The Express-Times reports on the parents who attended the NASD School Board meeting last evening regarding the Intermediate School (read the article here).
The complaints identified in the article reflect those posted yesterday. Of interest is the fact that the article does not indicate that Principal Yanek responded or was even in attendance. Dr. Lesky is the one quoted.
Lesky asked parents to give him two months to sort through the host of issues. He said he plans to unveil changes in January.
The responses noted in the article were, if you want shorter routes we could add another bus at $325,000 per year, we could shorten the day to 3:00 p.m., playground equipment is on order, and the parade was replaced with another activity.
In reality though, one bus won’t fix the problem. Adding a bus to shorten bus rides in Lower Nazareth will not impact those riding from Bushkill. I also don’t believe it is possible to end the day at 3:00 p.m., unless we put IS students on MS/HS buses. Bell times now are 2:05, 2:55, 3:30 and to move to 3:00 would mean the buses currently transporting students are being used for secondary students – there aren’t that many more buses or drivers available to accomplish this.
These complaints are not new. The issues raised at this meeting were raised years ago when the district was discussing the new building. The choice that was never even considered was a new elementary school and bringing 6th grade back down to free up space at the MS. This would have relieved cost burden, lower operation, shorter bus times, etc., but I digress.
One other point that arose in discussing our new elementary structure is the principal position. We have three building principals who lost two grades and now manage k-3. This has resulted in significantly fewer activities and evening obligations, with the same pay. The new IS principal has 4-6, but was provided with a vice principal, again less responsibility, with the same pay. This has nothing to do with performance, but purely takes into consideration responsibility and pay. In the public sector, if a job position had its responsibilities reduced, I’m pretty sure the pay would have gone with it.
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5 comments:
$325,000 per year. Is he serious? Did Lesky just admit how financially inept he really is?
Take a look at the cost to buy a school bus, and it is not $300K. Why do we continue to throw money at contracting services when we could spend it on buying our own fleet. Yes we would have added maintenance expenses, but we would also gain the tax benefits of owning an asset as opposed to renting it.
Similar to owning your home versus renting one.
Try to deal with Jennings, they are a piece of work. Bad drivers are just moved around to other routes, buses aren't clean (see NOCs other post) and routes are planned that best benefit Jennings from a cost perspective, not getting the students to school at a decent time.
Clearly our district is run by a group of financially deficient morons.
None of this is a surprise, the MS was shoved down our throat and we knew there would be these problems and more. No uprising now, can't be reasonably fixed now unless we have a complete change of guard by booting Lesky out of the school district. But that will never happen.
Bernie,I so wish you would blog on local school politics we could use your humor and attack dog style to put Leasy in his place.
I will just bend over and go on with my life and hope they somehow fix the ridiculously late start for the IS, it will affect my job.
Here is the root of the problem. The shuffling of students was needed because the district built a school IT DID NOT NEED.
The other schools were not at or over capacity. The economic bopom days are over and the influx into the Lehigh Valley and Nazareth has stopped.
Now couple that with too many administrators (I mean, come on, do we really need TWO curriculum directors in a school this size?) and it is easy to see that Lesky, the former wood shop teacher, is just building his fiefdom.
All of these other problems are just fallout from the taxpayers being hoodwinked into building a school that wasn't needed
NazoRanter- That’s how much it cost $325,000 a year for the extra Intermediate School I am sure I could get you some numbers to prove that.
LickVesky- The Elem. Schools were getting to small for the number of students we had. People are still moving into the district, just not at the rate they were before. The first proposal for a new building was for just a 4 & 5 building but a committee of different stakeholders in the district decided that 6 grade should be included into the 4,5 building.
As just to note, Mr. Yanek was at the meeting. Lesky handled all the questions.
Jacob E. Allen,
I don't doubt for a minute that we are paying Jennings that much for a bus run.
What I am trying to say is that for that cost, we could buy a couple of brand new school buses and cut Jennings completely out of the equation.
It is a big difference to own an asset that you can depreciate the cost of versus renting it. Personally I think that amount for a single bus for the year is a bit more than insane.
Jennings drives these buses for a profit, and my guess is it isn't a very bad one. Hey, our district even paid for one of their "green" buses a couple years ago. Nice that we not only paid for it but get the pleasure of being charged in the neighborhood of $325K for it to run our kids around.
This district and administration, and yes, I mean YOU Dr. Lesky, have the financial smarts of a gnat.
You have proven that time and time again.
You can cheerlead for them or you can hold their feet to the fire.
But hey, our football team sure is doing good this year, after all, isn't that the only thing that matters?
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