There are options other than closing our schools

Schools don't need to be closed in Cedar Rapids because of poor management! Better school management is needed to reallocate wasted dollars to keep them open, until student scores are raised to grade level, causing increased neighborhood enrollment, sufficient to fully support them.

Reallocating 1.1 percent of the district's budget produces at least

$2 million to keep schools open. No one at the district can honestly say $2 million per year isn't wasted beyond what is used to keep them open. They want the money to increase their salaries.

Sources of the worst school waste and mismanagement that built too many classrooms are described on http://

iowalive.net/poor

management.htm.

Beyond that, freeze administrator salaries and keep their office thermostats set at 65 in the winter and 80 in the summer until schools are kept open and academically abused students are scoring at grade level.

The Sept. 2, 2010, Gazette reported 21 Cedar Rapids schools were on the dreaded federal In Need of Assistance list, for academic failures - which is nothing short of child abuse, plaguing students for their entire lives. Allowable growth funding must be earmarked to keep neighborhood schools open.

Better school management would obtain help from Judy Hintz, at Educational Resources Associates in West Des Moines. Judy routinely brings students up to grade level - students the public schools force into special education, and claim can't be taught, which is the worst, lifetime child abuse.

Dick Fredericks

Palo