SCHOOL OF HARD KNOCKS
Just what the hell is going on? The GSR, the city’s only investigative newspaper, has tried to lay off the School Board and the Superintendent. Still, they won’t let us, nor the seeming cretin who serves as the financial control over both school districts under the supposed command of Peter Wilson. That honorable man. Here’s the litany of more than shocking events and/or rumors about what the hell is going on over there as the financial director states that another referendum is necessary to pay regular school expenses:
- The financial director of the district just got a raise to $132,000 and promoted his wife, formerly a teacher, to principal for $130,000. Family draws on the schools? How about $262,000 a year, plus about fifty grand annually for benefits?
- Second vote, first one failed unaccountably, and Wilson gets $233,000 a year for this small collection of school districts.
- The financial guy hires his father, who runs a Greek restaurant in town on Main Street, to work one day as a crossing guard for $1,500.00, and that’s after he quit as a school janitor!
- Teachers are coming out of the woodwork to talk about stipends paid to administrators, or even some teachers who threaten to complain, yet the districts will not release records of stipends paid, to whom, and how much, and when, and why four board members are saying quietly that they never signed for any of them as required by law?
- The school bus driver who yelled at her riders, all kids, to shut up, and when they did not, she slammed on the brakes, dumping them all out of their seats with their stuff. No parents were called. No board members were called. Nothing was done to the driver except transfer her to another school district, where she is still driving school buses to this day.
- Twenty-three teachers have resigned following the end of the last school year, almost all of them senior and much decorated for great teaching service. Anyone see the television series called Band of Brothers, where all the sergeants in the Army Easy Company in WWII training resigned because the leadership was so abusive and bad? We, at the GSR, see a parallel.
- What in hell happened to the money given to the districts by the public in the last referendum? Where’s the accounting for that money?
Sure as hell did not go for pay raises for teachers or lunch money for the students, or any of that. Where’s the accounting for that, and it better be coming, or the districts are not going to get a penny more. No revenue until these issues are settled.
The GSR may be the last holdout as a real investigative newspaper, which is a shame, because the staff, even though seldom loved by that paper, always thought it was really needed by the city and its residents.
The GSR liked being a tabloid supplementing it, but that father/mother figure of an institution (Lake Geneva Regional News) is fading fast, and the GSR has to stand up. The GSR is not after Wilson, the financial guy, his father, or the guy’s wife. The GSR is after the truth so the public can decide what is best for the children, teachers, and all those not getting big paychecks, stipends, or even more (gas station cards for the administrators so they don’t have to pay for gas…yes, it gets worse, so read the next issue for that one).
