The future of JISD

 

If you haven’t watched the 26 Feb Special Board Meeting video you really should. To me, it’s very apparent that the current Board Members don’t like Ms. Ryan, nor does the Superintendent and his Cabinet. Why would this be?

Ms. Ryan does what she was voted for by taxpayers. As an elected member, she represents us and everyone in the district, not just the individual places within the district, but the whole District. She seeks information on what the district does, she looks at data, and she asks questions. We can do that as well, but we elected her to do it for us. After all, it’s our tax dollars that they are spending, and she has a fiduciary duty to do that. We are in a deficit, so she looks for ways to reduce it. We can’t just wipe it clean, but we can reduce it and she brings that to the Board, no one else does. They talk about it, they say that they will look at ways to cut spending, but the rest of the Board does nothing except to increase it by approving the Superintendent’s request.

When discussing Ms. Ryan asking the district for information, one member suggested for the district to say “no” to providing that information as well as saying that “as long as the Board Majority is good it doesn’t matter what one member says at all”. Another board member interjected that “what they have to say is important but doesn’t affect the vote” and they laughed about it, they really laughed and if you were at the meeting, you could have seen other board members and the District Cabinet as well as the Superintendent laughing, but that was out of sight on the recording. Still another Board member suggested that the district provide Ms. Ryan’s information request, but withholding the information and giving it to her within the 20-day time limit which will exceed the meeting time so, again, to limit Ms. Ryan’s ability to discuss and ask questions during the meetings.

What is about to happen is clear to me, the board has time limited Ms. Ryans ability to ask questions. They don’t want her to get the information she wants by the meeting time. And, even if she has it, and asks questions, it doesn’t matter because they will simply vote against it.

That is the status of your current Board of Trustees and the District.

My fear is that there are two more Monthly Board Meetings as well as other planning meetings prior to the election and there will be a big push to move the Superintendent’ s Agenda through before it happens. I think that because of the upcoming election that there will be changes to the district, should members get re-elected, the repurposing of Coronado Village could and probably would change, increasing the tax rate could and probably would be put on the ballot in November, the increase of our deficit could and probably would increase.

If we, as a JISD community, don’t change our Board of Trustees focus and our Board of Trustees direction we as a JISD community will lose and our kids will lose. When we vote, we need to look at every candidate's character, and look deep, to protect our District.