On the education of the people of this country the fate of the country depends. -Disraeli, Benjamin
Al Shanker
The Davenport School District (2014) has a budget of almost $257 million dollars. It’s statutory decisions are made by seven people.
The City of Davenport has a budget (2014) of about $188 million dollars. Its decisions are made by ten alderman and a mayor.
The influence of education policy for good or bad is immeasurable.
Democrats seem to understand this.
The Davenport School Board is currently comprised of six registered Democrats and one registered Republican. The upcoming election has five people running for three of the staggered terms. Two of those running are incumbents (and Democrats) and of the other three, two are Democrats and one is registered as “no party.” No registered Republican is running for the school board in Davenport. *
The Scott County Republican Central Committee (SCRCC) leadership has made noise periodically about the city elections in Davenport, more like a whisper really, but is silent about the school district with its much larger budget and very significant influence. Could it be that the leadership are either unconcerned with the public schools or just don’t see any need for Republican values and philosophy at the local level?
* we will post the list of incumbents and candidates and their party registration later. We just want to check on some voter turnout figures and some other items to provide some more perspective. R Mall
An excellent and important report. A further analysis as to how many, and which, members of the board and candidates have a direct personal beneficial interest in board policies and decisions (teachers, retired teachers, providers of goods or services to the school system, etc) might be highly informative.
Some aspects might be difficult to ferret out with our resources but it is street wisdom that the school related unions control the election because they are the ones who turn out. No concerted effort has been made by tax payer groups, (the Republican Party used to be a proxy) to affect the elections. Democrat dominated unions rule.