Saturday, August 21, 2010
Education Pulaski school turmoil
Posted by Max Brantley on Sat, Aug 21, 2010 at 6:44 AM
As a Little Rock School District resident, I can only say, "Thank God for the Pulaski County School District's Gang of Four." They manage to make Little Rock's troubles look like a walk in the garden.
No emergency School Board meeting was held last night because the Gang couldn't round up a quorum, lacking, among others, its pivotal member, the well-traveled and taxpayer-entertained Mildred Tatum.
In the event this has become too difficult to follow, a primer: The Gang of Four that controls the School Board hates the teachers union. They produced a new school schedule, with a much longer day for elementary students, as part of an extralegal strategy to bust a contract with teachers. So far, despite a high-priced New York lawyer and high-handed tactics, the Gang has yet to find a court willing to side with lawbreakers. Now that school's restarted, the disastrous new schedule has had the predictable response. Parents are furious. So Gang wants the schedule to go back to the way things were before they f***ed it up.
Hurry the school election.
Dawn Jackson's website chronicles many of the ins and outs, including School Board President Tim Clark's latest diatribe against those who would oppose him.
For a reader: There are three school districts in Pulaski County. The LR disrict covers most of the city of Little Rock, the North Little Rock district covers most of that city and the Pulaski District is the doughnut around the cities in the center of the county, a big territory including Maumelle, Sherwood, Jacksonville and land to the south, west, east and north of the two major cities.
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Comments (4)
Showing 1-4 of 4
Thanks, Max. I am not from LR and was asking the other night was going on. Watching the news, this whole situation is embarrassing for the LR school system.
But why does the "gang of four" hate the union? Could you fill us in?
Thanks.
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It's not the LR school district. It's the Pulaski county school district. A separate entity completely. I think the board members think unions are inherently bad for some reason.
does it ever occur to these fools how many students they're probably losing because of all this bickering and infighting? Don't they have work to do like filling out forms and approving textbooks and stuff like that?
If avoidable at all financially, I would not send my kid to the PCSD because they seem to care more about infighting and carryin' on than the actual students. Charter schools, magnet schools, so what. Power struggles.
What did you all do at recess back in olden days when we were in elementary school? We played under the trees (just the girls although the boys may have had a war or two under a tree if they could seize one), we used what little broken-down playground equipment there was and never thought one thing about it, we played jump rope............ I dont really know what the boys did. I remember we really liked the big slide and the "whirl," and we even had wooden teeter-totters.
mainly, we just went outside and played. sometimes we'd play kickball. Sometimes the college would send a student teacher over to organize games and ruin our fun, too. she didnt know yet that kids need to be left alone to play under trees sometimes.
I dont remember any fights at all during my grade school years -- there may have been some that I forgot, or the surprise attacks of the warden, Miss E., opening up one of those huge windows & scaring the would-be fighters half to death, could've nipped that right in the bud.
I guar-on-TEE we wouldn't have had anybody going around in saggy pants.
I know damn well that very few families can get by on one salary today, but for most of us, except for Sunday School and a few of us who lived in town* and went to private kindergartens, school was our first time away from home. *If you lived on a farm or out on the mountains, you'd spend more time driving than Junior would spend at school. Just not worth it.
School was scary to me for the first two years, aided by a truly cruel 2nd grade teacher. she was just purely mean to kids if she knew their mothers were not likely to come in and complain. one day a little girl was at the blackboard and the old harridan was berating her; the little girl got nervous and threw up, and the old crow made her clean it up.
that night 3 of us whose mothers lived right handy nearby -- and by this time my mother worked full-time -- finally told our mothers what was going on. The next day was verrrrryyy interesting. But the day after that, she asked us one by one if we told our mothers that she was mean. We were seven years old. Seems like seven was much younger then.
Mr. Brantley, I am a PCSSD teacher who has also studied Chinese history a lot, including the original "Gang of Four" from right after Chairman Mao's death. Thank you for your continuing coverage of our district's mess. Also, thank you for the hilarious Chinese history references! Yes, everyone, it really is just as bad as Max Brantley and Dawn Jackson describe it -- but we have school board elections on September 21st, and half of our "Gang of Four" is up for re-election. There is, therefore, reason to be optimistic. There is also a court hearing at 2:30 pm on Wednesday, August 25, in Judge Moody's L.R. courtroom (Pulaski County Courthouse), about the bell schedule -- an injunction is being requested by other teachers (not me personally) to seek relief from this bell schedule, which was sprung on parents, teachers, students, and even administrators (at least those at the building level; I'm not certain about the District level) right at the very end of the Summer.
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