The feral youth of Bus 784

Here's what I think of this Not Safe for Work video that's gone viral around the world, thanks to YouTube.

Here's what I think of little smart-ass, bullying seventh-grade s***s who pick on a 68-year-old grandma, who also happens to be the monitor on Bus 784 in Greece, N.Y.

Here's what I think. Here goes.

Do you remember those little bitty baseball bats common back in the day?

In my youth in the segregated South, they had a common name (common in every sense of the word) I shall not repeat, but I suspect sons and daughters of the Deep South know exactly what I'm talking about.

ANYWAY, this is why God invented those. (And your old man's thin leather belt.) I suspect just nearly connecting with one of the little darlings with a billy club-size Louisville Slugger would have been sufficient to put the fear -- if not of God -- of serious bodily harm into their profoundly undeveloped little brains.

Unfortunately, if the poor woman had done what most any adult would have done when I was a kid, she would have been arrested, and then she would have been sued into pauperism by the wolves who obviously have been "raising" these little monsters. That's because brats like that don't come from nowhere.

There is almost no reason sufficient to administer a serious ass-whipping to a child. Almost. But this is a damn good one.

This kind of behavior toward a senior citizen by a child used to be unthinkable, especially in the South of my youth, unless you were talking about a serious juvenile delinquent who'd be penitentiary bound soon enough. There were reasons for that.

Someone needs to exercise "the nuclear option" against the whole lot of these feral youth on that bus. Now.

Dear God. There's more out there.

OK, reporters. Let's put on our thinking caps, shall we?

The Fun Superintendent is suing her former employer, Des Moines Public Schools, to prevent it from releasing any more emails she thinks are "purely personal." Which, of course, she illicitly sent and received via her work account, often using school-system computers.

Nancy Sebring may be stupid, but she's also arrogant and ballsy. It must be from . . . never mind.

According to a report Wednesday in the Omaha World-Herald, the incredibly horny (not to mention reckless and foolish) woman who missed being Omaha Public Schools' next superintendent by this much appears to be suing to close the barn door after the brood mare already has made a break for it. After all, the whole thing already has made The Smoking Gun on the Internet, where you can read all the naughty bits the Des Moines Register and the World-Herald censored out.

ANYWAY, said the World-Herald's report:

Sebring filed a lawsuit against the Des Moines Public Schools in Polk County, Iowa, District Court. She filed the request for an injunction Monday, after The World-Herald and Des Moines Register published selected emails over the weekend. Sebring resigned Saturday from the Omaha superintendent position.

The Des Moines district, responding to public records requests from the newspapers, provided the emails last week with some information redacted, including the identity and email address of Sebring's lover. Both newspapers removed certain sexually-explicit content from the emails before publishing them.

Des Moines officials acknowledged last week that the district's discovery of those emails was the reason Sebring resigned abruptly May 10, despite being under contract through June 30. At the time, Sebring said she needed more time to make the transition to the Omaha job and to help prepare for her daughter's wedding.

(snip)

In her lawsuit, Sebring claims that other individuals have requested or will ask for full, unredacted copies of her Des Moines emails.

The Des Moines district is no longer informing her about new records requests, the lawsuit says.

The lawsuit acknowledges that free and open examination of public records is generally in the public interest.

But the suit argues that a small number of the emails were purely personal and their content is of no public interest.

The lawsuit says some of the emails were sent by a private individual who would not have sent those emails “had they known the information would be available for general public examination.”

In the lawsuit, Sebring also alleges that the Des Moines district has refused her repeated requests to delete her emails, which she contends is the district's practice for former employees.

Sebring is asking a judge to find that free and open examination of the emails is not in the public interest because “it would cause substantial and irreparable injury to the persons involved.”

Sebring wants the judge to block the release of personal emails until a judge can rule on her request. She also wants to be notified of any public records requests made to the Des Moines district involving her.

YOU KNOW what this means, right?

Even Sebring doesn't think you can unring a bell -- that a lawsuit will magically erase all those X-rated, Not Safe to Be Sent From Work emails between her and her married lover from The Smoking Gun or newspaper websites . . . or Google's Internet cache. If you want to titilate yourself with the lowlights of the Fun Superintendent and her man friend talking dirty to one another on the public dime, you don't need to file a public-records request with the Des Moines school board.

Nobody's going to put those d*** pictures in a box.

Everybody's going to be reading about Sebring's love affair with a penis, spanking, No. 69, butt licking and her desire for a chair with an attached "suction-cup dildo" for a long, long time.

So, what the hell? With the lawsuit, I mean.

Easy. There's more of this stuff out there . . . or on there, meaning server hard drives (which sounds suspiciously like a line from one of Sebring's oversexed missives).

Note that the Register and the World-Herald were searching for emails having something to do with Omaha. What in the world was she saying that wasn't about Omaha somehow?

Inquiring minds want to know.

IF I were one of the reporters covering this hot mess, I would submit a public-records request for every bit of correspondence to and from Sebring from her then-lover's email addresses. I'd also request all emails to and from Sebring containing a laundry list of words and phrases I cannot mention here.

Just like it should have been obvious that the Naughty Schoolmarm had something to hide when she unfortunately convinced the Omaha reporter to narrow his records request, it likewise ought to be obvious that the woman is at it again, this time trying to "sucker" the Iowa district court.

Because.

There's.

More.

Out.

There.

Or at least there's ample reason to think there might be.

X-rated film at 11.

It's a Boomer (wild) thing

Picture a world in which you get almost all the way through The Music Man, only to find out that Marian the Librarian has a thing for kinky sex and arouses herself by gazing at magic-lantern pictures of Harold Hill's . . . baton.

So to speak.

Welcome to Omaha; we'll show you around. And then we can then slide on down I-80 to central Iowa to the horndog digital world of a 21st-century schoolmarm -- Des Moines' former- and Omaha's almost-superintendent, Nancy Sebring . . . complete with throughly modern, thorougly naughty "magic lantern" shows.

Who knew what passions which lay beneath the plastic-rim glasses and sensible suits of the plain-Jane, middle-aged educator? And you thought spanking was yesterday's news in the public schools.

Not only that, but who knew what entertaining reading would result from the Des Moines Register's simple public-records request to the local school district for any emails Sebring sent or received mentioning "Omaha"?

Who knew that a professional reporter could be dumber than the ceaseless horde of amateur journo-bloggers who -- we are told -- are no substitute for "real" journalism, as practiced by "real" journalists at "real" newspapers? Don't answer that.

That's a lot of questions floating around in one measly blog post -- one by an amateur idiot, no less, who's no substitute for his betters at The Daily Blab. Not that he particularly cares to be.

But I do have one answer. Hire more horny schoolmarms and let them talk dirty to -- and traffic in Favreian crotch shots with -- the guys they're screwing instead of their husbands, let them do it during office hours and on school computers . . . and you'll get people critically interested in public education again. They won't let Junior withing a country mile of a public school, but the more adventuresome of America's parents might like to make the Fun Teacher's acquaintance.

Not to mention the Fun Superintendent.


I MEAN, read this stuff. After I did, I kept thinking of the "nurse" who showed up at Ferris Bueller's house in the movie . . . but school administrator-y:

Click on email for higher-resolution version.

BUT CAN she take his (censored) home to meet the family? Is his (censored) in love with the Fun Superintendent, too, or is this just another "third-rate romance, low-rent rendezvous"?

Mainly, I'm just picturing Nancy Sebring standing at the altar with a giant penis. Is that wrong of me?


I DON'T WANT to imagine how Nancy's Special Friend might attempt to type a reply if he did.

Click on email for higher-resolution version, go to Friday, Mar. 30.

O! Dear. Me.

You get the drift, and you get the staggering, incomprehensible stupidity involved in a) doing this s***, then b) emailing about it incessantly on the job, while c) using your company email account and your company computer, when d) you work for a public entity subject to your state's open-records law.

All entertainment value aside, Omaha is lucky a reporter in Des Moines was paying attention to this stuff and not susceptible to being "suckered," as the Los Angeles Times put it. We dodged a bullet.

Though one might feel compassion (above and beyond the compulsion toward snark) for a reputedly talented educator who now must oh-so-publicly -- not to mention pubicly -- stew in her own hormonal juices, one "fun" fact trumps all: Nancy Sebring is too much of a "Fun Superintendent" for her -- or our -- own good.

Stupid is as reckless does.

America today

In case you had any doubt there's a class war going on, and that the middle class and below have giant targets on their backs, read on.

What the Stamford (Conn.) Advocate doesn't mention is that you at least get fed regularly in prison, which also serves as a permanent address. Look for Norwalk officials to spin their arrest of a homeless woman for sending her kid to one of their schools as actually being a compassionate act:

A homeless woman from Bridgeport who enrolled her 6-year-old son at a Norwalk elementary school has become the first in the city to be charged with stealing more than $15,000 for the cost of her child's education.

Tonya McDowell, 33, whose last known address was 66 Priscilla St., Bridgeport, was charged Thursday with first-degree larceny and conspiracy to commit first-degree larceny for allegedly stealing $15,686 from Norwalk schools. She was released after posting a $25,000 bond.

McDowell's babysitter, Ana Rebecca Marques, was also evicted from her Roodner Court public housing apartment for providing documents to enroll the child at Brookside Elementary School.

The police investigation into the residency began in January after Norwalk Housing Authority attorney Donna Lattarulo filed a complaint alleging McDowell registered her son at Brookside, but actually lived in an apartment on Priscilla Street in Bridgeport.

As part of the evidence presented in the complaint, police received an affidavit of residency signed by McDowell and dated last September attesting that she lived in the Roodner Court public housing complex on Ely Ave.

When she was interviewed by police in the case, McDowell admitted to living in Bridgeport at the time she registered her son in Norwalk schools.

She said she knew a man who owned a home on Priscilla Street and he allowed her to sleep at the home at night, but she had to leave the home during the day until he returned from work.

She also acknowledged that she stays from time to time at the Norwalk Emergency Shelter when she has nowhere else to stay.

McDowell also admitted that Marques was her son's babysitter from 3 p.m. to 6 p.m. after the boy got out of school.

JUSTICE without mercy is no justice at all.

Maybe ol' Jeremiah Wright was right, after all. Maybe God will damn -- indeed, is damning -- America.

Even God's mercy has its limits -- eventually -- and sooner or later the unrepentant sinner (or country) finds out exactly what dangerous a thing we do when we mindlessly pray "Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us."

Public school buses for Jesus

Back in my Louisiana hometown, the East Baton Rouge Parish School Board is considering a list of $37.4 million in budget cuts as a start on tackling what officials think will end up being a $39 million budget deficit.

Class sizes will increase. Three schools will close. Staffers will face furloughs. Direct bus routes -- 62 of them -- for gifted and magnet-school students will be eliminated.

One thing that won't be cut, however, is bus service for parochial schools.

Non-Louisianians might react to this with a great big "WTF???" They might wonder what the name of "separation of church and state" are taxpayers doing funding bus service for Catholic schools.

LOUISIANIANS, however, probably would wonder why taxpayers wouldn't provide school buses for parochial-school students. They'd argue that white kids ought to have just as much access to school buses as black ones.

Absurdity, after all, is so prevalent in the Gret Stet as to not even be noticed.

In today's newspaper, The Advocate reports on the abjectly insane machinations of what passes for self-governance in Louisiana with nary an eye roll:

Carnell Washington, president of the East Baton Rouge Federation of Teachers, said parochial school children should also lose direct bus routes if magnet and gifted children lose there’s.

“If we have to give up something, they should give up something,” Washington said.

Dilworth said he struggles with some suggested cuts, including ending after just one year an experiment in year-round schooling at Claiborne and Park elementary schools, saving $4 million in the process.

“So I spend $4 million at those schools and then look at the cuts I’m going to have to make across the district … can I justify that? No,” Dilworth said.

Washington placed the blame for the cuts on Gov. Bobby Jindal whom he described as “selfish.”

“We are here because the state of Louisiana has refused to fund public schools,” Washington said.

GOD, I HOPE someone makes a federal case of this.

It probably won't be the commenters at the bottom of the article -- the one yearning for a return to "neighborhood schools" and another who wants the school system to be rid of all its "magnate" programs.

Gee, if I were in charge, I'd make every school a "magnate" school. Them magnates would have enough money to pay for their own damned school buses.

Shake your booty till your brains fall out

If you're a little boy growing up in Ashland, Neb., you can grow up to be an astronaut.

Look at Clayton Anderson. Remember, the sky's the limit.

If you're a little girl in Ashland, and if you want to try your hand at junior cheerleading, you can grow up to shake your butt for the astronauts. And if you don't want to shake it for the youth-football crowd, the cheerleader coach will kick your unshaking butt right off the squad.

Because the "shake your booty" cheer is a real "crowd-pleaser." Make of that what you will when 5- to 11-year-old girls are involved. And note that the NBC version of the video package originally shot by Omaha's WOWT television artfully cuts away before the little girls shake their butts at the camera.

The local Channel 6 story is here.

HERE'S SOME of the story from the Today show on NBC:

“It just felt wrong. I don’t know why,” Faylene Frampton said Wednesday during an interview on TODAY with Tamron Hall. “It just didn’t feel it was a cheer that was appropriate for kids of my age or younger.”

The sixth-grader from Ashland, Neb., says she complained to cheerleading coach Tina Harris in the past that she did not feel comfortable with the cheer, which is number 33 in the squad’s 44-cheer routine.

The cheer calls upon Faylene and younger members of the squad — including some in the second grade — to turn their backs to the bleachers, bend over, and move their pelvises from side to side.

The cheer had been used in the past, but Faylene says never liked doing it and told the coach so. So when Harris gave the signal for “shake your booty” on Oct. 10, the third-to-last game of the season, she decided it was time to put her foot down — both of them, actually — and take a stand.

Faylene, the oldest and most senior of the junior cheerleaders, refused to do the cheer and was sent home. Later, her father was informed by the coach during a phone call that Faylene was being benched for the last two games for disrespecting the coach.

(snip)

Coach Harris told the local NBC affiliate that she didn’t find the cheer sexually suggestive or objectionable, but nonetheless dropped it from the last two games. She added that no one had complained about the cheer before, and that explaining the controversy, and her decision to bench Faylene for the remainder of the season, was difficult.

BUT NOT as "difficult" as just not having little girls shake their butts at adults in the stands of an elementary-school football game.

"Shaking it" is one thing. People dance; little kids dance. It's cute when they do.

But little girls, some as young as 5, turning their posteriors to the stands -- bleachers filled with adults -- and "shaking it" at the crowd is entirely another.

As a Catholic who has worked with kids at church -- and as someone who has completed the now-mandatory "safe-environment" training -- that is not something I'd be comfortable letting high-schoolers do for an audience, much less forcing preadolescents to do under penalty of banishment. Maybe if everybody were doing the "Hokey Pokey" or the "Chicken Dance," but certainly not chanting "Jump! Shake your booty! Jump! Jump! Shake your booty!"

In other words, what the hell is wrong with this overgrown teenager they have "coaching" little girls in Ashland how to be cheerleaders?

It doesn't take a rocket scientist -- or an astronaut -- to refrain from teaching junior cheerleaders how to "shake it" like junior streetwalkers.

Suicide: It's an equal-opportunity killer

In case you've forgotten, America -- and given the state of the American hype machine the past week or two, I think you may have -- being gay is not the only reason youth get bullied.

It is not the only reason they kill themselves.

And, frankly, I'm starting to get scared that people are getting the message that gay-bashing is the only bullying going on out there. I'm afraid everything else is going to get overlooked.


HOW ABOUT this, America? How about we stop the bullying -- and suicides -- of all youth? Gay, straight, fat, thin, geeky, brainiac, spazzy, dorkish, gimpoid, stuck-up, slutty, virginal, lame-o, klutzy, doofus and religious fanatic.

Let's help them all.

Let's protect them all.

Let's save them all.

At its root, teen bullying -- or any bullying, for that matter -- isn't because kids are gay (or fill-in-the-blank). It's because kids are different in some way, and adolescence is hell on "different."

It's easy as hell to become the Other when you're 15. Hell, it's easy enough when you're 50. We humans don't "do" Other very well.

I've seen kids catch hell for all kinds of reasons. And oftentimes, kids who catch holy, unrelenting hell end up hating themselves enough -- or wanting the pain to stop badly enough -- that they embrace the most permanent solution they can think of . . . for themselves, or for the pain.

THERE WAS a rash of teen suicides in Omaha about five years ago, bringing wider attention to a deadly trend across Nebraska. The deaths led the Omaha World-Herald to publish a huge, and excellent, series on the subject -- not that our short attention spans let us recall this.

Or recall that the teen deaths, while sometimes linked to bullying, rarely had anything to do with homosexuality.

I don't mean to minimize how badly gay kids get treated -- they often are treated horribly, and that is horribly wrong. And, indeed, sometimes the specific illustration can give us a good idea of the general picture.

Sometimes, the "little" story tells the bigger one in a manner we can wrap our brains around.

But in this case, I think it's possible that the smaller picture might end up obscuring the larger one.

And the life that costs may be your kid's.

Of crackers and s***holes

S***hole isn't a geological process.

S***hole is a state of mind that -- eventually -- becomes a geographical reality.

That's my explanation for places like St. Helena Parish, La., and I'm sticking to it. And, frankly, all the evidence is on my side.

Last week, I noted the parish's crumbling -- no, literally crumbling -- schools. That goes along with already collapsed educational achievement, refusal of voters to financially support the school system and how they are content to warehouse students, 95.5 percent of whom are black, under conditions that would get someone cited for animal cruelty if it were dogs we were talking about.

Let me clarify -- animal cruelty anywhere else in these United States apart from Louisiana.

Earlier, I cited this as an example of Tea Party America, which it is. I didn't hit the racial angle hard, because I couldn't be sure, despite my suspicions as a Louisiana native.

One thing is clear, though. Whites, who make up about half the parish's population, abandoned the public schools at some point during the federally mandated racial-integration life cycle in St. Helena, which has been going on for 57 years now. Fifty-seven years!

Same thing happened in my hometown, Baton Rouge. Its federal desegregation case dragged on nearly that long. And by the time it was put to rest, it was pointless; there weren't enough whites left to "desegregate" much of anything.

OF COURSE, the argument goes that taxpayers refuse to see their tax dollars be flushed down the toilet of a dysfunctional school system, long on corruption and short on results. Is that the "chicken" part or the "egg" part of the whole "What came first?" argument?

And no matter how much these spiritual children of Leander Perez and Willie Rainach protest it's "not racial," it's clear it all boils down to "Nigger ain't getting no tax money." When you hear Louisiana people -- or most Americans, actually -- protest long and loudly that something's not about race . . . it's all about race.

And where the news coverage of the sad state of St. Helena schools (and a federal judge's mulling whether to raise school taxes there by decree) left some doubt concerning motivations, the comments box doesn't. People can restrain themselves only for so long.

Then true colors start to show. As does the attitude that "liberals" are just ignorant if they can't see why the racist position is the utterly logical one.

Saturday's article in The Advocate went like this:

A federal judge is scheduled to try on Wednesday to sort out what to do about St. Helena Parish’s dilapidated public schools.

Reports from three state agencies and an architect show that the problems with the buildings go deeper than the cosmetic blemishes visible to a visitor.

Likewise, difficulties between the school system and the community, which is almost equally divided racially, are also deep-rooted, say people involved in the case.

U.S. Census Bureau statistics show that the population of the parish is 51.3 percent black and 47.8 percent white. A walk through the halls of St. Helena Central High School shows few white faces.

The population of the parish’s public schools is 95 percent black, Superintendent of Schools Daisy Slan said in an interview.

Voters have rejected four school-improvement property tax proposals in three years, and race is playing an issue, according to a court filing submitted by School Board attorney Nelson Taylor.

“The white community not only abandoned the public school system physically, it withdrew its financial support as well,” Taylor wrote in requesting the judge to order a pair of taxes put in place without a vote of the electorate.

One of the proposed property taxes would pay to put the wages of St. Helena teachers and staff on par with their counterparts in neighboring parishes. The other tax would fund a bond issue to build new schools.

Alton Travis, who is one of two white members of the six-member St. Helena School Board, said the board is split on the issue of whether a federal judge should impose new taxes by court order. Travis said he opposes the idea.

Nelson’s implication that white voters alone are killing school tax proposals is wrong, Travis said.

The majority of the parish’s population is black and about 60 percent of the people voting have opposed an additional school tax, he said.

“The board attorney makes this tax issue appear to be a racial issue and it’s not,” Travis said.

THEN the Baton Rouge paper went on to report this:

Asked about the matter, attorney Jonathan “Jay” Augustine, who made the request, said his main objective is to get St. Helena students into a better environment and “to give the court more options, not less.”

The tax issue also will be on the table during Wednesday’s hearing.

One of the taxes the School Board is asking the judge to order, without a vote by the electorate, is a 62.3-mill property tax to increase employee salaries, which Slan said are well below those of surrounding parishes. The second is a tax large enough to fund $27.5 million in new school construction.

“I’m totally against a tax without a vote,” Travis, one of the two white School Board members, said.

Travis said that while he doesn’t dispute the need for improvements in the schools, he thinks the imposition of a tax without a vote of the people “is wrong.”

Taylor, the School Board attorney, said in an interview there is “reasonable precedent” for a federal judge to give the School Board authority to levy such a tax.

The school system doesn’t have the funds to operate schools that provide students a safe place in which to learn, the School Board attorney said.

“Public schools require public support,” Taylor said.

Without the support of the most influential voters in the parish, there isn’t much of a chance of a school tax gaining approval in parishwide balloting, he said.

Most of the white population left the school system after schools were desegregated in the 1960s, Taylor said.

FUNNY, isn't it, how it's "wrong" to impose taxes without a vote, but it's perfectly OK for whites to abandon public schools en masse, then be the linchpin of a withdrawal of public support for those same public schools?

Alton Travis is damned lucky I'm not on the federal bench in Baton Rouge. It would not go well for the good, white Christian people of St. Helena Parish.

Why? For that answer, let's go to the Advocate's comments section.

Boilerroom53 kicks things off by sticking to the "race is not an issue" party line:

Race is not an issue Mr. Taylor. As a proud resident of St. Helena parish who also happens to be white, I am in the minority in this parish. A majority of voters are required to pass the taxes which have repeatedly been voted down over the past three years. I would remind you that insanity is defined by doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. It is clear that the people of our parish are not in favor of a property tax to fund the school system. Perhaps another and more equitable tax should be considered rather than simply placing the same property tax before the voters again. It is alarming that this property tax which has been voted down by a majority of people may simply be imposed by a single judge over the will of the voters.

MR. ROOM (Mr. 53?) may think this argument is novel. I heard the same 40 years ago when the "tyrannical" federal judge ordered neighborhood schools as a desegregation plan.

We have a republic, not a mobocracy. Minorities have rights, and white folks can't do whatever they want by majority vote.

But at least we don't have to endure the facade of faux enlightenment for long. Truth1 says what he or she (it?) really thinks. And remember, boys and girls, raseizm maykez yew smrot:

Taxation w/o representation??? Sounds familiar dont it. Also proves whites dont want to associate w/blacks... why do you think that might be??? School taxes should be put on property by the state w/the proceeds alocated to the school boards by student population. Also shows the blacks are not a self sustaining culture w/o dragging down other peoples w/them... both economicly & socialy. We no longer have a sustainable civilization in this country. Degenerative diversity is destroying our civilization.

TommyRucker tries a more sophisticated approach, however. I call this the "Black Folk Tear S*** Up" gambit:

The real issue is that the schools are TRASHED. Why should people give up their little hard earned money when pupils and students are NOT taking care of the school property. Most of the tax money is going into the hands of employees, teachers and administrators as they have unbelievable PERKS. People will support systems that are well run and when they TRUST that their tax money is not going to be WASTED. Many of these school administrators allow their schools to be trashed so they can use them politically to gain PERSONALLY. Many of these "educators" are using these kids as that is what demagogues have always done, they USE members of the MOB to enrich themselves personally and blame their failures on someone else (a scapegoat). They have learned well from other demagogues as they practice the principles that characterize demagogues.

AND ON . . . and on . . . and on it goes:

daisy/scarlet

Looks like we need to introduce another "option" for the Judge Brady....what if the school was cleaned up...really cleaned....doesn't look like the problems are all structural....maybe the janitorial staff needs to be replaced with a few maintenance employees and people who know that their job is to clean. Many of the problems look to be cleanliness related....hmmmm....not popular....wonder why? And, what does the state say about the condition of the middle school that was taken over? Are they complaining, too? I haven't heard anything from them about this. Didn't they just take over this last year or two? It might be worth it if Judge Brady imposed a tax, dismissed all of the St. Helena School Staff - supt. to custodian - and replaced them with staff that worked and operated like Livingston or Zachary educators. I'm certain there would be instructional improvement even if the kids had to remaiin in the old schools.

silverrose

The La Dept of Ed website reports the parish gets $10,076.00 per student compared to the state average of $9,781.00 for 2008-2009 school year. And if you do the math, it comes to $12,000,000 plus just as previously commented on. This is additionally shocking when you see that Livingston and Tangi schools got $8220.00 and $8229.00 per pupil. The question is where is this money going? By their own admission, St Helena teachers are paid less than surrounding parishes. It certainly isn't going to the facilities as evidenced by inspections of the buildings. So, one is left to wonder how much is being paid to the "non-teaching" staff and what is the relationship of these people to members of the parish school board. The race card is a red herring to deflect attention away from how the funds are being used. A child has one chance at an education and if the local public school is unable to provide it year after year, responsible parents have to look at alternatives. Address the issue of a quality education and this school will have the support of the parish.

bluedogdemocrat

The St. Helena School System (the only parish of all parishes with only three schools to take care of) situation is nothing new. Let's sum it up, timber is the only tax base in a parish with one red light, high minority population, low socio-economic background, ignorance, corruption, vote buying from my understanding including not passing a tax, flight to Tangipahoa and Livingston. As with anything, it has come to a catharsis, a climax after the rising action, to a halt... These conditions didn't start, it is a combination of poor management and an eroding tax base unwilling to pay for the ignorant fieldhands caring only for Hawks football.

newzjunkie

Mr. Taylor wants a federal judge to impose a tax that a vote of the people failed to approve?! Obviously another Southern Law graduate who fell asleep during the Constitutional law class. We fought a little thing called the Revolutionary War over this issue, counselor. Face it. Until the voters of St. Helena take responsibility for the education and future of their children, they remain doomed to live in an environment of welfare, unwed motherhood and incarceration. Then again, it's easier for some to play the race card and blame everyone but those who live the welfare mentality. The majority of parish voters, regardless of race, are obviously tired of their tax dollars being flushed into a system that seems (and likely is) helpless and hopeless. Build all the new schools you want in the parish. Come back in three years and they'll look like a bomb hit them. Can you imagine what a day at that high school must be like? Dixon Correctional likely has fewer problems.

CAN YOU IMAGINE what a day living in St. Helena Parish must be like? Life in a Third World country likely would seem like an improvement over such a gigantic s***hole.

You have to break a few eggs. . . .

Call this post You Have to Break a Few Eggs to Make an Omelet, or . . . the history of my old school, Baton Rouge High, as seen through "the phone egg."

Above, we have the phone egg, and classmate Hardy Justice, as seen in the pages of the 1979 Fricassee.


THEN, the phone egg -- minus the pay phone -- as seen in the fall of 2007, when the school long had slipped into disrepair and dilapidation.


AND LAST WEEK . . . destroying the campus -- well, much of it, anyway -- in order to save it.

One thing they ought to save, at least, is the phone egg. And when the new gymnasium rises from the rubble of the past, they ought to refurbish the "egg," put a '70s vintage pay phone in it (complete with nickel phone calls) and place it next to an entrance.

Because the past is part of all our futures.

Edukashun 2day

Biz prof smwhre was sayin smthin abt the prez bein a h8tr on cellphones & web intruding on clsrm.

Fnd articl here while surfin by. Chk it OUTTT!!!!!

In his commencement speech Sunday at Virginia's Hampton University, President Obama suggested that social media and the devices on which they are accessed distract students from learning. The president does not hate your precious freedom to isolate yourself in a cocoon of music, videos and text messages. He just realizes that if students are going to realize their potential, they need to focus more on the classroom.

As a part-time professor, I agree with him. I have to fight students' natural desire to keep an eye on Facebook during class. (I may be a really bad teacher, but Bloomberg Businessweek ranked my Babson College Business department second in the country for teaching strategy to undergraduates.) According to academic . . . 96% of college . . . students . . . Facebook . . . YouTube. . . . hour a. . . .

The stories of the flooding to hit Nashville and the damages incurred have made headlines around the nation. On all the network newscasts there have been pictures and stories of what has happened to our city. Some authorities are calling it, "The flood of 500 years," or The flood of 1000 years," based on the likelihood of something like this happening. One of our dedicated listeners referred to it as, "Nashville's Hurricane Katrina."

The outporing of concern from friends and fans of WSM and the Grand Ole Opry has been overwhelming to all of us connected with each of these businesses. There have been, and there continues to be, a lot of prayers being held up for our city, its resdients, businesses, and all that have been affected by this flood.

The Grand Ole Opry has been mentioned frequently on television and in print and the damages that have happened.

Let me share with you something that I've said for the fifteen years I've been with WSM, that is more relevant now than ever. The Grand Ole Opry is not a place--the Grand Ole Opry is a show, and as the old saying goes, "The show must go on." As many know, the Grand Ole Opry is world's longest continuously running live radio show. What many people don't know is, the Grand Ole Opry is our Saturday show--only. The program that is on Friday nights--started in 1949 as the Friday Night Frolics at WSM Studio C, then became the Friday Night Opry upon moving to the Ryman Auditorium in 1964, is formatted like our Saturday show. Our seasonal Tuesday Night show is the Tuesday Night Opry, and our seasonal Thursday night program is Opry Country Classics. Nothing has happened to any . . . shows and they . . . to continue. . . .

WHOA!!! OIL!!!

BAD WETHR 2-day! YUCK!!!

Whew . . . not here. . . .

RIIIIIINNNNNNNNNG!

Shoot the messenger principal

Denial in the name of "school reform" is going to do no one any good.

And in Omaha, politically correct political posturing may have just turned into full-blown delusion. Unfortunately, Washington has the clout -- and state officials are craven enough -- to turn a public-policy psychotic break into a world of hurt for children . . . and for those struggling to teach them.

Here's the story: One day, Nebraska education officials are praising the excellence of four local high schools. The next, the state puts the schools on a "persistently lowest achieving" list, qualifying them for federal stimulus money aimed at lifting troubled schools out of the educational gutter.

To qualify for these stimulus funds, Omaha Public Schools must institute "reforms" at the excellent-yet-underachieving schools, reforms ranging from removing the "excellent" administrators to shutting down the "excellent" schools.

We are Americans. That means we do insane things, from destroying Vietnamese villages in order to save them from the Red Menace to closing "excellent" schools to rescue them from dissoluteness.

AND IN OMAHA, according to a story in today's World-Herald, Americans are about to elevate their "crazy" to a whole new level:

The full list includes 28 high schools, eight middle schools and 18 elementary schools. Two of the schools house both middle and high school students.

Included on the list are five Omaha area high schools Omaha Central, Omaha North, Omaha South, Omaha Benson and Bellevue East. Indian Hill Elementary School in OPS also made the list.

The designation could mean federal grant funding for the schools if their districts agree to reforms prescribed by the Obama administration such as staffing changes at each school building.

John Mackiel, superintendent of the Omaha Public Schools, expressed frustration Wednesday at OPS schools making the list.

The four OPS high schools made the list because they have graduation rates below 75 percent.

Mackiel sharply criticized state officials for labeling the schools in order to receive federal funding.

“I don't believe there's anything more reprehensible than gaming the system to access $77 million of federal money by accepting it and then labeling schools that two months ago you just celebrated in terms of the educational opportunities going on in those schools,” he said.

Schools on the list are eligible for a total of $17 million in grants, but there probably will only be enough money to serve schools with the greatest need of improvement. As a result, many of the districts with schools listed won't have to make difficult decisions on whether to remove principals or take other drastic measures.

Schools that accept federal School Improvement Grants would have to implement one of four models. The models range in severity from removing the principal to closing the school.

Nebraska sought and received a waiver in the federal rules allowing use of a graduation rate of 75 percent instead of the 60 percent called for by the federal government.

Nebraska Education Commissioner Roger Breed said no Nebraska high schools except for Native American schools would have qualified for funding at 60 percent.

(snip)

Mackiel called it “a curious Alice-in-Wonderland contradiction” that in February, the Nebraska Department of Education performed an annual assessment of the district and issued a “glowing” report commending the leadership at South, North, Central and Benson high schools.

In the next 10 days, Mackiel said, graduating seniors at the four high schools will be awarded more than $25 million in scholarships, “but to see the list today you wouldn't know that.”

MACKIEL is right. Both Central and North, to name just two, are excellent schools. Both feature first-rate facilities, and Omaha North also is a magnet school.

What all Omaha's "failing" schools also happen to be are smack-dab in the inner city. What all Omaha's "failing" schools happen to be charged with is educating most of the offspring of the city's underclass.

These are the young victims of a failed culture, one which values many things, just not education, responsibility, achievement or familial stability. Back when I was taking just enough college sociology courses to be dangerous, one term of art for such was "deviant." Another was "dysfunctional."

As in "deviant behavior." Within a "dysfunctional environment."

According to the state -- and to the feds, eager to remedy a crisis, just not the right one -- the likes of Benson, North, South and Central are "persistently lowest achieving" schools because they graduate only 75 percent of the children who wander through their doors. According to the real world, Jesus Christ never performed a bigger miracle when he caused Peter to walk on water or fed more than 5,000 with five loaves and two fish.

Verily, I say unto thee if North, South, Central and Benson were more white, less underclass and a lot more suburban, the quality of teaching going on there would have the world beating a path unto them as the new MIT, if not the new Jerusalem.

But you cannot say that in America, because that would be impolitic.

IT IS BETTER for state and federal officials to ignore that Omaha, for example, has the third-highest black poverty rate in the nation. Ignore that its percentage of African-American children in poverty is atop the American hit parade of suck.

No, it is much more expedient to pretend that none of these things stack the deck against even the best educators and the best-resourced schools. It's a lot easier to downplay the fact that this kind of endemic poverty breeds real cultural deviance -- as opposed to America's everyday, middling cultural deviance -- and that a deviant hip-hop subculture glorifying Every Wrong Thing takes real cultural deviance and supersizes it.

Why, oh why, open up that can of racially-charged Whoop-Ass when you can just blame the schools instead?

Not acknowledging plain facts does not make them any less plain. Or factual.

It certainly doesn't make stigmatizing certain schools and punishing the educators formerly known as "excellent" any less of an insanely stupid starting point for embarking on the Sisyphean task of trying to fix broken people and a deviant culture.

Grateful in a strange land

I have lived in Omaha, by God, Nebraska for 22 years now and -- still -- there are times when I feel like a stranger in a strange land.

Saturday was another one of those times.

That was the day Central High School opened its doors to the community to celebrate its 150th-anniversary school year -- it was founded in 1859 as Omaha High School, just four years after the city's incorporation and eight years before Nebraska would win statehood. Its present building, the "new" Omaha Central, went up between 1900 and 1912.

You see what a beautiful structure it is.

ALMOST half a lifetime ago, I immigrated to Omaha from a foreign land . . . so to speak. Specifically, an exotic and strange Caribbean outpost by the name of "Louisiana."

It has been rumored that "Louisiana" is not a foreign land at all, but instead one of these United States. Technically, that may be true.

Technically, the cop running the small-town speed trap doesn't have a quota to make, either.

Anyway, I grew up in Baton Rouge, where I graduated from the oldest school in the city. Baton Rouge High came into being sometime around 1880 -- this in a city settled in 1699 and incorporated in 1817, five years after Louisiana became a state.

Its present building, the "new" Baton Rouge High, went into use in 1927.

You see, in this 2007 photo, what a dilapidated structure it is.

Having done no meaningful maintenance -- obviously -- on Baton Rouge High since I graduated in 1979, the East Baton Rouge Parish School Board managed to get a sales tax and millage renewed so it would have the money to fix the school facilities.

This after toying with the idea of tearing down the building after years of never toying with the idea of keeping it in good repair.

OF COURSE, "fixing" Baton Rouge High now requires tearing down the entire campus, save the historical main building. And the fate of the original building will involve more "renovation" than "restoration" -- there's not enough money for a full restoration.

All this will require relocating the entire student body for two years as the campus is renovated and rebuilt.


AT OMAHA CENTRAL, meanwhile, keeping up with the times -- and technology -- hasn't meant destroying the charms of a bygone age, save some false ceilings in classrooms here and there. Above is Central's courtyard, created when the "new" school was built around the old, which left what you see here upon its demolition.

Some years back, covering the courtyard with a clear roof created an atrium, now used as a gathering space and food court.


WHEN A NEW gynmasium opened at Omaha Central, workers renovated the old gym (above) into a second cafeteria and multipurpose space. Another view is below.


WHILE WE'RE speaking of gyms, I guess you might want to see Central's new one:


AND WHILE I'M showing you Omaha Central's new gym, I suppose you might like to see Baton Rouge High's gymnasium:


IN CASE it isn't obvious, there are no potholes in the floor of the Omaha Central gym. There are large ones in the floor of the Baton Rouge High gym.

And, yes, the locker rooms at my alma mater are as nasty as they look. Tetanus may be a concern, I don't know.

It is difficult to explain things like this to Omahans, who support inner-city public schools like Central -- that of the beautiful old building, and of the brand-new gymnasium and football stadium.

In fact, about two-and-a-half years ago, when I got some of my Baton Rouge High pictures developed at an Omaha photo lab, the proprietor asked my wife about them. He wanted to know whether the photos were of a school destroyed by Hurricane Katrina.

In other words, what people in my hometown had come to accept as normative, people in Omaha assumed was a victim of a catastrophe.

I come from a foreign land. Things are different here in the United States.

Potholes are what you try to avoid on city streets after a rough winter. Potholes are not what you worry about breaking your ankle in during phys ed.

At dear old Baton Rouge High, the old gym will not be renovated into cafeteria space. It will be bulldozed.


THE NEED for bulldozing speaks volumes about the esteem in which public education is held in my old Louisiana home.

Above is a common sight in the 1927 main building at Baton Rouge High. Moisture intrusion is causing plaster to fall off the walls in chunks. Has been for years, apparently.


MEANTIME, IN OMAHA, this is what it looks like in the hallways of Central High. Remember, this building is a couple of decades older than Baton Rouge High. Here's another view:

What it comes down to -- as I've said over and over, ad infinitum -- is culture. The South, and particularly Louisiana, never has been inclined toward public education.

Likewise, the South -- and particularly Louisiana -- never has been inclined toward a strong civic culture . . . or functional egalitarianism.

Recall that my alma mater, Baton Rouge High, did not exist until around 1880. Baton Rouge incorporated, remember, in 1817.

In 1859, the year Omaha Central came into being, there were public schools in Louisiana -- and at least one in East Baton Rouge Parish, I gather, but they were few in number and less than rooted in their communities.

That is because the South was -- and is, to a substantial degree -- a society based on class, and the privileges thereof. If your station in life allowed you the luxury of an education, that could be purchased.

If one was of mean estate, that's how one was apt to live out one's days -- poor. And ill-educated.

And for the vast majority of Southern blacks in 1859. . . .


A CENTURY AND A HALF later in Baton Rouge, those who have the means can purchase a fine, private education -- and that's where you'll find most white kids today. In private schools. Where they fled, starting in 1981, when "forced busing" came to town in the name of racial integration.

Meanwhile, the most prestigious public school in town looks like a casualty of Katrina. More than 30 years ago, when I was a student there, Baton Rouge High was notable for being the least decrepit school I'd attended.

To hell with all that.

To hell with a system where, yes, a school board can erect a nice, new facility where one once lay in ruins -- laid waste by official malfeasance and profound civic indifference -- but where one also has little confidence that what soon will be state of the art won't, in a decade or three, be in just as sad a state as the ruins it replaced.

To hell with it.


Children are a society's treasure, and if what befell Baton Rouge High is any indication -- and it is -- my hometown for decades, if not forever, has been casting swine before pearls. Children also are not stupid, and also for a couple of decades or so upon reaching adulthood, they've been voting in a referendum on the Gret Stet of Loosiana.

With their feet.


THEN THEY BECOME -- like so many of my generation of native Louisianians -- transplants in a strange land, one day walking into a public school and finding they have no frame of reference for the relative wonder they behold.

Like refugees stepping off a plane just arrived from some Third World enclave, they find themselves strangers in a strange land.

And "strange" is good.