The NYSED Clown Car Sputters into B-Lo, Well, Sort of...

Sam Radford III Welcomes John King to Buffalo. Seriously, They are Gonna Talk. 

Well the La la la I Can't Hear You ! Tour is coming to Buffalo. Kind of. Old Bob and Lil John have insulated themselves with layer upon layer of screening process to keep the rubes and rabble of B-Lo at arm's length. Surely King is still smarting over the way Phil Rumore and BTF members got up and put on their coats to leave as he was being feted and introduced by Dick Ianuzzi here in the City of Good Neighbors a while back. Guys like Lil John don't think anything about making your kid hurl or cry or skip school with their Torquemadan testing regimen. That's your problem and your kid's not his. But let some union president organize an Eff You styled walkout as King is about to unload a bushel of his Ed Reform shite on the assembled pedagogues and that stinger sinks deep into his delicate little psyche. Guys like this remember slights, cling to grudges and true politicians that they are they live to avenge their injuries. We all know a few of them. 

Old Bob was deeply offended by the lapses of decorum he was exposed to in Jamestown.  Another sensitive soul that codger. Well if he thought that was a bumpy ride he apparently knew what lay ahead for him here on the shores of Lake Erie. So they've bustled their whole clown car and freak show into the WNED studio -- so it can be broadcast to a larger audience they claim. Yeah , there's that... Each local district Superintendent gets to select 3 attendees and if the Super comes it counts as one of them. There are strict deadlines and all questions must be submitted online previous to the forum. Are you starting to get the picture here folks? I am not sure if Bill Gates will be providing security from the piece of G4S he's recently acquired or if Blackwater will be covering the close air support with its own black helicopters. 

Common Core Forum Procedures Will Be Strictly Followed at All Times

And if the stifling conditions set down for participation and attendance aren't enough of a deterrent the announcement that Sam Radford of the Buffalo Parents so called Group has some sort of facilitator's role renders the thing almost too ridiculous to countenance. Radford, if you have been spared the misfortune of catching his act, is virulently anti teacher, anti union, and stridently pro-Sam Radford. Over the years he has done things like demanding coaches at City Schools hand over their football coaching jobs to his homies from the Neighborhood some of whom have played a semester of JuCo football somewhere and see no reason why they should need to be certified or connected to the schools in a professional capacity to get paid. They should simply take the jobs and the stipend because Sam says so. He also complained that the district at one point stopped paying for babysitters and pizzas at his DPCC meetings. It was remedied quickly. He's organized a skip school day and has demanded the union make unilateral concessions of their health care benefits on his say so. The fact that other groups requesting audiences with King and Regents members have been unceremoniously blown off makes me wonder if there isn't some racial preference being played to Radford whose Angry Black Man schtick is second to none. If you can find a photo of him not scowling it's probably worth a Honus Wagner rookie card. 

While parents across the state have come hard at King and Bennett and the rest for their disconnected and apathetic responses to the destruction Common Core is wreaking, I have to wonder how exactly Sammy the Moocher is going to play this. His common bond with King has always been an obvious antipathy for teachers and their unions. Sam also objects to the number of white suburban teachers his 11 kids have to come in contact with as Buffalo Public School students. Hard to see how he can criticize Common Core but if he cheerleads it, this will simply paint him further into the corner many say he all ready operates from that only includes but a tiny segment of the many parents of Buffalo School kids. It's also a little entertaining that they've gone into turtle mode here, the King and Bennett show that is. It's only going to lead to more creative and likely more spectacular forms of protest that neither of them will be expecting. If they'd simply sucked it up and showed themselves to the masses the worst they could have expected would be more of what they've all ready seen -- catcalls, booing, heckling etc. But now that they've changed the stakes they've really opened a Pandora's Box to creative protest. I think this is going to be some fun.