Arkansas Blog

Rural areas would be glad to get the state out of overfunding P County at their expense. If one issue has been talked to death and had money burned to no avail it is P County and its public schools. It is like Iraq, it will never change and always be a problem.

The LRSD has no future. It will continue on the downward slide uninterrupted. Eventually, even the hard core defenders will be hard pressed to defend it because the failure will become so gross and obvious that more and more patrons will desert it. Private schools will grow as they have for the last 30 years. LRSD is incapable of recognizing the problem. It has become too ingrained in the system. So sad for a school system that used to be one of the finest in the nation. It is also sad for the competent teachers that remain.

The little rock district will do fine on its own. They are going through a difficult struggle now because three of its board members are trying to control the district even in the minority. I'M BETTING MR. bERKLEY WILL BECOME A MEMBER OF THE E-STEM CHARTER SCHOOL as soon as he leaves the Little Rock Board. I read in the Democrat-Gazette Melanie Fox has placed her child(ren) in private school. Why is she sitting on the public school board when she obviously hasn't any faith in what they do? Talk about a wolf in the fold!

I take it none of you three are planning to attend.

There was a time in the not too distant past when pillars of the community considered it their civic responsibility to run for school board.
Not only do we no longer have pillars of the community, but what passes for community leaders often give little more than lip service to their public schools, much less consider it a duty to guide them.

Look, let's call a spade a spade. LRSD is a black district. It is controlled by the blacks and they know it. Let it rest. Pretending that it is what it used to be is BORING. Everyone knows better so who are you fooling? Whites who can afford it will go to private schools. Those who can't will stay in the LRSD. Nuff said.

P.S. to Max: Not that anyone will get shirty about it, but it's the Unitarian +Universalist+ church.

You are a sad little man, strangelove, and I think you just called my daughter a spade.

Yea, I going to lose at least a nano second of sleep over speaking the truth. I simply say what others think and are afraid to say. You have cut off discourse because of your political correctness nonsense. Do you really think that you can stop people from thinking what they see with their own eyes and discern with their common sense?

When I graduated from the LRSD the school board was a 'who's who' of Little Rock. They were all prominent businessmen, lawyers or doctors. All had either run a business and met payrolls or established prominent medical or legal practices. They all had extensive business experience in meeting payrolls, budgeting and setting policy. Today, you have the 'what's happening now' brigade. At the most they have been involved in ACORN or some other worthless organization and have next to no relevant experience in business. You are seeing the result of that in the abject failure of the school system. Unfortunately, you now also have high level management personnel in the LRSD who have 'qualifications on paper' but no real substantive experience.

There is one particularly sleazy and dishonest trick in your little bag of lies, strangelove, which I'd like to highlight:

"I simply say what others think and are afraid to say."

There are many layers of cowardice and deception in that statement.

You claim courage for saying "what others...are afraid to say", but that's a cowardly lie on your part. I hear it, others hear it, and you hear it.

You claim they "are afraid to say" it, but that's a cowardly lie. You hear it less because people are ashamed, not afraid. Your shamelessness isn't bravery. It's shamelessness in the face of decency.

You claim "others think" it, and that's true so far as you go, but you say it in such a way as to imply +many+ others think it, and that's cowardice.

You say it with the cowardice of a man afraid to act unless he believes he has the lynch mob at his back, and that belief is a secondary lie, strangelove, the one you tell yourself to buck up your feeble courage and dwindling numbers.

As I was writing this, Bob Dylan singing in the background pegged you with a verse from "Lonesome Day Blues":

"I see your lover-man comin' - comin' 'cross the barren field
"I see your lover-man comin' - comin' 'cross the barren field
"he's not a gentleman at all - he's rotten to the core
"he's a coward and he steals"

So do tell us, strangelove, about your life of theft. We've all seen the rest.

You can stick your head in the sand as much as you want. Foolishness is not in short supply any more. The failure rate of the LRSD is easy to measure and undeniable. Compare the dropout rate, SAT scores, violence rate, etc. with 50 years ago at the LRSD and the truth is undeniable. Look at how many private schools existed then in LR compared to today. Teachers talk about the obscenity with what the school district has become with those that they trust. They never say the truth in public. You can speak in your abstractions and quote your worthless patron 'saint' Bob Dylan all day long but the truth is the truth. Asians kids are learning and the day will come when they will just shut out this country because we have played our silly games and discovered that we just can't compete anymore. Then who will look our kids in the face and tell they why?

There is nothing abstract about calling you a liar and a coward. That's as real as it gets. Oh, and a cowardly liar.

I realize you depend on "don't feed the trolls" to let your sewage pass without treatment. Sorry, but when you lie, or spread hatred, or just dip the skidmarked underwear of your mind in the community reservoir, I plan to call you on it.

I'm not unaware that the Little Rock school district has troubles. I'm not unable to pay for private school for my daughter. I'm satisfied she's getting a good education in the Little Rock public schools. It could be better, but that can and will be changed within the system. I don't know of a public school system anywhere in the country that is providing what I think of as a good enough education. That, too, can and must and will be changed.

As for you, sad little man, between your contempt for Blacks and your fear of Asians, I don't know how you sleep at night.

I mean, my daughter is afraid of things that go bump in the night, but she's able, even at her tender age, to overcome those fears with the help of a calm, reasoned talk from daddy and her own inner strength. What hope is there for you?

You are using personal invective and calling a person a racist to manipulate. I am not falling for your manipulation. The problems and degeneration of the LRSD are well documented. I noticed that you did not respond to the specific that I brought up. You chose to ignore them because you have vested interests. You do so at the peril of all of the children who attend the LRSD. Putting your head in the sand won't make these problems go away nor will they halt the slide into oblivion.

strangelove says, "You chose to ignore them because you have vested interests."

I say, "Name those vested interests, if you can. If you can't, then you are demonstrated once again to be a liar."

Please note, my invective is directed toward your cowardly and deceptive rhetoric, and is backed up by a careful, reasoned explanation of how your cowardly deception works. Your invective is just name-calling without anything to back it up.

You are thinking through your skin and not your brain. You have children who are being short changed by the second and third rate education that this district provides. The day will come when your children will have to compete with Asian kids whose education far out rates ours. What do you think will happen to this nation then?

Tell me about my vested interests that cause me to ignore the school systems' problems, strangelove, unless you were just making shit up.

As for the "thinking through your skin and not your brain" part, all I can say is that your great education failed you so far as biology went.

As I recall, the Arkansas public schools taught creationism fifty years ago--I'm thinking 1966 was the year Epperson was decided. Is that part of your "fifty years ago, the schools were good" schtick?

No, in your case that good education that I got from the LRSD was right on the money.