Wednesday, January 16, 2008

The Twisting Career of the Man Who Let the Simple Majority Happen

Without a key vote from Senator Jim Clements out of Yakima, the Simple Majority never would have gotten a chance to go to the voters. He's no longer in the legislature after losing a primary election in the spring; you can read more about what he's done the past 8 months over at The Other Side.

As teachers, we all owe him a big thank you.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I don't think anyone is against giving schools the funding they truly need. But what about taking a good hard look at where the money they already get is going first?

Think about it. Schools are guaranteed a constant source of income with no practically no oversight on how those dollars are spent. Combine that with the fact that the public is usually always pretty trusting of the schools (i.e school folk are noble -- Look at what they do and put up with for so little pay! They must be people with integrity who know exactly what they are doing!), and what you get is an entity that can pretty much do what it wants, aside from a few parent activists who complain when something affects their kid.

If the school got the boon of the 50% majority, it should at least have come at the price of annual performance audits. Most districts nickel and dime the teachers and the classrooms, but you should see the perks for the administrators, and you should look at what goes on with the sweetheart, cronyism deals in facilities, transportation, maintenance and the big one: building construction/real estate.