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Dear Editor:
Carmel voters deserve to know the truth and facts about its school board candidates. There is a lot of willful deception going on that voters wouldn’t know unless it were pointed out to them.
First of all, this election IS partisan. There will never again be a school board election that isn’t contested between the left and the right. In Carmel, there is a slate of three candidates for liberals and one for conservatives. Then there are three “independents.”
If you don’t want liberals to take full control of the board, don’t vote for Barnes, Flittner or Long. Not only are these people poorly qualified, but they publicly demonstrated inability to work with others. Barnes has antagonized others, including right here on this site. Just search the letters. Flittner’s angry responses to him and threats she made to another citizen posting factual information reveal a personality unfit to serve on the Board. Long … is clueless. Search and you will find that she didn’t even know what our school district was called or how to file paperwork. These three people knew there was a battle between left and right before they filed. Now their campaigns will draw votes away from conservatives – and help progressives to win our Board seats.
The left is up to their usual deceitful tactics. The liberals and their support groups are intentionally using names such as ‘Support CCS’ and ‘Keep CCS Inclusive’ with the intent to deceive you into thinking anyone else not with them does not support our schools or students. Clearly that’s false. Don’t be manipulated.
Liberal candidate Nichols posted a campaign video saying he “doesn’t want to get into politics” – and avoided mentioning he is on a slate with liberals and fully endorsed by the above liberal groups. He’s trying to fool voters in the middle. That makes Nichols a disingenuous candidate who deserves no votes.
The two incumbent Board Members not up for reelection, Katie Brown and Louise Jackson, are liberals who demonstrated publicly in media and board meetings that they dislike parents speaking up for their rights. The risk now is that Carmel’s board will become 100 percent progressive.
CCS was caught being willfully non-transparent and dishonest. There were, by CCS’s own admission, inappropriate books in its buildings. The books’ presence happened in part due to unchecked progressive bias and in part to due incompetence (Beresford stated he was surprised to learn those books were in his buildings.) Beresford and the Board were evasive and dishonest about the Panorama survey and have intentionally tried to avoid answering FOIA requests and hiding the names of people serving on our public committees. Our own school district … refusing to be open and honest.
These are facts. These and other disturbing things happened. CCS is no longer the titan of educational excellence it used to be; now it is merely the Titanic – and the wrong people are driving it. The left wants you to think everything is fine. It’s not. Vote BBS so we have a chance to save our children.
Dave Hommel
Carmel
Well said
Excellent and well written!
A fun fact is Dave Hommel runs the We Are Carmel Facebook group. He blocks and deletes everything he doesn’t like all in the name if his free speech. He even argues with himself using the anonymous pages.
Only vote BBS for book banning, lack of transparency, and misinformation from people very out of touch. They want some golden age that never existed.
Don’t be manipulated by their misinformation. And know they block people for asking questions and won’t allow comments in their posts. I’m still waiting on multiple questions to be answered. But then I was blocked.
Absolutely agree! Well said!
Carmel voters do deserve the truth and the facts about school board candidates. I recommend they visit their websites and/or watch their video interviews conducted by the Carmel Education Foundation to understand their platforms and how they plan to help students/improve our schools. Reading another passionate, but bias and opinion-heavy Letter to the Editor isn’t going to help unformed voters. Avoid noise and scare tactics.
So much disinformation here I hope some of the named parties consider filing libel and/or defamation lawsuits.
Chrissy, thank you for sharing. You comment explains a lot. I joined We Are Carmel, commented a few times, but ended up deleting when they weren’t approved before they lost relevancy. None of the handful of comments I tried to share we political or controversial.
This letter appears to be written by a bitter former candidate for City Council. This is a “Mitt Romney feelings hurt” jab at candidates. We understand that not everyone can win but you do not need to take it out on those who are not BBS.
Thanks to the Hamilton County Reporter for opening their Letters to the Editor pages to free, in-kind, donations to candidates because far short shear opinion are these political lies and advocacy that Mr. Hommel is spouting as “facts.”
It sounds like we’re all lucky that Dave has never been elected to anything!!
Burn all the books!
This is sad to see Dave Hommel and his campaign team constantly attack our district and teachers with their “the sky is falling campaign.” According to them, our schools are failing. The truth is that most schools are recovering from the effects of the pandemic. During the pandemic, despite online learning, instructional hours dropped significantly. Our 2022 scores show that we are on the improvement path. Next, we hear from them that our teachers are sexualizing our children. Some go as far as claim that our teachers are perverts, groomers and pedophiles. The truth is that we have dedicated teachers who are committed to the success of our students. 99.6% of our teachers are rated effective or highly effective. The issue with the books was addressed by our Superintendent. If elected, I will work with our policy committee to ensure the review process becomes policy and an annual process that the Superintendent is responsible for executing.
Our district needs people leaders. It is not enough to whine and complain. We need leaders like me who will offer solutions to our most pressing problems. That is what I’ve done at every step of my campaign: offer solutions that will solve our problems and unite our school district.
According to Dave Hommel I antagonized others. The truth is that I replied to Stephanie Flitnner’s letter and made it clear to our community that individual board members are not responsible for managing our individual funds. Our school board policies delegate that responsibility to our Superintendent. Those policies are grouped in policy series 6000. Our school board is responsible for hiring/firing the Superintendent, and managing their performance during their tenure. Our school board is also responsible for setting goals. Finally, our school board is responsible for setting policies, and most of my response in our public forums focused on policies.
Here is my previous response to Stephanie:
I believe there is a fundamental misunderstanding of how our Carmel Clay School Board of Trustees operate. It is impossible for an individual board member to make financial decisions. A quorum is required for the board to conduct business. Once a quorum is constituted, a simple majority of voting Members is required to approve an item of the Board’s business. In this case, the school’s budget and other financial matters that come before the board.
Kara Kollros is the Director of Finance for Carmel Clay Schools. Kara and her team are responsible for the day to day finances. The school board does not micromanage our Superintendent Dr. Beresford, our Associate Superintendent Roger McMichael, Kara Kollross or any of the staff in our Finance department.
I would encourage Stephane Flittner to watch a replay of the presentation by KGR at the School Board Workshop in May.
https://youtu.be/2cOYirxuoew?t=1827
Finally, our greatest asset is not our funds. Our greatest assets are our students, teachers, parents, administrators, and community. It is, you, our people.
I will simply point out that the chief measure of how well a district is meeting its objectives is student achievement, reflected in standardized test scores. When student achievement declines, teachers (who execute policies), administrators (who manage policies) and school board members (who set policies) are all culpable.
If school board candidates are truly focused upon student achievement, they will adopt policies designed to give teachers and administrators the tools needed to achieve that goal. If school board candidates are more focused upon personal agendas and imposing their own values, they will ultimately fail at their role and student achievement will suffer.
Thanks Dave for your thoughtful article and thank you for supporting Greg, Adam, and me.
We ran a good race despite a whole lot of disinformation and slander from a former superintendent and a few mean girls. Isn’t it ironic that there is such an emphasis on anti-bullying in our schools but some parents seem to think that it doesn’t apply to them?
I don’t believe that such poor behavior by a few had any effect on the outcome of the election. Adam and I would have each won soundly if we were not competing against those running independently in our districts. That is why we asked Stephanie and Lori to join our team early on and run in two years. They are very smart women who could have a positive impact upon our schools.
If you look at the total votes it is clear that the community realizes that there is a need for change in our Carmel school system. That’s great news! It also demonstrates that the majority of Carmel residents value the same things that Carmel has always valued and makes Carmel such a great place to live. We just need to fight a little harder for it these days.
I will continue to support my good friend Greg Brown and I hope the best for the other candidates that won. Also thank you to the hundreds of supporters who were behind us all the way.
And thanks again Jake Nichols, for the blueprint you brought me from your workplace that my father made for your grandfather years ago. It was a kind thing to do.