You might wonder how RPS is spending your tax dollars:

A few years ago I worked as a paraprofessional (para) at John Adams Middle School. I covered the detention room, hallways, and lunchroom. What I saw in the lunchroom was disgraceful. The food waste was unbelievable. Undisciplined students would continually throw food on the floors, walls, ceilings, windows and tables every break, and it would take 5 to 7 paras at least 20 minutes to clean up after them. This was good nutritious food paid for pay by the taxpayers for students from low income households. Thanks to another "great" law from the 2023 Legislature, now ALL RPS students receive free lunch, whether or not they are in financial need. This of the increase in food waste that will result....

VOTE NO on the Sales Tax Extension. Passage would extend this tax for 24 years!

We do not need a $65 million sports arena in addition to all the ones we already have here.

We simply can't afford this wasteful spending by our City and School District.

This is happening NOW (not in 2024). The gambit is to run these Tax Grabs in "off year" Special Elections to catch voters sleeping. Don't let them get away with this!

Diana Friemann

I worked maintenance at the Rochester Public Schools (RPS) for many years and recently
retired. All during my work career at RPS, I observed that spending was out of control, with a total lack of fiduciary responsibility concerning stewardship of taxpayer dollars.

Following the passage of the 2019 muti million- dollar taxpayer-funded Referendum, RPS #535 built 4 new schools. Two of these schools (Longfellow and Harriet Bishop) were replacement facilities, with the existing structures scheduled for demolition.

In the spring of 2020, following approval to tear down the Harriet Bishop site, the school board approved spending $500,000 on the old building’s HVAC system, replacing roof top units with new units (now in storage with parts raided making them in-operable.)

During demolition of the Bishop site the instruction for maintenance was to make sure
someone took a loader out each day and crushed the dumpster contents so the neighbors
wouldn’t see the contents....

The copper on the outside of Overland Elementary School sure is pretty. Are we having a
designer contest? I can’t imagine the extra expense. How did the cost of the Century swimming pool balloon from $9 million to $16 million?

With the past budgets and current out of control spending, and already having 2 unpaid tax
assessments on the public tax statements, RPS should learn to live within the budget already set.

Paul Pendergrass