Saturday, October 6, 2018

AREA EDUCATOR GOES AFTER SCHURING ON ECOT SCANDAL!


FINALLY!  AN EDUCATOR WITH "INTESTINAL FORTITUDE"



Some of Stark County's "most political people" are public school superintendents.

As the likes of state Representative J. Kirk Schuring work to undermine the financial viability of Stark's 17 public school districts, "mum is the word" on the part of many  Stark County educational leaders when he and fellow Republican Scott Oelslager make educational setting public officials.

This blog focuses on Schuring and his being challenged by Democrat Lauren Friedman in their race for 29th Ohio Senate District election.

Privately these so-called leaders of public education will whisper to you, me and others:

that the undermining of the financial stability Ohio public education by the Republican-led Ohio General Assembly (OGA) as vote-supported by Schuring  undermining the ability of area educational leaders to provide quality in Stark County public school education.

But when either shows up in the district;  "mum is the word," if not sycophantic words of praise seems all to often to be the way Stark educational leaders interact with this duo.

In the meantime, you and I have to pass additional levies to make up for state mandated "sharing with the profit making" private sector our educational resource dollars.

And that is not all.

Schuring has supported economic development in part at the expense of diverting public school district property taxes (TIFs) to fund economic development.

And, of course, there are those "unfunded" state mandates, many of which have been supported by Schuring and Oelslager over their combined 60 years in the OGA, that further diminish the financial viability of Stark public school districts.

Not all Ohio school superintendents are cowed by the state legislature on unfunded mandates witness the successful effort of superintendents in Ohio Senate District 12 to gain the implementation of Senate Bill 216 which becomes effective on November 2, 1918.

Noteworthy is that in the instance of SB 216 both Schuring and Oelslager supported the legislation.

Stark County does have one educator who has been all over Schuring in particular for his support of ECOT.

He appears to "stand alone" as an educator going public in a scathing assessment of Schuring and his support of Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow (ECOT) to the financial detriment of Stark County public education.

Recently, Soper sent a "letter to the editor" of The Repository.

Apparently, with good reason to believe it will not "see the light of day," (i.e. Rep publisher James Porter is said by SCPR sources "to love Schuring;" moreover, Porter on June 1st hired Schuring wife Darlene onto The Rep's staff)  Soper has made the letter available to The Stark County Political Report (SCPR, The Report), to wit:

From: greg soper
Sent: Thursday, October 4, 2018 7:57:58 PM
To: Letters, Cantonrep
Subject: Letter to the Editor

On November 6 it is time to remind all politicians that they are elected to serve the interests of taxpayers and not those of special interests and campaign donors.  

We shall do this by electing Lauren Friedman State Senator for the 29th District.

Kirk Schuring has betrayed the taxpayers of the 48th House District when he chose to stand with Bill Lager and ECOT in its battle with the Ohio Department of Education.

 In 2014, Kirk Schuring took $12,592 from ECOT.  The battle was the attendance audit ODE was doing of ECOT during the last two years. ECOT inflated its enrollment nearly 100% and all told stole [according to Soper in a clarification of his use of the world "stole," "Soper's opinion" on the basis of allegations made by others) nearly 60 million dollars from Ohioans.

Locally, ECOT took nearly 3 million dollars from Stark County School Districts.

 In 2016, Kirk Schuring acting on behalf of Bill Lager, went to ODE in an attempt to get ODE to stop the attendance audit. Had he been successful, no one would have noticed the fraud ECOT was doing.

In July of 2016, Kirk Schuring told the Columbus Dispatch” He was disappointed a reasonable agreement could be reached. On four occasions, I asked Schuring to explain what a reasonable agreement was. Not once did Schuring respond to me. He was too busy serving the interests of Bill Lager. Because of his relationship with Lager, one would expect Schuring was attempting to broker a sweetheart deal for ECOT.

In addition, I asked for his reason for standing with ECOT event though it had a negative impact Stark County Schools, still no reply. Oh wait, my bad, Schuring did not have one reason, he had 12,592 reasons.

Representing taxpayers has become a burden for Kirk. Let’s relieve him of this burden and elect Lauren Friedman State Senator of the 29th District.

Greg Soper
North Canton, Ohio

Noteworthy is Schurings deep sixing Soper's questions.

The SCPR also experiences Schuring's non-responses to various questions.

Sounds pretty arrogant, no?

That's what 25 years in the Ohio General Assembly will do to a person.

The SCPR believes that Schuring's challenger has between "slim and no chance" to defeat Schuring in his bid to continue (by playing "cutesy" with Ohio's term limits law) to be a member of the Ohio General Assembly.  This go round, in the Ohio Senate.

But there have been stranger things happen.

Here is Friedman's response to the Soper letter when presented to her:

I know many people feel the way Greg does about the career politicians representing Stark County. 

I know that, in November, we can finally give a voice to these concerns.

I would like to point out that the problem is much worse than Greg has said; $14,696,687.00 was stolen by ECOT from Stark County's schools over a six-year period. 

I want to return funding to our schools through a Constitutional funding plan- something my opponent failed to do, because, he said, of "partisan politics." 

I don't think our children's education should be subject to partisan politics. I hope the parents and teachers of Stark County know that I am an ally to them.The SCPR applauds this U.S. Naval graduate (originally from Lake Township; now hails from Jackson) for taking on Schuring.

Stark's educators could put her over over the top November 6th.

Greg Soper is the lodestar for Stark County educators  to follow in sending election day message to the OGA that taking away from public education funding and funneling the take away into "for profit" charter school ventures can be quite costly.

The SCPR expects Stark's leading public school educators to continue to complain in private but unwilling to participate in a defeat a legislative enabler-in-chief on the issue of diverting taxpayer dollars to "for profit" charter education.

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