Posted By: Gary Baird
It's OK, "feeling disgusted". I was disappointed myself, but it was an uphill battle. There were some bright spots though. In spite of a late start, we managed to improve the "NO" vote turnout from last year by about 11%. The other side just did a better job using the tools at their disposal, some of which are not available to us, like the classroom advertisements. They were well organized, so you have give them credit. I must say their job was made easier by the lack of tech savvy parents who could see through the BS and by the school board creating an atmosphere of fear in threatening "sacred cow" programs to be cut if the bond didn't pass.
I got a chuckle of of Mary Graham's comments at Monday's School Board meeting when she said students were unable to save their files because the computers lacked enough "memory". What a hoot. Yes, we should all listen to her about the need for "technology" when she doesn't even understand what she's talking about.
Then we hear stories from teachers and students about how they don't have the space to save their files... so we need new computers. Hello? The files are saved on a file server, so it has nothing to do with how "old" the computer is you're sitting at. Yes there is limited space on the file server. This could be fixed for little cost, or you could just learn file management. My sophomore daughter is smart enough to do that to keep from running out of space. Why can't you?
A few high school students also got up and talked about how the computers were so slow, it took forever to log in.... so we need new computers. Uhhhh... news flash. It's not the computer you're sitting at that's causing the slow log in. You either have a network problem, or a server problem. Try fixing it. It can be done. But why do that when you can just replace everything?
So the school district will buy all new equipment. Problems will continue. They'll hire a technology director to pay some crony back for helping pass the tech bond, adding to the buracracy, but doing nothing to actually make the hardware run smoothly. And in 5 years, they'll be back, asking for more money, "for the kids". Oh well, we tried. Maybe we'll prevail then.