It’s time to make a yarn board!
A recent trend is tax sponsored home based web education K-12 in lieu of public schools. Considering class size and inferior education, there can be a future of neighborhood home schooling with child care. Perhaps expanding schools bureaucracy is unnecessary. Is this a time to put the school board back in the bleachers?
MP- It matters because they no longer work. The company that created the books no longer services them. Another company tried to get them to work in the primary and failed, this is why our SOS said she will not work with them in the general. This is my concern. We are voting on one of the largest taxpayer expense in the history of our city, shouldn’t the vote be safe, secure and accurate? Damn right it should be.
Will there be a paper trail? Or, is that just too democratic now days?
#WithNoPaperWhoNeedsPutin?
Everyone agrees we need a fair and accurate election, but that does not relate to the merits or the lack thereof on this bond issue.
Today’s Argus Leader article on staffing costs confused me. Are we building to accommodate more students or are we building to reduce overcrowding? The article implies that staffing costs will be minimal because relatively few additional staff and additional classrooms will be needed. Hmm…see: https://www.argusleader.com/story/news/education/2018/07/25/whats-not-included-190-million-bond-staff-new-schools/827978002/
MW – it is because they don’t have a clue so they are spinning it. Their argument would make sense if we were 1) Redistricting FIRST 2) Adding on to existing schools (Which would save us millions). As someone pointed out to me, we are already at our school district boundaries, why are we building NEW when we could just add on to current schools? We could easily add on to Washington or RHS or both.
This is a bonding scam, pure and simple. It’s purpose has little to do with educating children and more to fleece the taxpayers.
It is an interesting twist how we are going to build as if the school district will continue to grow with the city of Sioux Falls. It’s not going to happen.
The city limits extend into six other school districts because of the short shortsightedness of previous school board decisions when the district was much smaller. I remember the redistricting efforts of local schools in the late 1960’s. Sioux Falls didn’t think the town growth would be what it is today. Why would Sioux Falls need to have low taxable farmland (this was the 1960’s) so why would we mix farm kids with city kids? Now we have six of districts inside the city limits and we continue to have private schools being built. Does anyone really know how many school systems there are now in the area?
The city limits are set with most growth extending far beyond the limits of the Sioux Falls School District. Where are these additional students we are building for going to live? Overlay city and school district maps and see what I’m referring to.
This vote and the building projects are a bonding scam and nothing more. They saw our former mayor is gone so bonding scams have to come from somewhere, so I guess its the school district this time.
I somewhat agree with Bruce. The school district has become the new local government empire builder. This is Main Street, not Wall Street. Scale it down some and maybe it’ll happen. School board is one level better than Parks Director. It’s not POTUS and cabinet.
a few thoughts : How many students from other districts are open enrolled in the Sioux Falls district? what would happen if we quit taking in these students? how can the numbers keep growing like this when the bulk of building in the city limits is actually in other school districts? as an aside, Stephanie Baker Gonagopolous was born in the early 70’s so probably not even in school when the bank was first chosen as trustee for district bond issues- but she was probably scheming then
There are currently approximately 1,200 students open-enrolled into the SFSD.
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There is not only one major issue in play here, but two:
A 300 million dollar bond issue
and
An entire community that faces re-drawing of ALL school boundaries in the near future.
Doug Morrison, one of the engineers of this bond issue, said at Task Force Meeting #2 that Memorial Middle School’s over-enrollment problems could be solved TODAY just by redrawing the school boundaries on the west side of SF.
Redrawing the boundaries on the west side would shift students from an over-crowded middle school (Memorial) to a middle school that is being under-utilized (George McGovern).
Also, the school district is asking taxpayers for 300m now, but what they are not emphasizing is their timeline which is to form another task force just five years from now to plan for the replacement of Whittier Middle School. Whittier only has 10 years of life left in it (Jeff Kreiter, Director, Operational Services).
While I am extremely skeptical of this bond issue (recent and not so recent history has shown the SFSD would rather tax and spend as a first option not a final resort) I will stick up for Vernon Brown. I do not think it is fair to suggest he may have ulterior motives other than he is a very passionate advocate of public education. In fact, I would suggest that his overriding reason for wanting to be involved with this process is that he is married to a school teacher and knows first hand the challenges and needs of our public schools. Though I may not agree with him on this issue, I do think that he truly has the best interests of our students and teachers at heart.
The stickler about ‘conflict of interest’ is that it is not determined by someone’s character, morality, ethics or personality, it’s what is on paper. Vernon’s company has business contracts with the school district. That’s not a dig on Vernon, that’s business. Just the ‘appearance’ of a conflict is enough for him to restrain himself. But in a city and state that ignores business integrity and conflicts, it is no surprise.
Well said “l3wis, well said!…. Oh, and I heard that Michael’s has a sale on yarn, too (I don’t shop at Hobby Lobby anymore…. Well, at least not since the ObamaCare lawsuit, that is…).