Taxpayers, are your education dollars being used for education?

Parents should be able to send their children to schools that use tuition dollars for education instead of for superfluous projects. In public schools, tuition is paid for by taxpayers. That's why LPS feels obliged to email newsletters out to the public after school board meetings.

What do we make, then, of this excerpt from this week's school board meeting notes, sent out by LPS's public relations specialist Mary Kay Roth.

from an email update sent out after the February 23rd LPS board meeting
The Board of Education approved a new online patron engagement program – also designed to create a tracking system for questions and concerns from the community – in a three-year contract for $100,000 annually.

LPS has branded the new program, ConnectNow, a product called “Let’s Talk” provided by K-12 Insight.  The engagement program can be accessed on the front of the LPS website where community members can click, send their questions and concerns – and expect answers within two days and often sooner.
The vote was 6 in favor, and Board member Matt Schulte voting no.
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The major goals of the program are:

• Provide a Front Door for LPS.
• Establish a Data Warehouse for LPS.
• Create an Awareness System for questions and issues in the community.  

Let's unpack the positive spin on this "patron engagement program."

The Board of Education just approved a $300,000 contract for an online program that allows community members to get answers to their questions within two days. We can already get answers to our questions in less than two days by simply picking up the phone and calling them. LPS is not Apple or Toyota. It doesn't have millions of customers. In fact, there is one LPS employee for every 5 LPS customers. Answering questions should be easy. What we really want LPS to be focusing on is education, not the organization's image.

What did taxpayers just buy?
The main goals of ConnectNow are to increase public relations, collect data on community "questions and concerns" and presumably the question-askers, and create an "awareness system" (this double-speak is unclear). 

How do we taxpayers like this expense? LPS is spending $100,000 per year on this particular part of their branding (there is much more spent on their image in other ways). What could we do with that $100,000 per year if it were spent on education?

What could we have bought instead?
The local Catholic schools can educate 20 students all year long with $100,000. For students with special interests or who want to learn something at a faster pace, we could pay for 500 of them to take an online course through the accredited UNL Online High School with that $100,000. We could have bought 14,285 copies of To Kill a Mockingbird or interactive Promethean boards for 20 classrooms. Instead, LPS gets "a front door," according to their spokesperson.

It's no wonder LPS officials and teacher's union officers want to deny the opportunity of school choice to the people of Lincoln. This kind of behavior is doomed to failure in any kind of free market. Without the free market, the monopoly can spend our money on anything they want.