My Slug Kid Will Be Sitting Next to Your Honors Student, Thanks Commissioner King

Thanks to NYSED's rookie Commissioner , who never tires of finding ways to make Buffalo Public Schools worse, the district must now transfer over 2,000 students out of so called "failing schools." An  uninitiated reader  might jump to the assumption that these students demanding transfers would have to be what some might term "students in good standing." Actually, this assumption would follow the "ed reformers' trite narrative that "failing schools" are teeming with students in good standing who "languish" refugee-like in said halls of failure. Ahhh but like so much of the ed reformers' fiction this one shrivels, gasps and disappears into a p.r. popcorn fart when litmus tested in real time.

In reality there is no limbo under which these transferees must pass. The harsh reality that some of them may have 45 absences, a dozen or so suspensions and a string of 50's in their core subjects and specials alike (50 being the lowest grade allowed to be given for fear of damaging delicate psyches with their earned grades) they are just as deserving of a seat at #72, #81 or City Honors as all the kids currently sitting there. The quaint notion that these schools function as well as they do because parents work with kids and teachers to get the job done is generally not embraced by Sam Radford in his role as the face of the DPCC, a group that represents a selective number of parents who follow Radford's Hamelinesque flute music, taking patronage jobs from him as "parent facilitators" where they hang out in school buildings gossipping and doing puzzles in the Buffalo News for a tidy stipend.

Now Sam I am is up in arms that only 20% of the Sabra and Shatilla-like languishers will be given their  "school in good standing" by the man. He is fresh from another outrage, namely that those same pesky Master Degreed teachers who refused to hand over their coaching jobs to his homies who played some JuCo ball 10 years ago are now ending their cooperation with another scam that's added food service worker and custodian to their pedagogical duties. The cheek of those uppity edumofos, refusing to pour milk and open cereal boxes for "the children" most of whom are likely receiving food stamps at home. Teachers have grown weary of the district's promises and finally said enough is enough, we are hired to teach not dole out corn flakes, mop up 2% and hit the pause button when roaches and mousies steal the show during instruction time. And for this Sammy the Moocher has nothing but disdain and contempt for the people who teach his kids. 

It has been wondered aloud in several places if and when the paid "parent facilitators" are going to step into the breech but the smart money isn't holding its breath on this one. Imagine the gossip they'd miss serving breakfast and cleaning up their own kids' spills and who in that room is going to know a 5 letter word for a river in Germany?