Candidate for
School Director; North Allegheny School District

First and foremost, please call or email us if you have any questions, at 412-519-2586, 412-974-3314 or buco21@pghmail.com. If Karen Shaheen and Phyllis Brannon are elected, we want ALL families to be represented. With the economic issues we are facing, we want to establish a connection/bridge with the Community College of Allegheny County. Not all of our students desire to go to a 4-yr college. In fact, many of the jobs that will be available in the next few years, will be in the service industry. We also need to offer job fairs and bring in representatives to our schools from a variety of local businesses/corporations to talk to students and let them know what various positions that their companies are looking for. We also need to make sure that taxpayers realize that we are going to be faced with a significant shortfall in the state pension plans, which is not exclusively due to the economy, it is also due to the fact that our tax base can NOT support the 90% pay that teacher's are getting when they retire. We need our elected officials to repeal this pension bill and establish a more realistic pension plan. I would propose that teacher's should be required to retire after 25yrs. and receive either 50% of their salary or even look at a 401K plan. The current School Board has done nothing to be Proactive about this issue that is going to result in at least a 28% shortfall in 2010, which will cause an increase in the millage. The current school board has increased the budget an avg. of $4 million/yr. In addition, I have expressed my concern on a number of occassions regarding the lack of Security in our schools. My husband, who is a Police Officer, attends a variety of conferences, and he constantly hears about the importance of Security and Police presence in schools, which is lacking at North Allegheny. There are a number of other issues we would like to address and would also like to hear from you, so please let us know what your issues are. We can be reached at buco21@pghmail.com or 412-519-2586. Finally, we do NOT want to raise your taxes and we will NOT come after you and reassess your property if your purchase price of your home is more than $50K of your assessed value, which the current school board has done. Thank you for taking the time to review this information and we would appreciate your VOTE on May 19th.