Did You Get Your August Electric Bill?

Hey Stand Up for Croydon Students crowd, instead of having a party to celebrate increasing property taxes on your neighbors and keeping children in failing schools, why not give that money to the school?   Let those funds received from the NEA and AFT go back to the school to pay higher electrical bills and not a party.  

What Were Croydon Voters Thinking?

An opportunity of a life time is gone.   Ann at the AG's office,   NH NEA,   NH AFT,  NEA, AFT, and all the other busy bodies that meddled in Croydon's business will make sure this never happens again.  What were you thinking Croydon voters?  If you like your failing and underperforming schools and high taxes you can keep your failing and underperforming schools and high taxes. 

The sad thing is many who will suffer the most under high food and gas prices could have really used that $1000-$3000 savings in their property taxes if the $800,000 budget remained.  

Will you follow people blindly you only hurt yourselves. 

Cathy Peschke 

The Five Lies that had to be Accepted to vote Yes for the 1.7 million Dollar Budget

 List of Lies 

1.  Little Red would be closed.  The school board repeatedly said Little Red would not be closed.  Instead the rumor continued to be spread by the We Stand for Croydon Students crowd.  It was fear mongering plain and simple.  Sheep won't ask questions, they will follow the crowd. 

2.  Deficit spending will cause taxes to go up next year.  Actually, no it would not have, but hey lies will get people to vote against their own interests.  It is like the tree voting for the axe.  

3. Prenda would not provide as good of an education as the current model.   Newport School is 84th out of 89th in New Hampshire and Little Red is Croydon Village School is ranked #252-267 out of 425 elementary schools.   Our schools are failing to educate our children.  10-14% of students are achieving proficiency in math at Newport, it is no wonder that the We Stand For Croydon Students Children crowd was so easily able to manipulate people into voting for the higher budget.     $10,000 per student is generous, $22,000 per student is not only greedy but illogical when students perform so poorly.  

4. The 1.7 million budget was only going to cost an extra $100-$300 dollars a year.  That was a lie that amount is on top of what taxpayers already pay annually towards the schools.  I suppose if someone was not the one writing the checks for their property taxes or taxes are taking out in escrow someone could easily fall for the lie.    It is surprising how easy it is to get the chickens to vote for Colonel Sanders. 

5. School choice would go away.  The Stand Up For Croydon Students kept shouting that but that was a lie.  $800,000 budget allowed for even more choices than before.    The crowd did not want to hear anything about that. With the help of outside organizations who wanted to protect a broken system they made sure people did not get that message. 

The NEA and AFT and their members had a big influence with time and money to fight for the $1.7 budget.  They were the biggest winners.  It certainly was not the taxpayers of Croydon or the children. The children are still locked into a failing school system with no plans for improvement other than keeping the status quo. 

Someone said they were proud of the vote and people coming out to support the 1.7 million budget.  I would not be proud of it if I was part of that group.  I would not be proud of pushing such high property taxes on my neighbors or pushing to keep such poorly performing schools to continue to operate in their current manor.  

The ones who actually cared about education were the ones who said it is time to try something new instead of keeping the same broken system. 

Cathy Peschke 

The World is in Need of more Ian Underwoods

Another outstanding article by the brilliant Ian Underwood.    The following article appears in full at Granite Grok. 

"At Wednesday’s school board meeting in Croydon, a former school board member and current math teacher — the latter detail turns out to be important — stood up to say that he is ‘happy to help pay to educate other people’s children.’

Now, this guy pays at most a few thousand dollars each year in school taxes.  At the same time, the town pays at least fifty thousand dollars each year towards schooling his three kids.

Put a few thousand in, take fifty thousand out.  In what sense is he helping to pay for anything?

To put that a different way, ask yourself:  If you put $3 in the poor box, then reach in and take out $50, in what sense are you helping the poor?

Of course, maybe he means he’ll be happy to keep paying even after he’s paid back what he’s taken from the town.  When would that start?

Well, $50 thousand a year times thirteen years (K-12) is $650 thousand.  If he’s paying $2500 a year in school taxes, he should be able to get around to actually helping in about 250 years.

As Richard Mitchell might say, the really interesting question here is whether this guy understands what he’s saying, or doesn’t understand it. In either case, you can at least be happy that he’s probably not teaching math to your children."

To read more of Ian's brilliant writing visit Granite Grok. 

Group Think is Dangerous

This cartoon reminded me of Saturday's meeting.  Group think is dangerous.     I wonder how many people actually analyzed the whole situation or did they just listen to the lie that Little Red would be shut down if the $800,000  budget remained. 

With retirement accounts taking big hits, gas prices being an all time high, and food prices being high; I can't help but wonder how some of these people will feel when their December tax bills come due.  

"One Hundred Authors Against Einstein was published in 1931. When asked to comment on this denunciation of relativity by so many scientists, Einstein replied that to defeat relativity one did not need the word of 100 scientists, just one fact."

Cathy Peschke 

If you like your Failing Schools

If you like your failing schools and high taxes you can keep your failing schools and high taxes. 

Sound familiar? 

Croydon Village School is ranked #252-267 out of 425 elementary schools.

Newport Middle and High School is ranked #84 out of 89. 

A parent asked me, "Why do you care if we want to send our children to a failing school?"  Someone should care and as a taxpayer I care.  On May 7th Croydon we had an opportunity to do better for our students.   377 people spoke, they want to keep the status quo of failing schools and high taxes.  264 people stayed home because they hoped for better opportunities for Croydon Students.  Apparently two people did not get the message to stay home. 

Cathy Peschke

Extortion?

 Ian Underwood has another fabulous article on Granite Grok.  

Your House is My ATM

An interesting thing happened in Croydon on Saturday. At a special school district meeting, 377 people decided that the voters who attended the annual meeting in March hadn’t offered enough charity ($800,000) to parents of school-aged children, so they gathered to extort more (an extra $900,000) through the threat of force (give us the money, or we’ll take your house).

One parent, who had already been offered $27,000 for tuition for his children at nearby public or private schools, insisted that he needed an additional $27,000. After the end of the meeting, he said that he had ‘never been prouder’ of his town.

He didn’t seem very concerned about the people from whom the money would be taken, or that over the course of their schooling, his children would cost the town more than $700,000.

Taking the money by force wasn’t unusual. It’s just the same kind of Marxism that happens in every district, every year.

As usual, the object lesson for the children of the district was that what you can’t do as an individual, with a gun, you can do as part of a gang, with a ballot. The first is robbery, which is bad. The second is democracy, which is good.

How are you supposed to raise moral children in a society that operates this way?

Anyway, what made Saturday unusual is the vote, which was 377 to 2, because the 40% of registered voters who believed that their money was their money boycotted the special meeting.

You can read the rest of the article by clicking here.

Cathy Peschke 

"Intelligence appears to be the thing that enables a man to get along without education. Education enables a man to get along without the use of his intelligence." - Albert Edward Wiggin