Just two years after a bitter and contentious school closure process that in addition to breaking communities’ hearts, also led to the resignation of the superintendent and an overhaul of the school board, the Seattle Times tells us that “Demand exceeds space in some North End Seattle schools.”
Of course it does. North End schools, their programs and facilities enriched through the generosity of their more affluent PTSAs, have always been a magnet for families from across the district. And throughout the closure process it had always been abundantly clear how little wiggle room the district had left itself should its dire prediction of precipitously declining enrollment not prove true.
But North End schools aren’t the only ones unable to keep up with demand, and if there’s a personal “I told you so” moment in the Times piece it comes about three quarters of the way through, and hits quite a bit closer to home:
In the South End, declining enrollment has forced several schools to close. But Beacon Hill Elementary, where a dual-language immersion program begins this fall, has a waiting list — 48 students — for the first time in years. Graham Hill and Kimball elementary schools also had waiting lists in the fall.
That’s right, Graham Hill, my daughter’s school—that piece of shit, racist hell hole that couldn’t educate its students, and was losing kids faster than the Fundamentalist Church of Latter Day Saints… or so the district insultingly insisted—has a goddamn waiting list this fall! If I still sound bitter about the way the district grossly manipulated the numbers to justify closing Graham Hill, it is because I am.
Yes, we ultimately managed to save our school, but the Kafkaesque experience ended up ripping the heart and soul out of a tight-knit community, leading many of the school’s most active parents to step back into the shadows, or leave the school entirely. My own daughter now attends school on Mercer Island, where her mother moved, partially out of disgust and despair over the way the closure process played out. It is a good school, with tutors and enrichment programs the Graham Hill PTSA could never dream of providing its students… but we still miss our friends and neighbors and teachers, and I can’t imagine we’ll ever recapture that sense of belonging that came from seven years attending our neighborhood school.
Had we not fought so aggressively to save our school, or had we not fought so effectively, our students would have been scattered between five other schools within our cluster—that’s how little excess capacity (outside of the alternative program at the African American Academy) the district’s original closure plan left the South End. Had we acquiesced, and quietly sacrificed our neighborhood school for the good of the district, as so many editorial boards and columnists solemnly advised, Graham Hill would now be shuttered, leaving South End schools just as crunched for space as those in the North End.
No doubt there were a handful of schools—under-enrolled, failing programs in crumbling buildings—that warranted closure. But I remain convinced that the district’s determination to close 12 schools at once, whatever the consequences and whatever the facts, had always been motivated more by politics than by careful analysis or common sense. That only two years later the district is now facing a crisis of over-enrollment, pretty much bears that out.
We all share your pain, Goldy! Especially at the grocery checkout. We all have a right to be bitter about how the Bush administration grossly manipulates inflation numbers to cover up their mismanagement of the economy. They claim inflation is “only” 4.5% a year. Here’s a snapshot of actual food inflation between March 2006 and March 2008 (courtesy of AOL):
White Bread – 29.8%
Whole Milk – 19.6%
Grade A Large Eggs – 69.2%
All Purpose Wheat Flour – 48.5%
Peanut Butter – 11.5%
Processed Cheese – 8.3%
Apples – 28.7%
Bananas – 17.6%
Tomatoes – 11.5%
Iceberg Lettuce – 6.1%
Green Peppers – 67.2%
Lemons – 35.2%
Strawberries – 13.7%
Broccoli – 15.4%
Bacon – 6.5%
Ground Beef – 10.1%
Whole Chicken – 11.4%
Soda Pop – 21.4%
Potato Chips – 7.1%
Coffee – 18.4%
Frozen Orange Juice – 33.7%
White Rice 9.3%
And, needless to say, the amount that my pension income has increased over the same time period is 0.0%. But I’m better off that many private-sector retirees. At least my employer didn’t file bankruptcy under Bush Bankruptcy Reform laws to get out of its union contracts and pension obligations. Nor do I have to live on interest from savings, which the Bush Federal Reserve has reduced to about 2%, which means you need $2 million in CDs to make $40,000 a year, and how many people have that? At the other end of the economic scale, some people take their kids to McDonald’s because it’s cheaper than buying groceries and cooking at home. The only silver lining in all this is that the wingnut jerks who voted in this awful administration are getting screwed at the pump and checkout like the rest of us. I have no (read as “zero”) sympathy for them.
Let’s see…
The hateful, demagogic extreme left-winger is upset because the elitist, immoral, intellectually debilitated extreme left-wing school system has been caught being deceitful.
Here, ladies and gentlemen, is the pot calling the kettle black.
@2 A wingnut accusing a liberal of being “hateful” is like Ted Bundy complaining about girls disappearing in his neighborhood.
Could the right wing idiots please chime in to inform us chuckleheads how they would solve this problem?
I know, it is all our fault for being middle class and poor.
Maybe it is all one Senator’s fault? Or the fault of unions.
What canards did I leave out?
@4 Oh, that’s easy — use tax dollars for private school vouchers, eliminate public education, and if you can’t get into a private school you’ll spend the rest of your life sweeping floors and cleaning toilets for $2.13 an hour.
On the international news wire, Zimbabwe dictator Mugabe’s goons arrested 215 people at the opposition party headquarters, including pregnant women and mothers with suckling infants who went there for refuge from the political violence being inflicted on the countryside by Mugabe’s goons. Police claim the 215 detainees are suspected of involvement in political violence. Apparently the suspects include the suckling infants, because even though police promised to release the babies by yesterday, none of the babies have been released.
Think that shit happens only in African fourth-world hellholes? Guess again, human nature is the same everywhere. Power corrupts, just ask a Republican. If you think we have problems with the schools, that’s nothing compared to what will happen if Republicans acquire absolute power in our country. Liberals must arm.
“…and was losing kids faster than the Fundamentalist Church of Latter Day Saints…”
Now that’s funny!
Heh Roger, don’t you think the Democrats deserve a bit of the credit for those high food prices,
considering their overwillingness to jump on the Ethenol bandwagon
Considering their piling on the gas tax
Considering they are piling on the tolls
Considering their do nothing approach to improving congestion
Considering their unwillingness to drill for new oil
All these things add to the price of transporting these groceries, and thus raise the price to the consumers.
Considering they have been in charge of two/thirds of the government decision making bodies for two years, it seems to me they are stuck in a perpetual study, no answers, and never get done mode.
I think that now that the bottom has dropped out of the financial services markets, the good folks who brought us that are now speculating madly in commodities to bring down the entire global food structure so they can make a few billion bucks.
GS
Funny how the professional Congressional ignorers called the Bush administration who have been executing federal policy for seven straight years somehow don’t figure at all in your analysis.
@8 “Heh Roger, don’t you think the Democrats deserve a bit of the credit for those high food prices”
No. While I think ethanol incentives are bad policy, their impact on inflation is relatively minor. The real cause of the Bush Inflation is GOP borrow-and-spend policies.
As I’ve pointed out before, the gas tax adds nothing to the pump price, which is a function of supply and demand. If you eliminated all federal, state, and local gas taxes you wouldn’t see a penny of savings at the pump. Oil companies would simply raise their prices until demand balanced with supply. Meanwhile, our transportation infrastructure would rot. Not that I care, because I don’t have to commute to a job on congested and potholed streets. If you want to wreck your suspension on bad roads, that’s your problem.
What tolls? Our state has no tolls, except on the new Narrows Bridge. That’s hardly precedent-shattering; the current 520 bridge had tolls until it was paid for. Yes, they’re talking about tolls to help pay for the new 520 bridge; how else can they pay for it? Would you rather they raised the gas tax, MVET, property tax, or sales tax? Where do you suggest the money should come from?
How, exactly, do you propose to “improve congestion” by lowering gas taxes and not charging tolls? What do you think the congestion will be like if we just close the 520 bridge and not replace it?
Drill for what oil? Are you talking about ANWR? Let’s talk about ANWR. There’s maybe 8 – 10 billion barrels of oil there. That’s 15 months of U.S. supply or 3 months of world supply. Let’s say we suck ANWR dry — then what, genius?
You want to know why oil prices are high? Here are some of the reasons:
The currency devaluation policies of the Bush administration;
The free trade policies of the Bush administration that have given China and India the dollars to compete with us for oil;
The inflationary policies of the Bush administration, notably deficit spending for an ultra-expensive war and billionaire tax cuts;
Other stupid policies of the Bush administration, like opposing energy conservation efforts and giving consumers and businesses tax credits to buy gas guzzlers.
You wingnut idiots seem to believe there are oceans of untapped oil in the U.S. that Democrats keep locked in the ground because we hate America. In any case, that’s the gist of the arguments I read on wingnut blogs. That, and a conviction among some wingnuts that oilfields refill from reserves buried deep in the earth’s core and therefore the oil supply is infinite and will last forever. (I find it interesting that this nutty theory originated with the Soviets, and that conservatives swallowed it whole hog.) You have as little common sense and as much ignorance about this subject as you exhibit about everything else. Consider:
Oil has been produced in the U.S. longer, and with better technology, than anywhere else.
The U.S. is the most thoroughly exploited oil province on earth.
Domestic U.S. oil production has been declining since 1970. Why? Because we used up our major reserves.
There are millions of oilwells in the U.S., most of them stripper wells producing a few barrels a day.
The majority of U.S. domestic production now comes from offshore wells in the Gulf of Mexico.
We simply don’t have the oil reserves it would take to supply our ever-growing demand, jackass! Oil is a finite commodity and we’ve squandered a lot of what we started out with on energy-wasteful lifestyles and practices, such as heavy, overpowered, gas-guzzling cars. Your “solution” — drilling anywhere and everywhere — won’t work because there’s no “anywhere” left. Sure, there’s a few billion barrels in the arctic refuge, and yes, many Democrats have opposed drilling there, because ANWR is the last great arctic wildlife preserve on earth and they believe it’s more important to humanity to preserve those values than to wreck it for a few more months of oil supply. I’m not sure I agree with their assumption that the oil can’t be extracted in a manner compatible with preservation of the refuge’s essential values, but that begs the question. Even if the U.S. adopted a drill-at-any-environmental-cost policy, that won’t solve the problem of high oil prices because (a) the remaining oil is difficult and expensive to get, and (b) it, too, will run out. The U.S. does not have the reserves it would take to provide cheap oil in perpetuity, or even for a few years. The whole fucking world doesn’t have that much. The era of cheap oil is over.
So what contribution are Republicans making to help us transition to next-generation energy technology? You criticize Democrats for jumping on the ethanol bandwagon, and I agree that’s not smart policy, but Bush’s leaping on the hydrogen bandwagon is even stupider policy. Nuclear isn’t the answer because the world’s supply of uranium is even more limited than its supply of oil. In fact, the world has too damn much fossil fuel; as a scientist quoted by National Geographic said, “We’re going to run out of atmosphere before we run out of fossil fuels.”
So what’s the answer? I don’t know. I’m not a physicist or engineer. But past history teaches us that humanity is pretty ingenious, so I have a fair amount of confidence that we’ll come up with something before the oil runs out — if we get started now. Research and development of this magnitude will require government funding … but, as we all know, Republicans don’t want to pay taxes … hell, they don’t even want to pay for roads.
So, while I don’t know what the long-term energy solution is, I feel pretty damn certain it won’t emanate from you wingnut fools.
Hey rabbit, let’s say obama is president. What is he going to do to reduce the cost of gas?
Hey, if we weren’t in Iraq, we could afford fucking schools!
And the poor schmuck Iraqis wouldn’t have to worry about John McCain being wrong about every fucking thing about their country for a hundred years.
12 MS
End the fucking war.
Fuck.
So that’s all it takes? End the war and gas prices will go down?
Did you give any consideration to increased demand around the world, ala china/india?
The Congress should have passed anti-manipulation legislation in the wake fo the Enron et. al. fuel prive shenanigans in 2000-2001.
Congress should have passed other market regulations in the wake of the current financial services meltdown.
Congress should pass regulation for our commodities markets RIGHT NOW.
@12 Look it up on his web site. More rational economic policies certainly will help. So will raising CAFE standards. If all you care about is oil prices, then the best thing to do with Iraq is get out, let the Iraqi factions slug it out, and in a few years after they resolve their civil war and a new dictator obtains uncontested control of the country, Iraqi oil will come back on the market. I’m not suggesting he do that, all I’m saying is the GOP’s military misadventure in Iraq is keeping a lot more oil locked in the ground than all the world’s environmentalists put together ever did. Adopt energy conservation policies. At the local level, adopt and enforce land use policies that concentrate population growth in existing urban areas and discourage sprawl. Provide federal subsidies for mass transit. Stop outsourcing American jobs to, and importing massive quantities of merchandise from, India and China. Raise interest rates. Don’t impose a “windfall profits” tax on oil companies. All of these things contribute.
16 MS
Real, but not the cause of what we’re experiencing now. A very large portion of the cost of a barrel of oil right now is speculation.
http://www.reuters.com/article.....8620080307
@13 “And the poor schmuck Iraqis wouldn’t have to worry about John McCain being wrong about every fucking thing about their country for a hundred years.”
That’s the least of their worries. If I were an Iraqi villager, I’d be more worried about a felon or sex offender in a Marine uniform raping my wife and shooting my kids.
20 RR
Yeah, I suppose. Of course, if I were one of the 2 million Iraqis who are external refugees or one of the million Iraqi widows, I think I might worry about whether I or my daughters would have to whore ourselves out to survive.
100 years…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f6ul9iMgmOw
@16 The war won’t end right away if the U.S. gets out, but it won’t ever end as long as we stay. Polls of Iraqis show 95% of them want U.S. troops out of their country — it’s the only thing they agree on among themselves. If my country were occupied by a foreign invader, I’d try to throw them out, too. And, meanwhile, I’d be blowing up oil pipelines so they couldn’t take the oil they came for.
The U.S. is not going to win anything in Iraq that it hasn’t already won — mainly, Saddam’s departure from the Middle East political scene. Trying to police Iraq’s warring factions for the next 100 years, like McCain wants to do, will accomplish nothing.
After the U.S. leaves, that country eventually will have a government of some sort. And they will sell their oil on international markets because they’re going to need a lot of rebuilding money. That won’t happen right away, either, because it takes investment and years of work to build oil production and transportation infrastructure, which Iraq never had a lot of to begin with.
Iraqi oil is not a long-term solution to high oil prices. In fact, nothing is. Humanity has already extracted and used the cheap half of the world’s oil endowment. We’re now consuming the harder-to-get and more expensive half. Oil will never again be cheap. But market fundamentals require only a price in the $50 – $60 range, although exploration and development of new sources would slow down if prices fell to that level. However, a significant decline in crude prices probably is possible if the international situation stabilizes. A more rational and less threatening foreign policy than what we’ve gotten from the Bush administration would help that to happen. However, there are severe limits on what the U.S. can do about political instability in places like Russia or Nigeria.
Growth in global human population will continue to put upward pressure on oil prices. There isn’t more oil in the ground simply because there’s more people. American government policies that send our jobs and money overseas will also put upward pressure on crude prices because we are giving third world countries like China and India the means to bid against us for a finite supply of oil.
At current rates of consumption, the world’s known oil reserves will be completely used up in less than 30 years. But oil consumption demand is projected to grow by 50% between now and 2020. Obviously, this level of consumption isn’t sustainable. Drilling in ANWR, the recent discoveries in Brazilian offshore waters, etc., merely postpone the inevitable by a few months or years.
What we need to do for the long haul is invent the next-generation energy technologies that will make oil obsolete. But if we can’t (or won’t) do that, there’s still an immense supply of fossil fuels — the world’s tar sands reserves are about 3 times the original oil reserves, and the planet has a 500-year supply of coal. But using these fuels is dirtier and more expensive than light sweet crude oil. They can replace oil, but they can’t provide us with a source of cheap oil.
If you really want to reduce what you have to spend on energy, then you should be committing yourself to, and investing in, energy conservation. Doubling average vehicle mileage will effectively double our oil reserves, and cut your fuel bills in half.
But what do we get from Republicans? They scoff at, oppose, and block energy conservation measures. That’s like cutting off their own balls. Republicans are stupid across the board, but nowhere are they as stupid as they are with respect to energy conservation policy.
Last summer John McCain was quoted in a newspaper report as saying that he did not plan to tap his wife’s substantial wealth to keep his bid for the Republican presidential nomination going. Just before he started to use her plane.
@17 There would seem to be some justification for that, as approximately half the current price of crude oil is primarily attributable to market speculators, not the costs of producing and transporting the product itself.
Another Bush policy that is pushing up oil prices is continuing to fill the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, which takes oil off the market, even though the SPR is 97% full. Why is Bush doing that? It looks like he’s expecting a world war.
Back to the Seattle Schools
The sad thing about Goldy’s post is that he is correct. The SPS is an administrative and political nightmare, compromised by racial politics, do gooder liberalism .. often by do gooders whose own kids go to private schools, and an anti-elitist tradition that is willing t take pride in athletics but never takers pride in academic achievement.
For many years, SPS has obsessed with the issues associated with a fairly small grou7p of kids .. the African Americans. Despite confusing propaganda from the district these kids are about 15% of that total. Moreover, AA parents, like other affluent parents, tend to send their kids ot private schools .. thus encouraging a self fulfilling prophecy.
Goldy’s intense interest in the ability of North of Canal folks to add subsidies to the meagre school budget is only one part f the problem. IMO, the biggrst problem is a lack of parental control over the schools.
In many SPS, esp, in poor areas, the District acts more like the Dept of Correcti9ons .. as if it owned the kids rather than the other eay around. Then there is the teacher’s union … their session with high entry level pay and little opportunity for advancement means that teacher jibs will never attract the best students.
While I understand the bias of this blog, I for one stand against the liberal approach to the SWPS. The best thing that could happen to this District wold be if it were broken up.
chool board, We need charter schools, parental control, teacher incentives … then things will change.
Factoid: Emerging country (i.e., China and India) prosperity is expected to add 900 million cars to the world’s vehicle fleet over the next couple of decades.
@27 The biggest single contributor to urban sprawl is parents moving to suburbs or exurbs because they don’t want their kids in inner city schools.
A perception of better schools and neighborhoods is also why Seattle’s housing has always cost more north of the ship canal.
Hey, if we weren’t in Iraq, we could afford fucking schools!
Hmmmm. Fighting terrorists or investing in the insufferably failing librul shit hole screwls? I got go with killing the terrorists. roof roof.
You know, it’s not just “Hamas.” The whole fucking world is just waiting for George W. Dimbulb to not be president, and praying that John McBush won’t be elected.
Roger…..Roger…..ROGER!!!!!
You’re trying to present a sophisticated, well-founded, nuanced argument to an individual whose delusional mind and supreme egocentrism won’t allow him to comprehend what you’re trying to say, and wouldn’t allow him to admit it if he did. Your efforts are admirable, but pointless.
A far simpler approach would be something like the following:
Hey, GS….
You’re full of shit.
Shut the hell up and go back to wanking over your Ann Coulter video collection.
30 JBD
We aren’t “fighting terrorists” in Iraq. We’re fighting Iraqi nationalists who want us to leave, and we’re fighting them on behalf of the Iranian-backed Iraqi government because they can’t get their own people to fight for them, and because we’re just…that..stupid.
h, that’s easy — use tax dollars for private school vouchers, eliminate public education, and if you can’t get into a private school you’ll spend the
04/27/2008 at 11:54 am
Versus going to public screwl to spend the rest of your life sweeping floors and cleaning toilets for $2.13 an hour.
30 JBD
And what the fuck, who cares about educating our children anyway? Clearly not you.
34 JBD
And when the private schools won’t take the learning disabled, the ESL students, and anyone else who’s too “troublesome” to teach, what will you have them do?
33
I am sure terrorists think of themselves as nationalists and even heros. Just like you lefties.
34 JBD
And when the private schools won’t take the learning disabled, the ESL students, and anyone else who’s too “troublesome” to teach, what will you have them do?
Why wouldn’t they. They have private schools for dogs. Don’t worry, you libs can send your kids to failing private schools.
37
Oh, no, no one in Iraq wants us to leave. In fact, when they learned that we were torturing their brothers, sisters, parents, and children in Saddam’s torture prisons, they invited us all over to a big dinner to thank us! And now they all love us and would NEVER support religious leaders who declare themselves to be against the American Occupiers or assist their militias.
And fighting wars of occupation in nations where the entire population has turned against us has ALWAYS worked out really, really well.
Funny how you ignored the “Iranian-back Iraqi government” thing. Convenient. You guys just swallow it whole. Bend over, JBD, here they come again.
38 JBD
Yeah, I know you don’t care. Which is why you aren’t going to be allowed to make any decisions about schools.
We’re leaving the public schools next year. The kid got into a good private high school – with a merit scholarship to boot. (Merit – for those Democrats in the audience – is when you, _personally_, do well. Not because you’re the right color or gender or flavor.) The kid scored well on the placement tests and got $3500 towards tuition.
We’re leaving behind at least 2 bad teachers who should have been fired. They retired in place. No harm will come to them, they’re in the union. A principal who screwed over their last school and got ours as a reward. A PTA who really tries and wants the school to succeed, raising 6 figures annually to make up for the lack of spending at the school level. It’s these other parents we’ll miss the most.
The thing I truly wonder about is how anybody, ANYBODY, can look at the public school system in this country and then say, “Let’s have universal healthcare run by the government.”
25 million Iraqis. 5 million are refugess. THEY love America, so that’s 5 million on our side, right? 1 million are widows due to the war and the Occupation. So that’s another million who love us, right?
20% are Sunni Arabs, who are cut out of government since we fired all the baathists and we won’t lift a finger to help them (withness the defections of the Awakening Council fighters after the refusal of the Shiite gov’t to add them to the security forces), so that’s another 5 million Iraqis who just love the shit out of us.
Now, the 15 million or so Shiites are just about evenly split in their allegiances, with about half supporting either the ISCI/Dawa Iranian-backed ruling coalition and their Iranian-trained Badr Organization miltia, and about half supporting the Mahdi Army (JAM). So the Mahdi Army and their supporters are just ANOTHER 7-8 million Iraqis who just want to give us big hugs and butterfly kisses.
I wonder how long the 5 million Kurds will stay with us while we let Turkey invade their country and attack them?
41 delebrt
Perhaps because all other advanced industrialized nations provide government-funded healthcare and enjoy better outcomes at lower cost than we do. Perhaps because the US is falling behind in life expectancy and infant mortality. I don’t know–people are funny that way.
You can duplicate comment 41 for most of the remaining 60% of families held hostage by the Seattle public school district. You can’t feel too sorry for people in Seattle, they are victims of their own ideology.
They’re people in other countries hoping we don’t go “socialize” on health care. It will eliminate the last place they can receive prompt, competent medical care.
@1 What are you complaining about? Don’t you
make $500 every time you shit? Why would the
smartest investor in the world be complaining about money? Liberals must arm? Conservatives
are armed to the fucking teeth, good luck to
you. Dumb ass.
@30 What terrorists? There were no terrorists in Iraq until you idiots invited them in.
@32 I didn’t write it for him. This is sort of like Lincoln practicing a speech to a tree stump. The stump was not his ultimate audience. The stump was merely a useful object for a larger purpose.
@32 (continued) I didn’t forget to insult his intelligence, did I? I hope not. But if I did, it’s an understandable oversight, in that he doesn’t have any.
@34 “Versus going to public screwl to spend the rest of your life sweeping floors and cleaning toilets for $2.13 an hour.”
School is what you make of it, dog. Don’t blame your teachers for your failure. They tried.
@41 “The thing I truly wonder about is how anybody, ANYBODY, can look at the public school system in this country and then say, ‘Let’s have universal healthcare run by the government.'”
Easy. Private-run, for-profit healthcare makes even bad government-run healthcare look good by comparison.
@46 “Conservatives are armed to the fucking teeth”
So am I. Just thought I’d let you know so you don’t get any stupid ideas …
@46 What? A wingnut resentful of someone else’s success at milking the capitalist system? You don’t say! Let me guess. Tomorrow is Monday, and your alarm will go off at 5:00 a.m. You’ll stagger to the bathroom to piss, shower, and shave; throw down a couple mugs of strong coffee; then ride a standing-room-only bus to a fucking job. And your boss will yell at you if you’re 30 seconds late because the bus got stuck in traffic. Meanwhile, international tensions will push oil prices even higher, and my stocks will go up again tomorrow morning while I’m still sound asleep in my comfy burrow. Yes, it sucks to be you, my friend.
HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR
Inasmuch as I’ve made public some of the stocks I own, I’m surprised our trolls don’t track them daily and give me shit every time they go down! What a missed opportunity! But then, they’re not very bright. Maybe those gullible fools think all you do to make money in the stock market is throw cash at it. Maybe they tried it and got their tail feathers burned.
HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR
On Public Schools
WADR to your comments about how bad the government is at running schools:
US Biomedical research, under the NIH, far outstrips the rest of the world combined. The UW, BTW is one of the major places that work is done.
While the USA has excellent higher ed. schools, among the best are fully public colleges and to a very largee extent, Harvard, MIT, Stanford, etc are government run.
Outside the uS, Cambridge, Oxford, Univ. Toronto, the Sorbonne, the Karolinska .. all of these are state run.
Here in the US if you go to as truly private school .. say SPU or even SU, you are not going to the best American school.
As for high schools and grade school, ther eis no doubt that the SPS have huger issues. BUT he last time I looked the best (socio-economically adjusted) scores on AP and SAT tests were at Garfield .. a Seattle Public School.
I think we should go to an all public system BUT a public system with far more parental choice. I do not think that children’ opportunities should be determined by the accident of birth.
We’re leaving behind at least 2 bad teachers who should have been fired. They retired in place. No harm will come to them, they’re in the union. A principal who screwed over their last school and got ours as a reward.
And you are one of the lucky ones. Just be glad you weren’t stuck with a sexual predator the teachers union decided needed a job transfer.
7. Roger Rabbit spews:
@30 What terrorists? There were no terrorists in Iraq until you idiots invited them in.
04/27/2008 at 3:11 pm
I know, it’s a great plan isn’t it. Like shooting fish in a barrel. Don’t cry to hard donks. hehehehee
and lunch and breakfast.
woof!
1
That’s nothing. Hell food went up by that much when driving to the grocery store when I was president.
Roger,
It’s easy to figure out why these wingnuts keep attacking you.
You just make too damn much sense!
A wingnut can’t handle information outside of what Faux Noise and Limbaugh programs into the air between their ears!
Come on trolls, I have guns too! Just like you think that some random white man can legally shoot and kill a nice Asian youth who comes to your door if you feel ‘threatened;” I assure you that I would feel threatened by any Republican who comes within 1000 feet (or, faiing that, scope distance) to my house.
JBD, come on down. Let’s fucking party.
Oh, yeah. Fuck.
@43 – A friend was in an industrial accident in Britain. Broke both legs, he waited a freaking week for the _one_ orthopedic surgeon to have an opening to operate. If it hadn’t been an emergency, it would have been longer. Just keep telling yourself that other countries have better systems.
@55 – Garfield HS has the AP program, top 2% of students. The best scores are at the magnet school where they consolidate the best students. (And what are the raw scores, not “socio-economically adjusted”.) The SPS average scores aren’t anywhere close.
@50 “School is what you make of it, dog. Don’t blame your teachers for your failure. They tried.”
No, they didn’t. That’s the problem…
@61 Daddy love
I am a bit smarter than you seemk to think. I compared students normalized for socieconomic levels and achievement records. This oncluded Lakeside .. a school that claims to have a very elite body.
Moreover, it was done at Garfield before there was an APP (not AP) program there. Though Garfield was the school many APP kids chose, many chose other Seattle HS … including Roosevelt. BTW Roosevelt also has great scores.
Finally, my study was done awhile ago and I do not know the current numbers, I have heard they are still very good. I suggest that you go get the data if you think I am wrong now.
It is very important to realize that comparing schools can not be done w/o normalizing for socioec. conditions. It is far more relevant to do a “case study,” that is try to match similar students in different schools.
I suggest also that, all other things aside, that there are some definite advantages to the SPS over private schools and suburban schools. In our case we used the money we saved in tuition to provide our kids with resources we could not othersise afford. We also believe that kids learn a lto form each other and, in some ways, the multiethinic communities in the SPS offer intangubkle lessons.
Look, I too am critical of the SPS, but I also think folksshould take the time t actually compare how kids do .. just as they spend time deciding on a Prious.
Thanks, you democraps have done ZERO to lower the price of anything in this country in the last two years.
Thank you for your lack of Bullosi leadership.
Nothing but continually ripping off the people of this country.
So, GS, do I understand your criticism is that the D’s have not reversed the policies of Bush and the R’s?
Did you know that the APP students are totally segregated from the rest of the school. The public schools for the most part try to do a good job, but are handicapped by a union. The best way to deliver publicly funded education is to allow for competition between schools.
So, GS, do I understand your criticism is that the D’s have not reversed the policies of Bush and the R’s?
04/27/2008 at 8:32 pm
Exactly. If you can’t lead when you are in the majority get the hell out of the way.
Downsizing in education means that you had less than you did before. If any ‘downsizing’ needs to be done in the Seattle District, it should begin at the main administrative facility.
Better to lead in the wrong direction, Jim?
Gassy Shithead (GS) has no interest in entering any dialogue – he’s got all the answers:
Limbaugh, Faux Noise and Republicans.
I bet this braindead even voted for Will Baker. Why? Had an “R” next to his name. He was joined by 841,772 other sh*theads.
Any more questions why this corrupt bunch of clowns can’t be trusted to govern?
Look at their constituents.
Hey Pelletizer@1: Keep dreaming.
Your global warming friends are driving up the price of food dumb bunny.
Keep up the GWB hatred. It’s constricting those alveoli and it will only get worse. Keep hating Pelletizer.
Pusdrivendyke@4: We don’t have to answer anything for FUWA. Remember we’ve been told by HAs clueless idiot, HAs rugrat, HAs loving daddy, HAs professors, HAs other lefties, this is a blue state and live with it. This is the outcome of lefties voting leftie all the time. So you deal with it pusdrivendyke.
Pelletizer@11 farted: “No. While I think ethanol incentives are bad policy, their impact on inflation is relatively minor.”
Apparently you’ve been reading the BULLSHITTIUM Times Pelletizer. Food riots are happening right now. Rice prices doubled. Everything corn based is price escalating because of lefties!
Marvin@12: When the Donkey was in the minority Nancy Pelosi claimed the Donkey had a plan to reduce gas prices. Now, the Republicans asked Nancy Pelosi last Tuesday to produce their plan. So we’ll see if prices come down.
@1
2 years ago a 20 pound bag of potatoes cost me $4.50 now they’re $6.50.
Bush stole both elections. That’s his legacy.
@57 “I know, it’s a great plan isn’t it. Like shooting fish in a barrel. Don’t cry to hard donks. hehehehee”
Are you really this idiotic? I mean, even for a dog, this is a stupid comment.
That fucking dog seems to think al Qaeda guys walk Iraq’s streets wearing “shoot me” signs. We should put his nose sniffing them out. Yeah, send his ass to Iraq, and he doesn’t need to be provided with body armor. There’s more dogs where he came from.
@59 You’re talking about the Nixon-Ford Inflation, I presume?
@60 That’s the idea. If I work on them enough their heads will explode. Then we’ll be rid of them for good.
@62 I think I saw that story about the British orthopedic surgeon in an e-mail about 10 years ago. It looks familiar. People are paid to dream this stuff up.
Of course, it means nothing to delbert that here in the Capitalist States of America, people who pay high premiums for health insurance have to hire lawyers to sue their own insurance companies to get the medical benefits they paid for. How is that an improvement over the British system? Why doesn’t he ask 100 randomly selected Brits or Canadians if they’d trade their system for ours and see what they say? Their answers might be interesting.
@63 I’m not going to respond to this with something cute or clever. What I’m about to say in response to this screed, I mean with total seriousness. Teaching has bad apples just like every other occupation. But most teachers are competent, dedicated, work hard, and care about whether the kids learn. I’m sick and tired of ideologues like you bashing public school teachers simply because they work for us instead of a private corporation. America isn’t a great country because of people like you, it’s a great country in spite of people like you. I will fight to defeat you and your ilk and your bankrupt ideology until my last breath because I love my country. You are the enemy of all that is good and decent. And that’s all I have to say about comment #63.
@65 “Thanks, you democraps have done ZERO to lower the price of anything in this country in the last two years.”
What I’ve noticed is that (a) Republicans are running everything and (b) the price of everything has gone up.
Anyway, I don’t care what you think. We’re going to win this election, and after we do, we’re going to shove as much Democratic agenda up your ass as you can stand plus a lot more. If you don’t like it, go fuck yourself.
No more Mr. Nice Guy Liberal around here. It’s payback time.
@68 We’re not going to get out of your way, we’re going to run over you. You’re going to be roadkill. Wait and see.
@72 I don’t hate you, puddinghead. You don’t know any better, and I can’t get emotional about insentient lifeforms. Hating you because you’re as stupid as a brick would be like hating a brick for being stupid. I have better things to do.
@74 Where are they making ethanol from rice?
When JBD talks about killing “terrorists,” he really means the innocent women and children killed in US air strikes, and the deaths in captivity of the men and boys who were picked up because they live next door to the guy US troops were ACTUALLY looking for, and the civilians killed regularly by the 200K contractors in Iraq.
I don’t think he’s talking about the American women that Halliburtonians rape over there, though.
Ahhhh yes, Pelletizer, the king of hate. I could care less if you “hate” me. That’s not the point. You hate GWB and it shows. You blamed GWB for the rice shortage and you did again.
When I posted the URLs describing the Asian Rice Crop failures and the drought in Australia, you still keep the same stupid mantra (even above) in the face of those PuddyFacts. That’s what hatred is….
Keep posting stupidity Pelletizer. You do the lefty side good!
Daddy Love@89: How do you know what JBD means. Oh you project your puny commentary to infer that!
Well you failed again…
Lucy@77-24X7:
Yes, your side placed a seminary school dropout and an almost D student against Bush.
You reap what you sow.
Lucy@69-24X7: It would do a child good if you were downsized from the Seattle Skuul District!
Look at their constituents.
And PuddySilly. The meds occasionally clears the air between his ears which is why he broke ranks with 841k+ over crapheads and voted for Sonntag.
Puddy ..
I would like to see your thoughts on nRev W in the current open thread.
94 – “other” crapheads, excuse me.
Like what? Posting all day on HA about how much you hate people? About how bitter you are that the best you could do was some government job?
For the children, the very first thing is to get the racists out of the classroom. So why don’t you help the children and quit.
Should the question be “The best possible education for MY child” or “The best possible education for as many children as possible”?
Should we, as individuals, support any program that gives one dime to any other kid, other than our own?