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Ellen Belcher is the Dayton Daily News opinion pages editor. She writes about state government, education, the environment, higher education and all things Dayton.
Martin Gottlieb is an editorial writer and columnist for the Dayton Daily News opinion pages. He focuses on the political process itself and does such national issues as war, the economy, taxes and Social Security, as well as a hodge-podge of local and state issues.Home > Blogs > A Matter of Opinion > Archives > 2009 > September > 20
Sunday, September 20, 2009
Editorial: Isaacs, Lee, Thompson, Lacey best picks for Dayton school board
2009 ELECTION
Dayton schools continue to struggle, but there are signs of hope.
Since a reform team known as Kids First won four seats on the school board in 2001, changes for the better have been sustained. The district is more professionally run, money is more likely to be spent on instruction, and families have better options among their school choices.
During the same period, the school board also has made blunders. It overpaid for too much downtown office space. It waited too long to ask for a levy, and then asked for too much, resulting in the request going down. Devastating cuts resulted. Overall, academic performance remains very poor. Dayton needs a school board with focus and energy.
The four incumbents seeking re-election — Yvonne Isaacs, Ronald Lee, Stacy Thompson and Joe Lacey — have mostly learned from mistakes and built on successes. Lacking a strong challenger this year, Ms. Isaacs, Mr. Lee, Ms. Thompson and Mr. Lacey are the best choices on Nov. 3.
Jim Weir, the only other candidate seeking one of the four seats, is the parent of a special needs student and seems genuinely interested in the success of the district. But he hasn’t immersed himself in the schools’ business, and he doesn’t have any concrete ideas to push. He isn’t ready for the job.
A more aggressive, better prepared challenger might have had a case to make against Mr. Lacey, who landed on the school board in 2005 following failed bids for other elective posts. Frequently, Mr. Lacey has been an obstacle, endlessly debating process questions and seeking to score political points. When given the chance to use his talents to help the board, he rarely comes through.
When Mr. Lacey complained, for instance, about the board’s process for reporting financial data to the state, his fellow board members responded by naming him head of a new audit committee. Mr. Lacey, an accountant, never formed the committee or held any meetings.
His signature concern on the board has been trying to save old buildings like Roosevelt and Julienne high schools from demolition. His interest in historic preservation is admirable, but board members should primarily be focused on student learning. He points to little evidence of his attention to that issue.
If he’s serious about being a school board member, Mr. Lacey must start to demonstrate more interest in what matters most.
Stacy Thompson and Ronald Lee have been quality players on the board, although primarily behind the scenes. Mr. Lee is the board’s point person for the district’s highly successful school construction program and has played a crucial role resolving a debate about requiring union wages on district projects. Ms. Thompson, as head of the board committee that evaluates the superintendent and treasurer, pressed for explicit review of efforts to make course work more challenging and standardized across all schools.
Both show genuine interest in focusing school leaders on student achievement. Ms. Isaacs blossomed into a leader as school board president for two years, and she remains a key voice in the board’s big decisions. During her tenure — this would be her third, four-year term — she has developed hard-earned insight. One of her strengths is her ability to learn from both mistakes and successes.
Collectively, the incumbents have made better decisions during the past two years. Recovering from the levy defeat in 2007, the board sought a smaller levy (which passed) and picked Kurt Stanic for superintendent (who has earned good reviews).
The school district can make a comeback if it builds on ideas that are working. Yvonne Isaacs, Ronald Lee, Stacy Thompson and Joe Lacey are the best choices to do that.
Permalink | Comments (8) | Post your comment | Categories: City of Dayton, Editorials, Education, Scott Elliott
Ellen Belcher: EPA is McCook Field neighbors’ only hope
If the U.S. EPA becomes your friend, you have a big problem.
That’s the bad news for Dayton’s McCook Field neighborhood. Some 400 families and businesses have groundwater under their property that contains, or could contain, a chemical solvent that produces dangerous vapors that can get trapped in their homes and buildings.
The property owners have been dealing with the threat — believed to have resulted from spills, leaks or dumping at an old Chrysler plant — for upward of three years.
Recently, the EPA gave the mostly low-income neighbors a lot of what they’ve been demanding. Two hundred homes already have vapor extraction systems, installed to suck out trichloroethylene or TCE vapors.
But some 200 other properties didn’t have alarming readings when they were tested previously, or they weren’t tested at all because, back then, they were deemed to be outside of the threatened area.
The problem, though, is that groundwater and chemical contamination move. The fear — make that, assumption — is that conditions have changed and the pollution is spreading in some form or fashion.
So there’s going to be another round of testing, to make sure people aren’t breathing nasty stuff.
This might sound like a logical thing to do. But until BVOCAL, a neighborhood group that formed in response to the problem, and Dayton’s aggressive Environmental Advisory Board made a fuss, the new testing wasn’t planned.
Picture the level of attention any middle-class, suburban neighborhood would be getting if 400 property owners were worried about the air in their homes and businesses; furious about what has happened to their real estate values; and frantic about the fact that a school in the neighborhood had to be closed because of harmful vapors.
Welcome to McCook’s nightmare.
The mess isn’t going to be fixed soon, but here are some reasons to pay attention to it — because of the lessons that can be learned and how patently unfair some things are:
— The U.S. EPA’s division of labor — between the people who handle environmental emergencies such as this and those who oversee permanent cleanups — doesn’t optimize the chance to fix problems quickly.
There are interim actions that can be taken now — without waiting for a detailed permanent cleanup plan that will take years to produce — that can protect public health, maybe save money. Putting in more interceptor wells to capture and treat contaminated water, for example, is something the city of Dayton wants. Removing dirt that’s known to be contaminated also is proactive.
Some decisions shouldn’t have to wait on an extensive study.
— Behr Dayton Thermal Products, in many ways, is taking the fall for Chrysler in this expensive mess. The TCE contamination probably occurred before Behr became the property owner.
In light of Chrysler’s bankruptcy and dicey financial position, getting much money out of it for the cleanup is as likely as getting blood out of a turnip.
Maybe Behr didn’t do its homework when it bought the factory, maybe it didn’t protect itself against this sort of thing in its real estate contract. But Behr is not the bad guy.
Meanwhile, the fact that Chrysler can’t really be held accountable is yet another way that Dayton is absorbing the fallout from the collapse of the auto industry.
— BVOCAL and especially neighborhood activist Jerry Bowling could be the subject of a movie. They’ve hounded public officials and educated themselves about topics lay people should not have to understand.
— The city’s Environmental Advisory Board is a competent and important check on the federal and state EPAs. Its members are serious people doing important volunteer work that protects people and neighborhoods and the region’s water supply.
The TCE plume — which the feds have designated to be among the worst environmental messes in the country — is about 1,600 feet from one of the wellfields that supplies the region’s drinking water. The contamination is moving away from, not toward, the wellfield. But, under drought conditions, the flow could change. The last time that happened was in the 1980s.
There are checks in place to discover contamination before it could get to any wells, but the bigger point is that this is sensitive territory, and anything that can be done now to anticipate problems later is smart.
The U.S. EPA has good people on this problem. But they’re most effective if the community stays on them. Unfortunately, lots of communities are finding they need the EPA to be their friend.
Permalink | Comments (3) | Post your comment | Categories: Auto industry, City of Dayton, Columns, Ellen Belcher
