Joseph Floyd Throwing Hat Back in the Superior Court Judge Ring

I guess they threw out some of the charges against him so Joseph Floyd has decided to reenter the race for Guilford County Superior Court Judge.

I myself think it’s a little late to be reentering the race given that early voting started a week and a half ago now and there is only one more week to go before the election.  Since he pulled out of the race so late in the game though, there wasn’t time to remove his name from the ballot so it’s been there all along for anyone who wanted to vote for him.  We’ll see how this works out for him, eh?

2010 Elections Page Updates

I’ve made some updates to the 2010 elections page (and hope to be able to add some more soon).  The updates include some information about the soil and water conservation district candidates which is definitely lacking.  Yes! Weekly did little profiles of all of them and two of them responded to the UNC-TV questionnaire so links to those are on there to help you make up your mind.  It’s definitely a tricky one.  I am assuming that they are all using their real names this time around.  Additionally, I’ve added  a link to the Carolina Journal Online Voting Guide to the 13-candidate NC Court of Appeals race which opened up in August with the appointment of Jim Wynn to the U.S. Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals.  NC is going to be the first state to use an instant runoff in a general election so we’ll see how that goes.

Absentee ballots went out a week or so ago and early voting starts this Thursday so there’s no time like the present to get informed!

Just say No to the Sales Tax Increase

I guess there is a campaign being launched today telling people why they should vote for a new quarter of a percent increase in the Guilford County sales tax.  The argument is that voters have approved so many bonds that we must raise taxes to pay for them.  Of course not all of the approved bonds have even been issued yet so there’s certainly no need to pay for any of those.  Additionally, we’re supposed to believe the commissioners when they promise by paying more sales tax, we’ll get a lower increase in property taxes.  That’s not that easy to measure and property tax rates are set annually but this sales tax increase would never expire without another vote.

Why doesn’t the county try cutting to the bone before asking for more money from county residents?  Sure, there’s been no property tax increase in the past couple of years but I haven’t seen a lot of evidence of cutting from the county either (unless you count stiffing the city of Greensboro for the library).

Let’s see if they can work on spending within the money they currently have instead of demanding a “raise” from taxpayers.  And if the economy was good, I’d be saying the same thing.

Why are “Legal Guardians” Allowed to Help with Absentee Ballots??

This is a serious issue. It’s one thing to need help filling out your absentee ballot form because your hands don’t work well enough for you to write or your vision is so poor that you can’t see the form.

Yet it boggles the mind that an adult who the state feels is in need of a legal guardian is at the same time deemed qualified to vote. Aren’t there any standards?  (I found this out while getting the form to request my absentee ballot, btw.  Get yours if you need one!)  I would imagine your “legal guardian” could go with you to the polls too?

Eliminating the “Achievement Gap”

George Will’s got the answer in his column.  Last paragraph at the bottom:

“He [Paul E. Barton] has estimated that about 90 percent of the difference in schools’ proficiencies can be explained by five factors: the number of days students are absent from school, the number of hours students spend watching television, the number of pages read for homework, the quantity and quality of reading material in the students’ homes — and, much the most important, the presence of two parents in the home. Public policies can have little purchase on these five, and least of all on the fifth.”

Something that should be obvious to someone with the most basic observation skills but, in any case, sadly, GCS can implement all the policies it wants to try and close the achievement gap but the real way to do that begins at home. Or they could just push all of the high achievers out of the public school system and then the gap would close itself!

What’s on Your Kid’s School Supply List?

The N&R has a whiny blog post asking if GCS will hire any new teachers with the latest round of porkulus funds.  Which doesn’t make sense because I am pretty sure they have managed to stave off any cuts to teachers anyway.  So is the N&R suggesting that we need more teachers than we  currently have?  In any case, right after reading that, I stumbled upon this post at Big Government pointing out that while Congress has passed a $10 billion bail out to the teachers unions (and union-like organizations, as the case may be), parents all across the country and being asked to send their kids back to school with toilet paper, cleaning supplies and other things that have absolutely nothing to do with the classroom.

At my local school, for instance, each child is asked to bring in an entire package of assorted color sharpies (what kind of idiot gives permanent markers to the kids? must be for the teachers!), dry erase markers, paper towels, wipes, tissues, two pairs of scissors (perhaps the expectation is that not all children are going to bring in the suggested supplies?) and on and on.  Aren’t dry erase markers, sharpies and paper towels (at a minimum) supposed to be provided by the school?  If the Feds are going to steal yet more money from taxpayers, can’t they at least cause it to be spent on something that will actually help our bottom line?

Joe Floyd Withdraws Bid for Superior Court Judge

Too much going on in his personal life apparently.  Still haven’t seen any more details about the strange arrest in July but the N&R is reporting that “details have emerged of his messy divorce battle”.  Not a good time to be running for office I’m sure.

Guilford County Schools — Institutionalizing Racism and Promoting a Color-Focused Society

**Apparently the school board may vote on this issue as soon as Thursday, June 10th —contact your school board representative and let him/her know how you feel about the dumbing down of standards to enter the gifted program!**

With the new “GCS Local Academically or Intellectually Gifted (AIG) plan,” Guilford County Schools is heading further and further away from Martin Luther King’s dream of a society where people are not “judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character”.  That’s because the school system, in its infinite wisdom has decided that entry to advanced classes should not be based on a child’s ability to do advanced work  (unless that child is white, “middle-class” and therefore inherently somehow more “privileged” than other children) but rather on the income level of his parents (as stated on the notoriously easily fakeable application for free lunches), the color of his skin, if he is “exceptional” (what I think used to be called learning disabled??) or if he is part of a group that is somehow or other “underrepresented” in the AIG program.

There are so many problems with this whole idea that it is almost impossible to know where to start critiquing it.

But, first, and, perhaps most importantly, what message is this sending the children who currently are ineligible for the AIG (now Advanced Learner) program but suddenly become so?  Doesn’t anyone think those children will understand that the bar was lowered for them?  The message that sends is that those children aren’t good enough to make it on their own and need lower standards to compete with the “advantaged” white, middle-class children.  I’m about to throw up.  That sets these kids up for a lifetime of questioning their own abilities which certainly isn’t going to lead to the self-motivation necessary to do well in school and later in life.  Also, they will constantly be expecting that standards will be lowered for them.  Wonderful.

Secondly, if the idea behind “diversity” in the classroom is to make people more comfortable with those of different backgrounds than themselves, well, a lowering of standards will cause that to backfire completely.  How do you expect white children to gain an appreciation and respect for minority and otherwise “disadvantaged” children when they feel know they are getting special dispensation and, quite possibly, taking resources away from other, more qualified children.  This breeds resentment, not respect and admiration.

Third, it has been shown that people who are placed in classes for which they are not prepared do worse than if they were placed appropriately.*

Guilford County Schools would like you to send comments to this email address: gcscomments@gcsnc.com or you can just contact your school board representative directly.

Does anyone remember the phrase “the soft bigotry of low expectations”?  That’s what you’ve got right here.

*(A Systemic Analysis of Affirmative Action in American Law Schools, Richard Sander, 2004, although I know there are others)

A Book Everyone Should Read

It’s called He Talk Like a White Boy by Joseph C. Phillips and I don’t think I can say enough good things about it.  In it, he discusses some of the ways in which the black community is setting it’s children up for failure.  Why would speaking like an educated person make him sound white?  Can’t black people be educated and smart?  Why are so many black parents more proud of their children’s achievements on the ball field than in the classroom?  Aren’t the odds of success in life better if you take the more academic route?  But these are questions that I, as a white woman, am prohibited from asking.

Here in Guilford County, we seem to spend an inordinate amount of time discussing race.  Does it really matter what color someone is?  Who cares what color the contractor is who builds our buildings if the work is done properly?  The school board has an entire committee devoted to studying the “Achievement Gap”.  Does anyone else think that implies that we think black children (boys especially) can’t achieve?  Why don’t we just start assuming that all children in school can achieve and stop looking for justifications for why they aren’t?

Anyway, read the book because Mr. Phillips expresses it in a way that I certainly can’t.  It’s laugh-out-loud funny but sad at the same time too and it should really get you thinking.

2010 Elections Info Update

I have finally managed to get up all the information about the candidates for this year’s election.  Well, everyone’s name is up there now at least and as much information as I could reasonably find about them.  Please see the 2010 Elections page and do check back — I’ll continue to post updates as I see them and of course after the primary May 4.