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This is the mistake you are all taking. I never said I came here to continue teaching. I decided to with my 30 Years experience, my care for the students, my want to keep teaching even for less money and more responsibility, only to see the old boy network, the hiring of young poorly trained teachers, the terminating contract that says well we have no need to respect you as a professional, that when you come here you are just working by the terms of the 1 year contract and bye bye!!
That is no way to treat a professional and quite frankly you get what you pay for.
Chill my friend as your name says. After 30 years of teaching you used the wisdom of your experience and made a decision to relocate. Did you already have a job or were you expecting to be hired here to supplement your retirement pension until you reached a certain point? At any rate it was all part of your planning process and not the responsibility of Wake or Johnson or any other public school system to make it work. The working conditions you describe are very comparable to private industry and for the first time for many teachers they are beginning to discover what the world of the private sector is like. How does the old boy network translate into young teachers being hired? Was it the son or daughter of someone? Talk about patronage, some of your top districts in NJ are notorious for that.
Why is everyone on here against neighborhood school's ? I believe if they stop busing they need to identify the inner city children in Wake County that want to learn and create some more magnet school's for them. Do you honestly think that busing kids 40 minutes to school is helping them? A lot of these children are going home to no home life and that is where it needs to start, at home and the classroom is secondary. Just look at the test scores of the Free and Reduced Lunch students the proof is right there, it does not help. I will agree that it is good for the kids of all races to get to know one another as it will help growing up a better person, but the busing thing is not working.
People are not against neighborhood schools...this is a misnomer! over 80% of all kid go to their neighborhood school right now. I think it's 94% for elementary schools.
Busing greater distances is rare. it happens in hi growth areas for obvious reasons. We are changing an entire system that needed tweaking, for a few ppl who don't like what they've found in moving here. What many of us parents don't like is that we are happy with our current school "choice" and now will have our kids pulled out of those schools and moved to satisfy the few. The neighborhood schools that do need help will have a higher concentration of poorer kids, this is problematic for all concerned and affects property values. We will have more majority white, and majority minority schools - this isn't good in the cases where income is tied to race. Read other threads on this to find out more about what I've mentioned.
Don't buy into the issue being busing and neighborhood schools. The new folks who wanted to change things needed a platform
My tax rate down here when you add up property and sales tax even the personal property tax and state income tax is almost equal to the taxes I paid in NJ!!!
Where in the world is the money going in this state???
Sure my property tax rate is 1.00 per 100 and it was 2.40 per 100 in NJ, but my state tax is 7% on my income but was only 2% in NJ. I have not been asked to spend any extra on the schools down here and I stated before I am willing to pay an additional 5 or even 7 cents on the dolar to fund the schools down here in Wake. But again the powers that run the show say nah lets just do it with less. I have seen how doing it with less works, Combining elementary grades??? Cutting electives in the High Schools, Hiring brand new teachers on the bottom of the guide. Spending how much money on Buses and fuel to run them. Its really a mess and will only get worse. Community schools, I could care less. I do know that to say a school in SE Raleigh cannot be as good as a school in Cary or apex is well a racist comment by people who should know better. Hire the best for all county schools, provide what is needed for each school in the community. The schools are a mirror image of the community.
Your last line is one that is worthy of additional discussion and thought by many posting in this thread. Let consider what you said.
"THE SCHOOLS ARE A MIRROR IMAGE OF THE COMMUNITY"
Now what community is that they should be a mirror image of?
Wake County as a whole?
North Carolina as a Whole?
A region within Wake County?
Hmmmm perhaps the local communities (which there are many of) within Wake County?
When you bus students outside of what they consider to be their community are you intended outcome creating schools that reflect their community? How should the boundaries of a community be determined?
Who should make that determination?
How big is to big to succeed in the world of education?
Remember now the answer to these questions are important especially who should decide?
People are not against neighborhood schools...this is a misnomer! over 80% of all kid go to their neighborhood school right now. I think it's 94% for elementary schools.
Busing greater distances is rare. it happens in hi growth areas for obvious reasons. We are changing an entire system that needed tweaking, for a few ppl who don't like what they've found in moving here. What many of us parents don't like is that we are happy with our current school "choice" and now will have our kids pulled out of those schools and moved to satisfy the few. The neighborhood schools that do need help will have a higher concentration of poorer kids, this is problematic for all concerned and affects property values. We will have more majority white, and majority minority schools - this isn't good in the cases where income is tied to race. Read other threads on this to find out more about what I've mentioned.
Don't buy into the issue being busing and neighborhood schools. The new folks who wanted to change things needed a platform
The platform part is very important and Pope has said the Republican party needed and issue to galvanize support around and the diversity policy was ideal. Sorta like the southern strategy the Republicans used years ago. Hmmm what was Pope doing back then?
n 2006, the Raleigh News and Observer reported that Pope "has created other organizations to sway public opinion, monitor the legislature, develop grass-roots political efforts and bring court challenges" and that he had spent "millions of dollars on a network whose purpose is to move North Carolina to the political right." His goal was to purge the North Carolina state House of Representatives of Republican moderates. According to journalist Rob Christensen, Pope "created two new tax-exempt organizations. The Republican Legislative Majority of North Carolina was bankrolled with $260,000 in contributions from Variety Wholesalers. A Pope-formed state chapter of a national group, Americans for Prosperity, contributed more than $200,000 ... The Pope effort helped defeat Republican Reps. Rex Baker of King, Keith Williams of Jacksonville, Michael Gorman of New Bern and Michael Decker of Forsyth County. Pope came within a whisker of knocking off Morgan and Rep. Rick Eddins of Raleigh."[3]
Pope started out by financing a network of conservative think tanks, but in latter years has expanded his role to that of a conservative political enforcer, spending hundreds of thousands of his own money to unseat moderate Republican legislators.[4]
The above is from the link
http://www.schoolsmatter.info/2009/1...ses-jesse.html
. .Pope was credited by a local GOP party official with crafting strategies in an October election that earned school board seats for three Republican-backed candidates and landed an allied candidate, John Tedesco, in a runoff that he ultimately won. In an Oct. 7 e-mail from Wake County Republican Party finance chair Marc Scruggs to incumbent board member Ron Margiotta, Scruggs said the GOP had implemented Pope's plan and that it "worked very well."
The election resulted in the new members' and Margiotta's gaining a majority on the nine-member board, with the ability to advance their agenda, including ending the system's diversity policy and mandated year-round schools. Margiotta is now chairman of the school board. . . .
The above is from the link
And oh yeah remember there are two Pope's at work in all of this Claude and Art.
For his opposers, what is he doing that you are opposed to? Not in regards to what you believe his future ambitions are, what political party he associates with, or speculation on how he could of afforded to leave his job. I just want policy disagreements so I can get a better understanding of others thoughts in this matter. Thanks!
For his opposers, what is he doing that you are opposed to? Not in regards to what you believe his future ambitions are, what political party he associates with, or speculation on how he could of afforded to leave his job. I just want policy disagreements so I can get a better understanding of others thoughts in this matter. Thanks!
My reply to you on this is to see my above post. And, others I've posted in Wake County schools issues. I've said it many, many times.
Thanks Tuborg! Yes, these little pixies have been working their magic agenda for some time now! Their machine reminds me of big daddy Jesse (Helms) RIP, and his Congressional Club in the '70's and later. You can't teach an old boy new tricks
Why is everyone on here against neighborhood school's ? I believe if they stop busing they need to identify the inner city children in Wake County that want to learn and create some more magnet school's for them. Do you honestly think that busing kids 40 minutes to school is helping them? A lot of these children are going home to no home life and that is where it needs to start, at home and the classroom is secondary. Just look at the test scores of the Free and Reduced Lunch students the proof is right there, it does not help. I will agree that it is good for the kids of all races to get to know one another as it will help growing up a better person, but the busing thing is not working.
I'm not against neighborhood schools at all! What I am against is the nonsensical way the new board has taken over, switching nodes one week then switching them back; being blatantly partisan and political in a supposedly nonpartisan office; making decisions without full hearing from parents (on diversity); ousting a man who has dedicated decades of his life to the schools for political reasons and who, whether we agree with him or not, deserves our respect and to go out on his own terms. I find the whole manner of their takeover to be distasteful as well as sloppy.
I have more experience and qualifications than Tedesco does but I wouldn't dream of running b/c I recognize that I do not have what it takes to be in that position. In him I see naked ambition and that's not what I want on my SB, I want civil service in the name of educating the next generation.
Last edited by Green Irish Eyes; 04-18-2010 at 03:11 PM..
Reason: Comments about national political figures are off-topic for this forum.
For his opposers, what is he doing that you are opposed to? Not in regards to what you believe his future ambitions are, what political party he associates with, or speculation on how he could of afforded to leave his job. I just want policy disagreements so I can get a better understanding of others thoughts in this matter. Thanks!
My issue is personal. My kids attend magnet schools and he seems I'll-informed about magnets. At times he seems eager to do away with him. For now he gets the benefit of the doubt and time to learn about them before I go into a panic about what could happen to the magnet system.
Let's not forget Margiotti when we talk of Tedesco. T is young and foolish (to me). Margiotti, is crafty. He knows to keep his mouth shut as much as possible so as not to show his hand. m is the one quoted in one of the links I posted either today or last night, who said he thought we should cut out magnets due to the budget issues. He is also the one on the board of Thales Academy, the private school of Luddy's. He shows no loyalty to our schools or the Magnet system IMO.
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