> SOUTHERN INDIANA — Reader upset with board’s direction

Well, now it is official. The reins of Greater Clark County Schools will pass to Dr. Andrew Melin in July. We welcome him and his family to our community and wish him Godspeed to maintain the momentum created over the previous three years.

Many questions continue to be raised regarding the actual need for a search — “lack of communication,” “personnel issues” and “salary” are hoisted up the school board’s flagpole when asked for a reason for termination, or, more accurately, lack of contract renewal.

Then, in the News and Tribune on June 8, a full-page ad, presumably paid for by the school corporation, with Dr. Stephen Daeschner’s picture on one side, the board on the other and our wonderful and fortunate graduates, below (they have escaped the madness).

How confusing ....

Celebrate the numbers on that page and add to the list the highest post-graduate acceptance rate in history, the attainment of AYP goals in all Greater Clark schools for the first time in the history of the corporation, record academic achievement gains in all of our schools and we are saying good-bye to the “master architect” who made it all happen.

How ironic, how confusing, how misdirected, how self-centered, how self-serving, how dysfunctional a board are we going to tolerate in Greater Clark?

This search process isn’t about Dr. Melin or any of the other candidates who were reviewed and selected. This entire process is about a school board who can’t deal with success, will not tolerate working with a superior intellect, who constantly need to micromanage due to their collective lack of experience, education and common sense and who are hell-bent on perpetuating mediocrity in this community.

This entire process is a control grab by this board. It is, at best, self-serving, and at worst, a slap in the face to our students, our teachers, our administrators and the entire Greater Clark community. A group of four and, sometimes five, board members who see their roles as directing the educational process and who, collectively, have one college degree between them.

Wake up, Greater Clark. You have just witnessed the most significant gains in academic achievement in the history of the school corporation and you are sending the Maestro packing. Yes, you (us). We elected this dysfunctional group and now we are living with their ineptitude. Wake up, Greater Clark.

— James H. Wesp, Charlestown



Tourism director expresses concerns on tolling



The Clark-Floyd Counties Convention-Tourism Board of Managers has asked me to express our concerns about the proposal to charge tolls to cross the Ohio River and the building of an additional Interstate 65 bridge.

The decision to build two new bridges, east end and downtown, sounded innocent enough when it was announced by the governors of Indiana and Kentucky on Dec. 11, 1997. Tolls were not part of the plan at that time.

The Clark-Floyd Counties Convention-Tourism Bureau has been outspoken on the proposed building of an additional I-65 bridge and placing tolls on the bridges. Recently we learned through articles in the News and Tribune that, according to the Bridges Authority, our thoughts and concerns were not “appropriate.”

The Board of Managers is concerned that a new I-65 bridge and tolling will be a deterrent to doing business in Jeffersonville and Clarksville. Our concerns were confirmed with the recently released Economic Impact Study of the Ohio River Bridges Project prepared for the Indiana Finance Authority and the Indiana Department of Transportation prepared by the Economic Development Research Group Inc. Businesses will lose customers and sales and thus some of them may be forced to close.

You might note that this will be the only toll on Interstate 65 that reaches from Chicago to Mobile, Ala. We are not aware of this scenario in the center of any other metropolitan area along a major Interstate.

The east-end bridge will be an economic benefit and improve traffic flow in the community. It needs to be built immediately.

As a community, we should not be bound by a decision made in 1997 without any local input, to build another I-65 bridge which will result in a loss of jobs and business closures in Jeffersonville and Clarksville.

— Jim Keith, executive director, Clark-Floyd Counties Convention-Tourism Bureau