Education
From yesterday’s Fox News Sunday…Chris Wallace: Over the years, John McCain has broken with his party and risked his career on a number of issues, campaign finance, immigration reform, banning torture. As a president, can you name a hot button issue where you would be willing to cross (ph) Democratic party line and say you…
John McDaid rightly tweaks me for my overly hasty reaction to Berkshire Advisors’ audit of the Portsmouth school district. The report is thorough, thoughtful, and likely enlightening for employees of the district… within its scope. In large part, my complaint still stands. Indeed, John begins a related post on his own blog thus: There is…
Pat Crowley’s complaints about a letter that Governor Carcieri apparently sent to Bob Walsh, Crowley’s NEA boss, are transparently two-faced in so many ways that I won’t enumerate them. Simply put, the idea that Walsh would respond otherwise than with the mind-numbing reply that Crowley publishes is laughable. It is, let’s just say, improbable that…
Here’s the laugh line from Jill Rodrigues’s Sakonnet Times story on the professional study that concluded — shockingly — that the Portsmouth school system needs more money: Although much of that money is spent on salaries and benefits, the consultants did not weigh in on contract provisions and their impacts on the district. Reading some…
Abby Fox of the East Greenwich Pendulum has some more data on what certain members of the legislature think of as a “fair” “funding formula”…East Greenwich’s state aid would be cut by the full amount — $1,949,761 – to $0.Narragansett’s almost identical share, $1,897,159, would also drop to $0.Newport’s share would be cut by more…
A Projo letter-to-the editor from West Greenwich resident Cynthia A. Walsh provides an excellent example of how education “funding formula” rhetoric has been used to confuse people about the true purpose of the proposal. Ms. Walsh celebrates the ideal of local control that is possible in smaller towns…The only time we end up with serious…
Russell J. Moore of the Warwick Beacon reports that the American Federation of Teachers has a longer-then-usual-term proposal for addressing the school financing situation in Warwick…The American Federation of Teachers (AFT) is asking the school department to seriously consider offering teachers a retirement incentive that they believe would save the department millions without compromising the…
It looks like the attempt by the National Education Association to place restrictions on school committee members’ communication with the public in the Chariho district has come to an end. NEA Assistant Executive Director Peter Gingras, who last year filed a Labor Relations Board complaint against the Chariho School Committee making the vague assertion that…
I’ve most likely been overstating the number of Tiverton teachers who stand to lose their jobs if the union remains implacable. Thirty-four notices of potential layoffs went out to meet a deadline; one position was eliminated in the school budget as passed; so I’ve been saying that intransigence might result in the actual layoffs of…
By way of a general observation, it occurred to me earlier this week that the extra opportunities and services for which so many Rhode Island parents pay the private school premium were offered as part of my New Jersey public school education back in the ’80s. In terms of current, local events, I don’t think…