John Dick, member of the Monroe County School Board, joined Good Morning Keys on Keys Talk 96.9/102.5FM this morning to talk about what’s going on in our schools.
The food services director recently resigned and had publicly criticized the food service department.
Dick said, “I wish he’d have come to us and said all these things and I wish he would have stayed to try to fix them. Of course, we have to find out if all these things are what they say. One thing that I do know, the state was scheduled for an audit of our food service, and they’re down here now going to be going through this, and the superintendent gave them this letter and all this, so they’re going to look at all these things and incorporate that in their audit. So we’ll get an unbiased opinion as to what’s what. Food service, in reality, you get money from the federal government and you collect money from people that pay for their lunches, they pay for their food. The ideal setup on that is that you don’t make any money and you don’t lose any money. That’s really way it should be designed and it is designed, and hopefully that happens. Of course, you could always come up with a surplus one year and then be a little bit under budget. But what has happened here, as far as some of the money, why they’re in a deficit, when COVID came, the feds came in and said, we’re paying for everything, and they paid for everybody’s lunch. Then, like, what happens with those things, once you give people something free, it’s really tough to take it away, and for political people, like board members, to be the ones to take it away, we see that in Congress all the time. They never want to take something back that they give for free. That’s part of what has happened here. I even knew this is a problem, once you start saying, well, we’ll continue to pay for it, we could pay for it, but where does the money come from? It actually comes out of the general fund. I look at those things and say, well, we could have hired another teacher instead of doing this. When you give everybody the free food, there’s a lot of people that it wouldn’t be a problem for them to pay for it. So that’s part of how that we got into some of that deficit. I’m not saying that’s all of it. I’m just saying that’s part of it, and I know that and that was a board decision to go forward and continue paying for the food for all the students.”
The schools will celebrate Veteran’s Day tomorrow.
Dick said, “That, to me, is very important, and I’m very glad that this district has stayed with that. Not all districts are closed for Veteran’s Day, but we do, and we always have, at least in my term, on the board I can’t speak for before that. Also, we have performances in all our schools. They were performing in Marathon on Friday and and I know they were going to perform in Key Largo, but they postponed it because there was a law enforcement issue. Other schools in Key West have all been performing, the patriotic songs, the students are singing songs and waving flags. I put a picture on Facebook of the students in Stanley Switlik Elementary waving 600 flags. Every student waving a flag and singing, God bless America. So that’s what a great community this is. It’s a day off for the for all the students, but you will see the complete Key West High School Band, and it is a big band, they will all be in that parade today, wearing their uniforms and and parading down Duval Street seeing playing patriotic music. I’m telling you, that band is maybe 60, 70 students, and this is their day off.”
It’s important for the schools to celebrate Veteran’s Day.
Dick said, “I can tell you something about our school board. I think this is a rarity. It’s not right now, but three years ago, when Captain Ed and Ron Martin were on the board with us, we had three combat veterans, then from Vietnam serving on the board out of five people. I don’t think there’s too many like that. When I grew up back in the day in the government in the United States, it would be hard to get a position in the government, as a Senator or a House of Representative or anything, unless you were World War II or Korean veteran. I think that was the way it was back then. Now I start to see that coming back, that veterans are getting elected into positions, and I think that’s very important. I’ll say it for the Marines, that as their birthday, there are celebrations up and down the Keys. I know the VFW in Key Largo, which I’m a member of, is having a celebration at their post. I know Marathon is having a celebration this evening at their post and and I would be sure that the Key West post is also doing the same. So they cut the cake. They have the oldest Marine and the youngest Marine. We celebrated the army a couple of weeks ago, and now it’s the Marines.”
The next school board meeting will be November 18 at Marathon High School.