Goldy

“Surprising findings“…?

A preliminary report on Seattle school closures includes some surprising findings — including that 157 students chose to leave the district entirely when it closed five school buildings this summer. […] Students at the closed schools were expected to merge into designated neighboring schools — but the report found that happened only half the time.

[…] The district didn’t survey parents to find out why their students chose not to enroll in the merged schools, and it’s difficult to draw any conclusions from the numbers alone, said Holly Ferguson, a district manager who has supervised the school closures and who wrote the preliminary report.

“When you look at where the kids went, it was all over the map,” she said. “To me, it says parents just exercised the normal (school) choice process.”

Yeah, maybe. Or, if they had bothered to survey parents, they might have learned that parents were just sick and tired of having their children’s education sacrificed for the sake of political expediency. And they also might have learned that a lot more than 157 children left the Seattle Public Schools in response to the district’s ill advised and mismanaged closure process. Like, for example, my daughter.

The day we learned the shocking news that Graham Hill Elementary was on the preliminary closure list, was the day my ex-wife started looking for houses on Mercer Island. My daughter had attended the Montessori program at Graham Hill since she was 3 years old, and we all loved the school, but middle school was approaching and we weren’t thrilled about our neighborhood choices. We had reluctantly applied to transfer Katie to TOPS for fourth grade, hoping to beat the rush of parents seeking a middle school slot in the popular K-8 program, and while she was high up on the waiting list, it was no sure thing. Then the closure list came out.

Long time readers are well familiar with my obsessive blogging on the topic during the summer of 2006 as we fought to save our school from closure, but despite our eventual victory the process left many of us parents disillusioned with the district and its ability to meet the needs of our children first, and our politicians second. Two days into the start of the 2006-2007 school year Katie was offered a slot at TOPS, but exhausted from the closure fight and emotionally invested in our recently saved school, we turned it down, choosing to keep Katie at Graham Hill for fourth grade. A few weeks later her mother purchased a house on Mercer Island. Katie transferred to the island for fifth grade, so as to ease next year’s transition to middle school.

Katie was fortunate to have at least one parent with the means to make a choice like that, but I know for a fact that we weren’t the only Graham Hill family to leave the district after the emotionally draining closure battle. Several families who had been struggling to make the best of limited middle school choices simply gave up the fight, opting for private school despite the financial hardship. Others picked up and moved out of the city entirely, including one classmate who joined Katie this year at her new Mercer Island school. And I’m sure there are several others I don’t know of, as I’ve never seen such turnover at Graham Hill as I’ve witnessed over the past two years.

Perhaps Graham Hill was unique in that no other school was more misrepresented nor its parents and teachers more bitterly slandered by the district than Graham Hill was in justifying its closure. A handful of administration officials — including a thrice-failed principle with an ax to grind — had concluded that Graham Hill was a racist program, and were determined to cynically use the closure process as a cover for shutting down our neighborhood school. The Citizens Advisory Committee was force fed misleading, cherry-picked, and downright incorrect information, as well as, apparently, a fair amount of innuendo. Our PTSA, arguably the most active in the South End, was wrongly accused of draining resources from the conventional classrooms to benefit a less racially diverse Montessori program, and our school was publicly humiliated for failing to meet the educational needs of our minority and economically disadvantaged children, a charge that was demonstrably untrue.

Just last month Graham Hill Elementary was honored by the state as one of only six Seattle “Schools of Distinction,” recognized for dramatic improvements in reading and mathematics over the past six years — and one of only three such Seattle schools with over 50-percent of students qualifying for free or reduced price lunch. And yet this was the same school the district vociferously argued should be shut down for failing to educate its disadvantaged students… the same school that was held in such disdain by the district for its alleged racism.

And you wonder why parents like me find it so difficult to trust the district?

I was volunteering at the school when Raj Manhas made his final tour of Graham Hill before including it on his final list of recommendations, and I briefly spoke with him, without acknowledging who I was or what I had been writing. There were a lot of things I wanted to say to the superintendent, but instead I simply admonished him for missing a golden opportunity. I pointed toward all the hard work and enthusiasm communities around the district were expending in their efforts to save their neighborhood schools, and suggested that he could have harnessed this energy to fight Olympia for adequate funding, rather than pitching us against each other in a battle over diminishing resources. What a waste. The fight to save Graham Hill and the other schools was a heartbreaking experience that cost the district much more than can ever be quantified on a financial balance sheet. And the balance sheet doesn’t look so good either…

Already, though, the short-term costs have been higher than anticipated. The original plan called for the district to spend about $500,000 over two years on closing schools. The actual general-fund costs over the past year and a half have been $927,364, according to the report — and an additional $500,000 to $700,000 still may be needed.

The extra money was needed to pay for “transition activities,” from hiring moving coordinators to paying staff members at the merged schools to attend team-building retreats.

“I was a little surprised by the actual operating expense of getting the schools closed down and everyone moved,” said board member Michael DeBell, who heads the board’s finance committee. Still, he said, the district expects to see a net financial benefit of about $1.9 million a year because of closures.

But if enrollment continues to slowly decline, district leaders will need to take action, he said.

Future school closures are an option, but not the only one, he said: “I don’t want it to be the first thing we turn to.”

It’s exactly what we argued in the first place, that closures would never save the district anywhere near the money it was estimating, and would inevitably lead to further declining enrollment. Declining enrollment would lead to more closures, which would lead to more declining enrollment, and so on and so on.

Let’s hope we learn from this failed experiment, and reinvest in our neighborhood schools rather than shutting them down.

The Seattle chapter of Drinking Liberally meets tonight (and every Tuesday), 8PM at the Montlake Ale House, 2307 24th Avenue E. Stop on by for some hoppy beer and hopped up conversation.

As for me, I’m headed out to Drinking Liberally Philadelphia tonight, so I won’t see you at the Ale House.

Not in Seattle (or Philadelphia)? Liberals will also be drinking tonight in the Tri-Cities. A full listing of Washington’s thirteen Drinking Liberally chapters is available here.

Yesterday the WA State Dems filed an FEC report alleging “serious violations” in Rep. Dave Reichert’s third quarter campaign finance report. Amongst other things, Democrats complained that it is impossible to figure out how much money Reichert raised from President Bush’s August visit because of how totally fucked up the accounting was, to which Reichert chief of staff Mike Shields responded:

“There is a fictional idea that somehow you can glean how much an event raised” by looking at an FEC report filed by the Reichert Washington Victory Committee.

Yeah… it’s totally unreasonable to expect to “glean how much an event raised” by looking at an FEC report of the, um, money the event raised. If this is how our campaign finance and disclosure laws work these days, the “fiction” is that we actually have any campaign finance and disclosure laws at all.

But Shields wasn’t finished. When asked how much he now believes the event raised, Shields prevaricated:

“I have given estimates that turned out to be wrong, so I am not doing that anymore.”

Well, he might try actually telling the truth, but then, I’m not “a veteran political operative” like Shields is, so what do I know?

I suppose Gov. Chris Gregoire thought she was dodging a political bullet by calling a special session to reinstate I-747’s 1-percent revenue cap on regular levies, but…

In the meantime, Republicans, Eyman and Republican gubernatorial candidate Dino Rossi criticized Gregoire for her response to the high court’s ruling.

“The incumbent is not leading — she is reacting and slowly,” Rossi said.

Well, how the fuck did she think they would respond? Did she really think she’d earn brownie points with the anti-tax crowd? Does she really believe Republicans will vote for anybody but a Republican, regardless of how much she panders to them? Does she really take the Democratic base this much for granted?

The sad thing is, this is one of the few times Rossi is actually right… well, sorta. Gregoire is reacting rather than leading on this issue, but if anything she’s moving too fast. Calling a special session to reimpose I-747 is not only bad policy, it is bad politics, and it will cost Democrats in both the short and long term. As much as I hate to write it, Gregoire’s response to the recent court ruling is as ill-conceived and irresponsible as the initiative itself.

Now I suppose it is possible that this is not just a monumental political miscalculation, but rather, that Gov. Gregoire really does believe that calling a special session to reinstate I-747 is the right and prudent thing to do. But if so, I would hope she could explain how capping local tax revenue growth below the rate of inflation is in any way an act of responsible governance? If the initiative had imposed a similar cap on state revenues, forcing state budgets to steadily shrink year to year in real dollars, even as energy and health care costs soar, would Gov. Gregoire fight so hard to reinstate it? I kinda doubt it.

Yet that’s exactly the fate to which she is condemning local governments, the end result being an endless parade of lid lifts and special levies on the ballot that will ultimately lead to voter fatigue, if it hasn’t already done so. If you want to undermine the ability of government to govern — if you want to set up the Democratic majority for failure — this is exactly the way to do it.

I just can’t tell you how disappointed I am with both the governor and the Democratic leadership. (I could try, but it would involve an awful lot of swearing, even for HA.) This was an opportunity to impose a reasonable cap — say, four-percent or inflation, whichever is lower — while enacting progressive property tax reform. Instead they’ve chosen to cave to Eyman and Rossi, while offering a half-measure in the form of tax deferrals. I suppose I’ll have to wait until I see the details to comment more fully, but a deferral is generally little more than that, and would do absolutely nothing to address our most regressive tax structure in the nation.

I guess Gregoire and her people are trying to play it safe in an election year, but playing it safe is how she almost lost in 2004. And it’s a terrible way to kick off 2008.

One of two things is going on here: either Dave Reichert and his campaign staff are incompetent or they initiated a deliberate effort to mislead the public about their disastrous fundraising in recent months.”
— WA State Democratic Party Chair Dwight Pelz

You know, or both. Three months after President Bush came to town for what we were told at the time was a half million dollar fundraiser, we still can’t make heads or tales of Rep. Dave Reichert’s numbers, and so the WA State Dems filed an FEC complaint today alleging serious violations of federal election laws.

Proceeds from the $1,000 a head fundraiser were supposed to be placed in a special joint account, and then divided between the Reichert campaign and the WA State Republican Party, but most of the money appears to have been deposited directly into Reichert’s campaign account, a serious violation of federal law. One experienced campaign treasurer tells me he’s never seen such a sloppy FEC report, a report that has made it impossible to figure out exactly how much Reichert raised. Which may of course have been the point.

First the campaign claimed Reichert raised $500,000, then $230,000, and ultimately $185,000. The report itself claims the joint fundraiser raised only $135,000, but it is now unclear how much of that represents Reichert’s share. After all expenses are accounted for it is possible that Reichert may have actually lost money on the event, but we’ll never know for sure until the report is properly revised.

This is all the more embarrassing for Republicans considering the astounding success of the national netroots fund drive we held to help Democratic opponent Darcy Burner offset Reichert’s expected presidential windfall, raising $126,000 from over 3,400 contributors… over a weekend in August. Burner ultimately beat Reichert in Q3 in both dollars raised, and cash on hand; it is clear now that we kicked the president’s ass. No wonder no other Republican incumbent has dared to bring the president into town since the debacle in Bellevue.

It sure is difficult covering Seattle local news from out of state when the local Seattle newspapers don’t seem to cover Seattle local news themselves. Sitting here next to me is the dead-tree edition of the Philadelphia Inquirer, which has five, count ’em, five front page stories this lazy Monday morning: three local news stories — a feature on yesterday’s Philadelphia Marathon, and an international story from the Washington Post — whereas the Times and the P-I have three headlines each, four of the six, features. The P-I is particularly shameless this morning, actually filling a chunk of its front page with a heartwarming feature about, you know… itself.

The one headline the two dailies share is that of missing ex-WSU and Garfield High basketball star Tony Harris, whose strangled body has apparently been found in Brazil. No criticism there — it is a compelling story, tinged with pathos and intrigue. But it is the only hard news story on the front page of either paper.

As usual, the online editions are much more informative. (Okay, a bit more informative. It’s all relative.)

The P-I’s Neil Modie reports that Dino Rossi has been, um, disingenuous, soliciting donations well before announcing his candidacy. Not exactly news, but it’s nice to see the local media acknowledging the obvious.

Rossi’s campaign finance records show the campaign started accepting contributions Oct. 12 and took in $97,750 even before he announced his candidacy Oct. 25. Of that sum, $86,800 came in donations of $2,800 each, the maximum amount allowed by law for the primary and general elections combined.

An additional $60,873 came in on the day of the announcement, more than half of it in contributions of $2,800 each.

Up until that time, the official line by the Rossi camp was that he hadn’t decided whether to run against Democratic Gov. Chris Gregoire again next year. […] Without specifically saying so, Rossi left the impression last week that he raised money more quickly following his announcement than he actually had.

His campaign reported last week that he brought in “over $463,300 during the month of October. He announced his candidacy for governor on October 25th.” That prompted erroneous news reports that he had raised the entire sum within a week after the announcement.

Republicans have been touting Rossi’s early fundraising success, but $333,600 of the total raised was in “double-max” donations — contributors who have given the maximum $1,400 for both the primary and the general. That’s an awful lot of low hanging fruit, and not exactly an indication of broad, grassroots support.

Also not news is yet another Catholic priest sexual abuse settlement, this time $50 million in hush money in Alaska.

In some villages it is difficult to find an adult who was not sexually violated by the priests, who then used religion and their power to silence hundreds of children, Roosa said.

“Despite all this, no Catholic religious leader has yet to admit that problem priests were dumped in Alaska. For our clients, this settlement represents a long overdue acknowledgment of the truth of their stories of abuse, stories that until today were largely denied and belittled by apologists for the abusers,” he said.

Yeah, it represents acknowledgment of abuse, but by settling, it also prevents full public disclosure of the extent of the problem, just like in Seattle, where Prosecuting Attorney Dan Satterberg has refused to investigate church records. Ah well… what we don’t know can’t hurt us, right?

Also not really news in the true sense of the word, Iraq bombing kills 20 as US reports decline in violence in Iraq, Detroit named America’s most dangerous city, and yet another man dies from a non-lethal taser strike. Shocking.

Tonight on “The David Goldstein Show”, 7PM to 10PM on News/Talk 710-KIRO:

7PM: The Stranger Hour with Christopher Frizzelle
It’s politics as unusual tonight as we take a break from our usual political discourse for a more arts oriented conversation with Stranger editor Christopher Frizzelle. While other journalists focused on the tabloid intrigue of Washington native Amanda Knox’s involvement with the murder of her roommate in Italy, Frizzelle critiqued her creative writing. Tune in and find out what, if anything, that tells us about our region’s most talked about murder suspect.

8PM: “Changing the World, One Joke at a Time!”
That’s the slogan of local comedian Travis Simmons, who joins us in studio to share his own unique take on the region and current events.

9PM: Regional Blogger Roundup
TJ from Loaded Orygun and Jimmy from McCranium join us for our monthly roundup of news and politics from around the Northwest. Drivers licenses for illegal immigrants and a recap of Jimmy’s write-in campaign for Richland city council, will top the agenda, but first we’ll hear from recently defeated Yakima city councilman Ron Bonlender about the shameless case of sock-puppetry that might have done him in.

Tune in tonight (or listen to the live stream) and give me a call: 1-877-710-KIRO (5476).

Courtesy of RawStory, and of course, PBS.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has issued its fourth and final report, and it ain’t pretty.

Warming of the climate system is unequivocal, as is now evident from observations of increases in global average air and ocean temperatures, widespread melting of snow and ice, and rising global average sea level.

[…] It is very likely that over the past 50 years: cold days, cold nights and frosts have become less frequent over most land areas, and hot days and hot nights have become more frequent. It is likely that: heat waves have become more frequent over most land areas, the frequency of heavy precipitation events has increased over most areas, and since 1975 the incidence of extreme high sea level has increased worldwide. […] Average Northern Hemisphere temperatures during the second half of the 20th century were very likely higher than during any other 50-year period in the last 500 years and likely the highest in at least the past 1300 years.

The report warns that the impacts of anthropogenic warming could be “abrupt or irreversible”, including “metres of sea level rise, major changes in coastlines and inundation of low-lying areas.”

Contraction of the Greenland ice sheet is projected to continue to contribute to sea level rise after 2100. Current models suggest virtually complete elimination of the Greenland ice sheet and a resulting contribution to sea level rise of about 7 m if global average warming were sustained for millennia in excess of 1.9 to 4.6ºC relative to preindustrial values. The corresponding future temperatures in Greenland are comparable to those inferred for the last interglacial period 125,000 years ago…

Of course, what do they know? They’re just a bunch of Nobel Prize winning scientists. Better we should listen to real experts, like Dori and Stefan.

Ron Reagan was a big hit with the audience at state Sen. Jeanne Kohl-Welles annual post-election panel and fundraiser last night, and several people came up to me afterwards asking why 710-KIRO dumped his show. I had no answer, except that radio is a tough, tough business. Former KVI host Bryan Suits knows this well, after being unceremoniously dumped from the dial last week, as does former Los Angeles police detective Mark Fuhrman (of O.J. Simpson murder trial fame,) whose show on Spokane’s KGA was suddenly canceled yesterday, probably to make room for cheaper, syndicated programming.

As an occasional guest of both Suits and Fuhrman, I wish them both well. Suits always treated me fairly, and Fuhrman, well, contrary to his popular image as a tough-talking, racist righty, he was perhaps the most polite and patient host I ever worked with, giving me wide latitude to make my case without interruption. My fellow liberals may cheer their demise, but in both cases their cancellation has resulted in less local content, and that’s almost always a bad thing, regardless of the ideological bent.

No doubt, barring a sudden career change or an untimely death, I will eventually lose my radio perch too — it’s a circle of life kinda thing — and when I do I expect my critics to be merciless in their taunting. Whatever. I’m not sure what’s more amazing, that I got my shot at all (and at a legacy station in a major market,) or that I’m still on the air 15 months later. That Reagan has been silenced while I’m still talking is more a testament to the relative value of our respective time slots than talent or competence, but whether my remaining tenure is ultimately measured in months or in years or in decades, I intend to make the most of the air-time I have.

PROGRAMMING NOTE:
Tomorrow night on 710-KIRO, The Stranger’s Christopher Frizzelle will join me at 7PM, local comedian Travis Simmons joins me at 8PM, and at 9PM we’ll discuss news and politics with bloggers from around the region. Phil “The News Junkie” will be filling in for me Sunday night.

Darcy Burner turned 37 this week, and in celebration the campaign is seeking to raise $18,500 in online contributions, $500 for each of her 37 years. Please give what you can.

Speaking of Darcy, she was in the audience at last night’s Democratic presidential debate in Las Vegas, and she’s posted her observations over on Daily Kos. It’s a fun read.

Barry Bonds lied about taking steroids, that’s the top story on the front page of the dead tree editions of both of Seattle’s dailies. Well… duh-uh. However, in the online editions, the story about the home run slugger’s grand jury indictment was much less prominent — I actually had to Command-F his name (Control-F for all you Windoze lozers) to find a link on the P-I’s home page. Huh.

That’s the interesting thing about this exercise in reporting the morning headlines. I’d gotten so out of the habit of reading the print editions, I hadn’t realized how old their news was. The morning papers are really yesterday’s news, while the online editions better reflect today’s headlines. No wonder the combined online readership of the P-I and the Times (4 million unique visits) would place amongst the top seven dailies nationwide, while their individual online readership now ranks them 19th and 21st respectively, ahead of many larger dailies in larger markets.

And notice that while the Times continues to kick the P-I’s ass in print circulation, the P-I has jumped ahead in online readership. (You know… the future.) Why? Well it could be that the P-I’s website has done a better job recently of staying on top of breaking news throughout the day. And it could be that absent the distortions of the JOA, the Times loses its competitive advantage. But I’d wager that a measurable part of the P-I’s lead — about 140,000 unique visits in October — is due to the fact that local bloggers like me tend to go out of our way to link to the P-I instead of the Times. This trend started back when the Times was trying to kill the P-I by ending the JOA, but it’s been reinforced by the fact that apart from Postman, there seems to be an editorial policy of refusing to link back to us. Given my druthers, I’d prefer to link to the best article on any particular story, but, you know, it’s a two-way street and all that.

But I digress.

Other duh-uh stories dominate the print editions today, with the P-I informing us that Bosses spy on their workers, and Video rental stores are losing business to NetFlix, downloads, and video-on-demand. Not exactly a couple of blockbuster stories. Meanwhile the Times breaks the shocking news that holiday travelers should Be prepared for flight delays and lost luggage. No shit, Sherlock.

Elsewhere, War funding bills fail in the Senate (NY Times, 17.5 million uniques), Army desertion rate up 80% since 2003, the highest since 1980 (USA Today, 9.5 million uniques), and oh yeah, the Democrats step up attacks in last night’s presidential debate (Washington Post, 8.7 million uniques.)

I’m just sayin’.