Buffalo Board of Ed Finds Its Arse with Both Hands. Except for Carl Anyway....

The rookie Commissioner has been sidestepped in yet another of his attempts to stand on a chair and wave his pointer at the grown ups hoping they'll fall for his bluff. When Lil John King decreed that he'd withhold the funding for Johns Hopkins and tried to bully B-Lo into sending kids from East and Lafayette to BOCES in Cheektowaga he proved yet again the disastrous results of political appointments that should have been made with the help of a job search. King's "vision" for lack of a better phrase, in the words of one insider "would have set Lafayette back years." King's knee jerk reaction to the uncooperative "class"  in Buffalo brings to mind your prototype hyper reactive rookie teacher who starts doling out ridiculous punishment assignments for minor offenses simply because he has no idea what he's doing, has zero rapport with his charges and deep down knows he isn't cut out for this so his best weapon is going to be coercion, threats and punishments. 

Well the Board voted tonight to stick with Johns Hopkins and any kids who want to take the cheese bus ride out to Chic-towaga to brush up on their cosmetology, auto body or welding skills will be free to do so. That vocational "piece" is courtesy of King's best thinking. In the reptilian cognition common to data nerds and unqualified appointees, King's logic appears to be "anything will be better than what they're doing." Way to step into the mix and get the lay of the land Commish. It's nearly as engaging and eye popping though possibly not as costly as the walking around  with a clipboard Judy Eliot performed at Lafayette before cashing her checks and parachuting back to Florida. 

Even BOCES agrees they are at a loss as to how they are supposed to jump into the rescue effort with East and Lafayette especially with less than a month to prepare a plan for a wholly unprecedented  and dirt dumb action. BOCES has no track record as a turn around entity and King knows damned well they don't.  It's as if BOCES is part of King's posse, his boys as it were, that he can call in for backup in a beef. Well says BOCES we're here but none of  us has a shit's clue as to what you think we're going to do to help you or these schools who don't need our help. 

The Board (except for Carl who wants to argue about it)  voted tonight to stick with the plan that's all ready in place, the plan JHU's own guy says is working well. He also says the faculty and staff at both schools have been great to work with and there is a definite energy of cooperation and progress in the air. Of course with this in place there's no way King can hand these schools over to his pals in the charter biz world. Poor Steve Polowitz will need his Florida housemate and retired News writer Donn Esmonde to write up another Profile in Courage if the Chameleons can't get their hooks into either school or Waterfront. The plans are in place, they are making progress, they have student, faculty, community and JHU buy-in. Get out of the way and stop interfering with the educational process commissioner King. It's not rocket science.