Fitzsimon File

Parent satisfaction does not mean parents are satisfied

Wake County School Board member John Tedesco, the self-appointed spokesperson for the Gang of Five that now runs the board, tells the News & Observer that a recent survey showing that 94.5 of parents are satisfied with their child’s school doesn’t mean that parents are satisfied with their child’s school.  

The new board members promised in their campaigns to overhaul Wake County’s nationally recognized student assignment policy that uses economic diversity as a factor in determining where kids go to school.

Tedesco is pressing on with his scheme to divide the county into assignment zones, which he now readily admits would create some high poverty schools which are almost certain to be overwhelmingly African-American.

Tedesco and the Gang of Give have said repeatedly that their plan would not resegregate the schools, which Tedesco now admits his plan would do.  He also wants to significantly change the popular magnet school program, which even a member of the new majority doesn’t think is a good idea.

Tedesco brushes aside the results of the parents survey that he and the Gang of Five demanded by saying it only shows that parents want stability in student assignment. He must not have read the results.

It shows that 94.5 are satisfied with their child’s school regardless of the calendar it uses. Parents want stability all right. They want things to stay the way they are, not some resegregated with rich zone, poor zone scheme cooked up to fulfill a misguided ideological promise.

One R or two?

Speaking of the Wake County School Board of Education, it looks like members will not be meeting individually with newly hired attorney Thomas Farr after all.  

The Gang of Five voted to hire Farr, a Republican with the close ties to the state GOP, to audit the board’s legal services and provide legal advice.  The board already has a legal counsel, Ann Majestic, of the Raleigh firm Tharrington Smith, and the school system faces a budget crisis that is likely to require layoffs and maybe increased class sizes in some school.

Farr requested individual meetings with each board member.  Ann McLaurin said she thought the board should instead meet with Farr as a group. The board is a public body after all.

Board Chair and lead Gang of Fiver Ron Margiotta was put off by the suggestion, telling McLaurin that the only reason she wasn’t happy hiring Farr was that he had an “R” at the end of his name, meaning that he is a Republican.

McLaurin pointed out that Farr actually has two Rs at the end of his name.   Good point.

Reaffirming the qualifications needed to serve

Governor Beverly Perdue has appointed Jacksonville car dealer Mike Alford to replace the embattled developer Lanny Wilson on the State Board of Transportation.  Campaign finance reports show that Alford is a fairly frequent contributor to political campaigns and gave $4,000 to Perdue in 2008.

The reports also show that Alford’s wife Alicia made an in-kind contribution to Perdue’s campaign of $3,453 for “event expenses,” which usually means fundraiser.

It raises a question that comes up nearly every time a key appointment is made in state government. Is there not anybody in North Carolina qualified to serve on an important board who does not host fundraisers or make campaign contributions?

Nick Danger and the N&O’s week

The News & Observer deserves a lot of credit for its dogged investigative reporting of the activities of former Governor Mike Easley and his cronies, this week telling us that Easley conducted sate business on a personal email account under the name of a detective on a 196Os radio show, Nick Danger, which also sounds the character in the game of Clue. Colonel Mustard in the basement with a letter opener.

But the N&O had a rough week in a couple of other places, most notably a story about a vote by the Apex Town Council to eliminate coverage of abortion services from the health plan of town employees.

The move was spearheaded by Apex Mayor Keith Weatherly, who says he was contacted by a prominent conservative activist about the issue. Maybe. The N&O failed to report that Weatherly works for House Minority Leader Paul Stam, who has been one of the leaders in the anti-choice movement in the state for 30 years.  Seems like a relevant piece of information.

Labor activists are scratching their heads at an N&O story this week about Governor Beverly Perdue’s decision to hold discussions with the State Employees Association when there is concern about working conditions.  

Anti-labor forces claimed that Perdue’s decision was the first step toward collective bargaining for state employees and the end of Western Civilization as we know it. The story quoted the state director of the National Federal of Independent Business, who said it was the camel’s nose under the tent. The story also included comments from the folks at the Pope Civitas Institute who said talking to a union is bad public policy.

The story also checked with the N.C. Chamber, but included only a statement from the website of the State Employees Association. Somebody needs to give the N&O the number of the AFL-CIO.

Change the locks on Right Wing Avenue

And finally, the folks in the right-wing think tanks can’t be too happy that an economist they often rely on for expert opinion keeps contradicting their tiresome claims about state and federal policy.

Dr. Mike Walden from N.C. State, who is a columnist and adjunct scholar at Lockerville, said last summer that the provisions in the federal recovery act that extended unemployment compensation and food stamp distribution would stimulate the economy as people who receive the benefits would almost immediately spend them.

That came as the anti-government think tanks were telling us that the recovery act would do nothing to stimulate economic activity.

The folks on the right also keep claiming that North Carolina’s future is threatened by the policies of the current administrations in Raleigh and Washington and that the state will lag behind when the national economy begins to turns around.

This past week, the Herald-Sun in Durham quoted Walden at a meeting of local officials saying that the return of jobs to the state would be slow and that economic recovery would take a while.  But Walden also said "Looking at the state analytically, I would be hard pressed — hard pressed — to find a state that's better positioned and has better prospects for future economic growth than North Carolina.”

Whoops. Wonder if they will still let him in the door over there.

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This entry was posted on Friday, February 5th, 2010 at 8:17 am and is filed under Fitzsimon File. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.