Heywood J. | Hammer Of The Blogs
1 May 2013
You can make fun of Dubya's ridonkulous Liberry and its self-serving
exhibits, but what's Obama's library going to look like at the rate he's
going, a cartoon of Barry O getting pushed around by Mitch McConnell
and Jamie Dimon for eight goddamned years?
I know his acolytes console themselves that his feckless
11th-dimensional chess mastery is somehow infinity better than whatever
shit sandwich Romney and Ryan were cooking up. But only as a mild,
eroding bulwark against the eternal predations of the oligarchy, not
that Obama has done thing one about them or even slowed them down. In
the meantime, every bloody thing you despised about the Bushies --
imprisonment without trial, drone war without end, the ongoing and
deliberate ruination of the financial system, the rich getting richer
and the poor no longer even getting by -- continue unabated.
There's not much more time for Obama to decide and act on whether he
wants to end on eight years of excuses and ineffectual moderation, or to
take a risk and do something, anything, pick a direction and grab a
shovel. I have zero faith that he'll do the right thing, and it no
longer matters whether he wants to but can't, or if he simply was never
the transformative figure he was pretending to be. Just another
politician, forever chasing the next election and too timid to do
anything that might actually impact someone from the non-donor class.
READ IT ALL:
Thursday, May 02, 2013
Principal fires security guards to hire art teachers — and transforms elementary school
Orchard Gardens, a school in Roxbury, Mass., had been plagued by bad test scores and violence – but one principal's idea to fire the security guards and hire art teachers is helping turn it around.
By Katy Tur, Correspondent, NBC News
ROXBURY, Mass. — The community of Roxbury had high hopes for its newest public school back in 2003. There were art studios, a dance room, even a theater equipped with cushy seating. A pilot school for grades K-8, Orchard Gardens was built on grand expectations.
But the dream of a school founded in the arts, a school that would give back to the community as it bettered its children, never materialized. Instead, the dance studio was used for storage and the orchestra's instruments were locked up and barely touched.
The school was plagued by violence and disorder from the start, and by 2010 it was rank in the bottom five of all public schools in the state of Massachusetts. That was when Andrew Bott — the sixth principal in seven years — showed up, and everything started to change.
“We got rid of the security guards,” said Bott, who reinvested all the money used for security infrastructure into the arts.
LINK:
By Katy Tur, Correspondent, NBC News
ROXBURY, Mass. — The community of Roxbury had high hopes for its newest public school back in 2003. There were art studios, a dance room, even a theater equipped with cushy seating. A pilot school for grades K-8, Orchard Gardens was built on grand expectations.
But the dream of a school founded in the arts, a school that would give back to the community as it bettered its children, never materialized. Instead, the dance studio was used for storage and the orchestra's instruments were locked up and barely touched.
The school was plagued by violence and disorder from the start, and by 2010 it was rank in the bottom five of all public schools in the state of Massachusetts. That was when Andrew Bott — the sixth principal in seven years — showed up, and everything started to change.
“We got rid of the security guards,” said Bott, who reinvested all the money used for security infrastructure into the arts.
LINK:
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