Raleigh, NC Politics

Wake county has finally bit the bullet and taken the easy way out and gone with a short term fix for school overcrowding....year round schools. The school board has decided that 23 elementary schools and, possibly, some number of middle schools will go year round. Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not really against year round schools. As a parent there are a lot things I like about year round. BUT, there are other issues here. I'll list them:

1) We just don't have enough good teachers as it is. Year round schools don't solve this. You still need teachers. My concern is that this is going to make it harder to keep the good teachers in the Wake County School district. I don't think all of them will leave, but some will not want to deal with the hassle of having their high school kid on a different schedule (I know I wouldn't) or packing up their stuff every 9 weeks to move to a different class, etc.

2) What if you have a kid in elementary or middle school and one in high school? Now they are on completely different schedules. The parents that can afford it are going to go to private schools. This will perpetuate the flight of the well-to-do away from public schools.

3) This is a short term fix. The Wake/Raleigh school planners need to get their act together. Stop building palatial 500-600 kid elementary schools and start building reasonable 1000 kid elementary schools. They keep talking like this is rocket science, but it really isn't. The planners just aren't very smart.

Raleigh has a history of good schools. I hope I'm wrong and that this isn't the start of the decline.

The N & O, my favorite liberal rag, wrote an article last weekend on the downtown Raleigh art project. It was on the front page and went into great detail about the art project and how it was in jeopardy even though funded by $2.5 million of private money. The article never once mentioned that the project was over budget by $1.7 million. Not once. They just talked about how Raleigh was backwards and didn't want art and the busses couldn't pass under it and we're a bunch of rednecks, etc.

In typical N & O reporting style, they never once mentioned the real issue here and that is that we don't have enough money to build schools and now they want to spend an "extra" $1.7M on this art project. Why can't they do the art project for the $2.5 million? Shouldn't that be the question?

Once again, good job missing the point N & O.

So you want to build a cool art sculpture in downtown Raleigh and some dude has given you $2.5 million to do it. No problem, right. We'll not really, you see you can't really do a cool art sculpture for $2.5 million, everybody knows this. You need, say $4.2 millions to do it right. At least if your a Spanish artist named Jaume Plensa.

So now the tax payers have to pay for it. Don't worry about the fact that we don't have enough schools and are having to all go year round next year, no don't worry about that. Worry about the poor artist who ONLY has $2.5 million to build a sculpture. THAT's the real tragedy here.

I heard some lady on the news say she was going to leave Raleigh if it wasn't approved that the tax payers pay for her sculpture. Fine. Leave. You can go live in Somalia or Rwanda or Iran for all I care, but get out of Raleigh.

Well I guess we get what we asked for. We re-elected Mayer Meeker. That means we can be sure that $1 billion of our tax dollars will go to rail system that goes absolutely nowhere just so he can sell some land at a good premium.

Beginning January 1, 2005 all children under the age of 8 or under 80 pounds are required by law to be in a car seat or Booster that is appropriate for their size. Our 7 year old first grader had to go back in to a booster which he did with no complaint. He will ride in a booster until September when he turns 8. My complaint is that the law does not make a whole lot of sense. The reason for the law is safety. When a child rides in a booster the seat belt crosses their chest and shoulder but not their neck. So why wasn't the law based on height? Clearly there are many 6 and 7 year olds taller than some 8 year olds. Age should not be the determining factor.... So the law also says if you are 80 pounds you do not have to use one. You could have an overweight 5 year old not required to be in a booster while your tall skinny 7 year old is. I do hope that this law saves lives, I just think it could have been more clearly thought out.

The 2005 - 2006 Wake County School Calendar does not make a lot of sense if you have anything to do with running a summer camp or program that involves the employment of College aged students. The traditional school year will begin August 25, 2005. In most cases, this is at least one week if not two weeks later than students report to their college campuses. This will be a problem for the camps and programs that rely so heavily on the college age student to work in their program.

Conversely, the last day of the school year will be on June 9,2006. Once again this is not in line with college dismissal dates. Most universities hold graduation mid May. Here you will have your student working population out of school waiting for the students to fill the programs they staff. The North Carolina legislature did not fully think this one out.

This is another test post. I'm still trying this stuff out. I'll delet it later.

Have you read the News & Observer lately? I know it's painful. What exactly is the deal with the front page? Is it supposed to be breaking news? The recent layout typically has a huge special interest story of some type with a big photo, two or three liberal editorials, and a small news story.

The latest front page editorial is that they show a "new" poll that somehow shows that most folks want illegals to go college on state money. I don't know about you, but I've been paying NC state taxes and saving for years and I still don't know if I can pay my kids way. Now the N & O is asking me to pay for illegals to go to college instead of my kids!!! Gee, thanks N & O.

You ask me how I know this an editorial, not a news story? Here is a quote:

the initial reaction to the bill as hateful, intimidating and angry.
"Now we're seeing more of the reasonable voices weigh in,"

You can read the article for yourself at:
http://www.newsobserver.com/news/story/2353514p-8731103c.html

What's interesting about this story is that they don't show the other polls that all showed 80% oppose. I think it's also the first time they have run this story on the front page. I need to look into this some more........still investigating.

Hello,

This is a test post for Raleigh, NC Political Blog.

Watch out Charles!!!