Justin Katz
Tiverton resident Jay Lambert makes a good point in a letter in the latest edition of the Sakonnet Times: According to Mr. Medeiros, the lack of a contract with the teachers “is actually the result of the union refusing to accept the (financial) challenges we all face.” This seems to be the view of several…
Marc offered the substantive commentary yesterday, so all I’ve got in response to bad news about Rhode Island’s high schools is a quip (emphasis added): But proficiency rates among students statewide are stagnant. Despite an aggressive statewide high school reform effort, test scores of high school juniors have remained flat for the past several years,…
Nobody who knows him will have any difficulty picking out the quotation from Rocco DiPippo from the Sakonnet Times‘s “Who said it?” list of “memorable quotes overheard around our cities and towns in 2007”: “I even ate sugared grasshoppers at a Sportsmen’s banquet in Maine.” “I had no thoughts in my head except to kill…
Charles Bakst does readers the service of eliciting the sort of comments from legislators that one would expect him to want to hear: Interestingly, Senator Montalbano’s speech quoted Hubert Humphrey’s plea to care for the sick, the needy and the handicapped. Montalbano told me that, sure, the budget must be balanced and there’ll be pain…
I’m afraid I have to say that I don’t share Dan Yorke’s optimism. I’m coming to believe that the silent (read: apathetic) majority that many of us have assumed to exist is dwindling toward mythdom. I’ve been beating this drum regularly, of late, but allow me to repeat: Almost 30,000 fewer Rhode Islanders lived in…
A recent op-ed by House Finance Committee Chairman Steven Costantino (D, what else) further illustrates the game playing that our legislators apparently intend to perform instead of fixing Rhode Island’s deep and structural problems: RHODE ISLAND’S fiscal crisis is also our moment of opportunity. By finding ways to make our tax dollars go further, we…
Members of the General Assembly were setting up a lie even before their first meeting of the year (if you can call it that). From Sunday’s Providence Journal: The legislature and the governor promise no tax increases. Legislative leaders repeat: “Everything [else] is on the table.” Interest groups fear the coming session will be “the…
What a sad, sad commentary that the first baby born in Rhode Island during 2008 was child number three to a nineteen year old girl. The picture of the mother with the baby and the father (different name; no mention of whether the other two are his) is worth a thousand words. Mom expressed hope…
I’m glad I wasn’t in the midst of a gulp of coffee when I read this yesterday: “We are not here today to cast blame on anyone,” House Speaker William J. Murphy, D-West Warwick, said of the huge back-to-back deficits. “The time for finger pointing is over.” Uh, yeah. I’d say there’s still a-plenty of…
Julia Steiny has a good column explaining one area in which the union model is a poor fit for teachers (the best parts aren’t quoted): Traditional “defined benefit” pensions motivate some teachers to become deadwood. Teachers who have lost their appetite for the work must continue to put in their time, however half-heartedly, to qualify…