Marc Comtois
Yay, according to Secretary of State Ralph Mollis, the Generally Assembly abided by the open meetings law–which they don’t think applies to them–abut 90% of the time. Political cover: check. Of course, as the ProJo reports and RI Common Cause’s John Marion emphasizes, that’s like saying you spent more days in first place even if…
East Providence, you were warned. Kinda. Faced with a $6.1 million school budget deficit, the new, labor-supported East Providence school committee took action by axing School Department Chief Operating Officer Lonnie Barham and his $109,000 salary. So, they’re down to $6 million! According to the new School Committee Chair Charles Tsonos: We have more school…
It was just so convenient, wasn’t it? Remember how we were told that ROTC didn’t belong on college campuses–those havens of “free speech” and “tolerance”–because the military policy “don’t ask, don’t tell” was anathema to the aforementioned lofty tenets? Well, at Columbia University, they’re showing what a convenient load of crap that all was. (h/t…
Previously, I focused on tracking the NECAP results of one cohort of kids as the moved through the Warwick School system (to 11th grade). What I found was that reading and writing continued to improve, while math went in the opposite direction. I took this–cautiously–as good news as does Julia Steiny, with the usual caveats:…
Historian Paul Rahe offers his perspective on the Tea Party. An extended excerpt: Over almost a century, under the influence of the Progressives and their heirs—the proponents of the New Deal, the Great Society, and Barack Obama’s New Foundation we have experienced a gradual consolidation of power in the federal government. Legislative responsibilities have been…
John Fund explains why Wisconsin is such a big deal to liberal/Democrat/unionists. First, though, he summarizes what got their panties in a bunch: Mr. Walker’s proposals are hardly revolutionary. Facing a $137 million budget deficit, he has decided to try to avoid laying off 5,500 state workers by proposing that they contribute 5.8% of their…
Most of the analysis of NECAP scores seems to focus on the year to year improvement of results at a given grade level. For instance, we’ll read something like “the percentage of students at School X who are proficient and above in Math is 55% this year, which is 5 points higher than last year.”…
I noted that Warwick Mayor Avedisian was offering up a pragmatic, if typical, pension reform plan in that it dealt with reforms for future pensions. Avedisian took to the pages of the Providence Journal to explain his plan, but, as Ted Nesi notes, Avedisian tries to get away with shoving the past pension problems aside.…
Justin believes that Education Commissioner Gist’s decision to delay implementation of tougher graduation requirements until 2014 is the day the reform died. I may not be quite as pessimistic, but I can understand his reasoning. One thing for sure is that, as reported in the Warwick Beacon, Warwick High School principals expect the improvements they…
Out of necessity (ya think?) they’re reforming pensions in Johnston. Stephen Beale reports on why: One of the biggest problems is with disability pensions. Out of 71 retired firefighters, 34 of them are on a disability pension, earning two thirds of their salary tax free. During the tenure of former Fire Chief Victor Cipriano, 15…