I was elected to the WLCSC school board in November 2022 and before that I was one of 15 candidates for the WLCSC school board in 2020. Participating in the 2020 election helped me to better articulate my beliefs about how school board campaigns in a small community like ours ought to run. These areContinue reading “Small Town School Board Campaigns”
Category Archives: Transparency
Our Community Needs Representation
One of the great insights of Nobel laureate George Stigler is that regulatory bodies, like school boards, tend to end up serving the interests of those they are supposed to regulate at the expense of the public. He called this “regulatory capture.” It is common for elected school boards to favor the priorities of schoolContinue reading “Our Community Needs Representation”
Debt Payments
In 2023, the school corporation will make debt payments of $6.15 million. This is about $800,000 more than the projected tax revenue to the debt service fund. This means that funds that had been intended for other purposes will be diverted to pay the debt on the recent construction. The school board already transferred $1.4Continue reading “Debt Payments”
Access to Information
What is the single most important change our schools need? We need to bring community input back into school decisions. This could not happen while the school board “gag order” was in place. After a policy change in April 2023, the school board packet is now posted online prior to school board meetings: This allowsContinue reading “Access to Information”
Community Engagement
Years ago, when I first attended a WL school board meeting, I found it uninviting. The unwelcoming tone started right at the top of the agenda which said that the school board “will not entertain questions during a board meeting.” The school board also seemed to be intentionally obscuring what was being done. Items onContinue reading “Community Engagement”
School Rankings
Our school district paid niche.com $9,900 in 2020 to promote their rankings of our schools. My opinion is that Niche is not a particularly reputable ranking site (facebook scandal, company renaming and rebranding, pushing schools to pay for a “premium profile”) and I think that whatever benefit is gained from the online advertising is likelyContinue reading “School Rankings”
Dacia Mumford 