SAN MATEO UNION HIGH SCHOOL DISTRICT BOARD OF TRUSTEES PUTS $186 MILLION BOND MEASURE ON NOVEMBER 2010 ELECTION BALLOT TO PAY FOR FISCAL MISMANAGMENT AND MORE EMBARRASINGLY BAD EDUCATIONS FOR MOST SMUHSD STUDENTS
Wednesday, August 4, 2010 at 2:29 PM by Bill Baker, J.D.
Editor and Publisher, The San Bruno Beacon
This $186 million SMUHSD bond measure follows the $137.5 million SMUHSD Measure D bond measure that was approved in 2000. This $186 million SMUHSD bond Measure follows the $298 SMUHSD Measure M bond measure that was approved in 2006.
Property taxes for those unfortunate enough to live within the taxing jurisdiction of the failing SMUHSD will be increased to pay for this suffocating amount of bond debt. This bond tax will also result in increased rents when landlords pass on the cost of the higher taxes resulting from this outrageous amount of bond debt to their renters.
Our economy is now in the midst of a depression. Most responsible people are trying to reduce the amount of debt they owe. However, the destructive and dangerously deluded SMUHSD Board of Trustees overseeing the unioned up SMUHSD are burying taxpayers in more debt to pay for their ongoing fiscal mismanagement of the SMUHSD and the unsupportable salaries, benefits and retirement plans of the overpaid, bloated school staffs and administrators that suck down approximately 80% of school budgets.
The SMUHSD is allegedly in the business of educating students. Yet, even with the hundreds of millions of dollars being drained from taxpayers by the SMUHSD, the educations received by most students in the SMUHSD could be construed as being little more than preparations for failure in a competitive world where jobs are scarce. As I see it, for all but the most highly motivated and successful students at the very top of their class, a SMUHSD education has little or no practical value.
The SMUHSD proves that public education in its present form is a failed experiment that does not produce acceptable results. The failure of U.S. public elementary and high schools to turn out sufficient numbers of functional, moderately educated adults is part of the reason why the United States economy has been reduced to rubble and we must import talented engineers, scientists, doctors and other professionals from other countries with better educational system.
It is beyond ridiculous to continue pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into the SMUHSD. In my opinion, the SMUHSD is little more than a job works program for overpaid SMUHSD employees and administrators who do a poor job educating most of the students who attend the SMUHSD. As I see it, the SMUHSD has also become an extension of the public welfare system paying for SMUHSD District retirees who continue to make increasing demands upon the SMUHSD for post retirement support. Do these people know what the words "get lost" mean?
It is time for taxpayers living in the SMUHSD to stop approving these outrageous SMUHSD bond measures. It is also time for California's voters to start creating elementary and high school education reform that will scale down and eventually eliminate California's overpriced, failing public education system and hand parents vouchers so they can give their children the chance they deserve to receive quality educations at private schools where the students and their educations come first.
As I see it, in private education systems teachers and administrators put their students first. In public education, it appears that teachers and administrators put their paychecks, benefit and retirement plans first.
Do public school teachers and administrators spend more time complaining, organizing demonstrations, playing politics and working on new schemes to gouge taxpayers for higher wages and benefits then teaching? Would this help explain why so many of their students drop out before graduating from high school and can barely read, write or do basic math? Is the saddest part of this catastrophe that these public education "professionals" don't seem to really care because for most of them the job is all about the paycheck and not their students who ultimately pay the painful price life exacts from poorly educated people?
