We haven’t heard anything about vouchers or school choice from Metro Nashville Public Schools while debating which schools to close and which personnel to terminate. In Washington, DC

“I think the good schools have gotten better, and the mediocre schools are getting on track because, I believe, we’ve had a charter school movement that’s been very robust, and because of the vouchers,” Mr. Williams told The New York Sun.

Mr. Williams said he didn’t know whether the District’s experience meant that voucher programs should spread across the country. “But I do believe we ought to be more open about experimenting all over the country,” the mayor said, “and I do believe that where you’ve got low-performing schools in bad situations, you ought to give parents that choice, wherever that happens to be.”

As for those receiving vouchers in D.C., Mr. Williams added: “We’re finding that the lowest-income parents from some of the lowest-performing schools are taking advantage of this program, and they’re excited about it.”

Ah yes, but we in Nashville have a problem. The one thing Mayor Williams has that the school board and mayor here do not is a) vision, and b) the ability to lead. We merely have managers in office right now, and they are poor ones at that.

For The Tennessean, anyway. Check out the title of their latest editorial - Metro students, city will pay price of budget cuts: Likely result is increased truancy, more drop-outs, unskilled workforce.

Holy cow. Serious thought is beyond these people. I may be wrong, but this sounds like Gail Kerr.

Yet, school board members were among those who warned what would happen if the city rejected the sales tax referendum. Gains made in providing music and arts to youngsters will falter. In addition to those teachers, 100 middle and high school teachers and 43 guidance counselors will be out of a job, along with 30 campus supervisors and 26 assistant principals. All the well-intentioned efforts to maintain schools, to provide adequate materials and textbooks for students, will be thwarted.

One of the school system’s most cherished goals — reaching those students who fall behind between middle school and high school — certainly will be jeopardized.

For the love of rationality, would someone, someone, PLEASE ask the mayor where 61 of the 67 cents of his most recent property tax went. This is absurd, and brings into question the good intentions of many involved in the funding, planning and current cuts occurring within the school board. Take on the mayor.

61 cents are unaccounted for. Bill Purcell, irresponsible mayor as he is, only marked 6 cents for schools. Is there anyone on the school board with a spine? Would someone with character on the school board take on the mayor and demand the funding they claim to need? Or are we short on leaders all the way around? What is there to fear? We are led by a bunch of wimps.

The price tag seems particularly harsh in light of the overall promising report Nashville schools received last week of gains made on several fronts. Nashville voters decided they didn’t want to pay more for schools, but the ultimate cost to the city could be far higher than the rejected sales tax increase would have been.

The sales tax was the third tax increase this summer. The desire for more funds and no accountability is outstanding even by local Democratic and Tennessean standards. Bill Purcell has increased property taxes by 50% since he entered office, and somehow, someway, it is not enough. You must be especially gullible to sit and take this as if it is the normal course of things. Has the city increased in population by 50% since Purcell took office? Sidewalks are great, but we so far all we see are many sidewalks to nowhere, and now, allegedly, the Metro public schools are in crisis. The biggest economic boom to hit Middle Tennessee in the last five years decided to relocate to Williamson County. Metro has failed the citizens of Nashville in many ways, and The Tennessean editorial board is so obtuse as to believe whatever they are fed.

Go ahead, if you choose to lead - ask Mayor Purcell where that 61 cents went. Ask him over and over and over until you get an answer.

If the school board will not lead, and advocate for the students, it must be replaced.

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There’s a great editorial by Liz Garrigan in the Nashville Scene today. She calls out the sales tax increase supporters for their attempted campaign tactic of keeping things quiet. The tax hike proponents did not want to have the issue discussed. They just wanted the people on their side to go stealthily to the polls on September 13 and let us all be surprised later.

I know the unwanted publicity has already been discussed as being a main factor in the failure of the tax hike, but I think this article is well-written and reiterates the point perfectly.

But I meant to point this sorry excuse for editorial thought out last Thursday.

Nashville failed school children at the polls Tuesday and in leadership.

City officials can’t turn their attention quickly enough to see that students aren’t harmed by the damage done. Schools may have to start cutting immediately for the $20 million shortfall expected next fiscal year that could mean as many as 700 teaching and support jobs. That sets back a five-year effort to improve schools and school funding. And just this year, concerns about fuel costs could put more of a strain on the school budget.

Logical fallacies abound. Assuming all other metropolitan funds earmarked for other priorities are immutable and cannot be diverted permanently to the school budget is unsupported by fact. Harping on “fuel costs”, though higher to be sure, further trivializes the need for the funds that The Tennessean so eloquently advocates. I think someone somewhere thought this would resonate with voters. That’s bad political strategy, and condescending to the voters.

It seems that The Tennessean editorial board deems shaming the populace as a viable advocacy strategy. Slapping 71% of the voters over the hand as if they were undisciplined children will certainly win them over the next time. Eh, not so much.

The people did not “fail the children” - if dollars expended on education are all that separate success from failure, such failure lies in one man’s lap. The mayor is the one who failed the children when he decided to make the sales tax hike a matter for education funding instead of for sidewalk and greenway funding, which it should have been.

Sixty-one cents of the last 67 cent property tax increase did not go to education. Bill, what happened to the 61 cents?

FYI for our readers, from the Keep Nashville Growing! website

Thank You!

The people of Metropolitan Nashville have spoken, and expressed their interest and desire in keeping municipal government responsive, responsible, and accountable to those who it was created to serve.

It was always my intention that once the purpose for which Keep Nashville Growing! Inc. was founded had ended, the organization itself would as well. Since the sales tax referendum election, and numerous conversations with members and voters, it has been determined that there is a broad-based desire to maintain this atmosphere of political accountability beyond the vote of September 13, 2005. To accomplish this end, a constant vigilance is required.

As such, Keep Nashville Growing! Inc. will remain in existence. Though the tax referendum is over, it is imperative that metropolitan officials know they are being watched, and that they will prospectively be required to honor the will of the voters. The rhetoric coming from some circles of the metro council and municipal government is heartening, but those words must come with deeds. It is for this mission that Keep Nashville Growing! Inc. will remain in existence.

Please check this site again in the near future as it is reworked and redesigned. Events and information regarding the function of metropolitan government will be linked and maintained on this website starting in the Fall.

Thank you all for your support of accountable government, and I look forward to working for the greater good of our city now and in the future.

Nathan Moore
Chairman
Keep Nashville Growing! Inc.

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I have taken the last couple of days and reflected on the meaning of the tax vote on Tuesday. The pro-tax forces, staking their morality on “the children” and unconstitutional senior tax relief, lost miserably. Even I could not have predicted such a lopsided outcome, and was pleasantly surprised when the early voting and final tallies rolled in.

The mood now is one of sadness and confusion. There have been rumors of the closing of Robertson Academy in Oak Hill, which is the center of the gifted program. This would a purposeful retaliation at those who opposed the tax hike, and unwise. Hopefully, it remains a mere rumor.

Oddly, most of those interviewed in the paper today, including those aligned with the mayor, started sounding like Reaganite conservatives. Let’s see how long it lasts, and what cuts are made. If they act with the intention of intelligent and responsible government, I will have no objections - none at all.

Tonight is the first annual Davidson County Republican Party Reagan Day Dinner, featuring Michael Reagan and former governor Winfield Dunn. I’ll report how it goes when I get back. A more detailed analysis and commentary on the sales tax vote will come out this weekend. There has been some talk of a permanent version of Keep Nashville Growing! Inc. When that decision is made, it will be posted here first.

I am so proud of the successful efforts of my husband and others to defeat the sales tax increase! Like others on our side have said, I am not opposed to taxes outright. I understand and appreciate their proper purpose. However, I do not believe that the Metro government has found it necessary to justify their spending decisions to the voters. Maybe that will change now.

Nathan and I are off to see Baby Moore for the first time this morning! Nathan doesn’t want to look at the images, because he is sure that he’ll be able to tell the gender. I’ll be lucky to recognize the head, so I’m not too concerned.

The people of Nashville have won tonight. The tax hike failed by a whopping 40%, losing 70-30. The people have spoken - I hope that our mayor and our council are listening.

More tomorrow. For additional coverage now, check out Bob Krumm, and the latest coverage in The Tennessean.

Tomorrow, I will have a good breakfast and play two rounds of golf. It’s been a long month - I’ll be back soon.

The Tennessean has an excellent story on the attempted breaking of Tennessee election law by the pro-tax pro-ineffective government group Nashville Tomorrow via the Metro Schools. Be sure to see where Blake Wylie wrote about it last night here.

UPDATE Blake wakes up earlier than I do.

How many of you are keeping score at home on the changing justification for the proposed sales tax increase? It becomes more evident with each story that the Mayor’s office takes a look at the current headlines and gears the message accordingly.

The reason for needing more money has gone from providing for the increase in students who speak English as a second language to standard cost of living changes to allowing for specialized teachers such as those for art and music to buying the gas to run our buses to the dire proclamation that we may never be able to open another school again! Whew!

Now, the Mayor is claiming that raising the sales tax now is the best way to avoid future hikes in the property tax later. Yeah, right. Say what you think people want to hear now, and then we’ll watch you turn around next year and insist that our children desperately need more money and property taxes will (begrudgingly, you will claim) need to be hiked again.

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Channel 4’s Larry Brinton devoted his Word on the Street to the sales tax referendum last night. He did a lovely job of pointing out the illegal actions of Mayor Purcell and Pedro Garcia. And, he said the “word on the street” is that teachers will be voting against the tax increase. I look forward to the final numbers proving that true this evening.

More law breaking via the Metro Nashville Public Schools for this “hazy” tax hike, as chronicled by Blake Wylie. The operable passage, among many

Well…after spending lots of money on printing these professional looking flyers (paid for by NashvilleTomorrow.com, but with the delivery of these to schools by Metro Employees ON Metro time makes me question just how close the school system is with NashvilleTomorrow) as well as the time in delivering them to each school, they suddenly realize that it wouldn’t be legal. Of course, that hasn’t stopped principals from pushing the tax at meetings with parents and open houses, now has it?

It’s obvious that the Oberführer of Education does not like dissent in his ranks and does not care about legalities when it comes to pushing his “baby” tax increase…all of this under the watchful eye of Mayor Purcell. Are they afraid that it can’t pass on its merits alone without resorting to questionable methods?

This is abhorrent. Is election law foreign to these people? How many flyers have been distributed, to how many parents? How often and for how long? Ordered and consented to by whom?

All questions that may need to be answered, soon.

My husband has already done a great job of dissecting the ridiculous piece on the editoral page of The Tennessean today. I just need to add my opinion as well. And that opinion is … wow. You rarely get to see an editorial supposedly written by professional journalists that includes such adolescent name-calling.

When I was in elementary school, my mom told me that the boys who called me names only did so because they liked me. It was just their immature way of getting my attention. And, like moms often are, she was right!

So, is that the deal, Tennessean editors? Do you really have a crush on my husband and other tax opponents but you just can’t find the adult words to say so? Do you wish you could be friends with people who demand accountability and REAL concern for our seniors but you just don’t know how? Nathan is a really friendly guy and I’m sure he would go to lunch with you if you asked nicely. Remember, though … he’s taken, so no serious courting!

The Tennessean has taken not only a stance for the tax increase, which was expected, but has issued a personal strike against those opposing the sales tax hike.

Opponents of the half-cent sales tax increase on tomorrow’s referendum ballot are offering little more than lame excuses to explain their objection to the tax

Okay, and what would those lame excuses be? That we actually want to see where the money will go before it is spent? It is “lame”, if I too can speak as an irate teenager, to swallow a bureaucratic budgetary request hook, line and sinker, after the mayor himself cut that request by $30 million, before asking for more.

This year, the Metro Council raised property taxes by 67 cents, with six cents of it for schools. But that covers only this year’s school budget. If the referendum fails, schools will face a $20 million shortfall for 2006-07. That would mean cutting possibly hundreds of positions.

Yet despite the budget problem staring schools in the face, some tax opponents have seized upon a hollow rant that there must be waste in the system. They offer little proof — nothing but a belief that there is waste because, well, there must be, they surmise.

First things first. Why only 6 cents to schools? The city is stagnant, if not shrinking. That much more money for sidewalks is, well, laughable.

Next, let’s see what positions can be cut. I haven’t seen that list, probably because no one has gone to the trouble of creating it. I find it difficult to believe that every position in the Metropolitan Nashville Public Schools is needed, required, or otherwise indispensable. The problem here is the mindset - the errant belief that pet government institutions are above reproach, and ought not be evaluated and open for public inspection. We as the people have no say, if it’s for the children, even if no details are provided. God forbid that we propose a meritocracy in the public schools, or challenge the authority of the unions, who care for the children only secondarily, if at all, though they get the full benefit of all doubts.

Finally, the editors here are simply wrong. I and others have been asking only that we be shown precisely what the new revenues are for, and that a new performance audit be conducted before collecting more revenues, with views to merit-based promotions and raises, not in the same static system we’re focusing on now. We’re on the last year of the proposed five years of the last audit - it’s okay to attempt to be efficient earlier than schedule, despite howling to the contrary.

Some objections are downright funny. At first, the argument was that schools were under-performing and therefore didn’t deserve more funding. When test scores revealed that schools were in fact improving, the argument became that it doesn’t really matter about test scores. Then, laughably, the objection became that since schools improved, that proved they never needed more money anyway.

I’m not sure where this came from, unless it’s a misreading of my comments on Teddy Bart awhile back. My contention is that we should see what works. The school system is not an employee who gets a raise and a pat on the head for doing a good job - it’s an entity through which our tax dollars function that is answerable to the people through perpetuity. Let’s see what works, then decide what new funding is needed. We don’t have a positive trend yet, just a positive blip.

Opponents of school funding should either expose detailed deficiencies in the school system or admit they just don’t want to pay taxes. An honest admission of selfishness would be more credible than hazy explanations.

I believe that I have been quite clear as to my opposition. I and others I know are for extreme clarity. Haze acts to the benefit of those proposing the tax increase. Property taxes have increased by $1.55 in the last four years, on two separate occasions. The wheel tax was increased by $20.00 this summer as well. Now, yet another tax increase is being proposed. The burden is certainly not on those opposing the tax to come up with anything new, but in light of the rash of tax hikes, is instead on those who support additional taxation. These same individuals, who seem to be unable to tax enough, can only laugh at accountable government, and go lame at the thought of a meritocratic education system, are bent not on responsible government, but simply more of it.

An increase in the sales tax, which will also go toward tax relief for the elderly in this case, is a regressive way to raise money, because the sales tax hits hardest on those with lower income. But in this case, the greater good must prevail. That means increasing funding for schools, which have earned and deserve the city’s support.

Editorial honesty would be nice here. The only definitive supporter of the constitutionality of the elderly relief scheme is Karl Dean, head of Metro Legal (which is currently breaking federal labor law, if The Tennessean cares to watch Channel 5 now and again) and subservient to Bill Purcell. A similar tax relief scheme in Memphis was met with disapproval by the state attorney general’s office. Prudent and responsible government (and editorializing) would require those supporting the tax hike on these grounds to get another opinion from the attorney general before taxing these same seniors at a higher rate.

So, there we are - if you are for responsible and accountable government, and are not for three tax hikes in three months, you are Lame, Laughable and Selfish.

Go vote tomorrow. And get your friends to vote.

UPDATE Mark Rose over at Right Minded makes mince of The Tennessean’s hypocritical political thuggery as well.

Here is a letter submitted to the Davidson County Election Commission yesterday summarizing the improper actions of those advocating for the sales tax hike. Here is a picture of a premarked ballot left at the voter check-in area at the Election Commission voting site on Tuesday.

Bob Krumm found the premarked ballot.

UPDATE The Tennessean story here.

Mayor Bill Purcell was using this last night on Fox 17 to intimate that we’d run out of gas for buses if the sales tax hike didn’t go through.

Of course - that makes a lot of sense. The shortfall as cited by the City Paper would be $500,000.00 to the Metro School budget.

And the costs of administering the election for the sales tax hike? $450,000.00.

Is this guy kidding?

I have also heard through reliable sources that the mayor and the normal cadre of the “more money, less responsibility” crowd was at an elementary school grand opening in councilmatic district twelve yesterday, spewing a litany of doomsday scenarios - including that “we won’t see anymore” grand openings of new schools if the tax increase did not pass.

No more gas, no more schools, no more sports - it’s not Halloween yet, mayor. Your “chicken little” politics have officially earned you the spot as the lead in the theater of the absurd.

Pedro Garcia, director of Metro Nashville Public Schools, has apparently broken the law

A mass e-mail from Metro Schools Director Pedro Garcia asking 5,600 Metro schools employees to help garner votes for a sales-tax increase has tax foes seething.

The city’s top attorney, Karl Dean, said he would have advised against such politicking, had he been consulted. The government is required by law to stay impartial and should err on the side of caution, he said.

The message sent at 11:59 a.m. Monday from Garcia’s school e-mail account includes this text:

“Metro School employees have the opportunity to volunteer to make phone calls on behalf of our future funding. The Service Employees Union (SEIU) is operating a phone truck and is asking for volunteers to make calls encouraging people to vote for the September 13 sales tax referendum … Please sign up to help make phone calls.”

So if there’s a limit to what those in favor of this irresponsible tax increase will do to pass it, I sure don’t know it. The schools administration’s spin

Garcia was on vacation and could not be reached, but schools spokesman Woody McMillin defended the memo.

“Dr. Garcia sent that out on his lunch break,” McMillin said. “There was no money involved. He was not directing anyone to take action. The only thing he was doing was notifying employees of an opportunity to volunteer if they want to. … We’re trying to follow guidelines and not do anything illegal or inappropriate.

“That’s part of his role, to make sure the district has the funding we need to operate.”

Garcia’s e-mail told employees they could contact school board administrator Allison Cutler to sign up for volunteer shifts, using her schools e-mail address.

Okay, so let’s say it was sent out on his lunch break (probably not, and irrelevant, actually as it’s an obvious attempt at a loophole), but it encourages those who get it to contact the government through a governmental email to volunteer. Of course, we’re not actually sure whether this email was sent to 5600, 4600, or 7600 teachers. If anyone went to the trouble to count the outgoing emails, perhaps we could nail down this one glaring hole of information and poster child of mismanagement.

Meanwhile, in the trustee’s office….

Deputy Trustee Bob Fitzpatrick, who placed the sticker there, had no qualms with promoting the half-cent sales-tax increase, which would also fund tax breaks for elderly homeowners.

“We handle tax relief,” Fitzpatrick said. “We know why they should vote for it, so I didn’t see anything wrong with it, but I wasn’t familiar with the (legal) code.”

An office worker scraped off the sticker immediately when a reporter raised questions

I have a feeling that quite a few more questions of legality will be raised in the next ten days.

The relevant law for those interested in what Bob Fitzpatrick violated, T.C.A. 2-19-206(a)

(a) It is unlawful for any elected or appointed official of the state, or any employee of the state or any department, division or agency thereof, to display campaign literature, banners, placards, streamers, stickers, signs or other items of campaign or political advertising on behalf of any party, committee or agency or candidate for political office, on the premises of any building or land owned by the state, or to use any of the facilities of the state, including equipment and vehicles, for such purposes.

and Pedro Garcia’s violation, T.C.A. 2-19-207(a)

(a) It is unlawful for any person employed by the state to engage actively in a political campaign on behalf of any party, committee, organization, agency or political candidate, or to attend political meetings or rallies or to otherwise use such person’s official position or employment to interfere with or affect the result of any regular or special primary election conducted within the state, or to perform political duties or functions of any kind not directly a part of such person’s employment, during those hours of the day when such person is required by law or administrative regulation to be conducting the business of the state.

“If we were asked whether they should send that e-mail, we would have said no,” Karl Dean [director of Metro Legal] said.