Anyone Here Live in Central Ohio? Man I Am Disgusted...

with Governor Taft. I'm sorry I just need to vent here. Recently I heard on our local news that Governor Taft is trying to end all funding for school buses. Our local schools are in terrible shape already. Schools/teachers have little resources to teach students correctly and many are actually being shut down in my neck of the woods. And now this. I was driving home this morning and went past one of our local high schools. Students were standing out front in the parking lot smoking cigarettes WITH the security guards. Shouldn't the security guards get reprimanded? And my property taxes are being raised why? To pay for this kind of crap? Why do people support Taft here? He is an idiot! Ok...Rant over. Thanks for listening. Sorry, but I am really peeved right now. :)

how in Hades are the students supposed to get to school?

Or, the question is, How in Hades will be school buses be funded?

for the little man of course. Property taxes are the answer to everything don't ya know. :)There will be no more new buses according to the news if the bill is passed and no more funding for the repair of the buses. It will be paid for by more property or local taxes to maintain the buses that already exist. After that we are just left with the huge void of red tape and false promises for our schools. Sad.

is supposed to happen to those kids who can't drive yet and who's parents can't take them to school because they have to go into work early? And what if they can't get a ride?

pass (that and/or sports) because it inconveniences the parents (I learned this in the early 90s when I was getting my Masters of Arts in Teaching in an administration class, btw -- perhaps things have changed -- though the school district I live in just employed this tactic after failing its 4th levy).

Bussing is expensive, but there are other things a district could cut that were "invisible" and wouldn't impact the public as much as bussing.

edit:typo

If busing gets cut, they should stop the staggered start system for schools, all grades should start and end at the same time.

Nov. levy didn't pass (for the 3rd time) -- and now is talking about cutting middle school (not sure if that includes 6th grade), AND, is moving the "bussing" parameter to a 2 mile mark. So younger kids are getting affected by this.

Here's a story about Lake County Schools where a middle-school student drove a tractor to school because his dad (a single parent) works the graveyard shift...

Lake budget cuts driven home; no bus service, so student rides tractor to school and back

By ERIKA RAY
BLADE STAFF WRITER


Mark Wasserman is too young to drive a car to school, but not too young to drive a tractor.

The 13-year-old eighth grader said he drove a John Deere farm tractor to school yesterday because budget cuts mean he can no longer ride the bus to Lake Middle School.

Bus transportation service was eliminated for all Lake High School students and any child in the Lake Local school district who lives within two miles of school, a move designed to save the financially struggling district $32,235 this school year.

<snip>
Because Mark lives on Pemberville Road in Lake Township about 1 1/2 miles from the middle school, his father, Robert Wasserman, told him to drive the tractor to school as long as he is unable to ride a bus.


more... http://toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050304/NEWS04/503040354

charges (RE: the school funding court decision)

This kind of stuff is a crime...Dems really need to beat them over the head with this issue...the do-nothing repubs...what have THEY done during their complete control to fix things for you...they have FOUGHT this court decision for YEARS

Don't they care about our children? <---this is EXACTLY what we should be saying.

taxes (school levies)? I mean the first thing that districts do when they lose a levy more than once is cut funding for buses for high school and sometimes junior highs, too. Many cities (Toledo, Cincinnati that I know of, but possibily others) use public bus transportation for high school students already because their districts couldn't afford bussing. I'd need to hear the report to know where he is going with it. But usually it's a local control issue, not a state issue.

how Taft has gotten away with many issues that he supports. Here is a link with some detailed information. Thanks for the input. :)

http://www.whiotv.com/news/4344365/detail.html

The Republican dominated for years government in Ohio has absolutely been anti-education...ignoring a court order to fund schools, cutting education funding after that, and now the school bus issue.

Taft was recently rated the WORST governor in the United States with what he has done financially to this state...and people just CANNOT pay more in property taxes...you all have seen one school levy after another fail over and over and over again. Personally, I, paraphrasing TV Judge Marilyn Millian..."would not trust a word that came out of Taft's mouth even if his tongue was notarized." Add DeWine and Voinovitch to the same list, as well as our miserable rep Hobson, and state rep Tim Schaffer.

Dems should run on obeying the court order and FIXING school funding...pound it HARD that the Republicans have only given lip service to it, and then continued to grant favor after favor to corporate greed. The front page story in the Dispatch yesterday about Accenture ought to tell you all everything!

I was born and raised in Central Ohio (Picktown) and another school levy lingers, and sadly, will not pass because everyone is sick and tired and broke....gas is now $2.37 a gallon here...any school district that thinks they are going to pass a tax levy with gas this high, unemployment this high, the stock market taking small craps, and everyone just in time for the levy finding out the hard way about that Alternative Minimum Tax everyone has been warning them about.

The sheeple are close to turning on the shepherd.

Edited for minor typos due to rant induced keyboard lapses.

steps up to fix this mess. I will support him. Taft is terrible...I listen to his state of the state addresses and cringe. I live in Columbus on the east side. Its not terrible, but it isn't great either. We have had our property taxes pounded through levies that seem to have little or no effect on the actual problem that it was intended to help and/or fix in the first place. We are broke like everyone else in our area and still paying out the nose for everything because of Taft. And the hits just keep coming. I grew up in California and I was shocked by the state of our schools here in Ohio. You are right...little or no attention has been paid to our schools. Even after being court ordered to fix the problems our educational system has, it has escalated into a state of absolute disrepair. Dem's in Ohio lets make a stand for reform here!!!! Don't give up. I know I sure won't. Thank you for the well informed comments. Its much appreciated. :)

make Taft look liberal. As bad as he is, those right wing morans in the Ohio GA are complete idiots.

Not to defend Taft, but at least he's able to undo some of the damage the incur. The entire state government is one big farking clown-car.

area where people are very upset about big recent increases. But when I lived in CO, I paid twice the property tax $ on a house that is worth half of what my house here is worth. State tax is lower where I now live, and there is no city tax here as there was in CO. And this is just outside Washington DC, in a community with good public schools and good local government.

The taxes there are very high relative to the value the taxes produce.

1% income tax - schools
1% income tax - city income
2% income tax - city you work in income tax
78.5 mils property tax - school district mils
28.25 mils property tax - other: fire, library, roads, police, etc.
6.75% - county sales tax rate

Not to mention we just had a property re-evaluation, and our property was revalued at an increase of 33% over last year. EVERYONE found out what that little gem costs (1st half property taxes were due February 17 in this county).

These numbers are above and beyond state tax on gasoline, alcohol, kilowats per hour, insurance premium taxes, license plate taxes, etc. charged by the State of Ohio, and all those "public utilities" fees (what a JOKE in Ohio, they get whatever they want).

Are we getting close to CO?

I thought it was illegal for kids now days to smoke on campus'? I know it was in my alama mater (I graduated in 2001). I remember last year here they were talking about getting rid of the buses. I don't think they ever did though. :shrug: I haven't heard. They were also thinking of cutting programs like band, choir, art and sports programs.

to smoke on campus. Most are minors for one, and they are on school property. Go figure. LOL. I know many programs have been cut back or completely eliminated because of lack of financial means to support them. :( Hopefully we can make a stand here in Ohio and see some positive change.

-- souls in public life in the entire nation.

I'm no longer in Ohio, but I'm homesick for Dick Celeste in the statehouse and Howard Metzenbaum in the Senate.

he gave Ohio one of its best bumper stickers (now don't get mad, cause it is funny):

"Dick Celeste before he dicks you"

Ya gotta admit, if the repubs were mad enough to use a semi porn reference in a bumper sitcker they ALL had on their cars, he must have been doing a good job!

-- desperate, then Celeste must have been on the right track.

My "homesickness" for Celeste and Metzenbaum is a yearning for the time when Democrats ran the show in key states and ideas flowed easily in and out of the doors of power.

Taft just doesn't do it for me. Voinovich is kind of a company man, at least most of the time, and Dewine...well, let's not go there today.

I wish for Ohio a gaggle of great Democrats for the new generation.

"How many of ya are tired of your schools havin old ass books and new ass metal detectors?"