Rebuttal to TU school board attacks

Our community has the chance May 19 to restore integrity to the Delaware Valley School Board with five caring and passionate candidates: Jack Fisher, Bill Greenlaw, Pam Lutfy, Chuck Pike and Sue Schor. In last week’s Courier, DeAnna Margiore criticized these five candidates represented at the Meet the Candidates night hosted by the hardworking volunteers in our PTAs. Ms. Margiore endorsed Taxpayers United’s Goldsack, Marasa and Wright, who refused to meet with you, the taxpayers, at this event. They also refused to attend the Matamoras Republican Club’s Meet the Candidates event. They refused to return questionnaires by our students and the PSEA union employees in our schools. Ms. Margiore wrote she is voting for these three candidates because they “share the same vision for our students and this ever changing economy.” Karl Flail wrote last week that only the TU candidates will “preserve some fiscal sanity within our school district.” Despite what Ms. Margiore and Mr. Flail want us to think, all of the candidates in this election favor fiscal responsibility. Everyone feels the pain of the economic crisis. The difference is that Fisher, Greenlaw, Lutfy, Pike, Schor show they are much more in touch with the needs of taxpayers, students, teachers, parents - everyone in our community. They’ve volunteered for decades in our schools and community, with our PTAs, with special needs children, with Odyssey of the Mind, with our Warrior athletics, with the Rotary Club. They all have children attending or graduated from DV. They’ve been endorsed by the Future of Pike County and the DV Education Support Professionals. Fisher, Greenlaw, Lutfy, Pike, Schor will keep taxes low, but unlike TU, they will do so responsibly, with integrity, with accountability, with transparency, with careful attention to the facts, and with sensitivity to the many stakeholders the school board represents. The defamation not only last week but also for months by Goldsack and his fellow bullies make me embarrassed of the circus that TU has made of the school district I attended for 13 years. More importantly, their attacks have encouraged me. They’ve encouraged me to major in education policy at the Maxwell School of Public Affairs. They encouraged me to intern at a New York City public high school as a Participation in Government teacher this spring. The experience of teaching where per-pupil costs exceed DV’s by thousands yet whose graduation rate is 50 percent, reinforced my position to always support educational leaders with integrity and vision. My family proudly pays our taxes, in gratitude, to the school district that raised my brother and me. Through the tough financial times our family is experiencing with two college bills and costly emergency medical expenses, we realize the importance of good leadership for the future of Delaware Valley. May 19 is our day to restore virtue and vision to our school board by voting Fisher, Greenlaw, Lutfy, Pike, Schor. Ryan Balton Milford