RAYTOWN'S LEADING NEWS SOURCE

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Paul’s Rant

There seemed to be some confusion with the football schedules in Raytown last week.  Someone scheduled both Raytown and Raytown South games at home.  

There was a problem, however.  Raytown only has one football field.  That meant there were two games played on the same field on the same night.  What a horrible situation!  How inconvenient for all involved.

Never fear.  The School District has solved the problem.  They will spend 2.9 million dollars and put in a football field at Raytown South.  We all know the boys will be smarter after they play on their own field.  Perhaps it will raise the sagging test scores.

You see, in the Raytown Quality Schools, the overall test scores went from 119 points out of 140 (85%) last year to 100.5 out of 140 (71.8%) this year.  Don’t believe me?  Check out the annual report released by the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education.
  
From where I’m sitting, almost $3,000,000 will buy a lot of books and hire a lot of remedial teachers.  Starting salaries in Raytown schools for new teachers with no experience is about $35,000 a year.

If the School District bought 1,000 books at $30 a pop and hired teachers for each elementary school, they would spend somewhere in the neighborhood of $775,000 per year.  The money wasted on a football field would fund teachers and books to raise the test scores for almost four years.

Greg’s Rant

TO THE READERS: Paul had much to say this week about the path chosen by the Raytown School District. Thought I would add my two cents worth.

There has been much hand-wringing and blame-placing in attempts to explain away why test scores of Raytown School District children have joined the lower echelon of area Kansas City School Districts. This  latest move by the School District is not because of a lack of money. It is because of a lack of leadership.

Children don’t go to school to play sports.  They go to school to learn.  That’s why sports are called extra-curricular activities. Someone has their priorities in the wrong order.

Who scheduled two high school football games at the same stadium on one night? If that is the problem, find the idiot and discipline him or her. Do not throw away 2.9 million dollars on a new football stadium less than two miles from one already available and pretend a problem has been solved.

High school sports are important for developing character and the value of teamwork to students. However, the adults in the room have a responsibility to keep focused on the real purpose of high school . . . to prepare our young to take the next step in joining and becoming productive members of society. 

From this writer's point of view, there is another purpose to the building of the stadium. As Mike Wallace of 60 Minutes fame once said, "if it looks like a duck, it quacks like duck, and it walks like a duck, it probably is a duck".

Sad to say, but this 2.7 million dollar boondoggle looks more like resume' building than any real concern for the district or its patrons.

Ignoring the greater goal of our schools and throwing money around recklessly is a step down a very slippery slope. What is worse, it gives a very bad example for our young to follow.

The School District should reverse this nonsensical decision to waste 2.9 million dollars of the taxpayer’s money.

Charter Commission News

The Raytown Charter Commission took historic steps at its last meeting when it set the number of signatures required to implement Initiative, Referendum and Recall petitions by the voting public.

For those unfamiliar with the terms, here is a brief description of Raytown is a Fourth Class city. Fourth Class cities are prohibited by state law to allow registered voters backed petitions to force ballot questions on the ballot. As a Charter City, voters would be allowed to bring questions directly to the ballot without City Council approval.

Just as important as the right to bring petitions for Initiative, Referendum and Recall is the amount of signatures needed to make them effective.

Originally the Commission considered thresholds of signed petitions at fairly high numbers. But after lengthy debate, Commissioners agreed on what most consider reasonable numbers for petition gatherers to gather to make ballot drives effective.

INITIATIVE PETITIONS . . . would require 8% of current registered voters to bring an issue directly from the voters to the ballot box.

REFERENDUM PETITIONS . . . would require 8% of current registered voters to bring a question requiring a vote of the people on an action taken by the City Council to the ballot box.

RECALL PETITIONS . . .  would require 17.5% of the current registered votes to bring a question requiring a vote of the people on the removal of an elected city official from office.

The benchmark was set higher for elected officials because Raytown’s city wards are so small an 8% threshold would be so ridiculously low that less than 250 voters could bring a recall vote to the ballot.

Charter Commissioners Mark Moore and Greg Walters and Jason Greene were the driving force behind the move to lower the numbers to “reachable” levels.

RAYTOWN REPORT CHOICES

Constitutional Amendments 2, 3, 6 and 10 
ON TUESDAY VOTERS WILL BE ASKED TO DECIDE THE FATE OF FIVE CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENTS. HERE ARE OUR CHOICES ON THE AMENDMENTS. PLEASE NOTE THAT ON AMENDMENT  4 PAUL AND GREG HAVE SPLIT THEIR ENDORSEMENT.

Constitutional Amendment # 2 will allow relevant evidence of prior criminal acts to be admissible in prosecutions for crimes of a sexual nature involving a victim less than eighteen years of age.  If a person has a history of abusing or molesting young people, the judge and jury should know this when making their decision.

VOTE YES . . . ON AMENDMENT NO. 2

Constitutional Amendment # 3 will force school districts to evaluate teachers by a standards based performance evaluation system for which each local school district must receive state approval to continue receiving state and local funding.  It will also force the school districts to dismiss, retain, demote, or promote teachers using the student performance data as part of the evaluation system.  This proposal does not account for the children who will enter the school district from other, unaccredited school districts.  The scores are the scores and the teachers will be evaluated on that alone.  It will also force teachers to teach only those subjects on the tests.  If there are no questions requiring the use of long division, would teachers really risk teaching it?  Probably not.  They will concentrate on those subjects they know will improve their evaluations. 

VOTE NO . . . ON AMENDMENT 3

Constitutional Amendment # 6 will permit voting in person or by mail for a period of six business days prior to and including the Wednesday before the Election Day in general elections, but only if the legislature and the governor appropriate and disburse funds to pay for the increased costs of such voting?  What are all the things wrong with this proposal?  Let me count them.  1) Early voting will only happen if the funds are appropriated and disbursed.  This should not be at the whim of the legislature or the governor or anyone else.   Either it will happen or it won’t.  Our ability to vote or not vote early is not a game.  2) We can already vote early.  It’s called absentee voting.  I did it myself once.  I was scheduled to be out of town on a business trip, so I voted early.  My neighbor is 95 years old and can’t always get out if the weather is bad.  The Election Board mails her ballot to her.  She fills it out and sends it back.  State governmental officials estimate start-up costs of about $2 million and costs to reimburse local election authorities of at least $100,000 per election.  That’s a lot of money to spend to reinvent the wheel. 
PAUL'S RECOMMENDATION . . . VOTE NO

GREG'S RECOMMENDATION . . . VOTE YES

Paul makes some valid arguments in his view of the amendment. However, I would remeind readers that any pre-voting plan would have start-up costs. Paul may not agree with how the plan is structured, but I see it as a step in the right direction. I especially appreciate that the Legislature has had the foresight to not get carried away with the early voting scheme. Some states allow pre-voting up to a month before the election. Most contests, particularly local races, are not completely developed until late in the campaign. Voting one month early does not allow voters to become fully informed about the issues.

Constitutional Amendment # 10 will require the governor to pay the public debt, and it will prohibit the governor from relying on revenue from legislation not yet passed when proposing a budget.  To restrict the governor from proposing a budget with only revenue approved by the legislature severely infringes on the checks and balances the Founding Fathers set up.   

VOTE NO . . . ON AMENDMENT 10

FIT BOTTOMED EATS

Baking Gluten-Free Bread 

That Really Is Delicious

Like I briefly mentioned in another post, years ago Ryan got into baking bread. And I mean, into it. I got him a copy of this book as a gift for Christmas, and he started making bread pretty much on the daily. And it was awesome. For all family events or gathering, there would be […] READ MORE

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