Wednesday, June 29, 2011

New Budget Will Create More Problems

The new Ohio budget will create more problems for school districts. Besides cutting funding for schools, the Republican/Kasich budget set up a complex method to evaluate teachers.

Dayton Daily News:

...The bill also requires Ohio’s roughly 120,000 K-12 teachers to receive annual performance evaluations to help determine who is promoted, retained and fired....

....The state Board of Education must come up with a framework by Dec. 31 that bases annual teacher and principal evaluations on at least two 30-minute observations and student academic growth. Teachers will be given written evaluations and opportunities for professional development.....

“If every single teacher has to be evaluated, we don’t have enough administrators in this district to carry that out in a fair and proper form,” he said. “Logistically, it’s going to be a problem.”

Great. Now principals will be less likely to be able to meet with parents, groups, and even students because they will spending a lot of time observing, writing up evaluations, setting up evaluation conferences with each teacher, and then researching the academic progress of every student and match them up with his/her teacher/teachers.  That should be time consuming!  

*** The Ohio Budget Watch has more details from the Kasich budget:

...the Ohio legislature and John Kasich are really doing a solid for all of their rich friends in this budget. I mean, teachers get screwed, firefighters get screwed, public employees get screwed, as do local governments and schools but the silver lining here is that rich people make out pretty well in this budget. It’s a shame we can’t all be rich.....

Invest Ohio - If you are like me you also probably have millions of dollars of tax liability each year right? Well my friend we are in luck thanks to John Kasich and his BFF Mark Kvamme,the brain trust behind this proposal. If they get their way Ohio will offer $100 million each year in tax credits to tax payers who invest in Ohio small businesses....

....Now, just ignore the fact right now that A)these provisions are not even in the same ballpark as to what Kasich described the program was going to be last week B) was stuck in the budget in the eleventh hour with out any hearings and C) we have seen exactly zero evidence on what the impact of this is going to be and if this even has a chance of creating a single job. Just ignore all that and put yourself in the shoes of a very wealth person. You are totally psyched for this because you were just handed an opportunity to not have to pay up to $1 million of income taxes for seven years.....


Kasich is definitely taking care of the rich.  The rest of us are just unimportant to Kasich and the GOP.

**** OMG!  The right wing Club for Growth is supporting Josh Mandel, right wing Republican, and recently elected Ohio Treasurer, according to the Hotlineoncall.  Mandel still hasn't officially declared his candidacy but he is raising funds.  Mandel has yet to state whether he supports SB 5.