I doubt the Chronicle would admit it, but it looks like you changed some minds. Focusing on the money moves the conversation from the faculty lounge to the lawyer’s office. Raises the stakes. Sharpens the mind.
This:”Public education has devolved into a fat enterprise quite happy with itself in spite of dismal failure. It is endlessly smug, deeply corrupt and laughably arrogant. Even worse than all that, it dares to paint its detractors as racist while it ships generations of poor minority children off to shrunken lives because they cannot read, write or do numbers.”
So good.
I do think Miles is wrong about not consolidating some schools. Maybe people will flock back, but I don’t think in 10s of thousands.
This is such a positive development I won't make any snide comments about an efficiency report that requires 32 pages to make its point.
Hopefully the Chronicle news staff gets a free (or discounted) subscription so they can read what their colleagues in the expensive chairs think about the situation.
Jim, I will attribute to your work all good things in reforming the Houston media -- if not the public school. Operating under a long-distance handicap, you've made big difference.
You can retire feeling fulfilled.
Or...
How 'bout taking a look at Fort Worth ISD? Same issues. The school age population is growing. But one in five students enrolled in the ISD has left. Some schools are so nearly empty the board is talking closure. But the superintendent, for reasons, is waiting on a study or survey or demographic analysis... anyhow looks to me like hope for an argument favoring a big election and bond fund cash infusion. But meanwhile, the district is talking "financial exigency". Hard on everybody.
Fort Worth is surrounded by what the media calls "suburban" districts. None have open enrollment policies that put them in direct competition with each other. All have charters, private, virtual, and home school competitors eating their lunch. Still, it appears FWISD is the trailing runner in that race.
Being somewhat closer to Fort Worth than Houston, and possibly having ties to the media world there -- well, I'm just wondering what you think of THAT situation?
Generally speaking, the thought of a rabid biting dog is not a positive one in my mind. But I will make an exception for you, Schootsy, because you bite all the people I want bitten!
This leaves one question unanswered: why does the Chronicle editorial board not have more influence over its news coverage?
The editorial board at most big dailies has always been something of a backwater, far from the exciting front lines, a plaything of the publisher, and now, in the era of attrition, a refuge where older peple with dangerously high salaries go to evade the grim reaper. They have no sway over the newsroom, and if they do go down there and start spouting off, the reaper will spot them for sure.
I doubt the Chronicle would admit it, but it looks like you changed some minds. Focusing on the money moves the conversation from the faculty lounge to the lawyer’s office. Raises the stakes. Sharpens the mind.
This:”Public education has devolved into a fat enterprise quite happy with itself in spite of dismal failure. It is endlessly smug, deeply corrupt and laughably arrogant. Even worse than all that, it dares to paint its detractors as racist while it ships generations of poor minority children off to shrunken lives because they cannot read, write or do numbers.”
So good.
I do think Miles is wrong about not consolidating some schools. Maybe people will flock back, but I don’t think in 10s of thousands.
Huh.
This is such a positive development I won't make any snide comments about an efficiency report that requires 32 pages to make its point.
Hopefully the Chronicle news staff gets a free (or discounted) subscription so they can read what their colleagues in the expensive chairs think about the situation.
Jim, I will attribute to your work all good things in reforming the Houston media -- if not the public school. Operating under a long-distance handicap, you've made big difference.
You can retire feeling fulfilled.
Or...
How 'bout taking a look at Fort Worth ISD? Same issues. The school age population is growing. But one in five students enrolled in the ISD has left. Some schools are so nearly empty the board is talking closure. But the superintendent, for reasons, is waiting on a study or survey or demographic analysis... anyhow looks to me like hope for an argument favoring a big election and bond fund cash infusion. But meanwhile, the district is talking "financial exigency". Hard on everybody.
Fort Worth is surrounded by what the media calls "suburban" districts. None have open enrollment policies that put them in direct competition with each other. All have charters, private, virtual, and home school competitors eating their lunch. Still, it appears FWISD is the trailing runner in that race.
https://fortworthreport.org/2024/02/21/superintendent-fort-worth-isd-wont-close-schools-until-studies-are-complete
Being somewhat closer to Fort Worth than Houston, and possibly having ties to the media world there -- well, I'm just wondering what you think of THAT situation?
Generally speaking, the thought of a rabid biting dog is not a positive one in my mind. But I will make an exception for you, Schootsy, because you bite all the people I want bitten!
This leaves one question unanswered: why does the Chronicle editorial board not have more influence over its news coverage?
The editorial board at most big dailies has always been something of a backwater, far from the exciting front lines, a plaything of the publisher, and now, in the era of attrition, a refuge where older peple with dangerously high salaries go to evade the grim reaper. They have no sway over the newsroom, and if they do go down there and start spouting off, the reaper will spot them for sure.
I was on an editorial board in Dallas for a few unhappy years. The publisher sent us people he didn't want to talk to.
You have opened my eyes today, bigly! Well at least the editorial board of the Chronicle is fighting the good fight.