Thursday, May 16, 2013

Big Meetin' Tonite - Save Our Librarians! - Updated

If you can't make the meeting, at least call your School Board Reps

Important notice concerning the ongoing Ogden School District media specialist/librarian "massacre", which we received just a couple of minutes ago via the Weber County Democrats:
Save our Librarians! Come to the open board meeting of the Ogden City School Board tonight! Details below...

The school board meeting will be held at the district offices on Monroe tonight (Thursday 5/16/13) at 6 p.m. Everyone is invited to attend and wear our stickers that say "The library is a classroom."

Please call your School Board Representative and share with them your concerns. They are the ones who can change the outcome of this by rejecting the proposed budget. Steve Marker is the only one so far who has committed to doing that.

Here are their phone numbers:
Precinct 1 - Don Belnap - 801-392-7002
Precinct 2 - Steve Marker - 801-510-1946 (has already agreed to vote no)
Precinct 3 - Jennifer Zundel - 801-782-1918
Precinct 4 - Jeffrey Heiner - 801-621-8426
Precinct 5 - Shane Story - 801-621-0018
Precinct 6 - Jeff Harris - 801-394-2161
Precinct 7 - Joyce Wilson - 801-394-3267
Show up in force, folks; but please... remember to mind your "manners."


We don't wanna see any of tonight's meeting attendees have to be forced to make an "emergency" call to our old buddy "Eddie" after all... if you know what we mean, and we think you do...


Comments anyone?

Feelin' the Heat
Update 5/17/13 8:00 a.m.:   Yep.  Just like clockwork, the Standard's Nancy Van Valkenburg is front and center this morning with a post meeting story, reporting about how a standing-room only crowd hammered our OSD Board and District Superintendent over the  Ogden School District Media Specialist/librarian "Massacre" the Adult Education Program "Friday Surprise," and the "OSD Reading Coach kill-off". Adding fuel to the fire, Ms. Van Valkenburg further reports that, surprize of surprizes, there were even a "few" steely-eyed Ogden City lumpencitizens calling for Superintendent Smith's head... on a plate:
Imagine that.

As an added bonus the Standard provides this butt-kickin' video "special," "capturing the moment in time" for posterity:

Standard.net Video Player

Gotta hand it to the Standard. When they're good, they're very good pretty danged excellent!

2 comments:

Anyone said...

How was the meeting?

rudizink said...

I say that Caril earns an "A" for this! What say you?Read to the school board meeting tonight.


"My name is Caril Jennings. I live in the Ogden School District. I have
been a property tax payer in Ogden since 1988. My grandchildren also
live in the Ogden School District

I have concerns about the
“business model” being applied to our school system. I do not doubt the
sincerity of the board and the hard work you do but I do think you may
be missing the point.

1. Any
REAL business model would not have given away working capital - in this
case, school district income through 2027 by way of tax increment
financing of The Junction in 2009 and additional funds to the River
Project in 2011. There are many sitting members on the board tonight who
were on the board then.

Blaming Obamacare (then retracting that) and then blaming sequestration is avoiding the facts.


In November 2011, the RDA taxing entity committee which includes one or
more representatives from the Ogden School District voted unanimously
for the most recent extention.

2. Any REAL business model would
have a much better “marketing campaign” when making changes. When our
city is trying to attract business, it doesn’t look good to hear about
how our school district operates:

A “take it or leave it” to teachers who should be partners, non minions, in the education process.

Enlightened business models do NOT use this approach with key members
of their organization and yet this was the very first action that
reached the news when the “business model” began to be applied.

Touting improved reading scores and then eliminating the those who helped make those improvements.
What business discards key players?


Weakening school libraries, when “Libraries” are fundamental to our
concept of learning. Any educated person who cannot recognize the
implications needs to go back to school.
Especially troubling is
librarians are being eliminated because they have low student contact
hours. However, I have heard that administrators have received a
increase in their salaries. This makes me wonder about how many student
contact hours these administrators have.

3. A smart business model may indicate this would be a good time to combine Ogden City and Weber School Districts.


4. A business model can be concerned about the product being
manufactured. In this case, students who can pass a test they are taught
to take.

An education model is concerned about what kind of
citizens we are raising: people who can think creatively about the many
issues we are facing in the future, with a love of learning - which
naturally includes reading - as well as computational skills be be able
to analyze when numbers are used to manipulate opinion. A document from
WesEd,with a vested interest in promoting their own programs, can not be
considered the only source of information about our school district.

Once size does not fit all. AND, our students are people, not statistics, not products; but citizens who are our future."

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