Does Pratt-Dannals have pictures of editorial staff with live boys or naked girls (rough draft)

Often when I read the Times unions editorials I wonder if Superintendent Pratt-Dannals has pictures of the Editorial staff with a live boy or a dead girl and it was this case again when I read their recent editorial about how good things (about the district) shouldn’t be buried. In case you didn’t know it that’s an old political joke explaining the two things that politicians are scared of except in the case of the school district nobody should be laughing.

Since I am sure the list of positives in the article comes from the districts very own propaganda sheet, they sounded similar what I imagine a fox charged to guarding the hen house would tell the farmer. That is you should take them with a grain of salt or perhaps a whole saltshaker.

It would be hard to stereotype the whole school district based on a few struggling schools the editor write. Excuse me by a few struggling schools does the Times Union mean almost half of our neighborhood high schools. I have a little head ache said the man shot in the head with a bazooka. Look his arms and legs are just fine. Six of our 14 high schools are considered the worse in the state and a few others aren’t that far away.

Then the TU lauds our graduation requirements as some as the hardest in the state. They speculate this better prepares them for college. Well sir we can graduate everybody if we wanted to it’s easy just give them credit whether they deserve it or not and as for being better prepared Florida State College says over seventy percent of our grads have to take remedial classes. Instead of pumping up graduation requirements, (and why does every kid need algebra II?) a better plan would have been to make sure the classes were rigorous.

Has student truancy really improved or is it how we report it has changed and as for suspensions being way down, well if kids are assigned to an ATOSS they don’t count against suspensions and discipline certainly hasn’t been improved because of it. This is another smoke and mirror program designed to make the school district appear to be doing better than it actually is.

They say we are a B district, which like the superintendent does the Times Union takes every opportunity to point out. The reason we are a B district because so many of our elementary and middle schools receive high grades. Well friends how accurate can those grades be when so many of our high schools are failing? The truth is our elementary and middle schools aren’t doing as well as the state would indicate, our high schools not as bad and the whole district is nowhere it could be if we received proper leadership.

Less than a year ago the editorial staff said we had the right superintendent and school board to lead us into the future. Since then we have had the Duval Partners fiasco and we have given away six of our high schools to an education management organizations. Did I miss something is that the direction we should be heading in?

So Times Union editors which is it, live boys or dead girls, please let us know as both boys and girls are having their futures retarded by an administration which is more interested in appearing good than doing right.