Voice For Liberty in Wichita

At the August 25, 2008 meeting of the board of USD 259, the Wichita public school district, John Todd and I addressed the board members, asking that they exercise their veto power over the formation of a tax increment financing (TIF) district recently created by the City of Wichita. My remarks may be read in [...]

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Remarks to be delivered to the Wichita school board on August 25, 2008.
On August 5, 2008, the Wichita City Council greatly expanded an existing tax increment financing district. This board has 30 days from then to veto the city’s action. I want to explain why this board should do just that.
The arithmetic behind TIF districts [...]

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Wichita’s mysterious “Boondoggler” posted today that George Fahnestock, the businessman selected to lead the campaign for the proposed bond issue for USD 259, the Wichita public schools, doesn’t live in the Wichita school district. The post is Fahnestock’s Motivation? A map of his house, along with school district boundaries, may be viewed here.
Earlier this year, [...]

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In a Wichita Eagle article City leaders cut short trip to talk about TIF, reporter Deb Gruver writes: “Susan Arensman, a spokeswoman for the school district, said the project would not affect schools.”
The context is that the City of Wichita is considering the creation of a large tax increment financing (TIF) district in downtown Wichita. [...]

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Talking to news media during a break in the meeting of USD 259, the Wichita public school district, on Monday August 11, 2008, Connie Dietz referred to her surprise motion to increase the amount being asked for by $20 million, remarking “I knew what I wanted to do, and I guess I was trying to [...]

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I attended the meeting of the USD 259, the Wichita public school district, board on August 11, 2008. The proposed bond issue for 2008 was a big part of this meeting.
There were many speakers from the audience at this meeting. Almost all were employees of USD 259 or parents of students. Most said so, proudly [...]

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For tonight’s meeting of the board of USD 259, the Wichita public school district, a resolution has been prepared that calls for a vote on a proposed bond issue to be held on November 4, 2008. I don’t know if the board will vote to approve this measure or if they will even take a [...]

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The Reverend Kevass Harding, a member of the board of USD 259, the Wichita public school district, is also a real estate developer (New life for Ken-Mar Shopping Center: Harding plans to revitalize 13th Street mall, March 14, 2008 Wichita Business Journal).
The problem is that Harding plans to ask the taxpayers of the City [...]

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In his Sunday Wichita Eagle column, Mark McCormick complains that the Wichita school bond issue opponents are a) cynical, b) short-sighted, c) myopic, d) forces pulling us backwards, e) frightening voters, f) spending too much at Starbucks, g) only saying “no,” h) hiding their true agenda to replace public schools with vouchers, i) not honest [...]

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When the USD 259 (Wichita, Kansas) school board voted on February 11, 2008 to hold a special bond issue election on May 6, board member Jeff Davis was the only dissenting vote. His reason, as reported in the Wichita Eagle, was that his district wasn’t given equal consideration. His district wasn’t getting its fair share.
Somehow [...]

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In a recent article I wondered Who Runs the Wichita School Bond Issue Campaign? Reporting in today’s Wichita Eagle (Technical ed at center of bond changes) makes me even more concerned about this.
At Monday’s school board meeting, representatives of Citizens Alliance for Responsible Education (CARE) revealed their recommendations for the revision of a proposed [...]

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As reported in the Wichita Eagle in May, the co-leaders of Citizens Alliance for Responsible Education (CARE) knew very little of the details of a telephone survey their group conducted to discover Wichitans’ attitudes towards a school bond issue. That they knew so little gives the citizens of Wichita cause to question who is in [...]

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My friend Helen Cochran of Citizens for Better Education contributes this article, which appeared in the Wichita Eagle.
In this article, Helen analyzes the work of Citizens Alliance for Responsible Education, a group that supports the Wichita school bond issue. As Helen notes, attendance at the four educational meetings CARE held was low. In one meeting, [...]

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Wichita’s mysterious Boondoggler analyses a recent poll that covers attitudes towards a proposed Wichita public school bond issue in Bond Poll Results.

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On June 16, 2008, I asked officials of USD 259, the Wichita public school district, two simple questions. At least I thought they were simple.
One question had to do with some figures about violent acts in the Wichita schools. The number of violent acts seems high, but before I could understand the meaning of the [...]

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According to the Wichita Eagle article School board plans no tax increase for coming year, USD 259, the Wichita public school district, does not “plan to raise property taxes” to pay for school operations next year.
Now if you read that and that alone, you might want to congratulate Wichita school officials for respecting the taxpayer.
But [...]

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Yesterday was departed USD 259 (Wichita public school district) superintendent Winston Brooks’ last day on the job in Wichita. I don’t know how much time he’s spent in Albuquerque, but someone there already doesn’t care much for him.
The blog Diogenes’six contains quite a few posts about Brooks. Use the blog’s search feature.

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I attended a forum on June 30, 2008, for candidates for two district seats on the Kansas State Board of Education. The event was held at Allison Middle School in Wichita and moderated by Randy Brown.
Candidates attending were Walt Chappell, David Dennis, Dennis Hedke, Charles Wiggins, and Paul Casanova. Marty Marshall did not attend.
Perhaps [...]

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In the recent Wichita Business Journal article Passage of 2000 school bond issue highlights Brooks’ legacy in Wichita reporter Josh Heck made this statement: “Enrollment [in Wichita public schools] has increased steadily during the past 10 years and now totals more than 48,000 students.”
Readers, would you please look at the following chart of enrollment numbers [...]

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Taxation without information. I wish I could take credit for inventing this phrase that I recently heard someone use. It captures very well the key characteristic of USD 259, the Wichita public school district, and its campaign for the proposed 2008 bond issue.

As highlighted by Wichita Eagle columnist Mark McCormick in his column District’s public files ought not cost $1,000, the Wichita public school district doesn’t like to release information. Mr. McCormick accuses some bond issue opponents of using Kansas Open Records Act information requests simply to “make hay for another ‘No’ campaign straw man.” I’ll explain another day why he’s wrong with the straw man argument, but even if he was correct, the people still have the right to know some basic facts.

The district does release a lot of information, of course. Whether it is useful in making a decision about the proposed bond issue is up to each voter. Sometimes these facts have been expressed unclearly. This was the case when I and a number of journalists used an incorrect figure for the cost of the safe rooms. The district issued a clarification, so now we have the correct information -– maybe.

Other needed clarifications, however, are not easy to obtain. The number of classrooms at each school, the subject of one records request, is an example. It seems that people intuitively understand the number of classrooms. They reason like this: “For school A, the district may estimate an enrollment of B students. The goal for class size is C students per class. Currently school A has D number of classrooms. So let’s do the arithmetic and see if school A needs more classrooms.”

Is it as simple as this, or is the situation more complicated? Doesn’t the district go through a process similar to this when it figures how many teachers are needed at each school?

More importantly, since overcrowding is given as one of the most important reasons why the Wichita school district needs a bond issue, shouldn’t facts and figures like these be known by the district, readily available, and shouldn’t the public be able to see them?

Recently I attended an event hosted by Citizens Alliance for Responsible Education, a citizen group that supports the bond issue. By way of what I considered to be a slightly bizarre method, a handful of experts from USD 259 addressed citizen concerns and answered questions. If you attended the event and knew little or nothing about the bond issue, you would have learned something, at least USD 259’s take on the issue. For those familiar with the issues, there was no new information presented.

Afterwards, the friend I attended the event with was pressured by a representative of the school district’s architect. Now that we have given you the information, he said, will you support the bond issue? This was a slightly better offer than what Wichita school board member Betty Arnold made to me, which was, as reported in The Wichita Eagle “So if you had the correct information, then would you support the bond issue?” My response was “If I had correct information, then I could make a decision.”

Sometimes even simple tasks regarding information are either difficult to perform or simply overlooked. As of today, June 19, 2008, the website for Citizens Alliance for Responsible Education at vote4kids2008.org still states the bond issue special election will be held on May 6, 2008, when at CARE’s own request, the Wichita school board canceled that election on April 7, 2008.

The Wichita school district’s attitude towards the public is demonstrated by two events. One, as related in In Wichita, Don’t Take Photographs of the School Administration Building! which tells how a citizen, standing on a public sidewalk taking a photograph of the Wichita school district administration building, was ordered by a district security guard to stop.

The second, much more serious, is the district’s willingness to rewrite its own rules when it feels things aren’t going its way, as explained in Wichita School Board Poisons Democracy.

I have several basic requests for information pending at the Wichita school district. Simple things like where on the district’s website can I see test scores? Where can I learn the definition of a “violent act” so that we can properly understand statistics made available at the Kansas State Department of Education? I will report on the results. Until then, it is taxation without information.

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