Dear editor,
Last week, an attempt to cloud taxpayer’s issues regarding Davis County Schools was offered in your paper. The author was Chris Williams, Community Relations Director for the District. Although it was well written, it was incomplete.
Since parents and our students don’t have a paid spokesperson, I will present the facts that sustain the claims.
Claim: The Board of Education voted to release personal confidential information of all families to public and private industries contrary to Utah law.
Fact: The board first approved a change to Policy 11IR-110 Family Education Rights and Privacy to allow an administrator to release personally identifiable information without parental knowledge or permission on Feb. 21, 2012. The vote was 6-1. Because of the appropriate blowback by parents, on April 17, 2012, the board modified the policy to require approval by the board of education for such a release of information.
Summary: The school board can release your family’s personal information without your consent.
Claim: School district employees have received raises when their salaries are double their counterparts in the private sector. More than 185 employees have salaries above $100,000.
Fact: Mr. Williams admits that 194 district employees make $100,000/year, the superintendent making $302,565. See Utahsright.com. His explanation that these figures are “misleading” because they factor in benefits is very revealing. Finally, ALL district employees received a 1.5 percent pay increase this year while the rest of the State’s median income dropped. Claim: The current Board of Education of the Davis School District has raised taxes five times during the last eight years.
Fact: Mr. Williams admits that the board voted to raise our taxes 3 of last 5 years, as if this were some grand act of restraint. While the country was struggling through the worst economic trial since the Great Depression, the board felt it justified to add yet another burden on our backs. Three times. Did they feel that they didn’t have to tighten their belts when the people paying their salaries did? The public and private sector’s tides were originally designed to rise and fall together. The incontrovertible fact is that more than $20 billion of taxpayer money is paid to administrators and bureaucrats before teachers see one penny.
-Paul Prier, Parent and candidate for Davis County School Board precinct #4
Mr. Prier, I sadly do not get you or your other Eagle Forum friends on this issue. I think you are downright mean and disrespectful of the current board's work. I can only speculate that you would also vote (like your Eagle Forum member on the school board) to make "hungry" kids have a separate line and separate reduced lunch/breakfast tickets (as you want to shame them and their parents)....this coming from a man who a few years ago could not name one teacher or even what grade his kids were in elementary school, and had not volunteered or attended one Parent-Teacher conference.
Your wild accusations remind me of Senator Joe McCarthy and what the esteemed journalist Ed Murrow said of McCarthy
" We must remember always that accusation is not proof and that conviction depends upon evidence and due process of law. We will not walk in fear, one of another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason"
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