Editorial: The not-so-subtle school district

Thursday, 19 November 2009 01:00

It may be a sound proposal, but the school district needs to stop using its bully pulpit and taxpayer dollars to shove the fields project down everyone’s throats. Its media blitz is blurring the line between providing information and electioneering — and is bordering on being illegal.

Over the last month, the district has created a “Q&A” pamphlet, four videos — a 30-minute version and three roughly 10-minute pieces — a document of “fast facts,” and two columns by district heads, all hitting readers and viewers over the head with the need for new and renovated fields. The top three stories on the main page of the district Web site is devoted to these materials and have been for days. The district has also sent out multiple e-mail blasts — some have received nearly 10 of them — to remind people where to view the stories online, and put printed versions in students’ backpacks to bring home to their parents. This is all being done in advance of the public vote on Tuesday, Dec. 8, on the proposal to spend more than $3 million from a reserve fund to build new fields and repair existing ones.

District officials use words like “facts” in an attempt to cloak the slant of these pro-fields materials. They purposefully avoid key words like “approve,” “support,” and “vote yes,” as state law prohibits school district funds from being used to exhort the electorate to support a particular position in a public vote. Their intent however, is blatant, obvious, and simple: to get you to vote yes.

Take a look at the videos. They are conducted by Superintendent of Schools Dr. Robert Roelle, who oversaw the development of the fields proposal, interviewing school board President Michael Gordon, a vocal supporter of the project at school board meetings and on a local blog; Chrstian McCarthy, who was just hired by the board at the request of Dr. Roelle to head the district’s athletics department; and Michael Jumper, the district’s top business employee. Both Mr. Jumper and Mr. McCarthy have written columns in favor of the proposal. This isn’t Frost/Nixon.

Instead, one video spends 30 minutes with the four men each reiterating the need for more fields. That video ran on KLTV and was posted on the district Web site on Nov. 9. A week later, on Tuesday, the district released three separate videos, each roughly 10 minutes long, with Dr. Roelle conducting separate one-on-one interviews with each of them making the same pitch. So why the redundancy? By posting the individual interviews a week later, it afforded the district another opportunity to send a blast e-mail out to alert voters about the “new” videos, and to produce another press release for the media. If this sounds too contrived to be the case, consider that all the videos were produced on the same day, as evidenced by them wearing the same clothes.

There’s also the district trumpeting the community vote in March that approved the capital reserve, but it conveniently neglects to mention that became necessary because the school board mistakenly put millions of dollars in a fund it could not touch.

Perhaps the most glaring example of the district saying “Vote YES!” without actually stating those words is one of the headlines in the pamphlet that reads “Why do we need this project?” That stands on its own as a plea to support the proposal but in case readers somehow miss the point, the accompanying text gives numerous examples of why more fields are desperately needed and why the existing ones must be replaced. If the reader is still not convinced, there’s the next headline: “Who benefits by adding more fields?” Not surprisingly, it’s “Our students” and “Our community.”

So much for subtlety.

Do the fields need to be renovated and could the district use more of them? Absolutely — the proposal itself has plenty of merit. But, in addition to the legality questions, the district wasted taxpayer money and school resources to produce these materials. Clearly, there are better ways for the district to spend its time and money in an economic climate that officials have said will force them to make numerous educational cuts next year.

The district can continue to hide behind its claim that it is merely presenting information, or “facts,” and not explicitly supporting the fields proposal. But the content, the time spent creating the materials, and the numerous ways they are presenting them has clearly become a marketing campaign to get your vote. The words “vote yes” may never be uttered, but the images and statements presented scream “Approve!”