[Vision2020] A Lawsuit to Slash School Funding 'For the Kids'?

[Tom Hansen]

>From today's (May 13, 2007) Lewiston Tribune -

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A lawsuit to slash school funding 'for the kids'?
Jim Fisher

Sunday, May 13, 2007

If Gerald Weitz wants to call himself "Moscow's most prominent supporter of
public education," that's fine. No one will dispute that he has done a lot
to help the city's schools, much of it from his own pocket.

But when Weitz says his lawsuit to deprive the Moscow School District of up
to a third of its operating money is "for the kids," he deserves to be
called on it. It is impossible to see how he is doing anything more than
furthering his own my-way-or-the-highway approach to schools - at the kids'
expense.

Weitz, whose former service on the school board was marked by repeated
resignations and reversals, has strong ideas about how things should be run.
Nothing wrong with that, except when things don't go his way, he turns on
those he purports to help.

In a prepared statement explaining his lawsuit, he says he is "teaching the
local school district a serious lesson." He adds he is "tired of watching
the school board and its administration skirt the law."

But are they skirting the law? Weitz's suit is based on charges about how
the district conducted its levy elections that are so arcane few nonlawyers
venture an opinion about them. And you certainly won't find one here.

There is little question, however, what his prevailing in court would do to
the Moscow School District. It would put it in the situation of a district
that has lost both federal timber money and repeated levy elections.

The number of teachers would be reduced, and more students would be crowded
into classrooms. Programs like those helping gifted and talented students
and putting teacher teams together would disappear. Students'
extracurricular activities would be sapped.

What does Weitz do when he and a neighbor have a disagreement, whip the
neighbor's dog?

Moscow's school patrons, who have repeatedly shown their support for
well-financed schools by voting with their pocketbooks, deserve better than
this. But more important, their children who attend those schools deserve
better. 

Weitz's current tantrum, with its inflated rhetoric, is reminiscent of his
2005 demand that voters recall Moscow city Councilors Linda Pall, Nancy
Chaney and John Dickinson from office.

"We will crush them," Weitz fulminated at the time. "They don't care about
our community or our children."

That raises the question whether anyone meets Weitz's standard of care for
children, other than himself. If, after filing this suit, he remains
"Moscow's most prominent supporter of public education," public education in
Moscow is in much worse shape than anyone guessed.

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Seeya round town, Moscow.

Tom Hansen
Moscow, Idaho

"I think one of the best ways to support education is to make successful
private schools like Logos prosper through tax exemption."

- Donovan Arnold (July 11, 2005)