Bill Kecskes

wmk@bellsouth.net

770-328-6450

Carroll County School Board District 5 candidate

I am enclosing the following 6 detailed main pillars of my campaign to rejoin our School Board.  I also am challenging the incumbent District 5 BOE Member in this campaign, Mr. Donald  Nixon to publicly debate both our platforms in an issues-only forum.  Since District 5 is geographically large, I propose we not be limited to one forum discussion but rather as many as can be arranged.

In addition to public forums, I propose joint radio interviews in addition to joint newspaper interviews with the Carroll Star News and the Times-Georgian

Respectfully,

Bill Kecskes

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Platform Policy Proposals & Issues

Monday – March 12, 2018

1. Safety & Security of Students & Faculty – I am proposing that the BOE employ 26 armed certified deputies to stand guard the entire school day at the driveway entrance to our schools as a first line of defense for the safety of our children. 26 deputies @ $20 an hour (avg) @ 8 hours X 180 school days = $748,800.  Ideally, I propose this be split 50-50 with our Sheriff’s office and with cities having a police force.  After all, our 15,000 students represent a significant portion of our daytime county population.  Now many will say we have no room in the budget for $748,800 or even 50% of that ($374,400) but as a parent I insist there is no amount too large when ensuring the safety of our children in our schools.  I know on December 16, 2017 our BOE approved the replacement of aging analog security cameras with IP Digital cameras.  This is a good second line of defense but we should not rely on security cameras alone and I’m not sure the BOE was told what percentage of coverage these new cameras provide.  Anything less than 100% coverage is unacceptable.  I also pray these security cameras provide real-time coverage and not the sickening 20-minute delay found at Stoneman-Douglas High in Parkland, Florida.

Amazingly, the Georgia General Assembly passed an $8,000,000 School Safety Bill this past week, to be prorated among Georgia’s 180 school districts having a student population of 1,600,000.  Carroll County’s share will be $74,710 though the Bill states no money can be used for personnel.

2. Nutritional Safety of our Students – On September 18, 2017, our BOE was presented with a “School Nutrition Wellness Plan” which states in part:  “In an effort to promote nutritional well being, growth, development and readiness to learn.”

Ironically, our BOE does not adhere to this nutritional ideal for our students because during the last 6 months they have approved over $64,500 in fundraising request for our students permitting them to sell candy, gum, krispy kreme donuts, chocolates, nachos and coca cola.  These fundraising requests are unquestionably for most worthy purposes such as band equipment, uniforms, repair of playground equipment and instructional supplies.

I find it unacceptable that our BOE is causing children to act as salesman on street corners and in front of Wal-mart, Kroger & Publix raising money for things the BOE should be funding particularly repair of playground equipment and instructional supplies.

The BOE should let our children be children and not salesman.  I propose the BOE budget at least $125,000 for these worthy items.

Additionally, I think the BOE should seriously reconsider the placement of sugar & salt vending machines in our schools.  These too are rationalized in the name of fundraising for worthy causes but why must we permit our students to poison themselves during the school day with excess sugar and salt.  I have witnessed the devastating cognitive effects of students eating nachos in class while drinking coca-colas.  Our schools serve amazing nutritional breakfasts and lunches and I’ve never known a student to starve between 8am and 4PM if they ate our breakfasts and lunches.  The BOE needs to act like responsible parents and adults in ridding our schools hallways of this sugar & salt evil.

3. SPLOST for Operations and Maintenance – Presently, in the Georgia General Assembly is HB 781, sponsored by Rep. Kevin Tanner of Forsyth, which permits up to 35% of SPLOST funds to be used for Maintenance and Operations wherein now they are to be used for capital outlay projects only (bricks & mortar). I would like our BOE to aggressively lobby Rep. Tanner to amend HB 781 to permit school systems to levy a send penny SPLOST to be divided 50% for maintenance and operations and 50% to reduce property assessment millage.  Our Carroll County Millage yields approximately $12,000,00 annually.  $6,000,000 towards reduction of property taxes could reduce the millage from 18 mils down to 14 mils.  Sadly, I don’t see our Representatives, Mr.  Cooke and Mr. Colllins as co-sponsors of HB 781; so I think we should actively lobby them in supporting our School System’s needs.

4. College Level Examination Program (CLEP) – This is a 47 year-old testing program is administered by the same folks administering the SAT, ACT & LSAT.  CLEP permits anyone to take upwards of 30 college level tests and be awarded up to two years of college credit accepted by over 3,000 colleges.  Locally, these CLEP tests are given at the University of West Georgia on Saturdays at a cost of $80 each.  I am personally familiar with this program because 46 years ago I earned my first two years of college simply by testing on subjects I already new.  As we all know, the college dropout rate is quite high for freshman and sophomores.  Again, I would rather have our students testing/earning college credits at UWG on Saturdays instead of selling Krispy Kreme Donuts in front of the Wal-Mart.  I know we already having many fine programs preparing our students for life after graduation among them our Dual Enrollment Program.  While a fan of the Dual Enrollment, it currently offers a limited number of subjects.  I propose the BOE  budget at least $240,000 for this worthy CLEP Testing program.  $240,000 would hypothetically  fund 100 of our senior students to test-out of their freshman and senior college years.  We owe this to our students to gain a motivating leg-up in their college careers.

5. BOE Budget – Our current BOE Budget totals $123,862,662 and amazingly, the BOE Members were presented with 60 unnumbered pages of budget data. I find it incredible that any Board Member could make reference to any budget item on their laptops when the pages are not numbered.  No student in our schools could get away with this oversight when turning in a lengthy term paper to a teacher.  Additionally, I found too many categories consolidated and lumped together so as not to give a fully accurate accounting of expenditures.  Two examples:  The Superintendent’s salary is lumped together with 3 other personnel so we don’t really know how much the Superintendent is paid.  Another example, when I was on the BOE, the janitorial budget was $1.5mm.  We wisely decided to outsource the janitorial services to a private company, a practice  wisely continued by the current BOE.  HOWEVER, in the current budget, the cleaning services are lumped together with water and sewer expenses for a consolidated total of $3,780,800 meaning the BOE has not idea what the cleaning services cost or if we are realizing savings over the previous $1.5mm figure.

When I was on the BOE, the Superintendent’s proposed budget was far lengthier containing a detailed accounting of expenditures.  How can any BOE Member claim to be “good stewards of the taxpayer’s money” when they don’t even know how much is being spent and where other than the grand total of $123,862,662.  I propose the BOE Budget be fully disclosed and detailed not only to the BOE but also to the taxpaying public.

Lastly, I propose the BOE Budget be constructed annually as a “Zero-Based Budget” meaning the Board & Staff and the public need to review every singly detailed line item justifying it’s continued use.  It is only in this way that we can ferret out less important expenses and reprioritize many expenses to the benefit of the children and taxpayer’s we serve.

6. Full transparency & Disclosure – The taxpaying public does not even know the skimp details of a 60 page unnumbered budget totaling $123,862,662 because it is only available to BOE Members on their secret password protected web site. When I was on the BOE, I insisted (and the Superintendent concurred) that the BOE Budget be posted for all to see on the BOE’s web site.

Another thing the public doesn’t know is the agendas given out to the public at Board Meetings is skimpy and sanitized at best meaning the backup data supporting the agenda items is posted only on the Board Member’s secret password protected web site.  For example, the public only hears the BOE passing the multiple fundraising requests but they don’t know the BOE is also giving approval for the sale of gum, candy, nachos, Krispy-Kreme donuts and coca-cola.

One amazing example of non-disclosure, even to the BOE, was a skimpy agenda item on June 22, 2017, awarding six bid contracts for food service without listing the amount of the award and the other non-winning bids.  Sadly, our BOE is as much in the dark as the public on way too many important items concerning our taxpayer money.

I propose there be no secrets between our BOE and the taxpaying public.  I propose there only be only one agenda for both the public, the media and the BOE.  I propose full transparent disclosure of the not only budget, the agendas, the backup data and the Superintendent’s employment contract.  It’s our tax money and we deserve to know how it’s being spent!