We sent the following email to all nine Lake County Superintendents. We are requesting that they review the schedules that we prepared from information we extracted or gleaned from various State of Ohio school websites.  Once we have received the verification from the individual schools we will publish the information.

We received information immediately from Riverside Local and Perry Local schools. We will give the others until January 15th, and then we publish with or without their input.  We applaud Riverside and Perry Superintendents for being honest and transparent with the taxpayers.  Well done.
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To all Lake County Public School Superintendents:

Lobbyists for Citizens is an apolitical, non-partisan group of Lake County citizens concerned about property taxes.  It is our belief that if we stay on our current path of ever increasing property taxes, we will price seniors and those living on fixed incomes out of their homes that they have worked all their lives to achieve.  Since the Lake County public schools receive 68% of the property taxes, we are trying to educate ourselves, and be honest and transparent with the Lake County citizens on what impacts their property taxes.

The funding of public schools with property taxes was declared unconstitutional by the Ohio Supreme Court over 20 years ago.  However, nothing has been done, other than spending more money, with generally less than stellar results. We recognize that this is a very complex issue with no easy solutions, but remaining silent is no longer an option.  We are hoping that some relief can be given to the aging population in Lake County because what we are doing is unsustainable.

There is a general perception in the population that teachers and superintendents are severely underpaid, and we wanted to determine if that is fact or fiction.

We have prepared and attached the following schedules that we plan to post on our website…..LobbyistsforCitizens.com.   The information was gathered and compiled from several websites that we found on-line.  It is our desire to be 100% accurate with our information that we present to the Lake County citizens.  To that end, we are providing each public school official with the schedules in order that they may have a chance to correct any information that they believe is incorrect.  Please email any changes to brian@lobbyistsforcitizens.com.  (LFC Comment: the schedules will be published once we have received confirmation from the Superintendents, or if they choose to ignore us we will publish the numbers as is.)

1. Average annual teacher’s salary
2. Summary of Superintendent’s annual salary
3.Student – Teacher Ratio
4.Source of funds for all nine public schools
5.Spending per pupil
6.State of Ohio Report cards for each public school

In addition to reviewing the schedules, we would like to know the following information:

1. Who is receiving the STRS or SERS pension payments and receiving compensation at         the same time. (commonly known as “double dipping”)?

2. Who is having the 14% or 10% employee portion of their pension paid by their employer (commonly known as “pick-up”)?
3. How much does an employee pay for their healthcare, what is their deductible, and co-insurance maximum for the health care?
4. How much does the employer pay on an annual basis for the individual / family employee health care?
5. Are there any other employee benefits paid by the district for salaried employees?

We thank you in advance for being honest and transparent with Lake County citizens and taxpayers.

Categories: Education, Uncategorized

Tags: FT