Subsidized Dell netbooks for all Huntsville City Schools 5th graders? In this fiscal climate? Yes, fellow Huntsville sheeples, we are all dumber than a 5th grader.
Didn’t Governor Bentley declare proration for the state of Alabama again in April 2011? Don’t we have to suffer the drama of faceless bureaucrats firing teachers year after year after year after year in political football? Should kids hawk garbage no one needs as a solution? Is the solution to ask taxpaying parents to write checks for supply shortages (golf clap, your local PTA raised $6,512 dollars this year) because of sob stories that the average teacher spends $500 of her own personal money every year? Maybe collecting boxtops will keep the hamsters busy enough not to pay attention to the hypocrisy?
Then riddle me this:
- why are Alabama taxpayers currently funding a $16M Taj Mahal to Mediocrity (THM) at Blossomwood School? (an elementary school of ~500 kids before the project started)
- why another $15M THM at Mill Creek School in Madison (2008)?
- why another THM at Williams Middle School in Huntsville?
- why another $15M THM to be built at Westlawn Middle School, approved just yesterday?
- (not to pick on these 4 schools, there are endless THMs sprinkled all over Madison County)
On Dec 5, 2011, Crystal Bonvillian (Twitter @cbonvillianHT) wrote a glowing review for the netbook program. Yet she makes no attempt to connect the fiscal dots to wasteful spending in her boxtops article (linked above) written 7 days later. Nor did she address wasteful spending in her Dec 15, 2011 article announcing the new Williams Middle School (also linked above).
Wake up, Huntsville. Your politicians aren’t serious about government spending, and neither is the press covering your education system.
antsy and uncle ham 
I love how non-tenured teachers will be sent pink slips first because obviously tenure equals better.
Yes, when you have tenure, you’re in like Flynn. Never again do you need to be bothered with fussy kids on the playground. You can just make up a new dog-ate-my-homework excuse every day for why you need to cancel recess that day. And the checks keep cashing, baby.
And the teachers-are-underpaid line? Nuh-nu-nu-nu-no, NOT if you’re talking about public school teachers. That’s one of the biggest wives tales going. Who has that kind of vacation at full salaries? But it’s a sacred cow you can’t question – “but it’s for the *kids*”, which translates roughly in sane-person speak to “watch your wallet”.