More Correspondence

This email was sent to all Board Members concerning our budget situation.
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Dear School Board members:

I sat through a draft budget presentation last spring, and saw the board almost paralyzed with shock.  This Monday, I expect nothing in Superintendent Moody’s draft budget to be unjustified and all of it to be cost effective, however, you probably realize that you can
expect to be in even more shock after the meeting.  This school funding crisis is almost entirely due to the tax cuts enacted by our
legislature over the last few years, according to many economic reports in the news.

As you consider the budget, I hope you will also consider hiring a person to mobilize the public to demand more public funding from the
state legislature, even if it means more taxes.  The five-year strategic plan includes financial goals, but they are not comprehensive enough, and someone needs to be spending a great deal of time on them for anything to happen.  The good things about our district need to be publicized and the costs of funding (and non-funding) need to be known to the public.  The job is not going to get done unless someone is focused entirely on it; the superintendent cannot do it all herself, her staff have other responsibilities, the board members have regular full-time jobs, and the grassroots email list is not enough.  We know the SC State legislature is going to have to readdress school funding, and we need professional help publicizing what our district needs and organizing people to go see their legislators in action, if need be.  I know it sounds absurd to call for more hiring now, but we have never needed such a position more!

As we have seen all over the news, Caroline Kennedy did this for the New York public schools and raised millions of dollars.  The Rock
Hill police chief recently had an article in the newspaper calling for more early learning funding.  On the SC Dept. of Education web
site at  http://www.ed.sc.gov/news/more.cfm?articleID=1109  you can read an entire article, bragging about SC schools.  Our local school
system is doing very well despite rising numbers of students on reduced and free lunch programs and constant besiegement by people
who want to loot the already empty public education coffers for their own purposes; why can’t we have someone telling us things like this
about the Rock Hill Schools?

Hiring someone to handle publicity and fundraising for the Rock Hill schools would easily pay for itself and is a justifiable expense.

Thank you for all your work for the schools.

Sincerely,