Sustained Public Outcry Continues to Irk School Board Members

The problem with the public writes Peter deVries is that there's too damned much of it. 

In the wake of yet another parent, teacher and student dominated Board of Ed meeting at Performing Arts the other night it's safe to say Accountability Jim Sampson, Leisure Class Larry Quinn and Carl the Churl Paladino would agree. To say that the wealthy old man's Caucasian Caucus took another ass whipping at the hands of this burdensome public would be an exercise in understatement akin to calling an alligator a lizard. It appears to me that in spite of whatever "mandate" Carl and Co. think they have -- more on that in a minute -- they are facing the reality of a public growing more impatient and more intolerant of representative government figureheads who refuse to represent them. 
Robert Reich has posted a piece this week offically declaring the arrival of a powerful third party in America which he calls The Billionaire Party. If you asked any of the speakers at this gathering or any of the half frozen souls protesting outside about this party I expect the response would be a blank stare followed by "Yeah, no shit."

Hard to say exactly what my favorite part of the floor show was. Hutch Tech teacher Kevin Gibson's unmasking of the Tapestry Charter frauds  with their bogus claims of being a "high performing charter school" comes in high on the list. Parent/Teachers Eve and Mel landed solid blows for the cause as well and even Phil Rumore and Crystal Barton came out swinging on behalf of the teachers'and administrators' unions. As I was unable to attend, my perspective is limited to the greatest hits on YouTube teacher Keith Hughes has posted. 

So it shouldn't come as too much of a surprise if I award best in show to the Bennett High student who took exception to the Board Majority folk busying themselves on their smartphones instead of listening to the damned public which they'd all had just about enough of by the time this young man got to speak.  Young Mr. McClain shares that he has been to some board meetings and Quinn's cell phone preoccupation is standard procedure not some emergency that he was handling by text. Even high school kids can spot a guy whose body language and actions are screaming that he'd rather be somewhere else. Not surprisingly, our amusing friends from the Ed Reform Class don't care much for this whole "democratic process" concept of public input at the meetings.  Leisure Class Larry Quinn attempted to do away with the public comments part of the meetings a while back. His sensibilities were offended when kids from Lafayette shared harrowing events from their life stories and reduced everyone in the room not playing with a smartphone to tears. Quinn, in his repressed patrician worldview found such an overt show of emotion to be bad form and later accused teachers of writing the kids' scripts for them and essentially staging the whole event as a disingenuous and underhanded stunt. Beyond that, Leisure Class Larry called Lafayette teacher Pat Foster "that idiot" and in visiting the school on a seperate occassion said he "didn't want to talk to those clowns anyway" the clowns in question being Lafayette teachers who face more obstacles before homeroom than Quinn has in all the equestrian events he's ever entered.  I believe LCL actually referred to the public input of board meetings as "a waste of time."  Does the callousness and arrogance of this board member make anyone believe he has the best interests of Buffalo students in his heart? Does he think calling Sam Radford from his elevated table at Bacchus on election night to gloat about his election to the board garners him any kind of cred in the community whose schools he seeks to privatize? Is he fooling anybody at this point about his motives and his contempt for Buffalo teachers and by proxy, their students? 

Board President Sampson would second Quinn's elitist notion to cancel public input especially if anyone has the cheek to question him about the way he abused the taxpayers for millions as CEO of Gateway. His response to that line of questioning when it came up a few weeks back was to have the guy cut off and bundled out the door by security. Again, whose interests is Sampson representing when he abuses his power as Board President in dodging questions from the public about his abuse of powers when he was CEO of gateway? 

Not to be outflanked by his pale brethren,  Carl the Churl Paladino has trained the full firepower of his pen on Dr. Gary Orfield, widely respected authority on Civil Rights among other than things who's been asked to take a look at some of the mess we are currently handling educationally here in B-Lo.  Below is a representative snippet of Carl's wrath, or as too many people in Buffalo like to say with a heavy sigh and a shrug "Carl being Carl:"

... Our mandate from the citizens of Buffalo is to face down and destroy the obstacles to providing an education for 34,000 kids. 

Your effort to control our mission is exactly the type of impediment that has historically frustrated any effort to change the status quo. The nonsense of allowing you or the Justice Department to interfere and slow our process of change is the reason good people with common sense refuse to get involved and the reason that our urban systems are operated by idiot less than competent leadership intent on self empowerment with no regard for breaking down the cycle of poverty in our urban centers. 

Stay out of our way Dr."(close quote).

Stay out of our way, Dr. he says. Just a thought but when Carl Paladino talks about "our way" whose way do you think he's talking about? Do you think he means the way of the parents and students and teachers who've been raising holy hell at Board meetings and elsewhere? Do you think he's talking about Buffalo Public School students when he says "our way?" Or do you think when he says "stay out of our way" he means don't get in the way of the three wealthy white men all of whom have financial connections to the charter school industry? Yeah, that's what I am thinking too. I think Carl means Carl's and Larry's and Jim's way. Period. One would almost forget there are 4 other board members whose way Carl doesn't share. Funny how he seems to forget them quite a lot of the time. 

There is some pesky pissant rule about one board member not being allowed to speak on behalf of the Board unless that member has the consent of all the members but I doubt that matters. Carl being Carl means he doesn't have to do what the rest of the world does, why the hell should he if he's Carl and they aren't? We've made something of a cottage industry here in Buffalo of enabling Carl's outrageous behavior. Read blogger Alan Bedenko's first hand experience of Carl being Carl at Alan's expense in a very public forum. 

So the question remains to be answered. Whose way will prevail when the members do belly up to cast their ballots? Will the will of the public be served by the wealthy white men with other ideas or will they provide us with yet another example of what we already know about the so called Golden Rule? Are the ones with the Gold about to make the rules yet again? To borrow a phrase from U.S. Attorney Preet  Bharara "stay tuned..."