School district fooling voters on closures
The Manatee County School District has a problem. They have too many empty student stations.
The state of Florida does a survey every year, and the most recent survey indicates that Manatee County has more than 10,000 empty student stations. How does our school board address this? Do they find a way to redistrict our schools to relieve the overcrowded ones and take advantage of these extra desks?
No! No such thing. They close schools to rid themselves of those pesky empty seats.
To justify closing these schools, they arbitrarily declare them unsafe. But where are the expert reports that these schools are not usable? Where are the engineering reports to verify this claim? There are none.
As a matter of fact, one expert report on condition of schools said that one school could be refurbished for $7.5 million and the other for $3.6 million. The reasoning of the school board is don’t spend $11 million fixing up schools, close them and spend $40 million for new schools.
So, now the taxpayers have to maintain two empty schools for a few years until they deteriorate to the point that we have to spend additional millions to demolish them.
The school board is incapable of managing our tax dollars with any fiscal integrity. Vote “no” on the sales tax initiative. In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act. — George Orwell
Linda Schaich
Palmetto
This story was originally published September 22, 2016 at 1:33 PM with the headline "School district fooling voters on closures."