Lack of Transparency Sinks Referendum

Unlike most, if not all of the candidates for the At-Large School Board seat in Floyd County, I have not been persuaded that the November referendum to raise $87 million dollars for capital improvements is the wisest choice for voters.

I'm running for school board explicitly to give voice to the multitudes in Floyd County who love our children and want the best for them when it comes to schooling. Many thousands of those people, however, aren't persuaded that this plan is the best or the only way to provide that.

The slogan of "We  [Heart] Our Schools" implies that anyone who opposes THIS referendum is against our schools. But the NA-FC administration has not made the case for this bond issue.

More importantly, the administration has given voters reason to distrust their priorities and their decision-making.

In my neighborhood, we watched as a fine school was closed (and then sold to a Louisville church). The closure was justified, in part, by saying that the city of New Albany didn't have enough children to fill the schools. The organization "Save Silver Street School" provided accurate demographic information to the opposite effect, but still the school was closed and disposed of.

Now that those statistics have proved to be the right ones, we are being told that we'll need more (and newer) space for the expected influx of new children.

The truth matters, and I believe the WHOLE truth needs to be discussed before we take on decades of debt payments.

There is a reason to build palaces, but the administration won't admit those reasons. If they had done so, if they paid attention to facts instead of dreams, I might have been convinced to support this debt referendum. But in the current case, I can't trust what they tell us.

That, among other reasons, is why I am offering my name as a candidate for the school board in the at-large seat. Those of us who oppose taking on $87 million in new debt and handing it over to this administration deserve a candidate who remembers that the Superintendent works for the School Board and not the other way around.

I do not question the good will of the many who are voting Yes to this new debt. I will not disparage other candidates for the school board who are urging you to take on $87 million in new debt. But I do offer you, the voters, a choice in the at-large school board race. I will be voting No on this referendum. And yes, those of us who do so love our schools and our children just as much as the PAC and the board members urging you to take on all this debt every year for the next few decades.