Arkansas Blog

On the baseball field? What!

Now wait a minute here. I can't wrap my brain around this trade-off. I'm all for education in principle, and think sometimes it even sticks with some people, but not at the expense of a baseball field. Why, you show me one kid, boy or girl that wasn't a lot better off for the short-term and the long-term, and a lot smarter too, for having rounded second and headed for third on a warm sunny spring afternoon than he or she would ever be from sitting in a classroom.

Man you could put those kids in the younger grade up back sitting outside by the train tracks and they'd do alright. Kids like trains. They could draw them. But don't take the ball field. It ain't right. It just ain't.

And don't we need the green space. Carbon footprint and all that.

I say PLAY BALL!l And if you learn a little math up by the train tracks well that's about all you could hope for.

I rest my case. That's all I'll say about that.

Heathwood Hall. Now that sounds like one of those proper East Coast type of private day schools. Just sounds like if you go to that school you are smart. Damn smart. That's half the trick of naming a school. It should just automatically convey that you got yersefl a quality education when you tell people you went there.

We need more of that around here. We need some grand sounding names for our schools. Public i and private alike.

what the hell is with the name eStem. who came up with that crappier than all-get-out of a name. Too many people sitting in a room thinking too much.

They need to rethink that. Still time to call it The Fenimore School. Or maybe Gadwall Prep. Or how bout The Pritchard Academy. Dont' matter if there ain't been a pritchard around for 200 years. It has a nice ring to it for a school. Yeah, anytime you can get the word Academy in the name your students are good for an extra 25 points minimum on the SAT from that alone. It just does something to them.

Man, you trot a name liek that out at a bar when you're older, or put that on a college admissions application and you are three steps ahead of the others coming from the likes of a an eStem.

eSTem. WTF. Are they kidding? Man. First the baseball field. Now thinking about the eStem atrocity of a name. Not a good day for education in my view. And a worse day for baseball. Steroids only being the half of it.

I'm thinking that this town ain't big enough for all these schools. Cathedral and Episcopal going after the same crowd? That can't end well. If the price is about the same I'm thinking you gotta go with the nice gleaming new school and the 30 million endowment. Maybe Episcopal will be three grand more a year--maybe more. And that may make a difference. But I'll bet they come in about the same price. I suppose you can quickly price yourself out of this market at the elementary level if you go to high on tuition given the options probably. So my guess is Episcopal will be competitively priced. Hell elementary school is mostly art classes nowadays anyway. How expensive could that be.

Speaking of the Hussman Academy, eStem Charter, did you catch the letter to the editor yesterday in the Democrat/Gazette from the Latin teacher at Central High School who caught them with "their pants down."

it seems as if the full page ad that was recently run to tout the eStem Charter was in Latin, however the Latin was not parsed correctly. The text apparently was written with no regard to proper conjugation, agreement of subjects and verbs, etc. Just words taken from a Latin dictionary and put together by some ad executive in the bowels of the D/G who had no knowledge of Latin at all.

I'll bet old Hussman like to have had a cat.

Bless his heart.

God, I love stupid people!

LOL at Ol' Blue Eyes. Good one.

My read of the location is that it will sit on the ball field and South of North 1st street where the trail currently runs. Where the trail currently runs. Which means, that even though ECS is bounded by approved planning plats to include the trail in future plans, my understanding is that unless the new campus addition interferes with the trail as it is now then ECS doesn't have any accommodating to do for the trail?

I believe ECS is putting the campus on the ball field so they don't have to spend effort or money on the trail - sacrificing an athletic field just in spite.

$7900 a year, eh? You know, if every liberal parent with a child in the private schools moved that child into public school and spent that money on political change for the public school system, the public school system would improve.

But I forget--as my old buddy Bob used to sing, "My turds are more important than your eyeballs, tra-la-la-la, tra-la-la-la."

It always seems a little stinky that tuition breaks and reductions are available for . . . parishoners. Not many places where one class of people can legitimately get a direct personal financial benefit from supporting a charity (the church) like this.

(AlmightyHog Congregation excepted . . .)

John, some of those parents don't have to "move their child into public schools" because we never opted for the $7,900 school. Unfortunately, "spending that money on political change for the public school system" seems to be coming up short. I suspect you will see the opposite of what you propose actually occur. The "new" school board wanted control. They got it. In due time, they will have no one to fight. We are gradually finding our way back to 1957, but this time there doesn't seem to be a political way to "fix" the problem (segregation).