Guest Opinion - Don Wright on Greenville Schools

The Sting

Editor:

Do you people remember an old movie with Paul Newman and Robert Redford where they conned a criminal out of a lot of money? The Greenville School Board and Susie Riegle is using the same tactics on Senior Citizens and parents to get votes for the new school.

Does anyone believe that the new school will have a five thousand square foot senior center? If it did the school board should be horse whipped down Broadway on Saturday afternoon.

What the hell does a senior center have to do with educating children?

About the fees parents are threatened with. I hear that we taxpayers are paying most of them now because the parents can’t afford them. Seniors and parents, if something smells bad it is usually rotten.

In the last fifty years we have become a throw away society. It has now come home to bite us. We need to make a change. We can’t continue to borrow, borrow, borrow and live beyond our means. I don’t know of anything that has ever been built that can’t be repaired or remodeled.

The school board keeps misrepresenting the South School as being built in 1911. Only a small part of the complex was built in 1911. This building and the Junior High could both be remodeled and put in excellent condition for a fraction of the cost of a new school.

Construction people tell me that both buildings could be made better than anything you can get built today. We all want safe and functional schools. We only differ on how we should do it.

Greenville Schools are not growing. They are down 385 students in the last 10 years. At one time the student/teacher ratio was 19.4, now it’s 14.4. In 2000 each student cost us $5,274. In 2009 the cost was $7,878.

I’m sick of reading and hearing it’s for the kids. If you people really want to do something for the kids, don’t saddle them with this horrendous debt. Most of us will be dead long before this new school would be paid for. That leaves our children and grandchildren to pay for it.

Our young people have enough to contend with. There are fewer and fewer good jobs. We have fools running Darke County. We have self-serving charlatans in Columbus. We have blithering socialist idiots in power in Washington, D.C.

To stop this borrow, borrow, borrow and spend, spend, spend we have to turn off the money spigot at all levels. We need to start at the local level. We need to start now. No new school. We don’t need a big fancy courthouse. We need to vote out of office anyone that supports these projects. It’s our money and if we let the fools handle it we won’t have any left.

I’ve been told that after this election the teachers union is going to demand a raise. Just one time I would like to see a school board tell the teachers union to go to hell. For the amount of education and the amount of labor they put out, they are very well paid, including benefits and retirements.

Folks, do what you want. I’m tuned out on this subject.

Don Wright

Greenville