Friday, November 20, 2009

Oh, it's even worse than I thought ...

I took a quick skim over the Concord Monitor article about the meeting last night: ["Charter panel: Elect residents"].
I have to look at the complete proposal but I would question the decision to allow the entire populations of Ward 1 and 2 - some of whom don't send their children to the Concord public school system - to have any role serving on or deciding who is on the charter commission. They can't vote for school board members - why would they be allowed to serve or elect charter commission members? Someone wasn't thinking clearly when they proposed that.
And this is doozy here:
A motion failed to ban the election of school board members and city councilors.
Wow, what a shock. While I personally don't want to ban anyone from running, there is a clear conflict of interest for school board members to be on this future charter commission. We can all agree on that one. I mean, we've seen what happens when school board members - and those closely connected to the school system - are involved in anything these days. Just look at last night's decision for an education, no pun intended.
The real problem here though is that school board members will by analyzing the charter that they have to serve under and they will thwart any effort for reform over themselves. You can be guaranteed of that. They have done it in the Legislature, allowing their lobbyist to outright lie in testimony; and they have done it on this study commission too, creating this stalling tactic to drag out any real reforms until 2013. They will do it on the charter commission, believe me. Rigged from the start, before they are even elected.
Chuck Douglas, as mentioned in the article, thought it shouldn't look like a politburo meeting. Indeed. But these days, no one even knows what that means since they haven't been taught about that stuff in school for years. And, as we have seen, most people in Concord have become quite comfortable with their city and school system being run like banana republics. Otherwise, no one in their right mind would stand for this.
And you gotta love this section of the article:
Ardinger argued at-large elections would ensure the election of the best candidates willing to take on a "thankless job," and member-elect Bill Glahn said at-large representation was appropriate for governing the schools.
What is the obsession with "the best candidates"? I hate it when these folks talk in the not so veiled code words. Somehow, ordinary people can't figure out what is best for themselves and their families, don'tcha know (Add mimic voice here: We have to "ensure" that the "best" candidates are elected, har, har, you know what I mean, right, wink, wink, nod, nod ... la-de-da). Yup, we need more lawyers, more educaters who supposedly support democracy, more trophy wives, and more clueless people with absolutely no commonsense screwing everything up for the rest of us [tongue firmly planted in cheek].
One possible very small saving grace: Six of the commission members will be voted via Wards, not unlike our state Reps., and three will be elected at-large. So, the bulk of the members will be running small campaigns in a Congressional election cycle. In other words, the popularity contest for the people elected to ultimately thwart democracy will be on the micro level.
What an absolute friggin' disaster.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

The arrogant elitists get their way once again. Let's keep the peasants from having too much say about how we run their schools, teach their kids and spend their hard earned money.