How DPS could have had your kids in school yesterday

We’re on day 3 of no school.

You can blame old man winter- for dumping a foot of snow.

You could blame the City of Dayton for not having the resources or skills to clear all of our roads.

Or you could ask the leaders at DPS why they didn’t watch this video 7 years ago- and fix their insane bus routing system?

I’ll even start the video right at the right point for y’all.

We’re still operating on a 100+ year old model to teach kids. It’s not working that well, and yet, no one’s talking about re-inventing this district, except for me.

And, since the old Marine Corps Reserve center now belongs to Sugarcreek Packing- I’ve been eyeing the old abandoned Ernie Greene Industries building on James H. McGee on the way to pool.

As to how we’d have the schools open, if we were routing buses only on main streets- to central pickup points, instead of doing door to door service. Besides cutting down on mileage- having someone taking attendance at the bus stop to start working on truancy before the school days starts, this system also gets kids walking, knowing their neighbors, and helps form a sense of community. And my system doesn’t depend on the city having to clear the side streets.

There’s a lot more in the video- like a longer school year, longer school day, with less time on instruction and more time engaging kids. Considering most kids have both parents working- it also solves child care issues. More importantly, if you’re talking about a reason to live in Dayton, or build a business here, knowing your employees kids are safe is a lot better economic development offering than a bag of taxpayer dollars.

The city just committed to waste $5.8M on the Fairgrounds- having the poor subsidize UD and Premier Health. Then today, the city talked about “chipping in” $6M on the Centre City Building. Maybe, if they’d spend money on snow plows and overtime, people could get to work, kids could go to school, and our taxes would be lower because we didn’t support some private businesses with our tax dollars.

The reality is in the last 40 years the tallest structure built in Dayton is the landfill and it’s still growing. We’ve got potential everywhere, but since we have politicians who’ve been paid off by landfill operators, demolition contractors, and developers, this is what we get.

You want a city that works for you? That can get your kids to school? Maybe you should have voted different.

In the mean time, if you want innovative answers to solve your problems, I run a creative services firm, The Next Wave Marketing Innovation. Have you heard ANYONE offer up any kind of innovative plan to solve the problems of DPS including the new superintendent?

Didn’t think so.

Song: Snowed In, Blown Out. David Esrati