I agree with Denys to a point. especially about the extreme-left liberal
NEA; however, being related to several teachers and having many as
friends, I would disagree with the comment regarding teachers' unions by
qualifying it a bit The MEMBERS of teachers' union do not always agree
with the union.  Most, if not all, of the teachers I know are in the
union for protection from being sued in this litigation-happy culture of
ours. Most would prefer not to pay union dues to unions that do not
really represent their interests anyway. Here in the Kansas City area,
I've watched the teachers' union give bargain away benefits and salary
increases that the teachers really deserve to have to the Kansas City,
Missouri, School District, a school district that lost it's
accreditation last year; a school district whose administrators do not
support the teachers under their jurisdiction, who do not show respect
to the teachers and then wonder why the children show no respect and why
the teachers cannot control some of the kids. A district that is top
heavy with high-paid administrators and short on qualified teachers.
There were several HUNDRED vacancies at the beginning of the school
year, which continues today, and the students still did not have
textbooks for some classes even into December 2000. Why would
responsible parents want to send their children to such a school
district? This is a very large, public school district, not a small or
even suburban district. If the public school expect to attract new
students, deter white flight, and prevent loss to private schools,
whatever the type, they need to do some serious evaluation of what they
are doing now and how they can make things better.  The teachers I know
would welcome accountability, but I think that needs to start at the
top. There are too many Chiefs (and I don't mean the NFL Football team
located here!) and not enough Indians in the urban, inner-city district
here.

Respectfully,

Cynthia Bridges-Fowler
MIS Operations Analyst
IMC Salt, Inc., a division of IMC Global
Overland Park, KS
[log in to unmask]
http://www.imcsalt.com

>>> Denys Beauchemin <[log in to unmask]> 01/22/01 02:55PM >>>
And I respectfully but totally disagree with my very good friend Wirt.

He says: If you look at where all of the Silicon Valleys are, they're
smack in
the middle of the most liberal, most highly educated populations in the
United
States.

RTP in North Carolina is definitely not an area that I would call the
"most
liberal", though it has a very highly educated population.  It also
ranks as
one of the top "Silicon Valleys".

Austin, TX also has a very important "Silicon Valley", and it is
definitely not
in a liberal area.  Atlanta is also another such area, and that is
definitely
not a "very liberal" area of the country.

The remainder of the post might have originated from the "Liberal's
Handbook."
 In response, suffice it to say that the main problem with public
education in
this country has to do with the extreme-left liberal NEA, the teachers
union,
which refuses to teach, they just want money and power with no
accountability.

Finally, we supposedly have had 8 years of economic growth with a
supposed
"education president and vice-president."  Nothing at all has been done
in this
respect.

It was definitely time for a change and the change is taking place.

Kind regards,

Denys. . .

Denys Beauchemin
HICOMP
(800) 323-8863  (281) 288-7438         Fax: (281) 355-6879
denys at hicomp.com                             www.hicomp.com


-----Original Message-----
From:   Wirt Atmar [SMTP:[log in to unmask]]
Sent:   Monday, January 22, 2001 1:17 PM
To:     [log in to unmask]
Subject:        Re: OT: rotating blackouts ordered for Northern
California

Glenn asks:

> Hey - how about the other side of Denver?  Kansas would more than
welcome
>  any expansion.

[snip]

>  We take our politics, like most of our religious life, on a
conservative
>  scale.  The state has been overwhelmingly Republican since being
founded in
>  the mid-1830's.  Remember Carry Nation?  Well, she was a
native-Kansas...

Unfortunately, it's these last four sentences that pretty much
guarantee that
Kansas won't be a future center of high-tech innovation, at least not
in the
near-term.

If you look at where all of the Silicon Valleys are, they're smack in
the
middle of the most liberal, most highly educated populations in the
United
States.

Today's NY Times ran an article today concerning the comments of a
great number
of the CEO's of these technology-based corporations regarding Bush's
new
education push. They're all for it, but not in the way that people in
Kansas
are.

In Kansas and Tennessee and Mississippi, Bush's education agenda is
being
primarily interpreted as the idea of school vouchers, which is
political code
for the notion that the US government (meaning all of us) should pay
for their
children to attend religious academies so that they will not be exposed
to the
corrupting ideas of modern science.

But in California, the idea's radically different. These CEO's very
much want
the US government to massively invest in public education, raise
standards, and
raise accountability, in a manner that recapitulates the national
defense push
for educational reform that followed directly after the launch of
Sputnik in
1957. Without these impositions of strict new guidelines, they see the
US
falling ever further behind, unable to find a sufficient labor pool of
well
educated, innovative thinkers without greatly increasing our dependence
on
foreign workers.

Bush lays out his education agenda today. He's going to have a problem
on his
hands, trying to satisfy both groups: the people who voted for him and
the
people who paid for his election.

Wirt Atmar