Fiscal Rangers

Lake County, FL School Board member should reimburse two candidates over $2000 each for last minute decision to run for re-election

An incumbent on the Lake County, FL School Board had announced months ago that she was relocating and would not run for re-election this year. Thus two candidates filed for the position and spent over $2400 each on their campaigns, THEN at the last minute, Burns filed to run again, and stay here. Our opinion is this last-minute flip in position is unethical unless Burns at least reimburses each candidate for their spending. Burns has not collected or spent anything yet on her campaign. Read more →

Flagler County, FL - half the population of Lake County, predicts $1.2-million DROP in sales tax revenue

Flagler County, FL announced Pandemic impacts on sales tax revenues, and Lake County, FL might be affected as much or more Read more →

Lake County, FL listed as one of 10 Florida Counties to suffer most downturn due to Chinese Virus

An Orlando Weekly article cites a study saying Lake County, FL is one of the 10 Florida Counties that may suffer the most bankruptcies from the Covid-19 crisis. Read more →

Lake County, FL K-12 Parents! Learn how the school district staff plan to implement distance learning for 42,000 students

Lake County, FL Schools were closed due to the Wuhan virus. Here is a meeting video how staff is rolling out distance learning and Chromebooks for 42,000 students. Read more →

What happens to local city and county cash flow if Florida cuts sales taxes like the UK just did to cope with the Wuhan Virus?

The UK just reduced their VAT, or national sales tax, to zero for awhile. What happens if Florida does the same, or the state government reduces tax revenues sent to local governments due to the Wuhan virus crisis? Will we go through layoffs and increased property taxes in Florida and Lake County? Read more →

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis announces replacement for Florida Common Core based school standards

Yippee!! Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has announced a replacement set of K-12 education standards for the older Obama supported Common Core "Florida Standards". Read more →

Supreme Court is being asked to decide if Unions will LOSE rights to negotiate for non-members!

A new case going to the Supreme Court could expand rights of non-union members, such as teachers, to negotiate their own wages and benefits because unions would lose the sole rights to negotiated for ALL employees when many choose not to be members. Forced coercion of non-members would end. Read our overview or the linked article. Read more →

Florida Standards (Common Core) Listening Tour skips Lake, Orange, Sumter, Polk & Marion County! WHY?

The Florida Dept. of Education is conducting a review of the Common Core based Florida Education Standards. They are having a listening tour in parts of Florida, but skipping Lake, Orange, Polk, Sumter & Marion Counties. Why? We provide links to information and the press release but have no answer why they are skipping those counties. But we include links where parents can go online and review the second draft of proposed new standards and submit comments. Read more →

Lake County, FL School District Supt. Diane Kornegay gets high marks in Board's evaluation

The Lake County, FL School Board approved the annual evaluation of School Superintendent Diane Kornegay, with a rating of 4.61 out of five. We provide an overview, the official press release and a link to the video of the meeting when the vote took place on Sept. 30, 2019. Read more →

The new Lake County 2019/2020 Property Tax TRIM Notices are Out - and you need to analyze them

The 2019-20 Lake County, FL property tax TRIM notices are out. We provide an example and some analysis, and tips how to analyze YOUR rates to understand if hidden increases are included. Read more →

Liberal Hyprocrites are facing a conundrum - should schools teach LGBTQ (which angers Muslims & others)

The UK columnist Katie Hopkins comments in this brief video on how Muslim parents are now demanding removal of class topics on LGBTQ issues. It is starting in Birmingham, UK and she suggest it will be a new Muslim demand that will spread to other UK schools. How soon before that conflict affects US schools and colleges? Read more →

Huge $50-million charter school scam disclosed by California District Attorney

A massive $50-million charter school scam was unveiled by the San Diego, California District Attorney. We discuss some of the better oversight in Florida vs California, plus provide links to other charter school scam reports and links to the article and video about the California scam. Read more →

More Lake County, FL Cities and government agencies need to provide Live or uploaded meeting videos!

Local cities and government agencies in Florida, including Lake County, FL, are reducing public transparency by removing most published documents, even for upcoming meeting agendas and staff packets, or annual financial reports or budgets. They are doing it to avoid nuisance lawsuits by roving bands of attorneys suing them for not spending thousands of taxpayer dollars to comply with Federal ADA laws related to "accessibility" for sight and hearing limited users. Read more →

North Carolina student quiz contains clear biased attack on President Trump

A North Carolina parent's student showed him a picture of a student quiz heavily biased against President Trump, and posted it with his comments. We share it hear, and suggest such biased classroom content should be prohibited within the mission statement of all school districts, including our local Lake County, FL School District. Read more →

K-12 Parents in Lake County, FL need to act now regarding textbooks that will be adopted by the School District

The Lake County, FL School Board is having hearings on this Monday, April 10, 2019 to approve several proposed textbooks for social studies for K-12 classes. This contains the details and links. We reviewed just the table of contents for the AP World History book shown and it is full of whitewashed coverage of Islam just in various chapters as well as written resources. Read more →

Why Don't Florida School Districts have Performance Management Metric Reports like Business?

Florida local government agencies like the Lake County FL School District lack process improvement and performance reporting dashboards like a business and need them. We start the conversation with some examples and what School Boards need to do if they actually want to protect the financial interests of taxpayers. Read more →

New Website discloses union collections and contributions to candidates - LCEA, SEIU

A new website shows which parties received political contributions and we show you those from the teachers and the service worker unions at the Lake County, FL School District. Read more →

A Quick Tip Before you or your kids get vaccinations

This tip about child vaccinations is from Karen Bracken, a well known education watcher, anti-common core activist and conservative author. From Karen Bracken April 9, 2019 Before you allow a doctor to shoot vaccines into your children ask them to see the insert of ingredients and the side affects. If they refuse, get out of there ASAP. When you get any other shot or prescription this information is given to patients but why not when it comes to vaccines?? WHY do you allow them to put multiple shots into your child's body without knowing what is in them and the side affects? Vance Jochim FiscalRangers.com FiscalRangers@gmail.com Read more →

Clermont, FL City Council votes to spend taxpayer funds to appeal a legal decision they lost.

The Clermont City Council lost a legal action to allow a charter school to build on a five acre lot with terrible traffic issues and neighbor complaints. Neither city staff or the Lake County School District wanted the project approved. Now the City attorney convinced the clearly vague Council to approve an expensive appeal of the legal decision. Neighbor opposition leader Dani Page made a video of that meeting which you can watch. The saga continues at taxpayer expense. Read more →

Federal & Florida ADA Compliance laws are wrecking local government transparency and incurring huge costs

Tavares, FL March 11, 2019 Federal and Florida regulations on compliance with the American Disabilities Act (ADA) are causing excess costs and reduced public transparency over local government meeting videos, agendas, budgets and even annual financial reports (CAFR's). Essentially, some scummy lawyers found that ADA requirements can be interpreted to require that any local government has to provide online information in a format that can be read by ADA software tools used by the disabled, such as vision limited or hearing limited. Apparently, the tools use screen "scanning" to find text or picture captions that can then be converted to audio so the disabled can "read" or "hear" the online information. We wrote an earlier story about this in January 2019 HERE, after the Orlando Sentinel published a story about it. It contains more about the scummy lawsuits, so I did not repeat it here. The Jan. 6, 2019 Orlando Sentinel story is here. And very few local governments have the funds to revamp their websites and file systems to comply with the lawsuit demands. Now, a city like Orlando could afford to get the software and modify all their files so they can be read by the ADA tools,... Read more →

Liberals are using children's books to indoctrinate them on political agendas

Liberals are intentionally publishing biased children's books to indoctrinate them on political agendas. Read more →

60 Local Government Employees based in Tavares, FL Earned $100k or more in 2017 per OpenTheBooks.org database

A government spending watchdog, OpenTheBooks.org, tracks wasteful government programs and also tracks local, state and Federal employee wages over $100k. We examined their reports for local cities in the Lake County area, and found 60 employees working in the Tavares, FL area for government that earned over $100k. OpenTheBooks.org also launched an initiative to encourage the Congress to launch a "War on Waste" by listing wasteful, stupid Federal programs and asking the government to publish budget details for transparency, and then eliminate the uncovered, wasteful programs. Read more →

Florida Citizens' Alliance Responding to Governor Ron DeSantis' Executive Order to Remove Common Core

FL Gov. Ron DeSantis issued an Exec Order reversing Common Core in Florida Schools and here are some links covering that action. Read more →

Florida "FEFP" Funding Formula of School Districts is uneven and was just exposed by the Florida Watchdog blog

Florida Watchdog blog just exposed the biased "FEFP" formula used by Florida State to allocate per-student funding to each County level School District. Here is the link to the story and other references on FEFP. Read more →

Why should conservative parents send their kids to Lake County Schools that follow David Coleman's Common Core?

Why should conservative parents send their kids to Lake County, FL Schools that follow David Coleman's Common Core? Read more →

Transparency over local government meeting agendas, minutes, videos, etc. is being damaged by ADA compliance lawsuits

Local governments like cities are being sued because their websites are not completely designed to comply with ADA requirements that were written before the internet was created.  For instance, cities cannot post meeting videos if they don't incur the expense to provide captions that software for the blind or deaf can read and translate so they can understand it.  Thus the benefit of transparency for 97% of the populations are shut down for 3% who complain. Read more →

New York Teacher penalizes student for not answering biased, anti-Trump question in homework

A New York teacher gave homework assignments (in 2017) to students with an anti-Trump fill-in question, but the student's father rejected the homework, then the teacher penalized the student and said her question was free speech. Read the article. This biased student homework assignment against conservatives and Trump as practiced in NY is a reason why parents are pulling their kids from public schools. Unless the Lake County, FL School Board issues a mission statement that prohibits teachers from exhibiting such bias and revisionist history, then local parents may believe it is also happening in Lake County, especially when one Board member is known to support socialist Gillum for Governor and another has ties to the SEIU unions. Here is another source for the story which is from 2017. This was also shared on Facebook to: FiscalRangers Trump Team Defenders Group Villagers for Trump Marc Dodd Stephanie Luke for School Board Bill Mathias Lake County Schools Sandy Gamble for Lake County School Board, District 4 Lake Federated Republican Women's Club North Lake Tea Party Republican Party of Florida Tavares, FL Dec. 31, 2018 Vance Jochim FiscalRangers.com Read more →

School Choice Programs - Four in Florida and National Survey of Parents from Ed Choice

There are lots of School choices, and competition for public schools.  Lake County schools have a great administration, but they do have a union affiliated with state and local unions that favor marxism and socialist Democrat political causes.  So here are links to a survey of national parents about preferred school choice, plus the school choice programs in Florida. Read more →

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 →

Trump signs Memo directing more K-12 efforts in STEM and offering Coder skills.

Tavares, FL Sept. 26, 2017 President Trump just signed new Presidential Memo to the Education Secretary on STEM and need for coders in K-12. LCSD has consistently ignored need for code training, only focusing on robotics. I have brought this up at prior meetings. Yesterday's White House Press Briefing by Sarah Sanders mentioned this and the lack of code training in K-12, which results in importing foreign coders. There are many more jobs in coding than there are in robotics. Notice Trump focuses on needed JOB training for high paying jobs, thus doesn't discuss the politically correct "STEAM" that includes Arts. "Today, too many of our Nation's K-12 and post-secondary students lack access to high-quality STEM education, and thus are at risk of being shut out from some of the most attractive job options in the growing United States economy. Courses in Computer Science are especially scarce in too many schools and communities, despite the job opportunities that these skills create. Nearly 40 percent of high schools do not offer physics and 60 percent of high schools do not offer computer programming. Of the nearly 17,000 high schools that were accredited to offer Advanced Placement exams in 2015, only 18... Read more →

Lake Schools shorted $57-million since 2004 and Orlando Sentinel Editorial supports fixing it

Less affluent county school districts like the Lake County, FL School District receive less for schools than they pay in Florida collected education property taxes. This explains the problem and what to do about it. Read more →

Week of July 31, 2017 - Lots of Political News and Plans

This is a recap of all the upcoming political events in Lake County the week of July 31, 2017. Read more →

Why Doesn't the Lake County, FL School Board Demand Staff provide all Agenda attachments 3-workdays before Board Meetings?

The Lake County, FL School District Board needs to mandate that administrators and external speakers provide all attachments and Powerpoints for agenda items at least 3-workdays before Board meetings for attachment to online agendas. That is needed so the Board and the public have time to read and digest presentations and develope questions as needed. Read more →

Updated: Lake County School Board Faces Charter School Competition and Plans to Meet It - June 5, 2017 Meeting

The Lake County School District met today to discuss how to compete with charter schools while funding will be static for at least three years. Read more →

Lake County, FL School District Superintendent Selection Process Update - Updates on today, Tuesday's interviews

The Lake County, FL School District is undergoing a search and selection for a new Superintendent of Schools, assisted by national search firm Ray & Associates. Six finalists have been selected by the School Board and will start the personal, on site interview process on Tuesday, Dec. 12, 2016. This post will be updated with information about the candidate selection process, the candidates and the selected applicant, which is expected to happen about Dec. 22. One round of interviews of six candidates will take place the week of Dec. 12, and the second round of three finalists will take place the week of Dec. 19, along with the assumed announcement of the finalist on Dec. 22 or soon after. Bookmark this page and return for updates. Read more →

Important new Scientific chemical element discovered - Governmentium aka the "Critical Morass"

Tavares, FL 32778 Dec. 18, 2017 This improtant scientific news is from Cathy Holden on Facebook: Subject: New Chemical Discovered The heaviest chemical element yet known to science A major research institution has recently announced the discovery of the heaviest chemical element yet known to science. The new element has been named "Governmentium". Governmentium has 1 neutron, 12 assistant neutrons,75 deputy neutrons, and 111 assistant deputy neutrons, giving it an atomic mass of 312. These 312 particles are held together by forces called morons, which are surrounded by vast quantities of lepton-like particles called peons. Since governmentium has no electrons, it is inert. However, it can be detected as it impedes every reaction with which it comes into contact. A minute amount of governmentium causes one reaction to take over 4 days to complete when it would normally take less than a second. Governmentium has a normal half-life of 2 to 6 years; it does not decay, but instead undergoes a reorganization in which a portion of the assistant neutrons and deputy neutrons exchange places. In fact, governmentium's mass will actually increase over time, since each reorganization causes some morons to become neutrons, forming isodopes. This characteristic of moron-promotion leads... Read more →

Updated FiscalRangers.com Conservative Voting Recommendations for Lake County, FL voters

Here are my recommendations for candidates and issues on the Nov. 8, 2016 ballot for Lake County, FL voters. Read more →

Lake County Schools DROP in almost all performance indicators, but Board gives good eval and raise to Superintendent

The Lake County, FL School Board recently gave a good evaluation and $17,000 bonus to the incumbent and retiring Superintendent of Schools, Dr. Susan Moxley, while most School District performance factors dropped. Read more →

Lake County Scoop: County Commissioner Leslie Campione discloses plan for school impact fee waivers

A new plan for school impact fee waivers was presented to the Lake County FL School Board today by Lake County Commissioner Leslie Campione. Read more →

Weekly FiscalRangers Update: Election Hijinks, Drug Smuggling, Supt. of Schools Search & More

Here is the FiscalRangers.com weekly update of local government and political issues in Lake County, FL. Read more →

Here is a $90-million REASON to vote out Lake County, FL Commission Incumbents - they ignored discussing a new $90-million liability

Here is a reason to vote out all three incumbent Lake County Commissioners on the August 30 ballot, and vote for Lake County Commission Candidates Wendy Breeden, Josh Blake and Tim Loucks (or Mike Levine) by August 30, 2016. Lake County staff and elected Board members are whining about lack of funds to pay for roads. But we describe how current Board incumbents ignored a new NINETY MILLION DOLLAR liability for retired employee pension and retiree health insurance benefits. We describe how more money would be available for roads, but instead, County staff and incumbent Board members are allocating increased pension costs first in the budget rather than reduce retiree or employee health insurance coverage to match rates spent by private sector employers. This is one of many reasons to vote out all incumbents and vote in new blood for County Commissioners like Wendy Breeden, Tim Loucks and Josh Blake. Read more →