Marc Comtois
Bah. Who needs a sense of urgency: George Caruolo, the savvy former politician Governor Chafee has appointed to lead the state’s top education board, says Rhode Island’s $2-billion-a-year public school system is not that bad. What is needed to improve the state’s 300-odd public schools, he says, may not be an ambitious agenda of change…
There were all sorts of developments over the weekend. Apparently someone named Charlie Sheen is now some sort of ambassador or FCC chair or something. He’s been in the news a lot lately. Also, there’s been a lot of talk about some speech given by the king this morning. We have a king? I guess…
The Rhode Island Statewide Coalition held its annual meeting yesterday. As the ProJo reports, the focus was on the economy and included guest speakers Leonard Lardaro (URI Economics professor) and a former New Zealand parliament member Maurice McTigue. McTigue…gave examples of how his country made major internal changes to turn the tide on years of…
A bevy of education-related stories today. The repercussions following the Providence teacher “firings” continue, with Mayor Tavares getting attention from the New York Times. The ProJo reported that teachers fear it’s the end for seniority-based retention, which is kind of a strange way to put it because, as the story also explains, that end was…
It’s been explained again and again that the pink slips are a technical response to fiscal realities. Nonetheless, that hasn’t stopped the hyperbolic rhetoric from continuing to flow from Providence teacher union leadership once the pink slips were issued. (I guess once we heard the Pearl Harbor reference, we shouldn’t have been surprised). To act…
As first reported on the Matt Allen Show, Adam Cole was in a confrontation with a union brother at the recent union solidarity rally held at the State House. National blogs are picking up the story, particularly the quote from a union brother, ““I’ll f**k you in the ass, you faggot!” Nice. Here’s the video…
The ProJo has more on the Providence School district sending pink slips to all teachers. Basically, it was Mayor Angel Taveras’ call based on economic reality and trying to have as much flexibility as possible. The mayor said the unprecedented move was necessary because of the depth of the financial crisis facing the city and…
Once again–because public employee union leaders are doing their best to conflate the two–let’s re-emphasize that there’s a difference between private sector and public employee unions. Further, as Dan Yorke brought up this morning, despite proclamations made at rallies, most of the middle-class isn’t unionized (nor intends to be). Starting with the latter, while it’s…
Julia Steiny reminded us that it was the time of year when pink slips would rain down. Boy, did they ever in Providence where every teacher is slated to be “laid off”. Well, not really–not all of the teachers will be fired. It’s just a way for the Providence school district to enable the greatest…
Neil Downing reports that Governor Chafee’s proposed new 1% tax on various items would violate a multi-state agreement and could result in the loss of $1.8 million in revenue. However, since the new tax would generate $89 million (or $121 million, depends on who you ask), it’s no surprise that the Governor is still going…