I have been asked if the remonstrance is "about me," what MY plan is, and how I would "maximize" education.

I'm positive that the remonstrance is not about me. It is about the whole of the community. I did nothing alone except sign a document or two, everything else has involved others. What happens will have little direct effect on me but a profound effect on our community in the next 20 to 50 years.

As a disabled veteran, I do not pay the tax rate that most people do. My son starts his junior year at Northview next year. Whatever we do will affect him only as a taxpaying adult. I have one great-nephew and one granddaughter going into the third grade. Anything we do will not affect them positively because, by the time any project is completed, they will be out of the elementary schools. The construction may well affect them adversely, but that cannot be helped because it must occur at some point. At some point in time, a portion of our students is going to deal with it unless we build a new building on a plot of ground removed from current facilities.

My plan is to have the community come up with a plan and hopefully before Dec. 2008. If I have to come up with a plan, it would take me ten years to deliver what should have came out of the school corporation last August instead of what did. When I read about project in The Brazil Times, I asked three questions of the school corporation via e-mail. "What are the ages of our buildings," "Why are we renovating old buildings instead of building their replacements," and "Why are we planning to spend $4.2 million dollars for a Bus Maintenance Facility that should be nothing more than a large pole barn?" As an answer to my query I was told that the plan was available to the public. I went to the Central Office where I was handed a fifteen to 20 sheaf of papers and told that that was the planned project. It contained mostly pictures and figures, cut and pasted, from a "construction" report ( http://www.peterli.com/global/pdfs/SPMCo... ) used to SELL building projects to the public and some financial details. (The construction report clearly states that these figures are only guidelines to be considered.) What the project plan did not contain was the research, comparisons, recommendations of "best practices" by educational organizations, such as the National School Board Association or the National Association of School Administrators, or even references to building codes and law, except the Americans with Disabilities Act, that would justified the need to expend money. Basically, that plan and the current one is nothing more than a small group, mainly school corporation employees, of the people involved telling the rest of the public that this is what we are going to do, whether it solves our problems, real or imaginary, or not. Even the county-wide committee of 28 people thought so highly of these plans that only one man stood up in the public meetings and identified himself as being a member to back the plan.

The Corporation started prior to Sept. 2005 because there is a list of what the building committees requested contained in the September 2005 (if I'm not mistaken) meeting minutes of the school board. That absurd list and recommendations of actual structural needs from Buildings and Grounds went to the 28 member county-wide committee. They came up with $60 million dollars worth of expenditures. At some point, an architect was contacted. Between the architect, the county-wide committee, and the corporation, the $60 million was pared down to $53 million with a 22 year bond that would cost $98 million to retire. The community balked at that plan, so the corporation pared it down even more to the $26 million Elementary Renovation plan. That is the plan that I started the remonstrance to put the decision before the public over. I believe that this community can, and needs to, come up with a better plan.

I know that I have a long month of hard work ahead of me. I'm not quite alone in this, but I am fully aware that the school corporation employees will turn out in force to proceed with the current plan. Most of them accept the current plan as the best that can be came up with, but, in my opinion, they are only taking into consideration their perspective as to the perceived needs and are not looking at the overall picture of the corporation's position today, within the next few years, or out a couple of decades, both financially and educationally. They are standing so close to the trees that they cannot see the forest.

I AM not an expert, no one is. Some may hold the opinion a person is an expert, but I have found that the fastest way to get a difference of opinion is to get two perceived experts together and start a conversation on the subject they are "expert" in.

There has been a lot of hype and fear-mongering spread about by a few people attempting to promote the two proposed plans and the one that was approved by the school board. Risks have been exaggerated to scare people into worrying about the modular classrooms as security risks or dangerous. People have stated that the students are at risk because of the modulars and having to move between them and the main buildings. These people forget that you have the very same children standing on the side of the road every school day. Tornadoes have been used to frighten people into worrying about the modulars, yet the modulars should be evacuated in inclement weather. The school corporation monitors the weather and has as much warning as is possible. If one of our brick school buildings is hit by a tornado when it is occupied, there is a good chance that someone is going to be seriously hurt. Then there was the bullets that impacted on Van Buren. No information has been released on that but there was a big stir over it. There was a lot of demand for security and a great flap about a vehicle that, apparently, just evaporated. Didn't that happen right before deer season? Four or five shots, about what it takes to check the sights on a rifle. Last week, a man walks into Northview through an unlocked back door to go to the bathroom and it makes the front page of The Brazil Times. Why was the door unlocked? Most people, myself included, had the impression that the policy throughout the school corporation was that all doors in our schools except one were locked. Why is that not the case at Northview? Then, there was the fact that came out at the political forum about the new, improved, security installation at Jackson Township being observed with the remote-controlled lock equipped door propped open with a sign asking visitors to report to the office. It does a great deal for our security to have the locks and not use them. Why should we buy these devices or change our buildings when policies are not made or not enforced? It is a waste of money.

We must comply with current law, it needs to be researched. We need to anticipate changes to the law that are foreseeable, such as a requirement that, most likely, will come down to be able to evacuate the handicapped from a multi-storied school building without using an elevator. We need to actually define our needs instead of accepting someone's opinion that there is a need. (EXAMPLE: We have a need to replace the Central Office, located in the old Knightsville school building. The building is about, if not over, 100 years old. The Central Office should be ADA compliant and may well be required to be by law. That would be sufficient justification to replace the building. It does not justify expending the 2.8 million dollars to build a new building for the Central Office if we build a new school to house the students of Meridian and Eastside. Doing that, we could repair the structure of Eastside, adapt that to be ADA compliant as an office building for much less than a school would require, and sell the real estate of the Knightsville and Meridian Street properties to recoup, at least, part of the construction costs of the conversion and new school construction. This would also return those properties to the tax rolls.) There are many other questions that must be asked, and answered, before we start any project. Should we re-district? Is the open balcony at North Clay a legal liability? Why are we teaching French IV to one student and Dance to nine, at a cost of over $20,000 in the 07-08 school year, when a fourth of our students cannot earn even our lowest diploma? Should we move our sixth graders out of North Clay and back into the elementary schools? Would that improve our graduation rate? Should we limit our Kindergarten through third-grades and high-school math classes to not more than 18 students as recommended by the Indiana School Boards Association? Should we eliminate instead of replacing the carpet in our schools as recommended ( http://www.aasa.org/files/PDFs/Publicati... ) by the American Association of School Administrators in 2003? There are many more questions that can and should be asked before we leap into a project. Many more people need to be involved.

Boiling it down to the bottom line, everything that the school corporation does needs to be justified and show to have an educational return. We need to pay for education and not the wants and wishes of the few, whoever they may be.