By LINDON DODD
Dear Frank Collesano,
Pardon the obvious pun, but let me be frank with you. Please reconsider your decision to leave at the end of the year.
The students at Greater Clark County Schools need you. I can’t put my plea in any simpler terms than that. Our $100 million educational corporation has been in the hands of small town, small-minded and intellectually challenged hands for too many years in a row.
I know you don’t have to have a dog in this fight. You can comfortably go back to your personal retirement. We can’t afford to go back to a school board where allegations fly about having votes influenced by campaign contributions.
I know you think that the school board on Nov. 10, in effect, issued a no confidence vote for you. Today, I publicly proclaim my absolute no confidence vote in this school board. This board on Nov. 10 sold out the interest of every kid in Charlestown.
Another round of backroom wheeling and dealing and people with personal and professional agendas that have nothing to do with the kids in the Greater Clark County Schools won out over the right thing to do. I hear one vote was traded for a vote next year for school board president. One trustee who proclaimed the loudest they received no aid from another architect has a mother who works for that architect.
Don’t let small town bullies run off a man of your character. Stand defiant and fight them and this community will rally behind you. Not everyone, of course, but the ones who understand the stakes for our kids.
I will continue to get the truth out with every chance. The only way to fight these people is with transparency. One CFO who really knows what he is doing is worth 100 part-time school board people who don’t have a clue. They want to second-guess your judgment on a $10,000 architectural fee. Just remember, $100 is a big number for some of them, so only try to imagine how much $10,000 sounds like. You already know how badly they misunderstood $100,000,000 regarding building contracts.
We can’t even afford to wait until May’s school board elections to let this board continue to let the ship float adrift. Some of the most dangerous members still have years left to play their small-town games. Frank — and I hope you don’t mind my calling you Frank even though we have never met — we will never get another of your wisdom, experience and ability. We have failing schools and budget woes that would make the average person’s head spin. You have found money where it was hiding in plain sight where others would have just thrown up their hands in despair. And you found money in the hundreds of thousands.
In the coming years, even less state money will become available for schools. Now more than ever, you need an experienced CFO. We really can’t afford to pad local campaign contributors’ bottom lines at the expense of better contracts.
The Greater Clark school board has been so used to bullying the people in charge and in micromanaging things about which they have no clue for so long it just seems to them to be a right of being elected. The obvious truth about a school board position is that when it is used properly and with integrity, there is a little bit of power and a lot of responsibility. However, the history of that position in Clark County is that when someone chooses to abuse the position for personal agendas, that power level can be exponentially increased and lucrative.
I can’t promise you that things will change with this school board. In fact, I am sure they won’t measurably until after the next two elections. However, if the community will increase pressure upon them to delegate authority and stick to approving policy issues like their job description dictates, we might all come out of this with some coherent plan for our school system.
Am I asking that we give you a blank check? Well, frankly, yes. If we can’t trust your integrity to do the right thing based on your resume and very obvious short-term success, then what other chance do we have for success?
The alternative seems much less palpable, that is the school board making the economic decisions based on which local manipulators with a personal or professional interest can persuade them how to spread millions of dollars around town. Remember, $100 in this town can go a long way. For certain business people who get a contract, $100 can get an almost repulsive rate of return on their investment.
I know critics of this opinion will begin nitpicking again at your $110,000 salary. Again, I remind you of the value of $100 to the average person. Just imagine what $110,000 must sound like. I can assure you that a CFO of any $100,000,000 corporation in the private sector would get more than that, plus lucrative bonuses and stock options for their trouble.
Just to explain to the average citizen who is not used to dealing with large numbers. I took the $10,000 architectural contract fee — which the board rejected — and divided that by $100,000,000 on my adding machine. Do you know what the mathematical answer was? Zero percent. That’s right, even carrying it out three decimal places; it didn’t even register a decimal percentage.
I am asking the public who is as disgusted with the way things have gone in the Greater Clark County Schools to evaluate with whom they want to trust the future of our kid’s education. We have three alternatives:
1. Superintedent Stephen Daeschner and Frank Collesano.
2. An unknown future superintendent and CFO.
3. The part-time elected school board members.
Greater Clark has had three superintendents and an interim superintendent in the last five years. Let me explain that in sports terms — which most Greater Clark parents tend to relate to much better than corporate language. If you had four different coaches in the last five years, your basketball and football teams likely would be an inept laughing-stock with a pitiful record.
I know many people tend to have a terrible perspective about sports versus real life, but the future and financial health of the school corporation is many times more important than having a good sports program.
Frank Collesano, our kids need you. Just stay a year or two until this financial mess is turned around and then leave on your own terms. You know what a mess you walked into on that first day.
People who have worked with you tell me you have worked magic, not by accounting slight-of-hand, rather by simply knowing what the heck you are doing. Regardless of your decision, thank you for what you have already accomplished in spite some of our school board members’ best resistance against your efforts.
As you said, you weren’t interested in the way the school board used to do things. Anyone who knows how things are used to being done really doesn’t want that to continue.
Lindon Dodd is an Otisco resident who is a freelance writer and can be reached at lindon.dodd@hotmail.com
