Mrs. Greenwell,

What is your educational background? Do you have an undergraduate degree, graduate degree, a degree in any area of specialization?

Thank you.

Ms. Greenwell, the community said no to you when you sought reelection, when you tried to recall the board, and when you tried to kill the new high school. We will say no again. You've created a track record that makes it very easy and necessary to do.

Sigh…..

Mrs. Greenwell, You posted and removed this blog two days ago. Now it is back. I was hoping that perhaps you had removed it in an effort to show this community and the world outside a more positive attitude.

Please start living in the here and now. You keep saying that you have moved on, but please read what you have written. It is glaringly obvious that you are still living in your disappointments of the past. What kind of lesson are you teaching the students of this district? For you to claim that we might have had the new school long ago if the sinking fund had been better spent is one of the biggest falsehoods you have spouted yet.

Mr. Charness is correct. The community has said no to you several times now. They said no several times when you wanted to be re-elected, and they said no to your recall. They also effectively said no to you when the bond for the new Bloomfield Hills High School passed in May. Are you listening?

By the way you live here in Bloomfield Hills, and the students and taxpayers you keep saying you wish to represent live here. We don't live in Grosse Pointe! Quite honestly I'm tired of hearing about how Grosse Pointe does things. We can all learn things from those around us, but if you think Grosse Pointe is that much better could you do us and our students a favor and just go live there!

Ms. Greenwell,
A small but important thing: when you talk about "academic acheivement" remember that it is "i before e accept after c": academic achievement. I make a lot of typos, too, but this is a spelling tic for you (I am now reading a lot of your posts); such typos from a board member are the sort of thing that end up on Jimmy Kimmel. Much more importantly, though, please stop presenting false choices. A board member has to concentrate both on education/academics and the "business" side of things. The board member who pits one against the other is doing a disservice to the taxpayer and District. I do appreciate the more reasonable tone here. You suggest only that you were alone in caring about education in 2004, etc., something I don't believe ...but it is within the realm of fair politics, I think.
(sorry if double posted)

If I remember correctly, Jenny, you voted in favor of the Lahser turf field and no to the Andover field. To many of us on the West side, that smacked of favoritism. The condition of the AHS field at the time was completely inadequate and antiquated. The new field was also much safer for the athletes. That sinking fund investment has been used and the return has been high. AHS has been able to hold many athletic and community events because the other 6 board members had the common sense to vote yes.

Also, in reference to the Wabeek development, it was an IDEA that surfaced to try to bring more younger families with school age children to the district. In the BHSD we are nearly built out and at the time, price points for homes were often times too high for young families starting out. Aren't you one to tout creative thinking? That is what that board and administration was attempting to do to increase enrollment. Ok, so it proved to be an idea that was not supported. Move on.

Taxpayers have said NO to Jenny Greenwell three times. Once again, the correct answer is "NO".

Jenny, I wholeheartedly agree that "No" has a place in good parenting. As for one of your examples where you said "No" as a trustee, you once again fail to provide context and thus unintentionally or intentionally mislead those uninformed on the issue. The Wabeek property was bought by the District years ago when enrollment growth suggested another school building in the District could be needed. When it became apparent years later that enrollment would never reach the level to justify that, the idea was presented to liquidate this unused asset to generate revenue, a concept you repeatedly advocate. There would be two ways to do this: 1) Sell the property and get a one-time cash infusion or 2) Lease the land to a residential developer in order for homes to be built that could potentially add students, and thus per pupil funding, to the District. The lease arrangement wouldn't be speculative as it would have involved a long term, 99 years being common practice. While there would not be the larger one-time cash gain as a result, there would be an ongoing annuity of lease income to the District, whose net present value would exceed that of the one-time cash sale. The District would maintain some control over what type of housing would be built, with a preference toward attracting families with school age kids.

The idea was shelved because market conditions weren't favorable enough to generate the rate of return that would make either scenario worthwhile.

J. Wagner

Sounds like some community members are listening to the wrong sources for their facts.....

Thanks for the confirmation Ms. Stieg. I really didn't mean to nitpick. But by any academic or financial standard measure BHS remains in the top two or three districts in the state if not at the top and when we talk about our achievements we want to avoid even the perception that we don't know what we are talking about. (i before e other than after c is just a cutesy general rule -- there are exceptions, of course). Working in the new media age is tough -- ask any school administration the care it takes in disseminating information lest the slightest miscue be jumped on as a mark of irresponsibility, bias, and so on. Not easy. Tedious even.

To address your statement Jenny, yes, it is well known that I did support the earlier proposal to build two separate new high schools of reasonable size (not Mega Schools as you characterize them) because I was willing to pay the additional taxes to maintain the separate Lahser and Andover and give them both new facilities, which I strongly felt they both needed. I was also realistic enough to understand that not all tapayers were going to be willing to support that expense and when the proposal failed, I understood why and respected those folks that voted that way for that reason. My compromise was to be willing to support a consolidated high school to get a new or substantially new facility. Enough folks on opposing side of that vote were willing to compromise and accept a lower tax request in exchange for the same. Thus, both sides compromised and here we are today moving forward with a plan that has majority community support. One could say that is was painful and time consuming getting to this point and I would agree, but we're here now. That is where our focus should be, not on drumming up past disagreements.

J. Wagner

Could there be a more telling argument against Ms. Greenwell's candidacy than this blog and her comments in response to peoples' post? I know there will soon be posts claiming personal attacks and how "insightful" her the blog was but that's just not the way it goes. You can have your own opinions but you can't create your own facts.

Thank You, Ken. I appreciate your concern for how readers use Patch and how the forum is perceived in the community. And I share it. A few things I wanted to point out: The site automatically categorizes and lists the 'most popular' blogs based on how many page views it receives, as is the case with articles, announcements and events. The number of comments, or who they're from, has no bearing, though it's clear that blogs or articles that have more comments likely will have more page views. I have no say or control on that process or when it's measured; As far as editorial practices, concerning blogs, there really are very few. The platform is designed to be free-flowing and easy to engage with others that might think along the same lines or different ones, too. Other than deciding when they're featured on the site, upholding the terms, of use, and how they're featured on our social media tools, Patch editors exert little control over local blogs. We don't edit them for content and generally not for grammar, spelling or cohesiveness. The goal is to help facilitate an ongoing conversation with your neighbors, warts and all, and if that means some are only coming to the site to strictly see just what the 'other guy' is saying, I'm okay with that. But I'd argue they're missing out on a lot more.

Even though Art has deleted two of my posts (and I do respectfully think he made the wrong choice both times) I don't think it's in his control. I think web based items like this are rated by hits, or responsive posts. Jenny has made herself a lightning rod with our schools whether someone agrees or disagrees with her. If I'm the Patch editor or owner I have to love having a blogger like her because it generates interest that probably transfers to the rest of the site. I don't really expect Art to moderate these blogs and subsequent posts, he's not the editor of a conventional newspaper with reporters and higher standards. When Jenny or her followers post things that are somewhat out there it's not as if he put his blessing on it.

I believe your assessment of Patch to be spot on, Neal. Where I get frustrated, and I have conveyed this frustration to Art in the past, is when people use Patch as a vehicle to present incomplete/misleading information, innuendo, speculative accusations, or worse, outright fabrications to support their point of view. We saw this time and time again during the high school bond campaign and it continues on and off since. There doesn't seem to be any editorial responsibility on the part of Patch because they consider themselves strictly a host of discussions. I suppose that Patch is not obligated to do anything more in that context, but if you are facilitating such behavior, shouldn't you have some accountability for it?

J. Wagner

You have to admit this is more damaging to Ms. Greenwell than anything else that's been out there. She's been repudiated by the voters on the recall (sure let's run a recall since I can't win a legitimate election) and the school bond issue. Now we see the voters have previously rejected her as a school board member 3 times. There's an ample record of divisiveness, disdain for large parts of the district, flat out ignorance of the issues in the school bond issue. As she has said many times: we have SMART voters here in the BHSD. She will get the votes of her cohorts (Barr, Linda P/Ulrey, Guidone, Mc Allister, and Marcia) but probably not very many more based on her track record and communications.

She doesn't need to dismissed as a bad person. It is clear, however, if she really cares about the students and community she should come before the school board as a community member, It would be foolish put give her power or control over our kids' education.

Thanks, again, to the many readers and commenters to my blog. I am happy that so much interest is being generated in school issues, current and past. Taxpayers and residents of the BHSD need to pay attention to public education. Are we gettiing the best possible value for our education tax dollars, and are our students getting the maximum benefit? We need to avoid expensive mistakes of some of our neighbors, while leading and innovating as the top-funded public school district in Michigan should! Are we leading? Let's take a close look. More to come.Thanks! j

For Ms. Greenwell to thank the readers and commenter to her blog who uniformly said she had been rejected 3 times amongst other things and then talk about best possible value for our tax dollars is simply delusional. Can you imagine this kind of reasoning from a member of the school board?

Sometimes, the correct answer is "no."

November 6 is certainly time to say "no" to Jenny Greenwell.

These "commenters" crack me up! Do they get paid to write this stuff?
Here's the deal: If voters and taxpayers think that pay & benefits for adults are more important than education outcomes and intellectual development of STUDENTS, then our public education system will continue to struggle, financially and otherwise. Enrollment will continue to decline, and funding from the state will continue to be cut. If voters feel that local school districts must be accountable to taxpayers, transparency and all, then public education will flourish.
We can re-build trust, or not. Voters have a choice, and that is good. I'm all for accountability to taxpayers and elimination of waste.

Since Chris (Fellin) was involved with Ms. Greenwell on some of these activities and still carries antipathy towards the board because of the closure of Pine Lake it would be hard to give him credibility on this issue other than as a loyal friend of Ms. Greenwell. Friendship and loyalty are very good things but don't change the factual nature of our experiences with Ms. Greenwell.