Drug Abuse Is The Top

Educational Concern

To the Editor:

Missing in Dr Pitkoff’s call to support the Newtown school budget is a real discussion of education and a willingness to listen to parents and taxpayers that pay his salary.

The flap over using taxpayer’s funds and or facilities to lobby for bigger and more expensive schools is illegal under the Hatch Act (a federal regulation). Because school officials doing the lobbying are government employees paid by “taxpayer dollars” and they are not supposed to use the taxpayers provided facilities to lobby for more confiscation of our hard-earned income. But schools routinely ignore this law.

Last year I received a call from Dr Pitkoff. He identified himself and said he “wanted to ‘instruct me’ to go out and vote for the school budget.” When I told him that I did not agree with his premise and would like to talk with him about quality education, he hung up on me. This is how he treats parents!

I think parents should view the ever-growing drug problem in our schools, which Dr Pitkoff skirts, as our number one concern. This is more important to parents than claims of underspending or overcrowding. Dr Pitkoff and school officials refuse to address this issue, because they worry about possible bad press if drug-sniffing dogs find drugs. To this I say, consider the bad press when some student dies of an overdose and the parents sue him and the school board? This actually happened in Redding. Do we want that to happen here, too?

All educators want to do is throw more money at every new educational fad that comes along. Over the last 43 years we have increased spending per pupil some 600 percent, plus adopted most educational fads devised by educrats (modern math, integrated math, whole language, outcome based education, revisionist history, teaching Hindu, etc). Educators also use false praise that is not earned, resulting in kids that need praise for the most routinely expected things, resulting in most of today’s youth never doing more than expected. Thus they fail to understand the effort required to achieve great results. Group collaboration projects are also counterproductive, when one reliable person does all the work, allowing everyone in the group to enjoy a good grade they did not earn. That plus drugs was my children’s biggest complaint.

Last year, the powers that be decided to add three school buses, even though the people doing the work said they were not necessary. Although these additional buses were removed after the budget was voted down, they are back in the budget this year.

Note: our school budgets are always three times the inflation rate. We’re talking about seven percent on $90 million, taxpayers understand this is a huge increase, school officials are oblivious. This arrogance is not acceptable.

Is Dr Pitkoff a leader that inspires better academic results or is he just out front pushing for more money? By the way, how large a raise did Dr Pitkoff say he’s getting on his $150,000 plus salary? Is it $7,000 or more? That fact was missing in his flier.

My challenge to Dr Pitkoff: freeze your salary until you solve the school drug problem.

Sincerely,

Daniel A. Kormanik

85 Great Ring Road, Sandy Hook                                  April 10, 2007