Jon knocks one out of the park with his latest installment, breaking down the specifically corporatist background and inspiration of Superintendent of Schools Jean-Claude Brizzard.
To those who insist that all things can be run better that are run like corporations I ask: what profit is there in education? I don’t mean those ethereal “values,” I mean the cold, hard profits on which corporations are based. Because if you cannot find an intrinsic profit margin in something, then there is no profit motive. And if there is no profit motive, the natural course of action is that a corporation needs to either manufacture one arbitrarily or else fail.
The O’Blog is one of the blogs featured on my sidebar in the RocWriters Blog Updates section of this site. It’s the blog of Dennis O’Brien which I’m only now just catching up to. He ran for City School Board a while back and reflects on the things that he’d had as a platform then that might help cure the problems there are with the School District and the Board now. Seems like fairly straight-forward changes, but unfortunately, disfunction is the engine that drives itself.
I don’t claim to know a whole lot about education in Rochester, so I reserve judgment. With luck, a friend of mine who knows a lot more about it will be here to help me out, soon. But if there’s anyone who resents the state of Rochester schools, I do. Just the threat of having to send a kid through middle school in Rochester was enough to push my wife and I into the ‘burbs. I fucking hate the goddamned ‘burbs. East Rochester is cool, but damn. I miss the city.
I find this strange: Channel 10 News is reporting today that two school districts have approved huge renovation programs. I’m all for improving schools, but apparently folks in Irondequoit and Churchville-Chili know something about the economy and the state budget the rest of us don’t. Either that, or they are possessed of an irrepressibly sunny disposition.
CNN.com has the story of ten middle schoolers who, whilst on a field trip to Washington, DC, decided to have an orgy in one of the hotel rooms. Clearly, this is not something you can tolerate on a school class trip, but interestingly, only eight kids seem to have been punished. . . and they were expelled from school.
This seems weird on any number of levels. There is nothing in the article that discusses what punishment – if any – was given to the remaining two kids, which is the kind of reporting I think we’ve all come to expect from CNN. What happened to those kids, and why was their punishment not the same as everyone else’s? Perhaps the two kids were simply not very effective at having sex – or even remarkably ugly – and therefore technically not guilty of the same crime. . .
And one has to wonder what the punishment would have been if these same ten kids had gotten into a fight. Would they have been expelled for that? I guess it would depend on the severity of the fight. If so, this must have been some very severe sex.
But as usual, those of us who like to think and stuff are left scratching our heads over another story broadcast on CNN.
John Sacheli turns in a great – if highly verbose – rant, filled with observations on daily life. But hands-down, this one’s my favourite:
» An observation of our society » Pissin in the Wind
They’re even pushing drugs on your kids now. If your kid acts out at school a few times they immediately jump to the conclusion that they need psycho-analysis and the need to be on temperament medication. Little kids shouldn’t be depressed enough to need a pill. Acting out on occasion doesn’t justify giving a kid Ritalin. Maybe some kids need that stuff but there’s a whole lot of them that really don’t. We are creating a society of numbed out legal drug addicts.
You know, maybe they should invent a pill for making you a good parent. Then your kids will turn out fine and maybe all the world’s problems would start to turn around. (Who am I kidding, there’s no money in that anyway.)
I guess goofballs and Ripple Wine don’t count as a drug that makes you a better parent. There goes my master plan. . .
I know those of you who are either teachers or administrators in schools will probably not see the humor in this that I do. Never the less, it’s freakin’ funny.
Apparently, someone got a hold of both the letterhead and the mailing list of Portland, OR’s Lincoln High School and sent out a nominally official letter to all the parents actively encouraging them to open their liquor cabinets to the attendees of the prom as a way to promote “a safe, secure place for students to have fun.” Condoms were included in the letters.
OMG, whomever pulled this off is my freakin’ hero.
Carla Palumbo is reporting in on her blog to say that the batting down of the F.A.I.R. plan may be much, much worse than I’d thought, because the county may be stuck with the intercept plan without having the benefit of the F.A.I.R. plan’s school tax offset (which is the part that was ruled illegal).
w00t! This could be bad.
NYSUT is fighting to keep the state’s share of special education funding for elementary school kids the same, whereas Spitzer’s new plan aims to reduce state funding. This is in addition to the slipping promise of additional funding by the state. The NYSUT blog picks up the story:
“Union: Pre-K cost shift another unfunded mandate.” March 07, 2008. NYSUT: A Union of Professionals. www.nysut.org
Under current law, the state reimburses counties for 59.5 percent of approved costs for preschool special education administration costs. The governor’s proposal would require districts where each special ed child resides to reimburse the child’s resident county — adding a $46 million cost burden onto districts already set to receive less state aid than promised last year.
As stlo7 at RochesterTurning reports, there are new hearings on the matter of Maggie Brooks’ F.A.I.R. plan and whether she and her County Legislature Republican cronies have violated a couple different laws in passing said piece of tripe. You might remember that, in December, a Judge Ken Fisher ruled in favour of the County. On the 28th of this month, the schools and NYSUT are beginning hearings in anticipation of appealing that ruling.
And there’s good news for those fighting the good fight for education funding: it seems that the Campaign for Fiscal Equity appears ready to put it’s weight behind efforts to shut down the F.A.I.R. plan. This is the same organization that sued New York City and the state for proper funding of students in that city. That agency is already testifying on behalf of Monroe County schools, as you can see in this document (PDF).
There is more to come, as I check out sources I’ve spoken to and get some confirmation of other developments.
