Ugh. This man calling himself the Mayor of Kansas City is so stubborn that he's wasting time and walking into a giant mess that has ruined people so much smarter than him.
The Mayor is currently touting his Education Summit.Here's what he is either too stubborn or too silly to realize . . .
He's recruiting Crosby Kemper to help . . . Apparently, Kemper is a big advocate of the voucher system. This will go over like lead balloon in the urban core and Kemper's big money roots will easily play to concerns over SUPREMACY within the urban core according to a great many local education experts.
Janice Ellis is on board. I guess she's going to save the School District despite the fact that she couldn't even run a magazine. Isn't she still running for Mayor? Her sign is still up on Main.
Mayor Funky is invoking Mr. Peanut; respectfully, the guy ran his own School Board slate back in the day and nothing ever came of it. One of the richest, most politically savvy dudes in KC couldn't change this town's schools and now we're supposed to believe a politico with virtually no experience or credibility managing educational institutions is going to make a difference? Again, Mayor Funky is touting Mr. Peanut but a white guy and his big money attempting to "save" KC schools isn't going to play well in the urban core.
We hear Gloria has a role in this as well. Denizens of KC Coffee places hear her talking up the project and touting her participation. I have no idea why Ms. Squitiro can't keep her cell Iphone conversations to herself.
Ultimately, this project is going to see the Mayor kissing the ring of School Board President Marilyn Simmons and trying to hold sway with Ajamu Webster in order to get him to ease tensions that are going to naturally arise . . . There is no debate more contentious than School Board politics. So . . . Is this the Mayor that conservative interlopers love to defend? A guy publiclly getting played by Kansas City's Black United Front.
Already leaders from throughout the City have seen this as a losing cause. So far there haven't been any Latino leaders of consequence that are at the table of this discussion.
TKC TIPSTERS are already raising questions about other participants in this hot mess.
Again, there are smarter people than Mayor Funky who know that State Takeover and breaking the district apart represent the only real hope for accountability and better schools. So far . . . What everyone has seen and heard from Kansas City's Mayor is nothing more than the same empty rhetoric regarding local schools from a naive politico that's soon to be mired in a useless debate in which his lack of power, experience and credibility will be yet again shown to all of Kansas City.
Go Funk!
ReplyDeleteThe blacks in this town care more about that monster Michael Jackson's death than they do their own schools.
ReplyDeleteRight, we get it. You don't like funk......
ReplyDeleteAnd MJ wasted some talent. It happens. A legend?? In a generation nobody will care....
Gloria will be paid for "administrative services and meeting planning."
ReplyDeletenothing else has worked so why not try vouchers. the people who are against them are school administration and teachers. parents and kids are in favor. more money,no.
ReplyDeleteSimmons belongs to the Black United Front, I don't know if she works for Webster but I do know she works in the same office.
ReplyDeleteSimmons works for Ajamu and the Mayor's Educational Summit is just another farce for him to show his lack of leadership and myopic vied of this city's educational concerns. The seminar he wants to institute only works when you have all the right players at the table and no one with any sincere community interest will work with him and his co-mayor. They have scared most of the real community leaders off and created their own puppets who hope to profit like the Black United Front.
ReplyDeleteWhat happened to the financial forum he sponsored at the World War I Veterans Memorial? What were the outcomes of that?
How long has hizzoner been trying to get this (Education) Summit out of the planning stages? Seems like the amount of money needed for his "Summit" would be better used to fund the KCPD and he didn't have much luck raising that money either.
I don't think the voucher system will do what its proponents publicly think. They won't make schools better or kids better educated. They'll simply provide fairness to those of us who sent our kids to private schools, paid the high cost of tuition and also supported the public schools through our property taxes. That amounted to about 3 times the cost per kid that education really cost.
ReplyDeleteThe problem with private schools for the poor is the same thing that the P&L district does, that restaurants do. The little sign that says "We reserve the right to refuse service to anyone."
And the problem with vouchers is ats it always is when the government gives an entity money. They start mandating requirements on the public schools that essentially will dumb them down so they'll just be public schools but not organized in districts.
If anything, private, government funded through vouchers will have to organize, consolidate so they'll have the money to obey government mandates.
Then where will we be? Back to where we started except there's no place parents can take their kids that don't have government's one size fits all policies.
A school could say 'we do uniforms here', and some judge will decree that's descriminatory because some self righteous parent will sue on behalf of his undisciplined kid.
But hey. public schools aren't working so well either. Or shall the arabs have their own schools and dare the governemnt to break the first amendment by dictating there shall be no revolution taught under the guise of religion?
It's not as simple as it looks.
While I have you, and yes, I dont' mind helping Tony's blog on a disccussion, I just wish he'd return the favor.
My blog has a few random interesting thoughts that, guess what? Don't rehash crimes and shitty hall.
Tony, you're starting to remind me of the republicans. They get up ervery morning, go to the war room and think up something to say to criticize the president.
it seems you do that with the Funk. Are YOU running for mayor? Give it a rest. Your talent is wasted downtown. You should bitxch about that construction job on I-29 south fromt he airport that had cars backed up for two miles!!!!! Why don't cops have a portable sign that says EXIT NOW... CONSTRUCTION AHEAD? Drivers head into the jam like cattle going to slaughter.
Come over to my blog. I've opened up a dealership.
//radiomankc.blogspot.com/2009/06/blog-post.html
Oh well, gotta go cut the grass before it gets too hot.
Ask Radioman what the time is and he will start explaining how a watch works.
ReplyDeleteYoure right... grin. But what do you think of what I wrote... or is the limit of your reading level such that it took you half the morning to get through six inches of copy?
ReplyDeleteyou can't say vouchers won't work if we don't try. we have tried everything else in the kc school district in the last 40 years and look at the mess. another study the people is not going to change anything.
ReplyDeleteThe teachers' unions don't like vouchers. They are scared to death of any competition ruining their monopoly.
ReplyDeleteA monopoly implies that the persons or entities holding the monopoly actually financially benefit from that monopoly. Teachers don't have the monopoly. If they did, then they would be paid a great deal more than they are.
ReplyDeleteIt is not a monopoly it is a public service, and a service no other organization is willing to provide without being driven by private profit -- and the profit motive makes a bad situation worse. We get what we pay for and we have been paying for less and less.
ReplyDeleteThe answer is to break the tie between property tax and education and linking education funding to income on a national basis. That would also put an end to sprawl.
The answer is not related to a make work project for Gloria. No contributor should give a penny unless Funk promices that Gloria will stay home an not receive a dime.
Supremacy is necessary here. Someone's gotta beat the knuckleheads into plowshares.
ReplyDeleteThe community hasn't done a damn thing for far too long.
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ReplyDeleteAnonymous at 11:29- you couldn't be more wrong! The vast majority of private school that exist are of a religious nature and operate at a fraction of the expense of the public school system. They operate from a charitable frame of reference, not a profit motive one. Should the City go with a voucher system, these already established schools would flourish and the well behaved students would be in those schools and flourish as well. The kids who can't follow rules would end up in the worst run schools- most likey ones based on profit motive or still run directly by the government.
ReplyDeleteRadioman is dead-on in pointing out why vouchers wouldn't work due to the government adding constraints. The problem is government! Especially the Feds. If government could be restrained from their meddling, then vouchers might have a chance. Heck, even the current system might have a chance!