They are only associated because they have a common donor. So what? Are you bothered by that association? George Soros is much more ingrained in the manipulation of our electoral system, and frankly the economic systems of other countries as well, while he gets uber rich off his exploitive "donations". Yet not a peep from you about him. Why?

It is, but none of that was evident in the article you posted. So what is your point about the article? The average person who read the article would never be able to determine that the Tea Party actually had anything to do with the school board, and frankly I am still not convinced. My point stands. The article did not support your assertions.

Here is a link to that event of the Ohio Mom being convicted of a felony
after sending her daughters to a better school that was not her assigned neighborhood school.

She has been sentenced to community service, but will not
be allowed to perform a service to the community in the future.

This qualifies for a "cut off your nose..." judgment.

Time
Ohio Mom Jailed for Sending Her Kids to a Better*School
By: Madison Gray

Williams-Bolar, 40, and her two children live in housing projects in Akron, Ohio.
For two years, she sent them to school in the Copley-Fairlawn district,
where her father lived, because it was a safer environment --
the high crime rate in her area drove her decision.

The suburban school district hired a private investigator to find their residential records
and it turned out she listed the children as living in that district, although they actually stayed with her.

Technically, that qualifies as a felony since she falsified records,
and Judge Patricia Cosgrove sentenced her to two concurrent five-year prison sentences.
She suspended the sentence, though, in favor of a 10-day jail sentence,
80 hours of community service and three years probation.

She had been working as a teaching assistant for special needs children
and earning a teaching degree, but since she is now a convicted felon,
under Ohio law she cannot earn that degree.

Both girls, now aged 16 and 12, attended schools in Copley-Fairlawn
from August 2006 to June 2008, but now attend school elsewhere,
according to the Akron Beacon-Journal.

This is right in my backyard. Not many people around here on her side. In effect, she stole tens of thousands of dollars in education from another school district. Ohio public school system funding is f'ed up and everyone knows it. This lady trying to cheat the system to get ahead while others play fair gains her little support amongst other area parents. Race had nothing to do with it. The other school system is better funded because it's a richer area (higher property taxes, main source of Ohio edu funding), and so she tried to cheat her way in and got caught with her hand in the cookie jar. Simple as that. If she's willing to falsify records, I don't want her as a teacher in my school district to begin with. Good riddance.

Her father lived in the district and so was paying whatever taxes.

By that logic she also saved her "neighborhood" many thousands of $ by not having her kids that district.

Six of one, half dozen of the other.

another opinion on the subject.

Source ???

Everyone is going to see this case differently, including the judge.
Here are some bits from another article:


http://www.nationalpost.com/news/wor...718/story.htmlt (Canada)
Mother jailed for sending children to better school

The woman told CNN the family considered her father's house one of their homes.
"My primary residence was both places. I stayed at both places," she said in an interview at the Summit County Jail.

Her father, Edward Williams, said the children did live with him so he believed the family was within the law.
Then officials asked her to pay US$30,000, the estimated cost of the four years of schooling received by her children without her paying taxes.

Common Pleas Judge Patricia Cosgrove said the prosecutor's office refused
to consider reducing the charges to misdemeanours during numerous closed-door talks
to resolve the case outside court, the Akron Beacon reported.

It was just an opinion from someone at the end of a different article.

There are a ton of article on it now, many spliced from each other it seems.
IF what that one person said was true, then it may be a lil different situation than the liberal posts conclude.
On the face, I don't like it, but I have a feeling that there is more to this than I've seen so far.

Not exactly. The districts budget based on reported number of school aged children. Her district was expecting those kids, so it levied taxes based on those children being there. They already had the money, paid for by all the other residents of the district. In effect wasting their hard earned money on higher than necessary taxes. This puts the hurt on the residents who pay for "ghost students".

The opposite occurred in the fraudulent district. They were not expecting those students, therefore did not take them into account for the school tax levy. Which creates an extra burden on them, hence the charge for $30k. No such thing as a free lunch.

My manager was trying to get the bag out of a soap dispenser, but just couldn't get the button just right...
When another associate asked what he was doing, I responded "Molesting the soap dispenser."
Manager was not amused. (I still think its a pretty good joke)

I know very little of the details in this particular case. But I do know at least two economically poorer families that are using the grandparents' house in this neighborhood as their "primary address" in order to get their kids into our high-quality school. As a parent, I can't possibly fault them for doing what's best for their kids.

That logic only works for the first year they're in the "wrong" school. After that, the new school is expecting them, since they had them the year before, and the old school is no longer accounting for them. As far as everyone is concerned, on paper they do actually live at the grandparents' house.

IMHO, this is the bit that you should be getting angry about; giving the children of the poor a second rate education.

I'd look down on you (USA) for this, except we have a very similar outcome (by different method) here. :(

Except this type of thing can go on for years before it is caught, leaving the school districts a lot to catch up on.


Believe me many people are very unhappy with the current funding. The Ohio lottery is a great example of shitty politicians not working in favor of the education system. It was created to allow extra funding to schools, especially the disadvantaged ones in low income areas. Instead the state said hey we got this extra income for education now, let's strip a bunch away for other programs. Which in effect left the amount of funding for schools unchanged. Everyone knows the current system of funding is broken and unconstitutional, and every election there are promises to fix it. But nothing changes. So with the anger over the current funding inequality issues already brewing, there is little room for compassion for someone who cheats the system and causes further problems.

Funding of schools is a very important issue,
but that was not what originally made me angry,
or what subsequent news has increased my aggravation.

There's enough ambiguity in the legal situation to call for someone
in authority to exercise at lease a small bit of discretion.

* The district could have simply refused to admit the kids in the next semester.
Period. And it becomes Mom's problem to resolve

* The district could have deemed the two girls live in the father's home.
Period. End. Done.

* The "receiving district" could receive reimbursement from the "sending" district.
Period. End. Done.

* The D.A. could have reduced the charges to misdemeanors with a fine to be set by the judge.
Period. End. Done.

* The justice authorities could have released the Mom,
on bail or her own recognisance, not 10 days in jail
The bad PR starts and grows from this.

I think the trial judge tried to deal to act with modicum of wisdom.
Whatever misdeed the Mom may have committed, it does not meet my sniff test
for a $30,000 fee, for jail time, or for a permanent felony blot on her record.
I hope the she appeals and can get the conviction overturned or expunged from her record.

This case continues to look like covert racial and/or class bigotry.
If not, it demonstrates incompetence along the entire chain of authorities, except the judge.
And I don't believe Ohio's bad PR will be overcome until someone fixes the situation.

As someone who lives a couple counties over from Wake County (I don't have a dog in that race), but as someone who pays NC taxes, I think that the argument about the tea-party is moot. I don't really care if the school board is Republican, Democrat, or Socialist. It simply doesn't matter.

What DOES matter is that Tedesco and the board want to bring back neighborhood (community) school zones. So your kids go to school with their friends in the neighborhood. Which I think is a great idea.

Historically, the desegregation laws were a good thing, and coming from a good place, namely a desire to integrate kids. I'm down with that. But it's been 60 years, and while I'm not naive enough to believe that racism is dead, I'm also of the firm belief that we should NOT be busing kids 90 minutes each way to a different middle school BASED ON RACE.

So a couple of years ago, they changed the standard from Ethnicity to "socio-economic" factors. They stated a target of no more than 40% of student on free/reduced lunch (FRL) per school. So, see now they could say that it's not RACIAL, it's ECONOMICS. Although everyone knew that the majority of the FRL kids just happened to be black.Gotta love political correctness. But that still left the problem of bussing POOR kids 90 minutes each way to school.

So Tedesco is coming at it like this: neighborhood zoning would provide a savings (currently, WFSD pays quite a few million in transportation (fuel, maintenance, driver salaries for all those 90 minute each way trips, etc).) So lets stop bussing kids and put that savings into the underperforming schools AND build the 12 new schools that we have budgeted into areas that..wait for it...need more schools.

I think it's a perfectly sound, logical way to do it.

My catholic, conservative co-worker, however, feels that "community" zoning is going BACK to the bad old days of segregation. Everyone knows that people who live in a certain area tend to be a certain ethnicity, whether that be a socio-economic reason, a cultural reason, or a racist reason. He thinks that if a 5 block square area for example, is 98% black in makeup, then they SHOULD bus kids out and "bring in" white kids, hispanic kids and asian kids to make up a more racially diverse school.

I think that's bullshit. There is a really good middle school out in my county, and I specifically moved out to that "zone" because I wanted my kid to go to that school. And he did. But if my coworker had his way, my kid would have been bussed to the shit school up county simply based on the fact that he's white. That's racism to me, pure and simple.

Let's spend our energy, focus, and money on making ALL the school in the district equally awesome, instead of spending that money on transporting a white kid 90 minutes to a "shitty school" so a black kid can spend the same 90 minutes on a bus going to a "great school". Make them all great schools.