Unfiltered Comment

I declined to comment to the tribune reporters at my school board victory party. I have been misquoted and libeled enough to know better. During this campaign, Mr. Bangert and his tabloid claptrap continuously attempted my political murder.

I asked the tribune reporters to tune in here, to the pirate, for my appraisal of the issues. My comments here will not be misconstrued before the public hears them.

The problem has been described by mark twain as those who do not read the newspaper are uninformed, those who do are misinformed, somethings don’t change huh? My question to mr. Bangert is with over $20k of in kind advertising in his newspaper every single day for the last few months, how did he still lose on 3A by over 66%? If I were a current Tribune advertiser, I would be rethinking my marketing strategy.

The wasteful and misguided 3A went down badly. In this eelection, property owners won. As I work with the board of education, the district will soon begin winning. But as I said in my campaign, no worries, they will bring it back from the dead again next year. Drag it out of its dark grave, slap the dust off, pin a sunset clause to the corpses chest and prop it up again.

But in my race AND the fight against 3A, I can not take credit for winning, save maybe finding extraordinary people to be my friends. My schoolbaord race was close only because of an idiosyncrasy in the voting mechanism. Thank you to so many who encouraged others to vote only once for a schoolboard member. If we had not exposed this quirk, and gotten so many to vote for only one candidate instead of using all 4 votes, I know I would have lost badly as it amounted to a 33% headstart for my opponents.

I look forward to working with the other members of the board of education. I have based my entire campaign on honesty, openness and neutrality. There will be cuts. We have had the foxes guarding the henhouse much too long. As I have heard from so many silent voices within the system, district 6 is top heavy. We have tons of waste and I will find it and offer it to my colleagues to do as they will with it. They have already steeled themselves for my arrival. I can not out vote them, I am one against six , but I can make darn sure the public knows what’s going on and who is accountable so that, if need be, at the polls in 2 years we can get the majority. In this endeavor I need your help. I need others with more experience and who know where the waste is to step forward and contact me.

I am starting a monthly meeting at different schools. I want to spend quality, intense time with teachers and students and meet and listen to them where they are at. I will work with the district to bring these meetings into the schools themselves. As I promised in my campaign, I need volunteers to find out what is working at other schools. We will find out how, for instance, a private school right here in Greeley is graduating kids at the 97% percentile academically and doing it for less than half distrtict 6 per pupil funding. They also accept mentally handicapped and minority students.

For those of you who did not vote for me. I want your confidence and even your approval. I encourage the rest of my colleagues on the schoolboard to get beyond their emotional negativity and be open about new ideas. We all have certain common goals. Nobody wants waste or distrust in our schools. We all want content teachers and administrators. We all know we need some major changes. We want to be proud of our schools and we CAN be proud of them. And I believe if we are ready to forgo the status quo, we can.