“Education Must be our Top Budget Priority”- great idea Dan….now if you could only get an educated person to write your newsletter. It is really bad…isn’t there anyone in Harrisburg who could write it? Or did your talented staff write it? What is it written at- about a 9th grade level or am I insulting 9th graders?  It’s very clear that Dan is a non regulated Charter School proponent..why not, his kids go to one. I’ve often wondered if parents home school and cyber their kids to keep them away from society..if they think they are protecting them…if the parents can’t let go. Some schools are good but there’s no accountability and that needs to change. Going to change that Dan? I hope so.

Marcellus Shale-he touts the ‘fee’, not ‘tax’ that he helped pass and all the wonderful things the ‘fee’ will pay for. He never gives the percentage of the ‘fee’. Had the House had the guts to tax Marcellus Shale properly the cuts to programs would not have been so deep. Obviously Dan doesn’t care about those truly in need..though he believes in Toys for Tots for poor kids. Hell, they don’t need food, clothing, roof over their head or an education but let’s give them that cheap, made in China toy.

FREE FREE FREE FREE…Free food and fun at his Community Day…FREE FREE FREE FREE Breakfast with Dan-3 of them…nothing is free Dan. Note to Dan – By the way, where did the link on your website go that showed your monthly office expenses? Where is the transparency you promise? If it’s there, it’s hidden well.

New Medicare Special Needs Plans available to County residents…effective CY 2012?? (guess that’s Current Year? Surely the brilliant author could have done better. Anyone know anything about this plan for County residents?

So glad to hear he supports a smaller legislature….Let’s start with losing him.

WHAT DAN DIDN’T TELL YOU:

Did he tell you to thank him while you wait in long lines at the polls to vote in November – yes, Dan voted to make you prove that you are who you’ve always been…yep you now need a photo ID  to vote. Don’t have a drivers license? No passport? No state ID? Tough cookies…your vote doesn’t count. And why did he vote for this bill? Because the Republicans made up a problem – said there was rampant voter fraud and we now need to show our photo and just in time for the Presidential Election.

On a local note, do you know that Dan Truitt and Gwenne Alexander are now working together on local politics? Does Dan have influence on the local school board? Does he pay for these FREE lunches or do WE? Does his office have a ramp yet? Oh…and how disappointed is Dan that the plan to protect his seat- cutting democratic West Chester in half didn’t go through? So many questions, so little time.

HB1077- Yep he co sponsored the state rape bill that would require a woman to have a vaginal ultra sound prior to an abortion…yep, Dan feels a woman has no right to say what happens to her body but the state does – it can legislate state rape …while Corbett says don’t look….and get this, rumor has it that after the uproar, Dan withdrew his co sponsorship…don’t know if that’s true. Shame on him either way. This site used to have an email exchange between Dan and a woman about abortion…wish TruthSquad would put that back up.

So if you need a laugh, get a copy of Dan Truitt..Superman..Spiderman…Boogeyman….I mean State Representative. You’ll be glad you did and you’ll give his opponent Bret Binder serious consideration.

This is not ALL Republican women however we have a lot of them in Chester County.

Email Dr. Scanlon now at:  jsca...@wcasd.net

WestChesterPatch
West Chester Vote
Rumblings
Posted on May 6, 2012 at 5:00 am

As mentioned in the last blog, West Chester was recipient to approximately $450,000 in grant money through the Keystone to Opportunity grant funds made possible through the state’s  receipt of $38 million  from the federal Striving Readers Comprehensive Literacy Program. The money would benefit six local pre-school entities, helping to ensure that all children in the district would be afforded the opportunity to enter kindergarten armed with strong literacy skills -  a positive impact for the entire community.  The understanding is that the following programs would benefit from receipt of the grant money:

Advent Lutheran Preschool

Dilworthtown Christian

Aardvark Childcare & Preschool

West Chester Daycare Center

West Chester Play School

Chester County IU Headstart Program

There are disturbing “rumblings” in the community that West Chester has made the decision to decline the Keystone to Opportunity grant.  Why, we ask?  Unfortunately there has been no public comment from the board or administration, but the “word” is that the District policy on grant applications was not followed. In addition, if the grant money is accepted, the District will ultimately need to offset that “revenue” with expenses, not necessarily this year, but in subsequent years of the grant.  Some background on KtO grant: Pennsylvania was awarded $38.6 million for one year, presented by the United States Department of Education (USDOE) as a 5-year project.  Funding for years 2-5 is contingent on continued funding by the USDOE.  West Chester was fortunate to receive a 2- year grant, with years 3,4, 5 dependent on availability of federal funds.  http://static.pdesas.org/content/documents/KtO%20FAQs%2011.08.2011.pdf

Realistically, one  cannot imagine what a difficult position this decision puts our district in. As leaders in education, our administration must decide whether to take the grant money in hopes of ensuring kindergarten readiness for “at-risk” students in the district  OR succumb to the Board’s condition to find and  cut established district K-12 programs to offset the grant revenue?    Sadly but understandably, the latter decision will most likely prevail, once again demonstrating the critical role school board directors play in influencing a district’s educational vision. Regardless of the decision,  we must continue to commend the administration for applying for this grant, for whoever applied for this grant had the best interests of our children and community in mind. Whoever applied for this grant is obviously well aware of  the numerous studies linking early childhood education/literacy with better outcomes for students entering our K-12 system.  Whoever applied for this grant is aware of the “preventive” nature of such early childhood literacy programs and the fact that they can, in the long run, possibly decrease remediation costs for children who will ultimately enter the WCASD in kindergarten.  Thank you to all involved for your leadership and vision in applying.

In addition, we implore those  members choosing to serve on the Education and Pupil Services committees – who must also be well aware of the above mentioned studies and long-term implications of this grant -  to do everything in their power to find a way to accept this grant with minimal impact to the budget, if not this year than next.  In the past, through the formation of community task forces, the entire West Chester community has demonstrated its commitment to being fiscally responsible while maintaining the educational integrity of its programs.  As a community, we cannot overlook the impact these funds could have in ensuring children entering our district schools will be well prepared for our programs.

What does now become a bit clearer to those of us in attendance at last week’s school board meeting is why the news of this grant was not mentioned by any board or administration member.  Never having been made “public” by the board, declining this grant can pass quietly with minimum community involvement.   When confronted, the Board can blame the administration for not “following policy” in applying for the grant.    Either way, the  Board remains safe in having adopted a 2012/13 budget, including a 1.7% tax increase, and can continue to commend themselves on the consistent years of cutting/staying “flat” with expenses regardless of the amount of revenue received.

On a positive endnote, this grant,  if declined, will go to  another equally, or perhaps more, deserving district  – still a “win” for early childhood education in Pennsylvania.

However, each of us is encouraged to find out more facts about the receipt of this grant and contact the board for a more thorough and public explanation.  And continue to thank and congratulate those in our administration who had the vision and foresight to apply for this grant.   Personally, I am remaining optimistic that what we hear about the grant are simply “rumblings” and the issue will not become yet another storm that divides this community.

Please check out “Thinking P-12: The School Board Role in Pre-K education”, published for the Center for Public Education http://www.centerforpubliceducation.org/Libraries/Document-Library/Pre-kindergarten/Thinking-P12-The-school-board-role-in-pre-k-education.pdf . It analyzes the impact of  2-year grants in 2006 awarded to school boards in Kansas, Ohio and Texas, in order to expand school board member awareness of pre-k and better involve them in state pre-K policy. No joking, but perhaps the Board can investigate if grants such as these still exist to help all in the community better understand the importance of early childhood education programs in our District.“

Read comments here

Posted: Sun, Apr. 29, 2012, 3:00 AM
Consumer 12.0: Online payday loan firms open flout Pa. laws

Jeff Gelles, Inquirer Business Columnist

Pete Alfeche says his $250 loan cost him almost $2,000 in finance charges within a year. He is fighting efforts to allow such loans back in Pennsylvania but with regulations on those who offer them.

Pete Alfeche doesn’t recall exactly how he first encountered CashNetUSA, the online affiliate of the payday lender Cash America. He believes he got an e-mail pitching a quick loan.

But Alfeche, a Havertown insurance adjuster, is convinced of one thing: As much as he believed he needed the $250 he borrowed that day five years ago, taking the high-cost, short-term loan was a mistake he’d like to help protect others from making. Within a year, he had paid nearly $2,000 in finance charges, much of it to repeatedly roll over the initial loan.

Alfeche agreed to tell his story last week to help fight proposed legislation, sponsored by State Rep. Chris Ross (R., Chester County) and backed by dozens of other House Republicans and a handful of Democrats, that would bring payday lenders back to the cities, towns, and strip malls of Pennsylvania after a six-year absence.

Alfeche, now 51, compares getting his CashNet loan to jumping onto a treadmill without an off-button. He was going through a divorce, raising three teenage sons, and stressed by some unexpected medical expenses. The quick cash was a salve, but just for a moment.

“It may have helped for the first few days,” he says. “But when it became due, I didn’t have the money. I just kept on paying the fees — refinancing the loan, and paying the fees.”

Ross has 50 cosponsors for House Bill 2191 and has been trying to nail down support from Gov. Corbett before a hearing scheduled for 9 a.m. Thursday by the House Consumer Affairs Committee. He plans to offer an amendment to address some complaints from the bill’s critics, led by a coalition, Stop Predatory Payday Loans in Pennsylvania, that includes religious and labor groups, credit-counseling organizations, AARP, and United Way of Southeastern Pennsylvania.

Ross says the legislation is needed because Pennsylvania has been unable to vanquish online payday lending, despite a 2010 state Supreme Court ruling that said the high-cost loans were barred by state laws whether they were made in a storefront or by an out-of-state Internet lender.

“What we have now is a totally unregulated industry, with no rules, and tremendous opportunity for the consumer to be taken advantage of,” Ross told me last week.

Ross says he would prefer to allow payday lenders into the state so that the loans could be regulated.

Kerry Smith, a lawyer at Philadelphia’s Community Legal Services, has helped lead the fight against Ross’ bill, arguing that it “authorizes a product that we know from other states causes long-term harm.”

Smith says she doesn’t doubt the sincerity of Ross, a former business owner from East Marlborough Township — just the logic of his arguments and those of his supporters.

“What they’re doing is saying, ‘Look, a few people are finding Internet payday loans at 300 percent or higher, so to protect them we should legalize these loans in Pennsylvania,’?” Smith says. “The only thing this bill does is legalize loan-sharking. It is not a consumer-protection bill.”

Ross said Friday that his amendment would cut the cost of a payday loan to less than in most other states that allow payday lending, drop provisions permitting rollovers, and enable borrowers who can’t repay to enter a “no-cost extended-payment plan at least once per year” — an option that John Rabenold, lobbyist for the Ohio-based Cash ’n Go payday-loan chain, likens to “a once-a-year, get-out-of-jail-free card.”

Smith and other opponents, such as Philadelphia lawyer Irv Ackelsberg, say the changes would do little to limit the harm from making payday loans more widely available. Smith says that under the amendments, for instance, the cost of a two-week $300 loan would drop from about $46 to $42.50. In terms of annual percentage rates — a standard for comparing loans that payday lenders call misleading for their product — Ross’ amendment would cut the $300 loan’s APR from 419 percent to 369 percent, Smith says.

Nor would the amendments stop a borrower from paying off a loan on payday — a process that’s almost automatic, since payday lenders require a postdated check or preauthorization to directly debit your checking account — and taking a new loan the next day, she says.

One oddity of this fight is that payday lenders, despite their appearance across the state about a decade ago, gained a toehold here only because of a scheme, known as “rent-a-bank,” that federal regulators finally stopped.

Under rent-a-bank, payday lenders openly ignored a Pennsylvania law that limits small-loan finance charges to an annual percentage rate of about 24 percent, far below the triple-digit APRs common to payday loans. The lenders’ stance was that they were simply serving as middlemen for out-of-state banks that, under federal law, only had to worry about the laws in their own home states.

Since 2006, when the last federal bank regulator finally barred rent-a-bank schemes, Pennsylvanians who wanted payday loans had to cross the border into states that allow them, such as Delaware and Ohio, or turn to Internet lenders. But since the Supreme Court’s 2010 ruling, Internet lenders who do business with Pennsylvanians are openly defying state law.

There’s unquestionably market demand for short-term loans. Consumers with decent credit have other options, such as a line of credit or a cash advance on a credit card, but others face a dismal list of options when too many bills come due. Even large national banks are trying to capitalize on the need through payday-loan-like products such as Wells Fargo’s “Direct Deposit Advance.”

But for now, Smith says, there’s ample evidence from other states that the payday-loan model is harmful at least to some customers, and especially to the repeat borrowers who generate the bulk of the industry’s revenue.

Pennsylvania doesn’t have to give in to Internet lawlessness — a point the state Banking Department emphasized in February when it fined a Delaware company, East Side Lenders, $150,000 for making Internet payday loans.

“The payday-loan industry is marketing a product that we know is explosive,” Smith says.

Why invite it back?

Contact Jeff Gelles at 215-854-2776 or jgel...@phillynews.com. Read his blog at www.philly.com/consumer.

link

“When I put my nose in a glass, it’s like tunnel vision. I move into another world, where everything around me is just gone, and every bit of mental energy is focused on that wine.”
Robert M. Parker, Jr.

We will all get through the November election with wine. Turn off the telly, open a great bottle, let it breathe then you will too!

John Snook is a Republican East Bradford Supervisor and the husband of WCASD member Maureen Snook. Seems he had a rant and sent this email in March- it went viral..why wouldn’t it when copies were sent to the Vice Chair of the CC Republican Party and the WC Borough Manager to send to the WCA COG. Do you know what the WCA COG is? I had never heard of it, like most government groups- they slip things in.

Find out here    http://www.wgoshen.org/News/WCACOG/wcacog.html

No clue what provoked this rant but the recipients are interesting. Who is he to send this to the school board then to the republican party? The appearance is supposed to be that the school board ISN’T run by the Republicans, though the public knows it really is.

If you know what put a bee in his bonnet, please give it up.

Here’s John Snook’s rant-

Start of quote:
Dear members of the West Chester Area School Board -

First of all, let me assure you that Maureen did NOT put me up to this.  I am a member of the Board of Supervisors in one of your constituant municipalities and I expect you to behave the same way we at the Township would.

I was extremely disappointed to learn that at tonight’s Pupil Services Committee meeting, the Board Members on the committee were presented by the Administration with at least one issue to vote upon without any prior information having been received.  This is entirely IRRESPONSIBLE!  However, I recognize that this is consistent with past practice by the Administration, spanning a number of School Boards.  However, it is YOUR responsibility to make sure that the current Administrators (however brilliant they may be) know that YOU are the boss and they are the experts that serve you.  YOU are the ones that were ELECTED by the voters of this District.  To be perfectly frank, as one elected official, I DEMAND that you make it a very clear policy that NOTHING will be voted on if it is not in the Board packet at the end of the prior week before the meeting.  To do so otherwise is irresponsible.  I expect better of you.

I further understand that the issue to “suddenly” be voted on affected schools that were only notified TODAY by mail and therefore did not receive notification in time to actually respond to a proposal to cut their services from the District.  This is not only irresponsible, it is disrespectful, if not downright immoral and certainly undemocratic.

It is very clear that this Administration continues to rest on its laurels and bask in the presumption that the largesse of the taxpayers will continue to foot the ever increasing bill.  Yet we, the constituent municipalities must cut services to balance our budgets.  In East Bradford, a year ago, we cut ALL discretionary budget items by an average of one third.  Why cannot you do that?!!!  Our taxpayers pay 60 times as much to the School District as they do to the Township and I am very deign to believe that the services garnered are worth 60 times as much.

You are a creature of the municipalities which comprise you and you MUST SERVE US.  The State may have mandated some 40 years ago the consolidation of school districts, but, in the process, we relinquished our facilities to you and we gave over to you the responsibility to serve ALL of our children.  Remember this!  I will NOT forget!

Thank you for your perseverance,

John Snook

I hereby ask Ernie McNeely to forward this message to the other WCA COG members and I ask Marian McGrath to forward it to the members of the Republican and Democratic Party committees in the WCASD

End of quote

Even the sainted Ronald Reagan believed in higher taxes for the rich. He raised taxes 11 times- even on the middle class.

Watch it for yourself -  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2oPhlVm3HIo

East Goshen’s own Republican leader Gwenne Alexander is not surprisingly doing all she can to push it forward.  Redstate.com has this account: “A third source at the PA Leadership Conference who appears to be fairly well informed and determined on HB 1077 is Gwenne Alexander, the ACTION of PA leader for its Chester County Chapter.

Alexander, attending the conference with her husband and manning the Exhibitor’s booth for her organization, confirmed that she is in fact, discussing with some of her leaders how they can help counter the leftwing pressure on legislators and counter-act the misinformation campaign being waged to defeat “The Women’s Right to Know” bill.

It’s in this link

http://www.redstate.com/hanoverhenry/2012/03/24/supporters-plan-counter-offensive-to-back-womens-right-to-know-hb-1077-at-pa-leadership-conference/

This is not a misinformation campaign- the state would force a woman to have this invasive procedure and watch the ultrasound. No woman enters into an abortion without great thought and soul searching.  Two horrific scenarios would be a victim of incest or of rape having to endure a state issued violation- an invasive ultrasound. If you now a victim of either of these situations you know what this would do to them.

This redstate.com is very frightening- read it. I’m not a member of planned parenthood, which is a target in these articles, just a woman who will not give up my rights to this state.

Abortion is  private and not the states business, not Alexander’s business and not any elected officials business unless it’s their family is involved. Watch the video of a very uncomfortable Tom Corbett at this link  http://handsoffpa.com

Reps Barrar, Micozzie, Truitt, Lawrence, Hennessey and more co-sponsored this bill – They all need to be defeated. Vote against all those who choose to take away a woman’s right to choose! This is about your mother, sister, wife, daughter, niece, granddaughter, girlfriend…any female you love.

Campaign, contribute and vote for pro-choice candidates.