Voice For Liberty

Tag: Lynn Rogers

  • Wichita school board members should not be re-elected

    Next Tuesday, four members of the board of USD 259, the Wichita public school district, seek to be elected again to their current posts.

    These members — Lanora Nolan, Lynn Rogers, Connie Dietz and Betty Arnold — are part of a board and school district that is increasingly out-of-step with education reforms that are working in other parts of the country. Their policies and actions are harmful to both Wichita schoolchildren and Wichita taxpayers.

    At the time when most of the country is starting to realize that quality teachers, not the number of teachers, is what makes the biggest difference in student outcomes, the Wichita school district is going the wrong way. The bond issue, with its focus on reducing class size, will force the district to hire more teachers. This makes it more likely that schoolchildren in Wichita will be taught by poorly-performing teachers.

    Its contract with its teachers union forbids any type of merit pay that might induce the best teachers to stay in teaching. Instead, all teachers are paid the same. Only length of service and extra education credentials allow teachers to earn more. Now researchers have found that length of service and the credentials earned at university schools of education make very little difference in student outcomes.

    Across the country parents can take advantage of school choices programs such as charter schools, vouchers, and tax credits. These programs give parents — instead of school administrators and politicians — choice as to where to send their children to school. In some cases, they allow parents to decide how their own tax dollars should be spent. The Wichita school district, including its board and the incumbent candidates that stand for election next week, are firmly against these type of programs that have benefited many students and parents. They prefer a government monopoly.

    The Wichita school district and its board are miles behind other school districts and governmental agencies regarding transparency and openness. Its recent search for a new superintendent was conducted in such a secretive manner that even the Wichita Eagle’s Rhonda Holman — one of the district’s several apologists at that newspaper — was critical.

    The district and board’s attitude towards citizens is nothing less than hostile. In particular, board member, now board president, Lynn Rogers has told citizens that records requests are a burden to the district. When citizens ask for evidence of claims the district makes, Rogers advises them to use Google to look things up for themselves.

    The board gets even little things wrong. For example, the board’s agenda that’s posted on the USD 259 website holds appendixes, which are usually attached files that hold additional information such as a Powerpoint presentation. But these files are removed quickly after the meeting. Most governmental agencies leave them available for eternity.

    Three board members, in their joint campaign materials, state they are proud of 11 years of rising test scores. Across the country school districts and states have watered-down testing standards in response to political pressure to produce rising test scores. Is this the case in Wichita and Kansas? We don’t know. But as scores rise on tests administered by the state, they remain unchanged on the national tests that are immune from local political pressures.

    The fact that all of the candidates facing election challenges have advertised jointly is evidence of another severe problem on the Wichita board of education: Rarely is there controversy or evidence of independent thought by board members. Consider the bond issue from last year, which passed narrowly (51 percent to 49 percent) when voted on by the public. Board members were unanimous in their support of the bond issue. What are the odds of that? (Well, board member Jeff Davis initially dissented, but only because he thought his district didn’t get its fair share. His straying from the board’s groupthink mentality was short-lived, however, as at the next meeting he changed his vote.)

    Then there’s the bond issue from last year. One analysis found that 72% of the contributions, both in-kind and cash, came from contractors, architects, engineering firms and others who directly stand to benefit from the new construction. The board rewarded Schaefer Johnson Cox Frey Architecture for its efforts in passing the bond issue with a no-bid $3.7 million contract to manage the bond issue.

    As large as the bond issue is, to board members it’s not enough. Board members started with a list of projects that totaled some $550 million. These projects are on the back burner, and as soon as this board senses the time is right, it will propose another bond issue. Count on it.

    We should remember the board’s conduct during the election. Calling a special election to be held in May, the board delayed it when it appeared the political landscape was not in their favor — after their opponents had mobilized and spent resources. The board appeared to rely on a hapless citizen group during the summer months for recommendations. Despite the district’s denials, huge amounts of district resources, all provided by taxpayers, were used to promote the bond issue.

    This Wichita school district and its board is an institution firmly rooted in and preferring a big-government style of education monopoly. It ignores evidence of reforms that work, preferring to remain beholden to special interests such as the teachers union, education bureaucrats, and firms that benefit from school construction. None of its members deserve re-election.

  • Wichita school board of education campaign contributions

    Recent campaign finance reports filed by candidates for the board of USD 259, the Wichita public school district, show some contributions that may be of interest to Wichita voters.

    I’ve compiled a table of some of the contributions. This table is not comprehensive. It includes only the three incumbent candidates that have challengers: Lanora Nolan, Lynn Rogers, and Connie Dietz.

    Joe Johnson, head of Schaefer Johnson Cox Frey Architecture, the firm that the Wichita school district selected without any competitive bidding to manage the implementation of the bond issue and the largest contributor to the bond issue campaign from last year, says “thank you” to several candidates. But it’s rather tepid, to say the least, as he could have contributed $500. And what didn’t Lanora Nolan do to earn the gratitude of Johnson? She received just $149, with the other two incumbent candidates receiving $250 each.

    Unions contributed. United Teachers of Wichita, the Wichita teachers union, contributed the same amount to all three incumbents. That union will be negotiating its contract with the board sometime soon.

    Unions involved in construction trades — Plumbers and Pipefitters Union and Wichita-Hutchinson Labor Federation — contributed the maximum amount to some of the incumbent candidates. It’s not clear as to their motive: thank you for passing the big bond issue? Of the three incumbent candidates, it’s Lynn Rogers that seems to be most appreciated by the trade unions. Lanora Nolan received no contributions from these unions.

    Rogers also received $300 from Kansas Families for Education PAC, a group from Johnson County that advocates — incessantly, and without regard to facts — for more funding for public schools.

    Lanora Nolan and her husband made a large contribution to her campaign. It also received $500 contributions from companies her husband is associated with.
    Wichita school board campaign contributions 2009

  • Should Wichita Identify Superintendent Finalists?

    When USD 259, the Wichita public school district, draws criticism from the Wichita Eagle’s Rhonda Holman, you know they’ve really done something wrong.

    Her column of today (Identify finalists for superintendent) requests that the Wichita school district make public the names of the finalists in its search for superintendent. Her request is likely to remain unfulfilled: “And board president Lynn Rogers was less than reassuring Wednesday when asked whether the public would have an opportunity to learn the names of more candidates than just the winner.”

    What we’d really like to know if Martin Libhart, the present superintendent — interim, that is — applied for this job. Whether he did, and whether his application was considered seriously by this board, will tell us a lot about both parties.

  • Changing Rules Now Bad, Says Wichita School Board President Lynn Rogers

    “It amounts to changing the rules in the middle of the game,” said Wichita school board president Lynn Rogers. “And it’s really bad policy.”

    This is the Wichita Eagle reporting his remarks to the possibility that the State of Kansas might stop the aid to school districts that helps them pay for bond issues. Mr. Rogers may object because it means that USD 259, the Wichita public school district, may lose a great deal of money. It also means that the district may not be able to fulfill one of its campaign promises, that being that the state would pay for 25% of the cost of the bonds.

    It’s ironic that Rogers objects to “changing the rules in the middle of the game.” I wonder if he remembers that the Wichita school district originally scheduled the bond issue election for May 6, 2008.

    Then, perhaps sensing that the mood of the electorate was not in his favor, he voted — along with all other school board members — to delay the election to some future date. This was after one of the opposition groups had already spent a considerable sum on a mailing, and after both opposition groups had spent much time and effort. Evidently the time and money of opposition groups means nothing to Mr. Rogers. Unless, of course, it’s the time and effort spent earning income so that they can pay taxes to the Wichita school district.

    So now we’ve learned something about Mr. Rogers and other school district officials. When they control the rules, changing them for their own advantage is good. But when others control the rules, Rogers wants them to adhere to a standard that he himself is not willing to follow.

  • Raising Wichitans’ Taxes in a Recession is Not A Good Idea

    “Democrat Barack Obama says he would delay rescinding President Bush’s tax cuts on wealthy Americans if he becomes the next president and the economy is in a recession, suggesting such an increase would further hurt the economy.” (Associated Press, September 7, 2008)

    Contrary to assertions by Wichita school interim superintendent Martin Libhart and school board president Lynn Rogers, Wichita can’t tax and spend its way out of a recession that may or may not be forthcoming. Not even Barack Obama believes that, as shown in the news story quoted above.

    Still, bond issue supporters say that’s what happened after the last school bond issue. There’s even a Wichita State University study to prove it.

    (There’s no doubt that some individuals and firms did well after the last bond issue. No doubt Schaefer Johnson Cox Frey Architecture, one of the firms most prominently pushing for the current bond issue, fared very well.)

    But what they don’t tell you is that the WSU study doesn’t account for the payment of the bond issue. All it looks at is the spending. Spending, of course, drives economic activity. If government spends money, economic activity happens. But without mentioning the cost, the study is meaningless.

    In fact, it’s worse than meaningless. It’s dangerously misleading. It leads citizens to believe that government spending can save us from harm. If that’s true, why don’t we go for a bigger bond issue? Why stop at $370 million? Why not go for the full $550 million in needs that was identified?

  • Wichita School District’s Claims Must be Questioned

    At a Wichita school bond issue debate on October 14, 2008, I challenged USD 259, the Wichita school district, to give evidence of their claim that smaller class sizes lead to better student achievement. That’s because I’ve been waiting a week for both USD 259 and the “Yes for Kids” group to respond to my request for references to the research they presumably relied on when formulating these claims.

    The next day, while speaking to the Wichita Downtown Lions Club, Wichita school board president Lynn Rogers said “If you just put in the words ‘class size reduction’ to Google, you’ll get 609,000 entries. There’s plenty of research.”

    I think it says a lot about the credibility of the arguments advanced by the Wichita school district when the district’s communications office and the citizens group that supports the bond issue can’t quickly produce references to evidence that supports their claims. It seems likely that the school district has no such evidence. Otherwise, why wouldn’t they produce it when citizens ask for it? Why wouldn’t they provide links to it on their informational websites?

    Has no one asked the district for such evidence? Hasn’t a single news reporter bothered to fact check some of the district’s claims?

    Back to Mr. Rogers and the Google search. I wonder if he actually read any of the articles that appear in the results of this search.

    For example, the fourth article that appeared when I performed the Google search recommended by Mr. Rogers is from the Heartland Institute. It’s titled “Class-Size Reduction Brings Mixed Results” and starts with this passage:

    Two recent studies of student achievement for students enrolled in class-size reduction programs in Wisconsin and California offer mixed results and call into question the cost effectiveness of large-scale programs with mandatory class-size caps.

    The seventh article is from Education Week, and it’s titled “Class-Size Reductions Seen of Limited Help on Achievement Gap.”

    Some of the search results do support smaller class sizes. One result was from the National Education Association, the teachers union. That union, as you might expect, supports anything that makes teachers’ jobs easier, no matter how much it costs and without consideration to whether it does students any good.

    This is not the only evidence the school district has had difficulty producing. A request for evidence of how arts and athletics improve student achievement took from September 29 to October 8 to fulfill. Shouldn’t this be easy to produce, given that the district uses it as an argument for the need for the bond issue?

    Until the Wichita school district and its supporting campaign groups — or the Wichita Eagle Editorial Board, for that matter — can produce references to the evidence they rely on when making their claims, Wichitans should rightly be skeptical of their claims. Saying “it’s all about the kids” doesn’t cut it.

  • Wichita School District: Accountability is on Our Terms

    USD 259, the Wichita public school district, wants to be held accountable. They say so. It’s a theme of the proposed bond issue, as recently stated by celebrity spokesman George Fahnestock: “…the district’s accountability is strong…” (See CARE launches Yes For Kids campaign)

    But what happens when citizens seek information from USD 259 that will let them verify claims made by the district?

    One of the things I and others have been looking at is the number of classrooms in the district’s schools. We made a records request asking for this number, and we were told this information would cost us $860. (See Wichita School District Values Its Information Highly)

    I wondered if the district actually knows how many classrooms it has. Interim superintendent Martin Libhart told me at a May 12 school board meeting “We do know how many classrooms we have, I can assure you of that.” Follow-up correspondence with Mr. Libhart revealed that the count of classrooms is a slightly more complicated issue than it might appear at first. Still, no count is available. So Wichitans are left with this message from USD 259: We can’t tell you how many classrooms we have, but we’re sure we need many more.

    Even simple requests post a problem. Asking for the definition of a “violent act” in the context of statistics for USD 259 that I collected from the Kansas State Department of Education requires weeks of waiting and follow up messages. Finally, a request to be placed on the agenda of a board meeting produced the answer I was looking for.

    On top of this, citizens who request information like this from USD 259 are made to feel guilty. That’s right. Lynn Rogers, now Wichita school board president, says these records requests interfere with the board’s mission of educating children. (Wichita Public Schools: Open Records Requests Are a Burden)

    I recently made a request for records from USD 259. It was rejected. This week I revised the request and narrowed its scope. We’ll have to see how this request is handled.

    Recently, a top investigative journalist told me that with the declining resources of local newspapers, many government agencies routinely deny records requests or slow-walk them, as agencies know that newspapers don’t have the resources to vigorously pursue requests.

    USD 259 consumes huge resources. Its budget is larger than either the City of Wichita or Sedgwick County, and it grows rapidly. It now asks for Wichitans to support even more spending in the form of the proposed bond issue. But when asked for information that Wichitans can use, the district’s answer is clear: accountability is on our terms.

  • Wichita School Bond Presentation by Helen Cochran

    On September 15, 2008, Helen Cochran of Citizens for Better Education gave a talk before a Wichita civic group. Her talk was fabulous. Here are some highlights:

    Helen (like myself) has tried to get test scores from USD 259 (Wichita public school district), but it’s a difficult process. There’s always a delay or reason why figures aren’t available. But, as Helen noted in her talk, school board president Lynn Rogers and Wichita Eagle columnist Mark McCormick seem to have access to the data. Openness and transparency, as I noted in posts like Wichita Public Schools: Open Records Requests Are a Burden isn’t a competency at USD 259.

    Helen mentioned what USD 259 doesn’t: new facilities will incur increased maintenance costs. It’s really worse than that, as new facilities need to be heated, cooled, and lighted. New classrooms, built to support class size reduction, need new teachers and perhaps more staff and bureaucracy.

    Here’s something important in Helen’s talk:

    The defeat of this school bond could be a beneficial springboard to realizing that business as usual is not succeeding in preparing our kids for the future and we must look to the numerous failures and successes in other communities if we are truly committed to giving our children the necessary tools to compete in a global economy.

    Vouchers, school choice, charter schools, home schools are not dirty words. The Wichita Eagle editorial board recently dismissed a group of bond opponents as “you people just want vouchers” as if that was all the more reason not to take opponents seriously in their concerns. These alternatives strike fear into the hearts of educational bureaucrats and teacher unions. Well you know what? It is not about them. It is about the children.

    Why is the existing education establishment and the Wichita Eagle editorial board afraid of school choice in Kansas? Their standard response is that school choice programs drain money from public schools. But this fear is unfounded. Recently the The Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice released the study School Choice by the Numbers: The Fiscal Effect of School Choice Programs, 1990-2006. Their finding? “Every existing school choice program is at least fiscally neutral, and most produce a substantial savings.”

    It’s possible — perhaps likely — that members of the public education establishment like Wichita school board president Lynn Rogers and the other board members don’t know this. Perhaps Wichita Eagle columnists like Mark McCormick and Rhonda Holman dismiss school choice without knowing facts like this. If so, here’s a chance to become informed.

    Near the closing of her talk, Helen said this:

    This proposed bond, like many bonds across this country, is a referendum on an administrative bureaucracy that equates progress to shiny and new. And however well intended, we have a school board that follows, rather than leads. The mantra would appear to be go along to get along.

  • Mark McCormick’s Wichita School Bond Bias

    Writing from Scottsdale, Arizona

    Today’s Mark McCormick column in the Wichita Eagle (Opponents of school bond skip specifics) provides an example of this columnist’s bias, and how this bias leads to his rapidly losing credibility among Wichitans.

    Bias is okay for a columnist. Everyone is entitled to a point of view. After reading a few of McCormick’s columns you get used to his way of looking at the world. Then you can either read his column, filtering it as you do. Or, like many people tell me, they’ve simply stopped reading his column. Sometimes they stop the entire newspaper.

    Here’s one of the problems with this column: In allowing Wichita school board president Lynn Rogers a “big-league rebuttal,” McCormick wrote “The board members, who aren’t paid for this work, are responsible for answering the most pressing challenges.”

    This makes it sound like the bond issue has been planned and managed only by volunteers.

    This ignores, however, the huge staff at USD 259, many highly paid to advance the interests of the public school bureaucracy and monopoly, many now working on educational campaigns for the bond issue.

    This ignores the tremendous effort by Schaefer Johnson Cox Frey Architecture in promoting the bond issue. They are working for free, but this firm stands to earn millions in fees if the bond issue passes. As shown in the posts Wichita School Bond Issue Economic Fallacy and Wichita School Safe Rooms: At No Cost? this firm’s head, Joe Johnson, often says things that make me wonder in amazement.

    This ignores the efforts of many construction companies and contractors that have, at least according to their sponsorship of an event, lined up behind the bond issue, hoping to profit from the building of public works — whether they’re needed or not.

    The bond issue opponents are the true volunteers, if that makes any difference. As outsiders, we don’t have access to the type of information that Lynn Rogers and USD 259 insiders have. And, as I’ve illustrated, getting information from this district is problematic.