And you think we've got problems? part deux

I just read this in the Flint Journal.

The Flint School District will lay off 257 teachers at the end of the school year.

A budget proposal announced last month called for 141 teachers to lose their jobs but officials announced Wednesday night that 116 more instructors would be laid off as part of efforts to reconcile a deficit estimated at nearly $20 million.

The layoffs represent about a fifth of the teachers now in the district.

Flint is a lot larger city than Newburyport, of course, but WOW, huh?

Flint in the Times!

A reader emailed me about an interesting story in the NY Times. It's about Flint! But it's also about renting. You can read the full article here.

Funny, but the State of Michigan is subsidizing people's rent so they will stay in one place. Well, people who have kids, anyway.

In some of Flint’s elementary schools, half or more of the students change in the course of a school year — in one school it reached 75 percent in 2003. The moves are usually linked to low, unstable incomes, inadequate housing and chaotic lives, and the recent rash of foreclosures on landlords is adding to the problem, forcing renters from their homes. The resulting classroom turmoil led the State Department of Human Services to start an unusual experiment, paying some parents $100 a month in rent subsidies to help them stay put — a rare effort to address the damaging turnover directly ...

The central attraction is the $100-a-month rent subsidy, which is paid directly to landlords, who in turn agree not to raise rents and to keep the houses up to code. The money comes from state agencies.

Who'd a thunk it? Michigan in general wasn't that big on education when I lived there!

But I do have to add, that this phenomenon (although not at 75%) occurred when I was in school in Clio, north of Flint. Classmates came, classmates left, classmates came back ... I think it was the nature of working in "the shop" (auto factory), or going there to work in the shop and not getting in.

It was wildly competitive because it paid so much more than almost anywhere else. In fact, you almost had to know someone on the inside in order to get in.

Hence the lack of focus on education - The goal of most everyone was to work in the shop. I think I've already mentioned how embarrassing it was for me, growing up, that my father didn't work for GM, like everybody else's father. And often, mother.

We didn't own boats, snow mobiles, or a cabin "up north." But all my friends' families did, so I reaped the benefits anyway. One "benefit" is that I now hate snow mobiles.

In my little town ...

I point everyone to this post by Tom Salemi, on his blog. Exactly ... who cares? You need something? Fight for it yourself, pay for it yourself - whatever. Just don't bother me about it.

I remember a column written by Jim Roy for the Current, back when there was a story in the DN about senior citizens complaining about the Proposition 2-1/2 override vote to fund the schools.

Some woman said something along the lines of, "Let the parents pay for it themselves!"

And Jim Roy countered that he'd remember that, when the vote came up on the senior center. He made a quip such as, "You say you want a senior center, Madam? Pay for it yourself!"

Tom is right on. So was Jim. This is a community, not isolated groups of people, some of whom should be expected to fend for themselves, or their children.

Where did this attitude come from?

And what about this extreme resentment of non-Townies? And renters? (See this post on Ari Herzog's blog and the accompanying comments.) If Townies are such a cohesive group, why didn't they at least get their fellow, Steve Cole, past the mayoral primary?

And again, what makes one a Townie? You were born here? You and your father and/or mother were born here? Some or all of their parents were born here?

By the first measure, a lot of the kids in school right now are Townies. Stand by these kids and vote a resounding YES to a debt exclusion! You want them to stick around here, right?

Your fellow (tiny) Townies are counting on you! You really let them down last year ...

Obama visits Flint

Barack Obama visited my old place of residence, Flint, MI, yesterday.

If you don't already know this, Flint has almost been decimated by General Motors pulling out of the city. There used to be, at least, a Buick plant, a parts plant, a Chevy plant, a Chevy Truck Plant (called "The Truck Plant" by locals), and an AC Spark Plug plant in Flint. Oh, yeah, and Fisher Body.

Every little AC Spark Plug was made in Flint, at one time. Now the plant is being torn down.

Everyone thinks Henry Ford and Detroit when they think automobiles. But by 1908, the Buick plant in Flint was the largest auto manufacturing plant in the country. According to Wikipedia, of the nearly 80,000 people that worked for General Motors in Flint during its peak years in the late 1970s, only about 8,000 are left after the most recent 2006 buyouts.

Among other things Obama said (you can read all about it here, in the Detroit Free Press, if you wish), he said this: Above all, Obama said, education is key to U.S. economic strength. But while he called for more federal money for early childhood education, and revamping the No Child Left Behind act to to improve school curriculums, he said the responsibility for education falls mainly on families.

“Parents have to instill a thirst for education excellence in our children," Obama said.

But he added that the government would do more to help financially, saying “A college education should be a birthright for every single American.”

When I first wrote this post, last night, my initial reaction was that "I don't know that I agree with that; I think the cheapening of a college education is one of our problems. This idea that everyone should go to college, or it is an entitlement, I think is not a good one."

This is a real problem. I know that in England, for instance, tensions exist between people who went to college and those that did not. In England, to be blunt about it, you have to be above-average intelligent to get into college. But you also can be poor and get into college - if you're smart enough.

But hold the phone - One of my uncles, who did not go to college, was way more successful in his career than his 2 siblings that did go to college. But is he as educated as his siblings, whatever that means? ... As you go through life, you get educated (if you're paying attention). He may not know about Greek mythology, but he probably could teach his more educated sibs a thing or two about being in top management at a big company.

But here and now, my uncle would not be able to rise through the ranks as he did while I was growing up; not without an MBA.

So although initially I thought Obama was being elitist, today I think he was being naive - unless he meant access to higher education should be every qualified American's birthright, rich or poor.

What we need is to adjust the elitist mindset, because it turns most people off. Look at the extreme popularity of that anti-intellectual movie, Forrest Gump.

If I've learned only one thing from being a reporter, it's that nearly everyone is smart about something, and a lot of people are smart about a lot of things - yes, even people who didn't go to college. And nearly everyone I've met, rich or poor, highly educated or not, had something interesting to say (a lot of them really believed they didn't).

And the problems in Flint, one of the most crime-ridden cities in the country? General Motors (with a lot of help from the UAW) gave its largely non-college educated workforce a sense of entitlement and then left town; left the workers nothing else to do, no income stream, and no future for their kids.

Now the kids are angry.

Need editing?

Ummm, yeah. Funny thing, I was going to comment on the inaccuracies/not-so-great sentence construction in this story about the school budget in today's Daily News. When I went back to the DN website to copy some more, the story was gone!

Oh, well, onwards and upwards (or downwards).

As of this school year, the Brown School has served as an early childhood center serving preschool and kindergarten while the Bresnahan School has the lower elementary grades. The Molin Upper Elementary School has moved to the Nock Middle School building.

The Molin Upper Elementary did not move anywhere. It was created to be within the Nock Middle School building.

Teachers at Nock are also stretched thin this year, as there are six teachers split among three teams, rather than the eight they had last year. Teachers are teaching out of their subject areas as well, like teaching geography.

Does this mean the teachers teaching out of their subject areas as well like teaching geography? Or that there are teachers teaching out of their subject areas, such as math teachers (for instance) teaching geography?

--Hell, I could teach geography. Give me some chalk.--

Anyway, is the editor on vacation or something? The other day they ran this (and it's still in there):

Roland and Brennan say those against the proposal are in the minority and most of his Joppa?? neighbors support Roland.

I don't know about the DN reporters, but that is how I would put something in a story when I wasn't sure it was accurate: in bold and with question marks.

And they really have got to find some other teacher besides Christine Johnson to interview. Don't get me wrong - I love Christine. She's a great person, a great artist and I'm sure a fantastic teacher. It's just always, in both papers, Christine Johnson.

Last time I saw her, at Amesbury Town Hall on election night last year, we even joked about how many times she'd been on the cover of one or other of the DN and the Current that year.

The next day, she was on the cover of the DN, or the Current, or the Amesbury News. I forget which one. Let's mix it up a little, folks.

Usually I would not, and do not, comment about random blips (yeah, right, you're thinking). The editor must be on vacation.

The mug, btw, is available at the Newseum, the interactive museum of news.

Sulky seniors

I read with interest this little diddy in the Daily News online. I assume it's an editorial.

For the life of me I can't understand how pranks at school became a tradition. This one doesn't seem so harmless. How much did it cost to clean up at NHS, I wonder? Why don't I just ask someone, I wonder?

When I was in high school, we pulled any stunts like that and wham! blam! we were in trouble. I do, however, remember a peaceful sit-in we staged ... but it was about a war ... a seemingly unwinnable (is that a word?) war being waged in Asia ... hey wait ...