An Ol’ Broad’s Ramblings
Your Tax Dollars Hard At Work
Columbus schools tapped stimulus for room rentals
Columbus City Schools have more than 120 buildings designed for teaching.
But in a three-day effort to teach its teachers, the district is renting banquet halls, high-end hotels and conference centers — using almost $145,000 in federal grant dollars.
Teach teachers what? Didn’t they spend a few years in school to learn to teach their subject of choice?
The district will pay up to $8,000 to rent Villa Milano, a marble-clad banquet hall with enough “classic elegance” that “you will think you have been transported to a romantic Italian Villa,” according to the hall’s Web site.
Other sites include: the Hyatt Regency ($23,000); the Greater Columbus Convention Center and the Hyatt on Capitol Square ($25,000 each); the Quest Business and Conference Center at Polaris ($17,000); and the Aladdin Temple near Easton ($12,500).
The district will pay the speakers more than $1.4 million in federal stimulus money, part of $64.2 million that Columbus schools have been awarded from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.
One company, the International Center for Leadership in Education, will receive $468,258.
Sheridan WorldWise, a company run by former Columbus school board President Dave Dobos, will collect $84,500 to give several presentations. He will talk about the college-admissions process and the SAT and ACT exams, while other WorldWise-affiliated speakers will talk on other subjects.
These people have never heard of renting chairs to put in rooms where the desks may be too small? There are no Holiday Inns in Columbus? Days Inn? (emphasis mine)
Norris said the federal government encourages districts to use Title I money for professional development to improve student achievement and school-leader effectiveness.
You mean they are using hard earned tax dollars to indoctrinate the indoctrinators?
Schools will shut down as all district educators attend the workshops, the first one this Wednesday. The other two will take place in February and May.
Ever wonder why there are so many kids running around during weekdays in recent years? Well, this is why! Teachers can’t be bothered to go in on a Saturday. If this stuff was so important, then they could take a Saturday out of their lives to attend these things.
The district received 245 proposals from those interested in leading training sessions, with 33 individuals or organizations winning work. The speakers were selected by the district’s various curriculum departments, Norris said. Asked whether the newly renovated South or East high schools — with auditoriums, cafeterias, gymnasiums capable of seating hundreds, with scores of adjacent classrooms — couldn’t have substituted for the Hyatt and the like, Superintendent Gene Harris said no.
Well, of course not! Why use all that money to buy supplies for the students, like say, maybe….TEXT BOOKS? Aren’t there under privileged students who need simple basics, like a backpack filled with essentials for school?
A proposal for the district to convert an aging building at the Fort Hayes campus into a 2,500-seat theater might help reduce the need to rent outside space in the future, Harris said. The hall would be used for student theatrical productions and staff meetings. The school board voted 6-1 to table the theater proposal last week.
Of course it was. Ya know why? Cuz it makes too much bloomin’ sense!
William Bainbridge, chief executive officer of SchoolMatch, a Dayton-based educational-research firm, agreed with Harris that because of the layout, acoustics and lighting in some schools, they might not be best place to hold a conference.
“I don’t know that they need the Hyatt,” he added.
Gee, y’think!?!?
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