Fiscal Rangers

Overview by Jim Krakowski of Lake County School District Workshop on Nov. 5, 2018 - Internal Audit Plan & District Policies

The Lake County, FL School District Board had a Nov. 5, 2018 workshop on internal audit and district policy matters. This is an overview of the meeting with comments by editor Vance Jochim and also Jim Krakowski. It included a link to the meeting video. Read more →

Lake County, FL School Board needs to reject Hillary's socialism doctrine of downplaying parental rights

Tavares, FL Memorial Day, May 28, 2018 Hillary's quote in this meme clearly indicates one of the problems with the liberals, Democrats and unions who support them. They believe that "the state" or government, should be more important in development of children than parental and family values. Their attitude that government is always more right than parents is scary, and is one of the concepts woven into K-12 textbooks, college teacher training, and "reading materials" used to support class topics. Suggested reading materials cited by the original, liberal created Common Core initiative included many sections preaching this idea of the State taking precedence over parents. This can be one cause for students to be rebeling more because they may have been indoctrinated that parental opinions are not important. Recently a grandparent filed a complaint with the Lake County school district about a book containing objectionable statements. The Lake County School District Board needs to pick a side in this controversy and distance themselves from this indoctrination by clearly rejecting this concept of the State superceding parents, stating so in their mission statement, class blueprints and instructions to teachers. By doing so, and implementing transparency in policies prohibiting political bias in... Read more →

The true, huge cost of the Florida Parkland School Resource Officer legislation will cause School & Sheriff funding problems

Tavares, FL May 3, 2018 Rich Swier writes a good overview of the funding crisis hitting schools and Sheriffs over the Parkland FL legislation requiring school resource officers in every school. VJ Read more →

Trump signs EO to study, then get Feds out of education - increasing home rule at State level

Tavares, FL Apr. 28, 2018 President Trump has signed an Exec Order to get the Feds out of education after a 300 day review. This means more latitude to reverse Obama era damage in local school districts (assuming the State allows them). Liberal press are saying it doesn't do anything, but below "is the rest of the story" - just wait after the in depth review. References: Remarks by Trump at White House signing of the EO: "The executive order I’m signing today is another critical step to restoring local control, which is so important. This executive order directs Secretary DeVos to review current federal regulations and ensure that they don’t obstruct the ability of states, local governments, teachers, and most importantly, parents, to make the best decisions for their students and, in many cases, for their children. Previous administrations have wrongfully forced states and schools to comply with federal whims and dictate what our kids are taught. But we know that local communities do it best and know it best. The time has come to empower parents and teachers to make the decisions that help their students achieve success. That’s what this executive order is all about. So important.... Read more →

Performance Matters School District Dashboard software at Lake County FL Schools

This post describes and links to a March 15, 2018 video of an overview of the "Performance Matters" academic tracking dashboard software just implemented at the Lake County, FL School District. Read more →

Conservative parent reasons to move kids from Florida public schools to charters or homeschooling

Florida public schools migrated to Common Core several years ago and embedded many liberal, biased concepts. Now charter school and home school funding is easier and parents have reasons to move their students to values based schools or teaching. This will continue to happen unless Florida School Districts change their written missions, teaching practices and learning materials to those supporting conservative values, not liberal, biases derived from the Obama Common Core standards. Read more →

Florida Parent Research Group Finds K-12 Public School Textbooks have Disturbing Indoctrination content biased to liberal viewpoints

Teams of 50+ activists and Florida parents spent most of 2017 reviewing K-12 Florida textbooks in subjects like social studies and history to identify excess liberal or Islamic religious bias.  We obtained their Oct. 2017 Interim Report of "Objectionable Materials" which is discussed below.  Read more →

Lake County, FL School Board workshop on Jan. 29, 20018 - guest columnist Jim Krakowski

Jan. 29, 2018 Tavares, FL The Lake County, FL School Board had a morning workshop and Jim Krakowski was at the meeting and wrote his observations below. You can watch the entire meeting on video at: https://youtu.be/HHzf3Uzq574 And you can see the online agenda and attachments HERE: http://www.boarddocs.com/fla/lake/Board.nsf/goto?open&id=AV3KH65177F7 Vance Jochim Meeting Observations From Jim Krakowski jakmak@comcast.net My Comments / Observations – School Board Meeting January 29, 2018 (Jim Krakowski 2/2/18) Monday’s School Board Workshop meeting focused on three topics: • Updated student demographics …. past, present and future • Budget timeline • Review of staffing allocation policy Demographics: Every year the LCSD has an outside consultant review, update and present to the SB the projected student demographics for the District. The objective is to: • Identify student trends by grade level over the last several years, • Determine “natural” progression (Kindergarteners moving to 1st grade, 1st to 2nd, etc.) • Projected birth rates, • New housing starts within the County The objective is to use these updated demographics to help determine how many “student stations” and schools will be needed in the near term … i.e. capital needs After factoring the effects of the hurricanes in Puerto Rico and the... Read more →

We video a union bargaining session between Lake County Schools and their SEIU Union

We provide a link to a video of a public SEIU union bargaining session on Nov. 8, 2017 with the Lake County, FL School District plus an overview of the bargaining process and our conclusions. Read more →

Fiscal Rangers Update: Marion County, FL School District will choose own textbooks using committees including teachers, parents and community members

Marion County, FL School District leaders have decided to choose their own textbooks using local committees rather than select from State "approved textbook" lists. Read more →