Speed Gibson

I think John Hinderaker of PowerLine said recently that a moderate Democrat is the political equivalent of the unicorn. He's never seen either one of them. Rush Limbaugh has argued from day one that what few moderates might actually exist are too few in number to even register in polls and elections.

I offer Channel 2's latest "Almanac" program as a case in point. The political panel featured three moderates, Curt Johnson, Dean Barkley, and Peter Hutchinson. I voted for Hutchinson over Tim Pawlenty and Mike Hatch in 2006, preferring what I thought was a reasoning, predictable "moderate" to the other two unpredictable candidates.

I must say, I was surprised and disappointed in Hutchinson's performance. There he was, a grown man, someone I thought intelligent, well read, and capable of independent thought, claiming that President Obama is a centrist. He then went on to praise his G-20 summit performance, citing events that never happened. It was nothing but White House talking points.

Then we have Dean Barkley, who still acts like he has his old job working for Governor Jesse Ventura. Ventura had shown the way - raise sales taxes - but of course neither major party would listen. Whose administration raised spending the most from 1994 to 2006? Carlson? Pawlenty? No, it was Barkley's common man "moderate" idol, Governor Ventura. Yes, we got rebates, but most of the "windfall" surpluses was spent, and the "Big Plan" is a big part of the deficit today.

Curt Johnson, former head of the Metropolitan Council was soft-spoken, but clearly had no problem raising taxes this year. You may remember that he won praise from liberals for flipping on Light Rail, like Prime Minister Pawlenty also did. By any reasonable definition, a moderate should never support anything with an extraordinarily lopsided cost - benefit ratio like Light Rail.

So, do moderates exist? Before answering, let me use myself as a last example. I oppose the local property tax caps that most in the GOP support. I would give school boards the same power to levy property taxes that the city and county have, requiring referendums only for bonding. Does that make me less than a purebred, at least a little bit moderate? Not at all. I seek the same government restraint and accountability all Republicans embrace. I differ only in how best to get there.

You know what the real difference is? I don't claim to be a moderate. I claim to be an American, a Conservative, and a Republican. It's the people who claim to be a moderate that should stand up and just admit what they really are.

The Referendum has passed. The right-sizing has been made. The resulting program restorations have been adopted. The Legislature has yet to weigh in, but the 2009-2010 Budget can and will now take shape. And, I can resume my T.E.R.M. paper to see if I can make District 281's finances more understandable.

As a State Legislator recently admitted on a radio interview, school finances for whatever the reason are much harder to interpret than say, city budgets. I like a car analogy. You go to a dealer and ask, "How much for that Bulgemobile Sultan over there?" The salesman gives you figures on how much they pay for the engines, transmissions, axles, fenders, seats, brake assemblies, air conditioning compressers, and so on. He shows you charts of what the assembly line workers make, and average hours per station. He lists the General and Administrative costs, Research and Development expenditures, and taxes paid, plus the transportation costs in putting that Sultan on the showroom floor. Another book lists all the buildings involved, from the factory to the dealership, with maintenance and utility costs shown. And none of it answers the original question: how much for the car? How much to educate my child?

In response to some recent commenters, I think I'm going to start with transportation. Again, the recent decisions should help because we won't have co-mingled operations like the Robbinsdale Area Learning Campus (RALC) any more. The RALC currently houses a middle school operation and the Robbinsdale Spanish Immersion (RSI) program, which is K-8 today. The alignment of the elementary / middle / high school boundaries also helps.

Starting this fall, there will be six categories of Transportation:

1. Daily, to your assigned school
   
2. RSI, from throughout the District to the re-purposed Sunny Hollow building.
   
3. IB (International Baccalaureate), from non-IB areas to IB schools.
   
4. AP (Advanced Placement), from non-AP areas to AP schools.
   
5. Events, for field trips, away games, etc.
   
6. Other - transportation for ECFE (Early Childhood Family Education), Community Education, or other non K-12 activity.
   

Some of these like IB and AP are in flux I believe, either being phased out or possibly restored. I will find out. Some of these are essential, like Daily and Events. Some are not, like RSI and IB in my opinion. I'll sort this out when I get the figures assembled.

Teachers are the focal point of my T.E.R.M. paper. A commenter asked, am I talking the basics like English and Mathematics? Social studies and Art? Special education? Sports? Where do I draw the line?

Good question, but not one to be answered here. All of those subjects are important, but that's a subjective assessment at every level. For my project, I don't think it matters that much because the union contracts are such that the district spends about the same for all subjects, at least during the 6+ hour prime time.

No, I think the place to start is with time, the student's time, from the time stepping on the bus in the morning to the step stepping off in the afternoon. I call it "face time." I want to know who at any given minute is in charge of the student and what service is being performing. That will be the bus driver at times, a playground supervisor at other times, but mostly, teacher time.

This fits my "sales and sales supporting" dichotomy I presented in my first post. Just as the salesperson at Dayton's was the predominant point of customer contact, so is the teacher the predominant point of contact with the student - the customer, if you will.

So what I need to put together is the answer to "how was your day at school?" - one minute at a time.

The elections are over. The District 281 Referendum passed, both questions. It's time to get back to what was my original intent in studying the District this past year. It's time to write my T.E.R.M. paper, where I will develop a Transparent Expenditure Reporting Model for making the District 281 financials more understandable by the general public.

I will do this gradually, of course. The District's 2008-2009 budget is almost 200 pages. The T.E.R.M. paper should be more like a typical corporate annual report to shareholders, and no larger. That's a lot of cabbage to boil down.

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I begin with a story from my corporate youth, when I worked for the Northwest's Great Store: Dayton's. The management always had a clear dichotomy in its structure and operation: sales and sales supporting. That applied to people, expenses, capital, even square feet. This wasn't meant to snub the support aspects. It was to keep us all focused on the customer, who almost totally dealt with sales people on the floor. If a customer bought it, a salesperson sold it.

If you weren't on the front lines making sales, you were there to support those who were. We bought the goods, mopped the floors, manned the receiving dock, dipped the strawberries, designed the store windows, ran the computers, kept the books, and developed - Santa Bear!

Everything we did in sales support was to make the store a destination for our customers and give the salespeople what they needed to keep them coming to Dayton's.

***

So it is with education, that most basic of human interactions that differentiates us from the animal kingdom: a teacher teaching a learning learner. Just as the salesperson was the focal point of Dayton's, so is the teacher the focal point of K-12 education. And if you're not a teacher, you're doing something to help that teacher.

Let me go further, for some may think they are directly serving the children, driving the school bus or preparing lunch for example. Not really, not in my T.E.R.M. view. The bus driver brings the students to the teacher. The luncheon cook satisfies primal hunger so the students can function better in the afternoon. Without a teacher, there is no point in a school organization driving children around or preparing meals for them. L'insegnante è tutto!