"As the old saying goes, without vision, the people perish. Only in this case, without vision, the hopes of many kids perish."
I remember hearing this many years ago. And I have heard it just about every election cycle since. If you want to get to the root of the root, fix the school boards. Why? Many of them are kissing cousins of Education Minnesota. That along with the "Minnesota Miracle" formula in how we allocate education dollars, has led to the biggest cabal this state's history. And meanwhile, kids, mostly poor and minority from the inner cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul, continued to be flushed down the drain.
Somehow all who are involved in this cabal practice the same talking points. Money = results. We hear that all the time, especially before a levy or referendum. But here are the facts. We spend a ton of money in Minneapolis and St. Paul and get some of the worst results. Here is another fact. School boards are notorious for the mismanagement of funds. School boards, along with the superintendent and staff, act like Keystone Cops in some districts.
I have told the story on social media about the district we live in. About 20 years ago, a new middle school was built. It was supposed to have a pool, like many other middle schools have. Only this one was built undersized with no diving area. Scratch the high school swim team using it. It also did not have an outside entrance. Scratch having the YMCA rent usage from it. It also did not have yearly maintenance money set aside. Scratch using it at all. It has sat idle for over 15 years now. And who is held accountable for this mess? Listen carefully, and you will hear the crickets chirping.
No, in our school district we are mostly concerned with who is gay and who is not. Who is trans and who is not. What type of bathrooms to put in for our every expanding variety of sexuality. How to deal with bullies. How do we all feel? Is there a safe room, where we can be protected from the past election results? Where can we all go just to have a good cry.
Good flipping grief! What about the A, B, C's? Math? Science? Education which will prepare the work force for jobs which are not even created yet? And enough of this dumbing down and social promotion. I also told a story on social media of a young girl in the inner city who received straight A's through high school. She got a full scholarship to an Ivy League college. Once there, she was given an entrance exam to see if she had any weaknesses. To her dismay, she tested out at an 8th grade level.
Yes it starts with the school board. Elect good people who eschew the cabal. Then elect good representatives who can fix this broken Department of Education we have in this state. Finally, elect a Governor with vision, who can lead the charge and share that vision for Minnesota. We need to do more for less in education. We need accountability and success.
Who is a Governor with that kind of vision? More than one on the Republican side of the fence. However, I believe the one with the best vision is Commissioner Jeff Johnson. As the old saying goes, without vision, the people perish. Only in this case, without vision, the hopes of many kids perish.
Right on, brother!
ReplyDeleteSaint Paul leads the pack of inept School Boards, hiring even worse Superintendents, who come back from California conferences with the latest is "snowflake" education theory.
Charter schools were the answer for awhile, until the criminals figured out opening charter schools and skimming the money was a lucrative venture.
So, we allowed our students to wander the cities, picking whatever school they desired, destroying neighborhood schools.
Now, no parental involvement, no local interest.
Quite a mess we've made.
People should spend as much time understanding who they are electing at the local level as they do national races.
It will be a long time before this quagmire is fixed.
Stay warm,
David Gjerdingen
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ReplyDeleteMore on 45's Administration's ability to understand and manage the US's critical activities OR maybe it was just another slam at something Obama did.............................
ReplyDeleteSince 2000, the EMP Commission, an unpaid team of leading scientists, engineers, and security experts has worked tirelessly to test, understand, and uncover risks posed to our nation's civil and military infrastructure by Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP).
EMP is a well known physical electromagnetic phenomena generated by a nuclear or special weapon or coronial mass ejection (CME). In 2012, Earth passed by a Coronal Mass Ejection that missed the planet by days.
Had Earth passed through the phenomena, damages would've set the United States back 200 years, according to NASA.
Based on historic data, Lloyds Bank and Oxford University fixed the likelihood of a major CME impact to North America at 12 percent per decade.
The EMP commission was actually defunded on September 30th.
It was created in 2001 and has been extended several times over the years, the last time in 2016.
This extension was allowed to lapse, even as North Korea issued a specific threat in September to carry out an EMP attack and published a technical paper in the official communist party paper “Rodong Sinmun” outlining some details about it.
They probably spent a few million dollars a year on travel expenses for meeting and a small support staff.
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