Just how bad off is Ohio

[dsc]

http://www.wkyc.com/news/news_fullstory.asp?id=17355

BEACHWOOD -- Beachwood is another local district looking at budget cuts and layoffs.

The district is making $2.2 million in cuts. It was facing a $1.6 million deficit for next year.


The school board voted to cut 11 teachers and 21 non-teaching positions. Parents worry this will affect the quality of education in Beachwood and some are looking to move their kids to private schools as a result.


Beachwood superintendent Paul Williams blames the cuts on tax losses, personal property tax losses, and delinquencies.

end of quote

For those unfamiliar with Ohio, Beachwood is one of the, if not the, wealthiest school districts in Ohio. If these people are having problems then you can only imagine what places like mine are doing.

[coloradodem2005]

1. Ohio is ours.

Ohio will come out in droves to rebuke the Bush administration.

[Andy_Stephenson]

6. But thanks to Diebold in

18 counties...Bush Wins!!!

No recount possible or available. Wake up before it is too late.

[Ksec]

2. Where is Beachwood?

Ohio is broke and jobless. If it wasnt for self employment I would be a crackhead selling dope to make a living. Used to work in steel and now I dabble in real estate.

Our little river town is so broke they cant afford lunch. We actually ran out of salt for the roads and didnt have a couple bucks to buy more

[dsc]

3. Very wealthy suburb of Cleveland

Interstate 271 and US 322.

[Ksec]

4. OK- for some reason I was thinking Euclid which must be nearby

[dsc]

7. They are having problems too

just about everyone is. Euclid is about 10 miles or so north of Beachwood. It is around US 20 and a bit west of I 271.

[Droopy]

5. Ohio was a red state last time

I wonder if they've seen enough of Bush to change their minds? The state leadership has been Republican for the longest time. It leads me to believe that it will be very close in this state in the coming election.

[NEOBuckeye]

8. Beechwood is only the tip of the Iceberg... Look at Cleveland Schools

Cleveland Schools are in VERY BAD shape.

I don't yet have a link to confirm it, but I heard on the news just earlier today that the Cleveland school board may cut up to 900 teaching, administrative, support and maintennance positions at the end of this year. That's not a typo. I said 900 jobs. I don't recall how many millions they are in debt, but it was obviously in the tens...

Cleveland is the largest school district in Ohio, BTW.

As a teacher, I think it's an absolute disgrace that our schools and educational system is in the mess that it's in. We can't seem to afford to properly educate our kids. But we can sure as hell send them to be maimed and murdered abroad, fighting on the behalf of corrupt, greedy and morally bankrupt men like Dick Cheney and Richard Perle.

This really burns... :grr:

[dsc]

9. $75 million 900 teachers

http://www.wkyc.com/news/news_fullstory.asp?id=17321

CLEVELAND -- The Cleveland School District is looking at ways to eliminate a $75 million deficit.

The district hopes to avoid massive layoffs by finding other areas to cut.


The new head of the Cleveland Teachers' Union expects tough road ahead for the district. Joanne Demarco takes over next month and will help the district with its budget cuts.


She knows they have their work cut out for them.


"We are in for troubled times. We are going to have to all pull together. They've already told us not going to replace teachers retire, resign or take another job," said Demarco.


City council was recently told it's possible 900 teachers could lose their jobs. The school board will look at eliminating overtime, which totaled $3.8 million this year. Nearly 75 percent of that overtime was for custodians.

[NEOBuckeye]

14. Thanks, dsc

I think it was still breaking when I heard it. I don't recall the $75 million figure, though. That's much worse than what I initially remembered. Ouch!

[dsc]

15. They are going for a levy

but it will be a hard sell.

[Norbert]

10. Let's hope Gov. Taft campaigns for shrub

Taft is one of the most inept governors Ohio ever had. He is a bu$h poodle dog and the unpopular campaigning governor may end up putting some votes on the Democratic side. The State GOP has a lot of infighting right now Taft and Ken Blackwell are fighting over the sales tax increase of a couple years ago. This plays into our hands too.

Ohio is a rust belt state and has lost it's share of jobs in the last three years.

The Dems have a opportunity here.

[eileen from OH]

11. Absolutemundo

Taft will have REVERSE coattails, if there is such a thing. Thoroughly despised across the board.

Rumor hath it that Ted Strickland will try for Gov., when Taft is term-limited out. Know anything 'bout him?


eileen from OH (south of Cleveland - Kent - as in KSU)

[NEOBuckeye]

16. Haven't heard of Strickland. I thought Blackwell was planning to run?

Not that he's any more popular than Taft -- even amongst the Ohio GOP itself. Then, there's another Republican -- a woman -- who was talking about running, although I can't recall her name at the moment.

Sounds like there are already three or four Republicans vying to take Taft's place. How many Democrats so far? None that I can think of now, except maybe Jerry Springer. And I'm not so sure what to make of that possibility yet.

What's wrong with this picture? We have Democratic mayors representing seven of Ohio's "Big Eight" great cities, yet no cohesive statewide organization to take back the legislature or executive office in Columbus? I'm still trying to figure this one out.

[cosmokramer]

12. You are correct....

...when wealthy districts are in trouble (my district is Oakwood, which is, in fact, the wealthiest district though Beachwood is an extremely close 2nd), one can only imagine the disaster this spells for the public school system outside of these districts. Our district passed yet another levy for funding because we needed to expand all of our buildings with the influx of new students fleeing from the other districts. It isn't fair that the those who don't have the resources to buy a house and pay the extremely huge taxes in these districts get less from the public education system than those who can afford these districts.

A public education should be FAIR, and EXCELLENT, no matter the demographic of the taxpayers surrounding it.

[dsc]

13. I knew Beachwood was close

My district had several layoffs last year and is likely to have more in the future. One of the districts by me, that never had levies fail, had two fail. We are in a total mess. Oh, and my county has a 10.2% unemployment rate, tied for 18th worst.

[cosmokramer]

18. omg, that is a huge unemployment rate.

District school levies are failing all over the state. Even the public libraries are suffering terribly. Our county library system had to close all of their special youth programs and lay-off 1/3 of their staff in order to keep the libraries OPEN. Unbelievable! Fortunately, their levy passed March 2nd, but most of the school levies failed. It is just too much for some districts that are already on academic watch or academic alert. Schools will close because of this.

[tedoll78]

17. It's my theory that..

Ohio is our lockpick back into the White House - not Florida.

First, Gore totally pulled-out three weeks before the 2000 election. He didn't visit afterwards. The vote still ended-up close: about 49-45-4%. Imagine had he stayed in and gone with a Florida-sized GOTV machine.
Ohio has double the nation's unemployment rate.
Ohioans can be convinced that their state isn't a top terrorist target, and thus they'll be more likely to vote on economics rather than security.
Ohio still has a nice union population, and this time guns aren't a distraction to them.
Ohio has plenty of metropolitan areas in which we can focus GOTV efforts.


The Blue states are looking really nice right now.
The swing states seem to be leaning our way, and even if Nader makes it onto some ballots, his support will collapse again. Remember when he was polling about 5 or 6% last time around right before the election?
The Red States are less red than the Blue States are blue. This means Georgie has more defending to do.
Bush has pissed-off certain key segments of the population. This time around, Bush will not get the votes of 25% of the GLBT population. This time around, Bush will not get >80% of the middle-eastern American vote like last time. Hell, there was an article about how Cuban Americans are leaning a bit more away from him this time.

These are all great things. I'm convinced that we're in pretty good shape there. And while I'm not much of a conspiracy theorist (no offense to anyone), the BBV issue raises valid points and needs to be taken seriously. We need to make it clear to the Diebold Ohio folks that we'll be watching them like friggin' hawks for the entire election season. In fact, it might behoove us to hire some PIs to tail election officials & businesspersons before the election, and we should seek to lobby Diebold to allow more monitoring before and during the election.