Now with an overwhelming vote in Franklin that has put financially responsible Franklin Public School’s  Board of Education members in our corner, we have reason to celebrate. In a two phase move, first to remove, unrestrained spenders like Judith Bialk and David Works in the primary. We as taxpayers went further to reject Union supported candidates Don Petre and John Thompson, who planned a course of unchecked facility spending. Both stated they equated high cost facilities spending with educational outcome.  

On April 25^th at the regular meeting of the Board of Education, both Janet Evans and Aimee Schlueter, the peoples candidates, will be sworn in as board members and a reorganization of the board should occur.  

Next comes the next tough part, that is, the election of Board officers. As many of you know, Deb Larson has pretended to lead the board as President and Jeff (what the heck is financial responsibility?) Traylor has been her second in command as VP of the board.  

With a shift in paradigm (you know the one where Superintendent Steve Patz makes the rules and the board just nods their heads) to one where Dr. Steve Patz needs to justify his requests before the Board of Education who then discuss, approve or deny his requests.  

I believe there will be fewer occurrences of  hidden discussions under the pretense of closed door rules where board members are not allowed to discuss the outcome of their deliberation of issues.  

The direction of the board may also be to slow down the move toward a building referendum and actually get  real community discussion that is not one sided as the so called World Café meetings produced. Listening sessions or surveys have been more fruitful in getting community input but it is not the “directed  input” that Superintendent Patz and Company wanted. Input where they could control the direction, along with their Architects for the necessary outcome of massive building of facilities.  

I recall the community inputs sessions that were held for K4. Even though the majority of the input was not to go ahead with K4, Steve Patz tried to go forward with it until state funding of K4 came to a halt due to the economy. 

Our board, administration and parents must come to the realization that 75% of our population do not have children in the Franklin Public Schools. Many of which are just making ends meet, whether they are elderly on fixed incomes, or have faced cuts in their jobs and pay.  

I have read on the FranklinNOW the few that are making the comment that if you don’t like the fact that it could cost you $200 to $800 more per year in taxes then you should just get out of Franklin. Others say that people who come here will be influenced by our schools. I say, imagine that we have an influx of people moving to Franklin that have children that will go to our schools. When we do build new facilities, you may see those building costs increase into the thousands rather than the hundreds of dollars. People who move to Franklin with children should be checking, how are our students performing, not how incredible do the schools look.

Statistics show that performance, of the education of our children is not tied to facilities; it is tied to our educators, how they inspire and teach our children. We do have a high percentage of graduates going on to higher education and being successful. Just check out the FranklinNOW sometime and look at all the kids from Franklin on the Deans list of various universities. 

Please consider attending the Board of Education meeting on April 25 at the Franklin Public Schools Community Center, 8255 Forest Hill Avenue at 6pm and watch the change start in the City of Franklin Public Schools.

NEXT PHASE: Replace the following Board Members….

Deb Larson - Replace April 2013

Jeff Traylor - Replace April 2013

Melissa Klein - Replace April 2013