Required Reading

Thomas Friedman on how 9/11 has made us stupid. I agree with every word.

We need a president who will unite us around a common purpose, not a common enemy.

I will not vote for any candidate running on 9/11. We don’t need another president of 9/11. We need a president for 9/12. I will only vote for the 9/12 candidate.

Ditto.

Tweet

Our Workshop

We expected maybe 8 people, and I had handouts for 15. We well exceeded that, with representation from everywhere but Lansing and several town chairs in attendance. I led a lively discussion of what they're up against in the various towns, and we dumped way too much information on everyone, possibly discouraging most. Still, I think it's something we ought to be doing more often instead of letting candidates sink or swim on their own. Next time we'll be a bit more organized, but on the whole, it was a worthwhile effort.

Tweet

Required Reading

Gail Collins in today's NYT (now linkable!) on what drives us so crazy about Hillary Clinton:

It is possible to be so careful that you drive everybody crazy, make them so itchy for adventure, for a noble mission instead of a winnable hand of poker, that they’ll be willing to undo all your hard work just to juice things up.

Tweet

Wrong Ball

I can't explain exactly why, but I feel this video clip has a lot to say about the game of politics as it's played today.

Tweet

Workshops, Required and Not

NYS now requires six hours of fiscal oversight training for school board members. This is the latest thing: mandating training for voluntary board members of all kinds. Paul thinks requiring anything of volunteers is just plain wrong. But how can I resist six hours at the Horseheads Holiday Inn, learning about revenue sources; disposition of funds; accounting practices; and fraud, waste, and abuse? I'm going at the last possible date, December 1.

Meanwhile, Irene, Carrie, and I are doing our own, optional workshop for candidates tonight at GIAC.

Tweet

NCLB NG

In case you thought No Child Left Behind was a rousing success, even the Education Department has a hard time touting these statistics. The slight lessening of the gap between black and white students, as Paul pointed out this morning, may simply mean that white students are doing worse. And it seems that Secretary Margaret Spellings can neither read NOR do math.

But the good news is that we still cannot discriminate against the Boy Scouts. And military recruiters may have access to your local high school campus. This part of NCLB, at least, is working.

Tweet

Financing Schools

I'm always willing to look at new ways to finance education in NYS. This proposal from a GOP state senator on Long Island makes new teachers state employees, removing their salaries, pensions, and health costs from the district budget. I guess attrition through retirement then eases those costs away from the local and back to the state. The suggestion that districts would be capable of banding together as a bargaining unit is scary, though, and would certainly tend to ensure that the rich get richer.

Tweet