pinion Letter to the Editor: More Smoke and Mirrors?

The School District continues to follow their practice of obscuring the facts with misleading information. Look at the headline ”Manatee Schools cut 6 Administrators.“ This has appeared six times in the newspapers, each time worded carefully, if a little differently. It leads one to assume that they are cutting six administrative positions.  

This is not so. Two Directors who were let go, were dismissed for performance and will be replaced. No positions were eliminated. One of these Directors has already been placed in another position within the district. Two positions will be combined into one. One of these has simply been moved somewhere else in the system. Another one of these "cuts“ was not on the payroll, but working as an outsourced employee - while collecting retirement benefits and being paid $90,000 for the present position.

Bob Gagnon visited about 10 schools and formed his opinion after interviewing only 1/6 of the schools. The statement that the district has reduced spending by $60 million in the past four years is not supported by the statistics reported on page 48 of the Annual Budget for 2011/2012. The actual numbers for the general fund are 2008/09 - $328 million; and for 2009/10 - $319 million. It looks like the real reduction is only $9 million - a sad shortfall from the declared $60 million.
 
Judi Hood
Manatee County