Liberty school board candidates agree district needs more money

By Jeanne Starmack

LIBERTY — One incumbent and four newcomers are vying for three seats on the Liberty Board of Education.

Money, or lack thereof, is foremost on all their minds, with the state’s school-voucher system the culprit that’s stealing funds away from the district, they say.

A 9.9-mill levy on the November ballot doesn’t really have much of a chance of passing, they believe.

In the last election, a 9.9-mill levy was voted down 80 percent to 20 percent.

What’s left to do, if not pass a levy? The five candidates discussed how to deal with the district’s financial problems.

Michael Ceci, 41, has never run for office before. He did so this time, he said, because he noticed in a previous election that there were only three candidates running for three seats.

“We need a choice,” he said.

Ceci said the school board needs to take the advice in a July 2009 performance audit, but instead, the board worried that unfavorable comments in the audit would keep a levy from passing.

“That shows lack of leadership,” he said.

Ceci acknowledged, though, that he doesn’t know if the current board has a plan for meeting recommendations of the performance audit. He said he does not attend school board meetings because he doesn’t want to be influenced by what the board is doing now. He said he wants to use “my own judgment walking into it.”

Ceci said the school district is always going to need more money. “But that doesn’t mean we have to ask residents for it,” he said. “Let’s look at things differently — consolidating administrative costs.”

He said he will not vote for the levy.

David Hight, 44, also is running for office for the first time.

Hight also said he does not support the levy. “People said ‘no’ pretty strongly,” he pointed out.

He said he favors competing to keep students who are being lost through open enrollment and school vouchers and to win back the ones who already have been lost.

He also talked about a possible lawsuit against the state to recover the money the district has lost.

“We have to account for a pro-rated loss and tighten our belts,” he said.

“We’re going to have to do what’s necessary — pay to play, doing away with some extracurricular activities,” he said.

Gloria Lang, 77, is the lone incumbent running. She has been on the board since 2006.

“I decided to try to continue the things I’ve been working for — the survival of our school district,” she said. She said the voucher program is costing the district between $600,000 and $700,000 a year.

She said that not only does the district lose $5,500 per pupil, but it also has the costs of busing pupils to 13 schools. Lang said the board did take action to save money.

“We sat down 18 months ago and knew we’d be in bad shape by now,” she said. “So we met with bargaining units and made changes in insurance contracts.”

She said the changes saved $683,000. Most of the recommendations in the performance audit, she added, were instituted before the audit was published.

“We’ve done everything they’ve asked for within reason,” she said.

Lang predicts the levy will fail, and she said the district could be in a fiscal watch by the end of the year.

Christine Flanagan, 55, is running for office for the first time.

She said her top priority is fiscal solvency. “It’s going to be tough,” she said. The board will have to make cuts and try to keep the students the district has, she added.

“We want parents to help market the good things,” she said. “Word of mouth: ‘Keep your kids here.’”

She also said she intends to vote for the levy. “I don’t want to pay more taxes, but we have a responsibility to educate our kids.”

She does not know, though, if she’d agree to put another one on the ballot if this one fails.

“We might have to go into [state] receivership if people don’t want it,” she said.

Joseph Nohra, 38, who was on the levy-passage committee in May and is on it again, believes the levy’s chances are dismal.

He also blamed the state, saying it has failed to fix the way school districts are funded.

“The state is supposed to solve this reliance on property taxes, and here we still are,” he said.

Nohra attributes the levy failure in the last election to a “disconnect” between the school district and the community.

“I don’t think the message was put out there,” he said.

He said he is in favor of concessions from unions, including the members’ paying more for health care.

“If you don’t want to lay off, the board has to say to the unions, ‘We need concessions,’” he said, adding that he wouldn’t want to cut teachers. He said the district has to compete to keep students, but if they leave, cuts have to be made.