jim, this is from three years ago why would you bring it into current
discussions?
Joan Thom
Hawthorne
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Sunday, June 22, 2003 12:01
PM
Subject: [Mpls] Police
Story;Education;Coops
Anyone else read this?
"Police stop angers director of
Minneapolis'
Civil Rights Department
David Chanen, Star Tribune "
http://www.startribune.com/stories/467/46562.html
I
can't help wondering WHAT the police technique
is that caused this squad
car to follow a man and
a tiny child all the was to Cedar-Riverside
and
then roust him in full public view? I mean,
don't they do
license checks? Wouldnt they have
gotten his name? Wouldn't
they check and find
out he's head of Civil Rights? And is this
a
sign of some police grudge against the Civil
Rights Department?
I'd love to get some MPD
communications specialist to put into words
the
legitimate explanation for this. From where I
sit it makes MPD
look pretty foolish!
-----------------------------------
The following
comes from the Dept of Education of
the Bush administration:
"Charter
schools have greater freedom from
burdensome regulations in exchange for
being held
to high standards of accountability.
Consistent with the
president's entire education
plan, charter schools show that higher
standards,
parent and community involvement and greater
freedom can
result in higher achievement.
Charter schools are public schools
which are
largely free to innovate, and often provide more
effective
programs and choice to underserved
groups of students.
The result is
schools that are designed to meet
students' unique interests (e.g.,
vocational
training, arts) and special talents or needs.
Many of these
programs have clearly increased
academic achievement.
Parents
and teachers at charter schools develop
programs for their students. In
some, the
community becomes the classroom, using museums
and libraries
to enrich the offerings.
A recent comprehensive national study of
charter
schools conducted by the RAND Corporation
suggests that charter
schools can have a positive
impact on student achievement and increase
levels
of parental satisfaction.
Charter schools are an important
alternative in
districts where schools are having difficulty
improving
academic achievement.
Starting this fall, parents who have a child in
a
school that has been identified as needing
improvement will have the
opportunity to send
their child to a new school.
Under No Child
Left Behind, children who attend
schools identified as needing improvement
have
the opportunity to enroll in charter schools
located within their
district.
These districts will be required to use federal
funding
to provide meaningful choices as well as
to provide transportation to the
new schools
families choose."
So after reading all that PR, I'm
still
wondering: HAVE the charter schools with all that
"choice" all
that "freedom from burdensome
regulations" done ANYTHING to
improve
achievement?
By how much does Minneapolis' charter
school
effort lead the normal public schools in
achievement?
Surely the school board has an
answer to that
question.
Frederick: You say you stopped using coops when
your
income dropped. Well, then I have to assume
you don't buy stuff like
spices. Because Cub and
Rainbow are charging PREMIUM prices for
spices.
You can buy as little as you need at the coop, at
a lower price,
and it will be fresher. Some of
the coop's goods are priced higher,
but if you
want to cut down on the packaging in your trash,
it will be
far easier at the coop than elsewhere.
I don't buy everything at a
coop. I just don't
live by such rigid practices. But poverty isn't
a
good reason to totally shun the coops. You just
have to know
what is a good buy and what is not.
Minneapolis has an excellent set of
convenient
coops.
I gotta respond to Wizard on prostitution. It
is
VERY hard for me to believe a person cares about
prostitutes when
that person insists on using LAW
ENFORCEMENT to show the caring.
Let's choose
milder weapons, ones that don't victimize the
girls and
women again. The people who beg the
cops to come in and clear out the
traffic are
really more worried about their streets than the
women in
prostitution. Hey, if you want to
target pimps, fine. THEY, at
least, can never be
called "victims". But if you want to get the
WOMEN
off the streets, use economic incentives,
trained social workers, something
OTHER than
police. Can't you see that even the POLICE don't
see
themselves as the agency of choice? If you
twist their arms enough,
they'll do it for a
while, but ultimately they find "other
priorities"
because they understand, even if you
don't, the utter futility of
it.
Police against prostitution is just a lazy way
for society NOT
to remedy its own defects.
Remember the story where the villagers
were
stoning a woman and Jesus said "Which of you is
without sin".
I think that says it for all time.
People who badger prostitutes love the
fake
feeling of superiority. But they AREN'T superior.
They just aren't
in the scapegoat class.
Prostitutes are there as a symbol of failure of
a
society. Like so many of these other problems we
discuss. Stop
weeding your neighbors yard.
=====
Jim
Mork
Cooper-Longfellow-Minneapolis (L'Etoile du
Nord)
---------------
"Fascism should more properly be called
corporatism,
since it is the merger of state and corporate power."
�
Benito Mussolini ...
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