This is a real life conversation that I had:
Ignorant Girl: My favorite quote is "Unemployment insurance is a pre-paid vacation for freeloaders." by Ronald Reagan
Me: Hate to ask what you think about welfare?
Ignorant Girl: Poor people get everything, free housing, free food, free medical, free education, more $ for each kid, why the f*ck would you ever want to be a contributing citizen & work? Everyone I know on welfare is scamming it, I never met any legits. Best qualified should always get the job, pisses me off there are quotas, best qualified period.
Me: Well, well, well….that's quite an opinion there. Don’t know if I should RETORT or leave it alone.
That was the end of that conversation. I am not sure that at the time I could of been civilized enough to continue speaking to her. What I wanted to do is grab her by her hair and slam it against the wall and ask her what world had she been living in for her past 30 something odd years. I attribute her ignorance to being white. Not to say that all my white friends are ignorant but I know they don't all think like this. Do they???
Now that its been a few days I will start with her first comment. How can unemployment insurance be a pre-paid vacation? Correct me if I am wrong? but don't you originally have to be working to collect unemployment insurance? Does she think that most people quit their jobs to get unemployment insurance, which is never the amount you were making in the first place? I am sure there are people who delay going back to work to collect unemployment but that does not apply to everyone. Plus who pays unemployment insurance? States set up trust funds to pay be able to pay unemployment insurance to certain qualified individuals. I think I pay enough taxes that if I am unemployed, I should be able to get some funds for a little while until my next job. And last I checked unemployment is not only for poor Black/Brown people.
Now for her welfare comments. "Poor people get everything.........." Is she suggesting that being poor is lucrative. Is she suggesting that people strive to stay poor so that they can continue getting everything? To this I say research your government reform laws on welfare. because the last time I checked ONE person on welfare gets 68.50 bi wkly and as far as free education and free housing,has she seen OUR school system and it's FREE education? NYC public schools are not havens of education. People send there children to NYC public schools because they can not afford the private ones. Has she ever lived in these so called free housing? The projects are no Trump Towers. Plus, it is not free to live in the projects. Rent is according to income. Which by the way does anyone know what it costs to live in NY these days. Rents are ridiculous. Thank goodness for public housing, shabby as it is and all.
Now about EVERYONE on welfare that she knows being scammers. Who are her circle of friends? I know several former welfare recipients, me included. The emphasis is on FORMER. I didn't strive to stay on welfare. I didn't even want to be on welfare. I used it because I needed it and I was working all the while. I just wasn't making enough to support myself at the time so it was a supplement. That was then and this is now. So here comment is pure bullsh*t.
As far as quotas go: If it wasn't for quotas black/brown people wouldn't get the job even if they were qualified. Most if not all jobs would go to the most qualified WHITE person. If it wasn't for quotas we might not get into certain schools. Segragation was NOT that long ago. If you have been reading the current news, segragation is still being fought in the courts. This is 2007.
To all who share the ignorant opinion: Educate yourself before you speak so that you can stop talking SH*T.
Sunday, August 12, 2007
Friday, August 10, 2007
Frases Celebres de Mujer, Citas, Refranes, Proverbios, y Pensamnientos
La mujer es la salvación o la perdición de la familia.Amiel
La mujer es el hombre imperfecto.Averroes
La mujer es la reina del mundo y la esclava de un deseo.Balzac
Una mujer virtuosa tiene en el corazón una fibra de menos o una de más que las otras mujeres: o es estúpida o es sublime.Balzac
La mujer más despreocupada siente una voz interna que le dice: "Sé bella si puedes, sé sabia si quieres, pero sobre todo trata de ser estimada: es necesario".Beaumarchais
Una mujer bella es un brillantísimo espejo que se empaña al menor soplo.Cervantes
La mujer ha de ser buena, y parecerlo, que es más.Cervantes
Es de vidrio la mujer pero no se ha de probar si se puede o no quebrar, porque todo podría ser.
Y es más fácil el quebrarse y no es cordura ponerse a peligro de romperse lo que no
puede soldarse.Cervantes
Una mujer sin ternura es una monstruosidad social, todavía más que un hombre sin coraje.Augusto Compte
Casi todas las mujeres hablan bien del amor; es el gran asunto de su vida.Benjamín Constant
La mujer no se acuerda nunca de lo que habéis hecho por ella; solamente se acuerda de lo que no habéis hecho.G. Courteline
Es preciso elegir entre amar a las mujeres o conocerlas; no hay otro medio.Chamfort
La mujer que se estima a sí misma más por las cualidades de su alma o de su espíritu que de su belleza, es superior a su sexo.Chamfort
La verdadera hermosura y la gala más preciosa de la mujer es el hablar escaso.Demócrito
La mujer, solo el diablo sabe lo que es; yo no lo sé en absoluto.Dostoiewsky
Hay hombre tan maldito que dice que la mujer no es buena sólo porque una no quiso ser mala.Feijóo
La mujer es un animal vulgar del cual el hombre se ha hecho un ideal demasiado bello.G. Flaubert
No olvidéis aquello que ha dicho alguien: la mujer no ha nacido para que se la comprenda, sino para que se la ame.Federico García Sánchiz
Los hombres no pensamos nunca, al juzgar una mujer, que es muy difícil ser una mujer.Paúl Geraldy
El amor en la mujer está siempre mezclado con una admiración involuntaria, y cesa cuando cree convencerse de que el hombre le es inferior.Hebbel
En la mujer, verdaderamente mujer, no hay nada que no esté en relación con su marido, con su hijo o con su amante.Hebbel
Una mujer ignorante podrá ser buena esposa, buena madre; podrá manejar la aguja, pero será siempre una compañera menos estimada que aquella que añada a esas virtudes y cualidades útiles, conocimientos agradables y una imaginación cultivada.Jay
La mujer en el paraíso perdido, mordió el fruto del árbol de la ciencia diez minutos antes que el hombre; y ha mantenido después siempre estos diez minutos de ventaja.Alfonso Karr
¿Quién puede bajar los ojos como una mujer? ¿Y quien sabe alzarlos como ella?Kierkegaard
Las mujeres no simpatizan entre sí por los mismos motivos que agradan a los hombres.La Bruyère
Las mujeres son excesivas: mejores o peores que los hombres.La Bruyère
Las mujeres que aman perdonan más fácilmente las grandes indiscreciones que las pequeñas infidelidades.La Rochefoucauld
Si hay debajo de la luna cosa que merezca ser estimada y preciada es la mujer buena.Fray Luís de León
La mujer, de su natural, es movediza y liviana sin constancia en su ser.Fray Luís de León
Hay ciertas cosas en las cuales una mujer ve siempre más a fondo que cien ojos de hombre.G. El Lessing
En las horas graves, las mujeres inspiran por la sensibilidad, por la pasión y por la iniciativa, superior a la de los hombres.Michelet
La mujer es un hermoso defecto de la Naturaleza.Milton
Una mujer hermosa agrada a los ojos; una mujer buena agrada al corazón: la primera es un dije, la segunda es un tesoro.Napoleón
La mujer más insigne es la que mayor número de hijos da a la patria.Napoleón
El hombre es, para la mujer, un medio; el fin es siempre el hijo.Nietzsche
En la venganza, como en el amor, la mujer es más bárbara que el hombre.Nietzsche
La mujer perfecta es un tipo más elevado de la humanidad que el hombre perfecto; es también algo más raro.Nietzsche
Las mujeres, cuando aman, ponen en el amor algo divino. Tal amor es como el sol, que anima a la Naturaleza.Plutarco
El hombre reina y la mujer gobierna.Ponson du Terrail
La mujer ríe cuando puede y llora cuando quiere.Proverbio francés
Aunque tu mujer haya cometido cien faltas, no la golpees ni con una flor.Proverbio indio
La mujer sabía edifica su casa; más la necia con sus manos la derriba.Proverbio bíblico
En el diccionario de la mujer, "querer" no tiene, en la mayoría de los casos, más acepción que "estimar", es decir, "valorar".Ramón y Cajal
La mujer es como la mochila en el combate. Sin ella se lucha con desembarazo: ¡pero! y ¿al acabar?Ramón y Cajal
La mujer es la píldora amarga de la naturaleza y el arte se ha complacido en dorarla para que el hombre trague más fácilmente.Ramón y Cajal
La mujer hermosa es un peligro. La mujer fea es un peligro y una desgracia.Santiago Rusiñol
La mujer es un manjar digno de los dioses, cuando no lo guisa el diablo.Shakespeare
¡Fragilidad, tienes nombre de mujer!Shakespeare
De las mujeres debe temerse todo, especialmente su perdón.A. Stahl
Una mujer es capaz de amar, y, en un año entero, no decir más que diez o doce palabras al hombre a quien prefiere.Stendhal
El mayor defecto de las mujeres, el más ofensivo de todos para un hombre un poco digno de este nombre, es su preocupación de la opinión pública.Stendhal
Una mujer sacrificará mil veces la vida por el que ama y se enemistará para siempre con él por una cuestión de orgullo a propósito de una puerta cerrada o abierta: se trata de un punto de honor.Stendhal
Oh, Mujer, cuando te mueves en las ocupaciones del hogar, tu cuerpo canta como un riachuelo de montaña entre las piedras.Rabindranath Tagore
El hombre para el campo y la mujer para el hogar; el hombre para la espada y ella para la aguja; el hombre con la cabeza y la mujer con el corazón; el hombre para el mando y la mujer para la obediencia: todo lo demás es confusión.Tennyson
El primero que comparó la mujer a una flor, fue un poeta; el segundo un imbécil.Voltaire
La mujer en tanto no ama y no sufre, es como una lámpara no encendida aún.M. de Waleffe
Mientras una mujer pueda parecer diez años más joven que su hija, es completamente feliz.Wilde
Las mujeres han sido hechas para ser amadas no para ser comprendidas.Wilde
No hay ninguna mujer genial. Las mujeres son un sexto decorativo. Nunca tienen nada que decir, pero lo dicen deliciosamente.Wilde
Si una mujer no puede hacer encantadoras sus faltas, no es más que una hembra.Wilde
Las mujeres viven por y para sus emociones. No tienen la menor filosofía de la vida.Wilde
La mujer es el hombre imperfecto.Averroes
La mujer es la reina del mundo y la esclava de un deseo.Balzac
Una mujer virtuosa tiene en el corazón una fibra de menos o una de más que las otras mujeres: o es estúpida o es sublime.Balzac
La mujer más despreocupada siente una voz interna que le dice: "Sé bella si puedes, sé sabia si quieres, pero sobre todo trata de ser estimada: es necesario".Beaumarchais
Una mujer bella es un brillantísimo espejo que se empaña al menor soplo.Cervantes
La mujer ha de ser buena, y parecerlo, que es más.Cervantes
Es de vidrio la mujer pero no se ha de probar si se puede o no quebrar, porque todo podría ser.
Y es más fácil el quebrarse y no es cordura ponerse a peligro de romperse lo que no
puede soldarse.Cervantes
Una mujer sin ternura es una monstruosidad social, todavía más que un hombre sin coraje.Augusto Compte
Casi todas las mujeres hablan bien del amor; es el gran asunto de su vida.Benjamín Constant
La mujer no se acuerda nunca de lo que habéis hecho por ella; solamente se acuerda de lo que no habéis hecho.G. Courteline
Es preciso elegir entre amar a las mujeres o conocerlas; no hay otro medio.Chamfort
La mujer que se estima a sí misma más por las cualidades de su alma o de su espíritu que de su belleza, es superior a su sexo.Chamfort
La verdadera hermosura y la gala más preciosa de la mujer es el hablar escaso.Demócrito
La mujer, solo el diablo sabe lo que es; yo no lo sé en absoluto.Dostoiewsky
Hay hombre tan maldito que dice que la mujer no es buena sólo porque una no quiso ser mala.Feijóo
La mujer es un animal vulgar del cual el hombre se ha hecho un ideal demasiado bello.G. Flaubert
No olvidéis aquello que ha dicho alguien: la mujer no ha nacido para que se la comprenda, sino para que se la ame.Federico García Sánchiz
Los hombres no pensamos nunca, al juzgar una mujer, que es muy difícil ser una mujer.Paúl Geraldy
El amor en la mujer está siempre mezclado con una admiración involuntaria, y cesa cuando cree convencerse de que el hombre le es inferior.Hebbel
En la mujer, verdaderamente mujer, no hay nada que no esté en relación con su marido, con su hijo o con su amante.Hebbel
Una mujer ignorante podrá ser buena esposa, buena madre; podrá manejar la aguja, pero será siempre una compañera menos estimada que aquella que añada a esas virtudes y cualidades útiles, conocimientos agradables y una imaginación cultivada.Jay
La mujer en el paraíso perdido, mordió el fruto del árbol de la ciencia diez minutos antes que el hombre; y ha mantenido después siempre estos diez minutos de ventaja.Alfonso Karr
¿Quién puede bajar los ojos como una mujer? ¿Y quien sabe alzarlos como ella?Kierkegaard
Las mujeres no simpatizan entre sí por los mismos motivos que agradan a los hombres.La Bruyère
Las mujeres son excesivas: mejores o peores que los hombres.La Bruyère
Las mujeres que aman perdonan más fácilmente las grandes indiscreciones que las pequeñas infidelidades.La Rochefoucauld
Si hay debajo de la luna cosa que merezca ser estimada y preciada es la mujer buena.Fray Luís de León
La mujer, de su natural, es movediza y liviana sin constancia en su ser.Fray Luís de León
Hay ciertas cosas en las cuales una mujer ve siempre más a fondo que cien ojos de hombre.G. El Lessing
En las horas graves, las mujeres inspiran por la sensibilidad, por la pasión y por la iniciativa, superior a la de los hombres.Michelet
La mujer es un hermoso defecto de la Naturaleza.Milton
Una mujer hermosa agrada a los ojos; una mujer buena agrada al corazón: la primera es un dije, la segunda es un tesoro.Napoleón
La mujer más insigne es la que mayor número de hijos da a la patria.Napoleón
El hombre es, para la mujer, un medio; el fin es siempre el hijo.Nietzsche
En la venganza, como en el amor, la mujer es más bárbara que el hombre.Nietzsche
La mujer perfecta es un tipo más elevado de la humanidad que el hombre perfecto; es también algo más raro.Nietzsche
Las mujeres, cuando aman, ponen en el amor algo divino. Tal amor es como el sol, que anima a la Naturaleza.Plutarco
El hombre reina y la mujer gobierna.Ponson du Terrail
La mujer ríe cuando puede y llora cuando quiere.Proverbio francés
Aunque tu mujer haya cometido cien faltas, no la golpees ni con una flor.Proverbio indio
La mujer sabía edifica su casa; más la necia con sus manos la derriba.Proverbio bíblico
En el diccionario de la mujer, "querer" no tiene, en la mayoría de los casos, más acepción que "estimar", es decir, "valorar".Ramón y Cajal
La mujer es como la mochila en el combate. Sin ella se lucha con desembarazo: ¡pero! y ¿al acabar?Ramón y Cajal
La mujer es la píldora amarga de la naturaleza y el arte se ha complacido en dorarla para que el hombre trague más fácilmente.Ramón y Cajal
La mujer hermosa es un peligro. La mujer fea es un peligro y una desgracia.Santiago Rusiñol
La mujer es un manjar digno de los dioses, cuando no lo guisa el diablo.Shakespeare
¡Fragilidad, tienes nombre de mujer!Shakespeare
De las mujeres debe temerse todo, especialmente su perdón.A. Stahl
Una mujer es capaz de amar, y, en un año entero, no decir más que diez o doce palabras al hombre a quien prefiere.Stendhal
El mayor defecto de las mujeres, el más ofensivo de todos para un hombre un poco digno de este nombre, es su preocupación de la opinión pública.Stendhal
Una mujer sacrificará mil veces la vida por el que ama y se enemistará para siempre con él por una cuestión de orgullo a propósito de una puerta cerrada o abierta: se trata de un punto de honor.Stendhal
Oh, Mujer, cuando te mueves en las ocupaciones del hogar, tu cuerpo canta como un riachuelo de montaña entre las piedras.Rabindranath Tagore
El hombre para el campo y la mujer para el hogar; el hombre para la espada y ella para la aguja; el hombre con la cabeza y la mujer con el corazón; el hombre para el mando y la mujer para la obediencia: todo lo demás es confusión.Tennyson
El primero que comparó la mujer a una flor, fue un poeta; el segundo un imbécil.Voltaire
La mujer en tanto no ama y no sufre, es como una lámpara no encendida aún.M. de Waleffe
Mientras una mujer pueda parecer diez años más joven que su hija, es completamente feliz.Wilde
Las mujeres han sido hechas para ser amadas no para ser comprendidas.Wilde
No hay ninguna mujer genial. Las mujeres son un sexto decorativo. Nunca tienen nada que decir, pero lo dicen deliciosamente.Wilde
Si una mujer no puede hacer encantadoras sus faltas, no es más que una hembra.Wilde
Las mujeres viven por y para sus emociones. No tienen la menor filosofía de la vida.Wilde
Thursday, August 09, 2007
I love my job.
I just cant stress enough how important and how good it feels to go to work and love what you do and love to be where you are.
Wednesday, August 08, 2007
Today and Tomorrow are equally important
This is an interesting story and one that I am not sure would work. While investing in the future of these children sounds like a great idea. I feel it is more important to make sure that they get a quality education so that they will be able to manage the money tomorrow. Children need a quality education today so that they are able to get really good jobs that will support them and their families and keep them out of the system tomorrow. Children need a quality education today so that they can keep up with the future tomorrow. The question is can we give the children a quality education today AND deposit money into their account for tomorrow?
City hatches nest egg savings plan for foster care grads
By KATHLEEN LUCADAMO DAILY NEWS CITY HALL BUREAU
Friday, July 27th 2007, 4:00 AM
In an effort to help young adults in foster care save cash, the city will match every $1 they bank with $2 - a bold program that can provide them with a $3,000 nest egg.
"They'll learn the value of saving for tomorrow," Mayor Bloomberg said yesterday at a Citibank branch in the Bronx.
The five-year pilot anti-poverty program is designed to teach those on the verge of leaving the foster care program financial skills because they don't have relatives to lean on when they exit the system.
Roughly 1,000 young adults age out of foster care annually, and many end up homeless, unemployed or in low-wage jobs.
After attending money management seminars, 450 participants, ages 17 to 21, will get individual development accounts in which they can start to save money, officials said.
The city will match the first $1,000 of each participant's deposit.
The program, which will be publicly and privately funded, is part of Bloomberg's battle to reduce poverty in the city.
The multiagency effort also involves giving cash to poor students who get good grades and struggling families who find time for medical checkups.
"When you are in foster care, you are put in a lot of situations, and either you are going to fall or move forward," said Mary Brown, a 20-year-old who says that she hopes to participate in the program.
She has been in foster care for seven years, works at a McDonald's, attends John Jay College and will be dropped from foster care by the time she turns 21.
"The education they will give behind some of the money. I think that will make a difference," said Brown.
City hatches nest egg savings plan for foster care grads
By KATHLEEN LUCADAMO DAILY NEWS CITY HALL BUREAU
Friday, July 27th 2007, 4:00 AM
In an effort to help young adults in foster care save cash, the city will match every $1 they bank with $2 - a bold program that can provide them with a $3,000 nest egg.
"They'll learn the value of saving for tomorrow," Mayor Bloomberg said yesterday at a Citibank branch in the Bronx.
The five-year pilot anti-poverty program is designed to teach those on the verge of leaving the foster care program financial skills because they don't have relatives to lean on when they exit the system.
Roughly 1,000 young adults age out of foster care annually, and many end up homeless, unemployed or in low-wage jobs.
After attending money management seminars, 450 participants, ages 17 to 21, will get individual development accounts in which they can start to save money, officials said.
The city will match the first $1,000 of each participant's deposit.
The program, which will be publicly and privately funded, is part of Bloomberg's battle to reduce poverty in the city.
The multiagency effort also involves giving cash to poor students who get good grades and struggling families who find time for medical checkups.
"When you are in foster care, you are put in a lot of situations, and either you are going to fall or move forward," said Mary Brown, a 20-year-old who says that she hopes to participate in the program.
She has been in foster care for seven years, works at a McDonald's, attends John Jay College and will be dropped from foster care by the time she turns 21.
"The education they will give behind some of the money. I think that will make a difference," said Brown.
I wish I would of known about this because I would of been there to say thank you as well. My bro and I have had this conversation many times. People should be helping people. People should not be for self. No one exists here alone. The problem with the "American Way" is that people feel you need to help yourself. That's capitalism for you. It is all about the almighty $$$ dollars. Thank you Chavez for your assistance. American companies should take notice but they can't because they are too busy thinking about the bottom line. Profit.
Serrano joins hundreds in public thanks for Chavez oil
BY JESS WISLOSKIDAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER
Wednesday, August 8th 2007, 4:00 AM
Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chavez - and the U.S. oil company that pumps his nation's oil - got a big "Gracias!" this week from the South Bronx.
The thanks was for $3 million in donations to various nonprofit borough groups.
Hundreds gathered at the Hunts Point Riverside Park Monday to welcome and thank the ambassador from the U.S.'s fourth-largest oil-providing nation, and executives from Citgo, the U.S. subsidiary of Venezuela's state-run oil company.
"For all intents and purposes, this is an American company. Ninety percent of its employees are here, they pay taxes here, they are held accountable here," said Rep. Jose Serrano, who worked with Venezuelan Ambassador Bernardo Alvarez to provide the grants.
"The only difference is they're putting money back into the communities they get their money from," he said.
The three-year grants will go to nine community-based organizations devoted to social justice and environmental change in the Bronx.
The idea is one of many by Venezuela's firebrand president, Hugo Chavez, and part of his "Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas."
But his largesse also is easily seen as a dig at President Bush, whom Chavez famously called "the devil" in a speech at the UN.
Serrano (D-South Bronx), who hosted Fidel Castro on a Bronx visit more than a decade ago, struck up a relationship with Chavez after he visited the borough two years ago and earmarked 25 million gallons of Citgo's home heating oil to be sold at a 40% discounted rate to poor Americans. Three Bronx non-profits helped distribute it to 8,000 impoverished residents.
Serrano defended the political implication of the new funding from Citgo.
The grant recipients are Casa Atabex Ache, GreenWorker Cooperatives, Mount Hope Housing, Servicios de Educación Básica, Sistas on the Rise and the new South Bronx Food Coop, as well as environmental organizations Rocking the Boat, The Point and Youth Ministries for Peace and Justice.
They did not seem to mind the political implications.
"This is allowing us to do more demonstration projects than we were able to before, and community projects," said Alexie Torres-Fleming, executive director for Youth Ministries for Peace and Justice, which educates communities about the damage of pollution.
jwisloski@nydailynews.com
Serrano joins hundreds in public thanks for Chavez oil
BY JESS WISLOSKIDAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER
Wednesday, August 8th 2007, 4:00 AM
Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chavez - and the U.S. oil company that pumps his nation's oil - got a big "Gracias!" this week from the South Bronx.
The thanks was for $3 million in donations to various nonprofit borough groups.
Hundreds gathered at the Hunts Point Riverside Park Monday to welcome and thank the ambassador from the U.S.'s fourth-largest oil-providing nation, and executives from Citgo, the U.S. subsidiary of Venezuela's state-run oil company.
"For all intents and purposes, this is an American company. Ninety percent of its employees are here, they pay taxes here, they are held accountable here," said Rep. Jose Serrano, who worked with Venezuelan Ambassador Bernardo Alvarez to provide the grants.
"The only difference is they're putting money back into the communities they get their money from," he said.
The three-year grants will go to nine community-based organizations devoted to social justice and environmental change in the Bronx.
The idea is one of many by Venezuela's firebrand president, Hugo Chavez, and part of his "Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas."
But his largesse also is easily seen as a dig at President Bush, whom Chavez famously called "the devil" in a speech at the UN.
Serrano (D-South Bronx), who hosted Fidel Castro on a Bronx visit more than a decade ago, struck up a relationship with Chavez after he visited the borough two years ago and earmarked 25 million gallons of Citgo's home heating oil to be sold at a 40% discounted rate to poor Americans. Three Bronx non-profits helped distribute it to 8,000 impoverished residents.
Serrano defended the political implication of the new funding from Citgo.
The grant recipients are Casa Atabex Ache, GreenWorker Cooperatives, Mount Hope Housing, Servicios de Educación Básica, Sistas on the Rise and the new South Bronx Food Coop, as well as environmental organizations Rocking the Boat, The Point and Youth Ministries for Peace and Justice.
They did not seem to mind the political implications.
"This is allowing us to do more demonstration projects than we were able to before, and community projects," said Alexie Torres-Fleming, executive director for Youth Ministries for Peace and Justice, which educates communities about the damage of pollution.
jwisloski@nydailynews.com
I thought education was the key, apparently it's Santeria.
The following story is in today's Daily News. This is a ridiculous story. How is it that it got this far before no one reported this principal to authorities. This is why there is a separation of church and state because of incidents like this. I would be interested to know about the stats of this school. I will not be surprised if there is a lawsuit because of this. I am not saying that the principal has committed any crimes but she definitely is not using the money for the students properly. What else is she mispending on???
School's rite stuff
Teacher: Principal brings in Santeria priestess 'to drive away bad spirits'
BY JOHN LAUINGER and CARRIE MELAGODAILY NEWS WRITERS
Wednesday, August 8th 2007, 4:00 AM
Unity Center for Urban Technologies Principal Maritza Tamayo brought woman into Tribeca school to perform Santeria rituals twice last year, staffers and probers say.
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Unity Center for Urban Technologies
Report from the Office of the Special Commissioner of Investigation
A Manhattan principal determined to rid her school of "negative energy" paid a priestess to drip chicken blood on the floors and stalk the halls with dozens of lighted candles during bizarre Santeria ceremonies, investigators and sources revealed yesterday.
Principal Maritza Tamayo invited a neighbor to perform the rituals twice in Unity Center for Urban Technologies in SoHo - hoping "it would calm the students down," according to a report by schools investigator Richard Condon.
"She had the ceremony to drive away the bad spirits in the school," said an upset teacher. "Why would you bring someone doing voodoo into the school?"
Tamayo later forced her assistant principal to pay the Santeria priestess $900, then improperly paid her $350 more to drive children to school for Regents exams.
Education officials are pushing to fire Tamayo, a 17-year veteran of city schools who earned $133,998 last year.
The peculiar events began in early 2006, when Tamayo told former Assistant Principal Melody Crooks-Simpson that she believed that Santeria - a South American and Caribbean religion known for its unusual rituals - could calm misbehaving students.
The Sixth Ave. school, once a second-chance haven for dropouts, isn't among the city's most violent but has had consistently low test scores.
Several weeks after the conversation, over midwinter break, two staffers saw Tamayo in a white headdress and carrying branches, elephant plant leaves and incense up to the school's fourth floor.
Walking beside Tamayo was her neighbor Gilda Fonte - carrying on her head a silver tray with about 40 lighted candles.
Though there were no children in the building and no witnesses to the ritual itself, staff members told investigators the fourth floor smelled of incense and was "really smoky." School sources said chicken blood had to be cleaned off the floors.
Later that week, Crooks-Simpson agreed to participate in one of the rituals and heeded Tamayo's creepy warning: "Wear white. If there's anything evil, it won't get on you."
Crooks-Simpson sat in a conference room as Fonte "took two puffs from a brown cigar," spoke in another language and read tarot cards, according to yesterday's report.
Tamayo - who displayed a black doll wrapped in purple fabric with its head covered in pins in her office - later insisted that Crooks-Simpson write a $900 personal check for the ceremony.
This January, Fonte returned to the school, this time to drive five chronically absent students to Regents exams for $350. Tamayo paid her with teacher contributions and school funds.
Tamayo didn't return calls for comment yesterday but gave investigators lengthy excuses for every allegation. She denied holding the ceremonies, said the head with pins was an interior design project and that the cloth doll belonged to her predecessor, according to investigators.
Fonte told probers she was Catholic, "prays all the time" and does not participate in Santeria.
cmelago@nydailynews.com
With Adam Edelman
School's rite stuff
Teacher: Principal brings in Santeria priestess 'to drive away bad spirits'
BY JOHN LAUINGER and CARRIE MELAGODAILY NEWS WRITERS
Wednesday, August 8th 2007, 4:00 AM
Unity Center for Urban Technologies Principal Maritza Tamayo brought woman into Tribeca school to perform Santeria rituals twice last year, staffers and probers say.
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Unity Center for Urban Technologies
Report from the Office of the Special Commissioner of Investigation
A Manhattan principal determined to rid her school of "negative energy" paid a priestess to drip chicken blood on the floors and stalk the halls with dozens of lighted candles during bizarre Santeria ceremonies, investigators and sources revealed yesterday.
Principal Maritza Tamayo invited a neighbor to perform the rituals twice in Unity Center for Urban Technologies in SoHo - hoping "it would calm the students down," according to a report by schools investigator Richard Condon.
"She had the ceremony to drive away the bad spirits in the school," said an upset teacher. "Why would you bring someone doing voodoo into the school?"
Tamayo later forced her assistant principal to pay the Santeria priestess $900, then improperly paid her $350 more to drive children to school for Regents exams.
Education officials are pushing to fire Tamayo, a 17-year veteran of city schools who earned $133,998 last year.
The peculiar events began in early 2006, when Tamayo told former Assistant Principal Melody Crooks-Simpson that she believed that Santeria - a South American and Caribbean religion known for its unusual rituals - could calm misbehaving students.
The Sixth Ave. school, once a second-chance haven for dropouts, isn't among the city's most violent but has had consistently low test scores.
Several weeks after the conversation, over midwinter break, two staffers saw Tamayo in a white headdress and carrying branches, elephant plant leaves and incense up to the school's fourth floor.
Walking beside Tamayo was her neighbor Gilda Fonte - carrying on her head a silver tray with about 40 lighted candles.
Though there were no children in the building and no witnesses to the ritual itself, staff members told investigators the fourth floor smelled of incense and was "really smoky." School sources said chicken blood had to be cleaned off the floors.
Later that week, Crooks-Simpson agreed to participate in one of the rituals and heeded Tamayo's creepy warning: "Wear white. If there's anything evil, it won't get on you."
Crooks-Simpson sat in a conference room as Fonte "took two puffs from a brown cigar," spoke in another language and read tarot cards, according to yesterday's report.
Tamayo - who displayed a black doll wrapped in purple fabric with its head covered in pins in her office - later insisted that Crooks-Simpson write a $900 personal check for the ceremony.
This January, Fonte returned to the school, this time to drive five chronically absent students to Regents exams for $350. Tamayo paid her with teacher contributions and school funds.
Tamayo didn't return calls for comment yesterday but gave investigators lengthy excuses for every allegation. She denied holding the ceremonies, said the head with pins was an interior design project and that the cloth doll belonged to her predecessor, according to investigators.
Fonte told probers she was Catholic, "prays all the time" and does not participate in Santeria.
cmelago@nydailynews.com
With Adam Edelman
Education is the key to unlocking all doors.
Thought this might be an interesting read for those of you interested in the present and the future.
Ryan Hill, head of the two KIPP schools in Newark (which are kicking butt, even by KIPP's lofty standards), writes:
There were two great Op-Eds in the WSJ today, one about Mayor Booker that mentions us, and one about my friend Scott Shirey’s KIPP school in the Mississippi Delta. The second article I copy just because it’s one of the best I’ve read on the power of a single KIPP school. During the school’s second year, the state passed a law putting a cap on new charter schools in the state, EXCEPT when those schools were KIPP schools. If anyone receiving this has contacts in Arkansas, please let me know. Helena is a place of rich tradition whose economy now relies almost entirely on the nearby casinos and a budding cluster of KIPP schools – they can use all the help they can get in raising the money they need to get to scale.
1) Here is the article about KIPP in Arkansas:
Helena's KIPP school is working in two ways. First, it's educating the kids. An important task for a school, don't you think? Before KIPP, Helena's kids were getting scores around the 17th percentile in language and 18th percentile in math on the Stanford Achievement Test. Only a few years later, those same kids are averaging around 76th and 82nd, respectively. Last year, KIPP's eighth-graders scored in the 91st percentile in math and the 84th in language on the SAT. As fifth-graders, those same kids scored in the 29th percentile in both math and language.
KIPP is also helping to revitalize this impoverished area. The school's current downtown location was the first new construction in Helena in 10 years. Now that the school has grown to 315 students in grades five through 10, there's talk about expanding....
For its next act, KIPP is expected to transform downtown Helena (technically Helena-West Helena -- the towns recently consolidated) and revitalize the city center, while serving as an economic engine for an area with double-digit unemployment that's been losing population for decades. Since 1950, Phillips County has lost more than half its population. Down here, the goal after graduating high school -- if you graduate high school -- is to get out.
A school transforming a community economically and maybe even emotionally? It does sound kind of nutty. Unless you're here and walking the dilapidated landscape that could be the future home of the KIPP Campus. Unless you listen to Mr. Shirey. ("Those would be athletic fields," he says, pointing at a vacant lot.) Unless you see the kids at Mr. Shirley's school wearing "There are no shortcuts" T-shirts. Unless you check out those test scores. Then you think maybe anything is possible. Even in the Delta.
2) Here's the article about Cory, my favorite mayor (with Mike Bloomberg running close behind):
Part of Mr. Booker's solution to this dilemma is education reform centered on school choice. "It's the last frontier we have to cross in order to become the most thriving city in America," he states confidently. "Parents in Newark are more demanding than ever, and they deserve a plethora of options of excellence to choose from that meet the needs of their kids." Mr. Booker is a longtime advocate of school choice: In 1999 he helped found E3, a prominent education-reform group in New Jersey that pushes for charter schools and vouchers for inner-city communities.
Newark's public schools enroll around 42,000 students. With frequent instances of in-school violence, decrepit facilities and low morale, the system is in need of serious overhaul. Just 37% of the city's high-school seniors passed the state proficiency exam in 2005, a statistic that is even more embarrassing considering that city schools spend around $20,000 per pupil -- far above the $13,000 state average (itself the second-highest in the country).
Before Mr. Booker can pursue any sweeping reforms, though, he must wrest control of the district from the state, which took over in 1995. "My goal is to turn the clock back to the '70s and vest control in the mayor to appoint school board members that can drive an agenda for reform," Mr. Booker says with hope. "Elected school boards often hit the lowest common denominator . . . they are not the way to get courageous, driven change."
Mr. Booker emphasizes that until local control returns -- which, thanks to recent moves by the state, could be within "16 to 18 months" -- his powers are limited. But that hasn't stopped him from cultivating donors to start thinking about charter schools for the future. Last month, he flew to Seattle to meet with representatives of the Gates Foundation. "We had very strong conversations," he reports. "I told them, 'If we can grow KIPP schools and overachieving charter schools [in Newark], it will be much easier to show that [school choice] can work, because you'll see results a lot quicker than in a place like New York, which has around a million school-aged children.'"
3) Speaking of Ryan, he asked me to forward the attached job description: the NJ Performing Arts Center in Newark (it's gorgeous) is looking for a VP of Arts Education.
4) This is an all-Ryan email: in response to the ongoing discussion of how to do performance pay for teachers, he sent me this report (which I confess to not having read yet, though I vaguely recall reading about it when the report was released earlier this year): Performance-Pay for Teachers: Designing a System that Students Deserve (http://www.teacherleaders.org/teachersolutions/TSreport.pdf). It's by the Center for Teaching Quality and is written "by 18 of the nation's best teachers."
---------------------------
Smart Growth
By KANE WEBBAugust 4, 2007; Page A6
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118618703415787941.html
HELENA, Ark. -- A walking tour of this Mississippi River town's past, present and future could start at Bubba's Blues Corner at the south end of Cherry Street, a whisky bottle's throw from the Mighty River. Bubba Sullivan has a little of everything in his shop, including a healthy dose of Helena blues history (free of charge) and old 45 rpm records (25 cents each). Keep walking past the broken bottles and dilapidated buildings until you're across from the old train depot. Turn into what looks like a strip mall store that might sell wicker chairs and scented candles (or in this town, second-hand clothes and garage-sale trinkets).
And then welcome to one of the best schools in Arkansas, maybe the South. A school that's so good both candidates for governor last year -- Democrat Mike Beebe and Republican Asa Hutchinson -- couldn't utter a sentence on education without mentioning it. It is the KIPP Delta College Preparatory School. (KIPP stands for Knowledge Is Power Program, a Brooklyn-born system of 57 charter schools nationwide.) It is filled with kids eager to be there even though the school meets almost all year long and every day but Sunday.
Scott Shirey runs the place. He's 31 years old and a native of Massachusetts. He filtered through the KIPP system and came out to Phillips County, one of the poorest in the country, where he started Delta College Prep five years ago with 65 students and the support of community leaders desperate for something -- anything -- to jumpstart their tired town. All else had failed -- from government handouts to gambling across the river.
Helena's KIPP school is working in two ways. First, it's educating the kids. An important task for a school, don't you think? Before KIPP, Helena's kids were getting scores around the 17th percentile in language and 18th percentile in math on the Stanford Achievement Test. Only a few years later, those same kids are averaging around 76th and 82nd, respectively. Last year, KIPP's eighth-graders scored in the 91st percentile in math and the 84th in language on the SAT. As fifth-graders, those same kids scored in the 29th percentile in both math and language.
KIPP is also helping to revitalize this impoverished area. The school's current downtown location was the first new construction in Helena in 10 years. Now that the school has grown to 315 students in grades five through 10, there's talk about expanding.
Actually, there's a lot more than talk. Just last week, the national KIPP charter school outfit in San Francisco named Luke VanDeWalle the principal of the new Delta College Prep High. Mr. VanDeWalle, an Illinois native and graduate of Purdue University in Indiana, is a former member of Teach for America. For the past three years, he's been teaching math at Mr. Shirey's school -- and doing quite a job. At last report, 93% of the Delta College Prep students scored proficient or better on Arkansas's end-of-course exam in algebra. Soon-to-be Principal VanDeWalle's high school opens later this month in a renovated train station.
But maybe not for long. Led by local investors at Southern Bancorporation and Southern Financial Partners, the community is out to raise $20 million for a K-12 Delta College Prep campus. It'll consume several blighted blocks of downtown, now home to broken liquor bottles, crumbling sidewalks and weeds -- not to mention the abandoned buildings and long-abandoned businesses. KIPP has already secured the land through a grant from the Walton Family Foundation. Now it has to raise the rest of the money.
In a state under a court order to fix its public schools, there aren't many examples of educational excellence. But because KIPP schools are charter schools, they operate free of the bureaucratic baloney that chokes the creativity out of so many traditional public schools and their teachers. And Delta College Prep is a different kind of charter school. You notice it right off. World map-sized posters of students' test scores decorate the hallways -- the way you'd see a "Go Team!" banner at a public high school.
"We're comfortable discussing data," Mr. Shirey told me. "We aim for absolute transparency," which sharpens the attention of both students and teachers.
Mr. Shirey notes proudly that he's run off three teachers this year but not many students, even though homework runs about two hours a night after a long school day. There's a dress code and detailed instructions about how to behave in class, right down to when to raise your hand. Parents and students and teachers all have to sign a "Commitment to Excellence Form" outlining life at Delta College Prep.
Teachers tend to be young and not from around Helena -- Mr. Shirey's staff has included recent graduates from Cornell, Purdue, Notre Dame, New York University and Spelman. Still, Delta Prep's Wyvonne Sisk, a teacher for 38 years, won a $10,000 Kinder Excellence in Teaching Award last year. Ms. Sisk had retired from teaching in nearby schools but was attracted back to work by this innovative charter school.
Earlier this year, the school received a grant from the Delta Regional Authority, a federal-state partnership devoted to regional economic improvement. DRA money typically goes to water systems and rail spurs, not schools. But to quote Pete Johnson, federal co-chairman of the DRA: "As we travel the region, we're holding up the KIPP school and Helena as examples of what children can accomplish when you go outside the restraints of the public-school system. . . . Unless you change the educational system in weak counties, you're not going to change the counties."
For its next act, KIPP is expected to transform downtown Helena (technically Helena-West Helena -- the towns recently consolidated) and revitalize the city center, while serving as an economic engine for an area with double-digit unemployment that's been losing population for decades. Since 1950, Phillips County has lost more than half its population. Down here, the goal after graduating high school -- if you graduate high school -- is to get out.
A school transforming a community economically and maybe even emotionally? It does sound kind of nutty. Unless you're here and walking the dilapidated landscape that could be the future home of the KIPP Campus. Unless you listen to Mr. Shirey. ("Those would be athletic fields," he says, pointing at a vacant lot.) Unless you see the kids at Mr. Shirley's school wearing "There are no shortcuts" T-shirts. Unless you check out those test scores. Then you think maybe anything is possible. Even in the Delta.
Mr. Webb is a columnist for the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette in Little Rock.
-------------------------
Cory BookerAll American
By CHRISTIAN SAHNERAugust 4, 2007; Page A7
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118618739811387948.html
NEWARK, N.J. – "As difficult as it's been the first year, I'm blessed to be in the most important American fight going on." Thus spoke Newark Mayor Cory Booker when I sat down with him late last month in his spartan City Hall office.
There were no pictures of smiling politicians on the walls, few personal mementos and minimal paperwork cluttering the tabletops. Mr. Booker doesn't need any extra distractions. "I'm used to doing a million things and balancing them all," he tells me. "But a job like this has so many areas that are screaming for attention."
Mr. Booker is trying to turn around a city plagued by violent crime, poverty and failing schools. Problem cities can be found all over the country, but most of them don't have mayors like Cory Booker. Only 38, Mr. Booker is the son of African-American civil rights activists and boasts degrees from Stanford, Yale Law School and Oxford (where he was a Rhodes Scholar). His pedigree may instill confidence in outsiders, but it elicits suspicion from many Newarkers who have a hard time seeing Mr. Booker as one of their own.
The former All-American tight end -- who greets me with a hand the size of a bear paw -- certainly looks like he's up to the job. But with his vegetarian diet and affinity for meditation, it's easy to see why some residents have doubts about Mr. Booker's street cred.
Mr. Booker grew up in the wealthy suburb of Harrington Park, N.J. But soon after coming to Newark in 1997, he moved into an apartment in a drug-infested housing project, looking to provide legal help to the local residents. Five years later he ran unsuccessfully for mayor against the 16-year incumbent, fellow Democrat Sharpe James. Fearing imminent defeat the next time around, Mr. James dropped out of the race in 2006, giving Mr. Booker a landslide victory.
Mr. James had gained a reputation for running the city as a personal playground, and last month he was indicted on 25 counts of corruption. Mr. Booker has been left to clean up the mess left behind, including a $180 million budget gap. That's led him to make hundreds of layoffs, along with numerous other budget cuts. It has also meant raising municipal property taxes by 8% for 2006, angering many residents.
Mr. Booker is quick to point out that municipal taxes have been cut for 2007 -- a policy he hopes to continue in the future. "By cutting the rate [for 2007]," he says, "we began what we hope will be a process of increasing city revenue and improving our tax collection rate." He also aims at eliminating City Hall's patronage machine: "It may be like taking castor oil to fix all these problems, but at the end of the day, this city will be financially healthy and people will be better off for it."
A major part of the mayor's grand solution is developing Newark's private sector. "You want to create a more vibrant private sector that's going to generate more economic activity, more economic dynamism, and create more opportunity for residents." The city could certainly use it: one quarter of the population lives below the poverty line, and median family income sits at $30,665 -- half the state average.
When compared to some other poor cities in the U.S., Newark has distinct advantages. Sitting 12 miles from midtown Manhattan, it boasts extensive rail and highway connections, a booming international airport and one of the busiest seaports in the country -- all the infrastructure needed to jumpstart a moribund economy. And thanks to agreements with Continental Airlines, city unions, and new funds to give local entrepreneurs a boost, "We're creating jobs and trying to build sustainability at the same time," Mr. Booker enthuses. But as City Hall knows all too well, blue-chip employers like Prudential and Verizon need skilled labor, and in a city in which only 13% of residents have college degrees, Newark's high-skill workforce will continue to commute from the suburbs for the foreseeable future.
Part of Mr. Booker's solution to this dilemma is education reform centered on school choice. "It's the last frontier we have to cross in order to become the most thriving city in America," he states confidently. "Parents in Newark are more demanding than ever, and they deserve a plethora of options of excellence to choose from that meet the needs of their kids." Mr. Booker is a longtime advocate of school choice: In 1999 he helped found E3, a prominent education-reform group in New Jersey that pushes for charter schools and vouchers for inner-city communities.
Newark's public schools enroll around 42,000 students. With frequent instances of in-school violence, decrepit facilities and low morale, the system is in need of serious overhaul. Just 37% of the city's high-school seniors passed the state proficiency exam in 2005, a statistic that is even more embarrassing considering that city schools spend around $20,000 per pupil -- far above the $13,000 state average (itself the second-highest in the country).
Before Mr. Booker can pursue any sweeping reforms, though, he must wrest control of the district from the state, which took over in 1995. "My goal is to turn the clock back to the '70s and vest control in the mayor to appoint school board members that can drive an agenda for reform," Mr. Booker says with hope. "Elected school boards often hit the lowest common denominator . . . they are not the way to get courageous, driven change."
Mr. Booker emphasizes that until local control returns -- which, thanks to recent moves by the state, could be within "16 to 18 months" -- his powers are limited. But that hasn't stopped him from cultivating donors to start thinking about charter schools for the future. Last month, he flew to Seattle to meet with representatives of the Gates Foundation. "We had very strong conversations," he reports. "I told them, 'If we can grow KIPP schools and overachieving charter schools [in Newark], it will be much easier to show that [school choice] can work, because you'll see results a lot quicker than in a place like New York, which has around a million school-aged children.'"
Many charter-school donors won't touch Newark until Mr. Booker gains control. Without a powerful leader to ensure accountability, they fear, the city is simply a black hole for outside funding. "The Broad Foundation and others don't want to invest in cities that don't have mayoral control," Mr. Booker says. "So mayoral control has to be one part of the strategy to bring resources into Newark [schools]."
Mr. Booker realizes that educational turnaround will take a lot more than charter schools. Across the country "you're seeing teachers unions allowing merit pay, or unions allowing more leeway in the hiring of good teachers and the firing of bad teachers." In Newark, he predicts, multi-pronged reforms could quickly create "an abundance of excellent schools that can empower our kids to create a 21st century knowledge-based economy, plus keep a lot of residents here."
Meanwhile, Newark's high crime rates are a pressing crisis. Thanks to the zero-tolerance policy of new police director Garry McCarthy, a no-nonsense former NYPD crime strategist, most major crime categories are down in the mayor's first year. The high murder rate, however, hasn't budged.
"These homicides are principally drug-related," Mr. Booker says, explaining that his next step is to tackle New Jersey's draconian drug laws. "You lock up a nonviolent offender, now they have a criminal conviction, and it becomes very hard for him to get a job. . . There's no hope of joining the productive economy, so it's very easy to get sucked back into the narcotics trade." Mr. Booker hopes reforms to the drug laws can "liberate the economic potential of ex-offenders so they can rejoin society instead of going back to criminality."
This summer marks the 40th anniversary of the 1967 race riots that helped reduce Newark -- along with other U.S. cities -- to a burnt-out wasteland. In many ways the city has moved beyond the racial tensions of the late 1960s. But Mr. Booker, often accused of not being "black enough," is no stranger to Newark's lingering racial problems. Former Mayor Sharpe James once said of him, "You have to learn to be African-American! And we don't have time to train you all night!"
"That's such a shallow brand of racial essentialism," Mr. Booker retorts. "New Jersey is a state with 14% African-American population, but the prison population is 60% black. That's a racial reality that impacts my city that we have to deal with." Moving beyond the problems of 1967 doesn't mean "ignoring race," he says, but asking whether you "can you build a community where diversity is its strength . . . or will it tear us apart?"
My time with the mayor is coming to a close. Mr. Booker's ambitious schedule has prompted him to regularly call meetings as early as 6 a.m. and as late as 11 p.m. -- "not the smartest way to maintain balance," he admits -- and now he has to run.
As a final question, I ask him whether he has national political ambitions. Booker hopefuls claim he has all the charisma of a Barack Obama with the gritty urban experience of a Rudy Giuliani. Laughing, he says: "I think the greatest impact I could make would not be through running for Congress, the Senate or the presidency, but as mayor of a big city where I could create models on the most crucial issues of our country's future: Education, public safety."
He thus repeats the same assurance he has given to those Newarkers worried that he'll one day jump ship for a more prestigious office in Trenton, or Washington. "I know what I'm doing in 2010," he tells me. "I'm running for re-election."
Mr. Sahner is a Robert L. Bartley Fellow at the Journal this summer.
Ryan Hill, head of the two KIPP schools in Newark (which are kicking butt, even by KIPP's lofty standards), writes:
There were two great Op-Eds in the WSJ today, one about Mayor Booker that mentions us, and one about my friend Scott Shirey’s KIPP school in the Mississippi Delta. The second article I copy just because it’s one of the best I’ve read on the power of a single KIPP school. During the school’s second year, the state passed a law putting a cap on new charter schools in the state, EXCEPT when those schools were KIPP schools. If anyone receiving this has contacts in Arkansas, please let me know. Helena is a place of rich tradition whose economy now relies almost entirely on the nearby casinos and a budding cluster of KIPP schools – they can use all the help they can get in raising the money they need to get to scale.
1) Here is the article about KIPP in Arkansas:
Helena's KIPP school is working in two ways. First, it's educating the kids. An important task for a school, don't you think? Before KIPP, Helena's kids were getting scores around the 17th percentile in language and 18th percentile in math on the Stanford Achievement Test. Only a few years later, those same kids are averaging around 76th and 82nd, respectively. Last year, KIPP's eighth-graders scored in the 91st percentile in math and the 84th in language on the SAT. As fifth-graders, those same kids scored in the 29th percentile in both math and language.
KIPP is also helping to revitalize this impoverished area. The school's current downtown location was the first new construction in Helena in 10 years. Now that the school has grown to 315 students in grades five through 10, there's talk about expanding....
For its next act, KIPP is expected to transform downtown Helena (technically Helena-West Helena -- the towns recently consolidated) and revitalize the city center, while serving as an economic engine for an area with double-digit unemployment that's been losing population for decades. Since 1950, Phillips County has lost more than half its population. Down here, the goal after graduating high school -- if you graduate high school -- is to get out.
A school transforming a community economically and maybe even emotionally? It does sound kind of nutty. Unless you're here and walking the dilapidated landscape that could be the future home of the KIPP Campus. Unless you listen to Mr. Shirey. ("Those would be athletic fields," he says, pointing at a vacant lot.) Unless you see the kids at Mr. Shirley's school wearing "There are no shortcuts" T-shirts. Unless you check out those test scores. Then you think maybe anything is possible. Even in the Delta.
2) Here's the article about Cory, my favorite mayor (with Mike Bloomberg running close behind):
Part of Mr. Booker's solution to this dilemma is education reform centered on school choice. "It's the last frontier we have to cross in order to become the most thriving city in America," he states confidently. "Parents in Newark are more demanding than ever, and they deserve a plethora of options of excellence to choose from that meet the needs of their kids." Mr. Booker is a longtime advocate of school choice: In 1999 he helped found E3, a prominent education-reform group in New Jersey that pushes for charter schools and vouchers for inner-city communities.
Newark's public schools enroll around 42,000 students. With frequent instances of in-school violence, decrepit facilities and low morale, the system is in need of serious overhaul. Just 37% of the city's high-school seniors passed the state proficiency exam in 2005, a statistic that is even more embarrassing considering that city schools spend around $20,000 per pupil -- far above the $13,000 state average (itself the second-highest in the country).
Before Mr. Booker can pursue any sweeping reforms, though, he must wrest control of the district from the state, which took over in 1995. "My goal is to turn the clock back to the '70s and vest control in the mayor to appoint school board members that can drive an agenda for reform," Mr. Booker says with hope. "Elected school boards often hit the lowest common denominator . . . they are not the way to get courageous, driven change."
Mr. Booker emphasizes that until local control returns -- which, thanks to recent moves by the state, could be within "16 to 18 months" -- his powers are limited. But that hasn't stopped him from cultivating donors to start thinking about charter schools for the future. Last month, he flew to Seattle to meet with representatives of the Gates Foundation. "We had very strong conversations," he reports. "I told them, 'If we can grow KIPP schools and overachieving charter schools [in Newark], it will be much easier to show that [school choice] can work, because you'll see results a lot quicker than in a place like New York, which has around a million school-aged children.'"
3) Speaking of Ryan, he asked me to forward the attached job description: the NJ Performing Arts Center in Newark (it's gorgeous) is looking for a VP of Arts Education.
4) This is an all-Ryan email: in response to the ongoing discussion of how to do performance pay for teachers, he sent me this report (which I confess to not having read yet, though I vaguely recall reading about it when the report was released earlier this year): Performance-Pay for Teachers: Designing a System that Students Deserve (http://www.teacherleaders.org/teachersolutions/TSreport.pdf). It's by the Center for Teaching Quality and is written "by 18 of the nation's best teachers."
---------------------------
Smart Growth
By KANE WEBBAugust 4, 2007; Page A6
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118618703415787941.html
HELENA, Ark. -- A walking tour of this Mississippi River town's past, present and future could start at Bubba's Blues Corner at the south end of Cherry Street, a whisky bottle's throw from the Mighty River. Bubba Sullivan has a little of everything in his shop, including a healthy dose of Helena blues history (free of charge) and old 45 rpm records (25 cents each). Keep walking past the broken bottles and dilapidated buildings until you're across from the old train depot. Turn into what looks like a strip mall store that might sell wicker chairs and scented candles (or in this town, second-hand clothes and garage-sale trinkets).
And then welcome to one of the best schools in Arkansas, maybe the South. A school that's so good both candidates for governor last year -- Democrat Mike Beebe and Republican Asa Hutchinson -- couldn't utter a sentence on education without mentioning it. It is the KIPP Delta College Preparatory School. (KIPP stands for Knowledge Is Power Program, a Brooklyn-born system of 57 charter schools nationwide.) It is filled with kids eager to be there even though the school meets almost all year long and every day but Sunday.
Scott Shirey runs the place. He's 31 years old and a native of Massachusetts. He filtered through the KIPP system and came out to Phillips County, one of the poorest in the country, where he started Delta College Prep five years ago with 65 students and the support of community leaders desperate for something -- anything -- to jumpstart their tired town. All else had failed -- from government handouts to gambling across the river.
Helena's KIPP school is working in two ways. First, it's educating the kids. An important task for a school, don't you think? Before KIPP, Helena's kids were getting scores around the 17th percentile in language and 18th percentile in math on the Stanford Achievement Test. Only a few years later, those same kids are averaging around 76th and 82nd, respectively. Last year, KIPP's eighth-graders scored in the 91st percentile in math and the 84th in language on the SAT. As fifth-graders, those same kids scored in the 29th percentile in both math and language.
KIPP is also helping to revitalize this impoverished area. The school's current downtown location was the first new construction in Helena in 10 years. Now that the school has grown to 315 students in grades five through 10, there's talk about expanding.
Actually, there's a lot more than talk. Just last week, the national KIPP charter school outfit in San Francisco named Luke VanDeWalle the principal of the new Delta College Prep High. Mr. VanDeWalle, an Illinois native and graduate of Purdue University in Indiana, is a former member of Teach for America. For the past three years, he's been teaching math at Mr. Shirey's school -- and doing quite a job. At last report, 93% of the Delta College Prep students scored proficient or better on Arkansas's end-of-course exam in algebra. Soon-to-be Principal VanDeWalle's high school opens later this month in a renovated train station.
But maybe not for long. Led by local investors at Southern Bancorporation and Southern Financial Partners, the community is out to raise $20 million for a K-12 Delta College Prep campus. It'll consume several blighted blocks of downtown, now home to broken liquor bottles, crumbling sidewalks and weeds -- not to mention the abandoned buildings and long-abandoned businesses. KIPP has already secured the land through a grant from the Walton Family Foundation. Now it has to raise the rest of the money.
In a state under a court order to fix its public schools, there aren't many examples of educational excellence. But because KIPP schools are charter schools, they operate free of the bureaucratic baloney that chokes the creativity out of so many traditional public schools and their teachers. And Delta College Prep is a different kind of charter school. You notice it right off. World map-sized posters of students' test scores decorate the hallways -- the way you'd see a "Go Team!" banner at a public high school.
"We're comfortable discussing data," Mr. Shirey told me. "We aim for absolute transparency," which sharpens the attention of both students and teachers.
Mr. Shirey notes proudly that he's run off three teachers this year but not many students, even though homework runs about two hours a night after a long school day. There's a dress code and detailed instructions about how to behave in class, right down to when to raise your hand. Parents and students and teachers all have to sign a "Commitment to Excellence Form" outlining life at Delta College Prep.
Teachers tend to be young and not from around Helena -- Mr. Shirey's staff has included recent graduates from Cornell, Purdue, Notre Dame, New York University and Spelman. Still, Delta Prep's Wyvonne Sisk, a teacher for 38 years, won a $10,000 Kinder Excellence in Teaching Award last year. Ms. Sisk had retired from teaching in nearby schools but was attracted back to work by this innovative charter school.
Earlier this year, the school received a grant from the Delta Regional Authority, a federal-state partnership devoted to regional economic improvement. DRA money typically goes to water systems and rail spurs, not schools. But to quote Pete Johnson, federal co-chairman of the DRA: "As we travel the region, we're holding up the KIPP school and Helena as examples of what children can accomplish when you go outside the restraints of the public-school system. . . . Unless you change the educational system in weak counties, you're not going to change the counties."
For its next act, KIPP is expected to transform downtown Helena (technically Helena-West Helena -- the towns recently consolidated) and revitalize the city center, while serving as an economic engine for an area with double-digit unemployment that's been losing population for decades. Since 1950, Phillips County has lost more than half its population. Down here, the goal after graduating high school -- if you graduate high school -- is to get out.
A school transforming a community economically and maybe even emotionally? It does sound kind of nutty. Unless you're here and walking the dilapidated landscape that could be the future home of the KIPP Campus. Unless you listen to Mr. Shirey. ("Those would be athletic fields," he says, pointing at a vacant lot.) Unless you see the kids at Mr. Shirley's school wearing "There are no shortcuts" T-shirts. Unless you check out those test scores. Then you think maybe anything is possible. Even in the Delta.
Mr. Webb is a columnist for the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette in Little Rock.
-------------------------
Cory BookerAll American
By CHRISTIAN SAHNERAugust 4, 2007; Page A7
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118618739811387948.html
NEWARK, N.J. – "As difficult as it's been the first year, I'm blessed to be in the most important American fight going on." Thus spoke Newark Mayor Cory Booker when I sat down with him late last month in his spartan City Hall office.
There were no pictures of smiling politicians on the walls, few personal mementos and minimal paperwork cluttering the tabletops. Mr. Booker doesn't need any extra distractions. "I'm used to doing a million things and balancing them all," he tells me. "But a job like this has so many areas that are screaming for attention."
Mr. Booker is trying to turn around a city plagued by violent crime, poverty and failing schools. Problem cities can be found all over the country, but most of them don't have mayors like Cory Booker. Only 38, Mr. Booker is the son of African-American civil rights activists and boasts degrees from Stanford, Yale Law School and Oxford (where he was a Rhodes Scholar). His pedigree may instill confidence in outsiders, but it elicits suspicion from many Newarkers who have a hard time seeing Mr. Booker as one of their own.
The former All-American tight end -- who greets me with a hand the size of a bear paw -- certainly looks like he's up to the job. But with his vegetarian diet and affinity for meditation, it's easy to see why some residents have doubts about Mr. Booker's street cred.
Mr. Booker grew up in the wealthy suburb of Harrington Park, N.J. But soon after coming to Newark in 1997, he moved into an apartment in a drug-infested housing project, looking to provide legal help to the local residents. Five years later he ran unsuccessfully for mayor against the 16-year incumbent, fellow Democrat Sharpe James. Fearing imminent defeat the next time around, Mr. James dropped out of the race in 2006, giving Mr. Booker a landslide victory.
Mr. James had gained a reputation for running the city as a personal playground, and last month he was indicted on 25 counts of corruption. Mr. Booker has been left to clean up the mess left behind, including a $180 million budget gap. That's led him to make hundreds of layoffs, along with numerous other budget cuts. It has also meant raising municipal property taxes by 8% for 2006, angering many residents.
Mr. Booker is quick to point out that municipal taxes have been cut for 2007 -- a policy he hopes to continue in the future. "By cutting the rate [for 2007]," he says, "we began what we hope will be a process of increasing city revenue and improving our tax collection rate." He also aims at eliminating City Hall's patronage machine: "It may be like taking castor oil to fix all these problems, but at the end of the day, this city will be financially healthy and people will be better off for it."
A major part of the mayor's grand solution is developing Newark's private sector. "You want to create a more vibrant private sector that's going to generate more economic activity, more economic dynamism, and create more opportunity for residents." The city could certainly use it: one quarter of the population lives below the poverty line, and median family income sits at $30,665 -- half the state average.
When compared to some other poor cities in the U.S., Newark has distinct advantages. Sitting 12 miles from midtown Manhattan, it boasts extensive rail and highway connections, a booming international airport and one of the busiest seaports in the country -- all the infrastructure needed to jumpstart a moribund economy. And thanks to agreements with Continental Airlines, city unions, and new funds to give local entrepreneurs a boost, "We're creating jobs and trying to build sustainability at the same time," Mr. Booker enthuses. But as City Hall knows all too well, blue-chip employers like Prudential and Verizon need skilled labor, and in a city in which only 13% of residents have college degrees, Newark's high-skill workforce will continue to commute from the suburbs for the foreseeable future.
Part of Mr. Booker's solution to this dilemma is education reform centered on school choice. "It's the last frontier we have to cross in order to become the most thriving city in America," he states confidently. "Parents in Newark are more demanding than ever, and they deserve a plethora of options of excellence to choose from that meet the needs of their kids." Mr. Booker is a longtime advocate of school choice: In 1999 he helped found E3, a prominent education-reform group in New Jersey that pushes for charter schools and vouchers for inner-city communities.
Newark's public schools enroll around 42,000 students. With frequent instances of in-school violence, decrepit facilities and low morale, the system is in need of serious overhaul. Just 37% of the city's high-school seniors passed the state proficiency exam in 2005, a statistic that is even more embarrassing considering that city schools spend around $20,000 per pupil -- far above the $13,000 state average (itself the second-highest in the country).
Before Mr. Booker can pursue any sweeping reforms, though, he must wrest control of the district from the state, which took over in 1995. "My goal is to turn the clock back to the '70s and vest control in the mayor to appoint school board members that can drive an agenda for reform," Mr. Booker says with hope. "Elected school boards often hit the lowest common denominator . . . they are not the way to get courageous, driven change."
Mr. Booker emphasizes that until local control returns -- which, thanks to recent moves by the state, could be within "16 to 18 months" -- his powers are limited. But that hasn't stopped him from cultivating donors to start thinking about charter schools for the future. Last month, he flew to Seattle to meet with representatives of the Gates Foundation. "We had very strong conversations," he reports. "I told them, 'If we can grow KIPP schools and overachieving charter schools [in Newark], it will be much easier to show that [school choice] can work, because you'll see results a lot quicker than in a place like New York, which has around a million school-aged children.'"
Many charter-school donors won't touch Newark until Mr. Booker gains control. Without a powerful leader to ensure accountability, they fear, the city is simply a black hole for outside funding. "The Broad Foundation and others don't want to invest in cities that don't have mayoral control," Mr. Booker says. "So mayoral control has to be one part of the strategy to bring resources into Newark [schools]."
Mr. Booker realizes that educational turnaround will take a lot more than charter schools. Across the country "you're seeing teachers unions allowing merit pay, or unions allowing more leeway in the hiring of good teachers and the firing of bad teachers." In Newark, he predicts, multi-pronged reforms could quickly create "an abundance of excellent schools that can empower our kids to create a 21st century knowledge-based economy, plus keep a lot of residents here."
Meanwhile, Newark's high crime rates are a pressing crisis. Thanks to the zero-tolerance policy of new police director Garry McCarthy, a no-nonsense former NYPD crime strategist, most major crime categories are down in the mayor's first year. The high murder rate, however, hasn't budged.
"These homicides are principally drug-related," Mr. Booker says, explaining that his next step is to tackle New Jersey's draconian drug laws. "You lock up a nonviolent offender, now they have a criminal conviction, and it becomes very hard for him to get a job. . . There's no hope of joining the productive economy, so it's very easy to get sucked back into the narcotics trade." Mr. Booker hopes reforms to the drug laws can "liberate the economic potential of ex-offenders so they can rejoin society instead of going back to criminality."
This summer marks the 40th anniversary of the 1967 race riots that helped reduce Newark -- along with other U.S. cities -- to a burnt-out wasteland. In many ways the city has moved beyond the racial tensions of the late 1960s. But Mr. Booker, often accused of not being "black enough," is no stranger to Newark's lingering racial problems. Former Mayor Sharpe James once said of him, "You have to learn to be African-American! And we don't have time to train you all night!"
"That's such a shallow brand of racial essentialism," Mr. Booker retorts. "New Jersey is a state with 14% African-American population, but the prison population is 60% black. That's a racial reality that impacts my city that we have to deal with." Moving beyond the problems of 1967 doesn't mean "ignoring race," he says, but asking whether you "can you build a community where diversity is its strength . . . or will it tear us apart?"
My time with the mayor is coming to a close. Mr. Booker's ambitious schedule has prompted him to regularly call meetings as early as 6 a.m. and as late as 11 p.m. -- "not the smartest way to maintain balance," he admits -- and now he has to run.
As a final question, I ask him whether he has national political ambitions. Booker hopefuls claim he has all the charisma of a Barack Obama with the gritty urban experience of a Rudy Giuliani. Laughing, he says: "I think the greatest impact I could make would not be through running for Congress, the Senate or the presidency, but as mayor of a big city where I could create models on the most crucial issues of our country's future: Education, public safety."
He thus repeats the same assurance he has given to those Newarkers worried that he'll one day jump ship for a more prestigious office in Trenton, or Washington. "I know what I'm doing in 2010," he tells me. "I'm running for re-election."
Mr. Sahner is a Robert L. Bartley Fellow at the Journal this summer.
Tuesday, August 07, 2007
Today that GHETTO B*TCH was me.
Today was one of my grumpy, cranky days. Happens every month. Anyways so I am grumpy and cranky and not in the mood. I decide I have to get my nails done. The one luxury I afford myself every 2 weeks. I like for my hands to look good. It makes me feel nice. By the way, it always rains when I get my nails done. Thats neither here nor there. Today, was my get my nails done day. I get there and park. I am in no rush either because I am cranky and slow. And that how I move when I am cranky. I turn the car off and I am taking my time. I also notice these chicks in a car trying to get my attention. I am trying to ignore them. Hindsight is 20/20 because I should of ignored them. But I said to myself just because I am cranky doesn't mean I should be rude. Well, I roll my window down, which means that I have to put the key back in the car. Power windows. And I ask yes. They got the good nerve to ask me if I can move my car back so that she can have the parking that I am already in. I ask her and why should I do that. Emphasis on the why should I. She goes on to blah, blah, blah, explain how there's so much traffic and she can't get the parking behind me. Clearly this chick got her license yesterday. Tsk. Tsk. Sigh. I am no mood. But again, I tell myself no need to be rude. So I turn my key, start my car, and put it in reverse. The chicks take the spot in front of me and thats the end of that. NO. REALLY. THATS THE END OF THAT. These mother effing b*tches didn't even turn around to give me a head nod. What the f*ck!!!! You know that sh*t done pissed me the f*ck off. Not a f*cking THANK YOU. That's what the f*ck is wrong with this dang world. So you know every time I get my nails done there is always a ghetto chick who walks thru the door. Well today that ghetto chick was me. And I didnt give a f*ck neither. I walked into the nail place cursing and acting a fool. And I was talking straight to them 2 b*tches. They acted like nothing. I wanted them to respond. I wanted to knock the driver the f*ck out with her no manner having a&&. What kindergarten did she go to? That's how you can tell someone's education or lack there of. KINDERGARTEN. I am impressed with everyone who attends kindergarten because those are the ones who clearly learned THANK YOU, PLEASE, EXCUSE ME, and I AM SORRY. The ones who missed kindergarten they didn't learn that and it shows. Doesn't matter what type of schooling you get after that if you missed the basics YOU AIN'T SHIT.
Wednesday, August 01, 2007
Feeling Hot, Hot, Hot!!!
I am currently OUT of New York and currently IN Arizona. It is so hot out here. 100+ degrees everyday. WOW. This is great. Everyone says that dry heat is different than humid heat. Heat is Heat to me and I LOVE it.
What I don't like is the same adobe color. Everywhere you see this same color. Nothing stands out. Everything looks so blah.
No matter I have the heat to keep me happy. Sigh........
What I don't like is the same adobe color. Everywhere you see this same color. Nothing stands out. Everything looks so blah.
No matter I have the heat to keep me happy. Sigh........
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