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10/21/2004 |
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Empirical Evidence of Libertarian Effect Again in last night's PTA forum Mike Barber pointed out that our District 7 race for the board of commissioners has remained a gentlemanly affair free of mudslinging. And, he is accurate. In a thought provoking juxtaposition, Mike's opening statement leading off the forum was immediately followed by Bill Davidson having to read a scripted response to charges against him of racism, anti-Semitism and sexism and an apology for allowing his name to be associated with an ad attacking his opponent for being a ditzy cheerleader for and Stepford Wife robot of the Superintendent of schools. You would think that with party control of the Board of Commissioners hanging in the balance, district 7 being near equally divided between registered Democrats and Republicans, and a testy primary campaign behind the Republican candidate in the race, we should be seeing some desperate charges and body slams by now. What is up? Certainly campaign pledges to bring a higher level of professionalism and grace to the Board of Commissioners have to be taken into account. I however would like to suggest the following as the major reason: "The Libertarian Effect." The calm professionalism and thoughtful debate you are seeing in this race is a foreshadowing of what the Board of Commissioners will move towards if a credible third party candidate is sitting on it. How can the other two candidates in my race go after each other in attack dog fashion when they risk an above the fray response from the outsider candidate who will get even-handed coverage in the major news daily? I believe, this same effect would carry over to the board as a whole. I stand by my quote in the N&R Tuesday that, "I would be calming influence on the board." This reminds me of the "Truel" scenario in gaming theory. Everyone is used to a duel. Seeing things as a choice between one or the other. In a duel we can look at the abilities of each opponent and on percentages pick the victor with relative ease. Throw in a third player though and their is a vastly new dynamic to be dealt with. Playing percentages, the guy with the best shot has to fire first at the guy with the second best shot and likewise the guy with the second best shot should aim first at the most skilled opponent. But, then there is the third guy. Can the guy with the best shot risk ignoring him? If he does, there is a certain percent of the time the 3rd guy is bound to win even though he is the weakest player. When you work the Truel scenario through your head a few times, you get to see how much more exciting it is than the duels (often only contrived at best) that the Demopublican party offers for voters. 
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ISO and the Guilford County School System We have a school board that says it does not have enough money for even paper and pencils but it did somehow find the money (and let me tell you a lot of time) to get itself certified to the international ISO 9001 standard. Anybody in business who has gone through this ISO process knows too well that it is a massive resource consumer. Unquestionably, 80% of it represents good business and management practices you should be doing anyway. It's the other 20% which is mostly about adopting "the approved way" and having 3rd party oversight of your operation that is the killer. In light of the time and money involved, I would like to get a response from GSC management on why in light of our strained budgets they thought it was necessary to become one of the first school systems in the country and the first in North Carolina to adopt this industrial based mangement systme that is yet to be fully de-bugged for use by government service providers. Also, as I am sure any one who has experienced a first time ISO registration audit will tell you, there was undoubtably little management and planning time available to those in the Transportation department as they did what it took to win their "certificate of conformance" on May 12th of this year. My suppositon is that had they not been working on ISO certification, they might have actually been allowed to do something useful like properly plan out the bus hub program that launched as a disaster...in spite of the ISO management system being put in place and so recently having pasted its inagural audit. If the arguement is made that the ISO process has produced a better managed system, then, as a customer, I would like to file a claim against the certification stating that the GCS are in major default of their conformance status and that their 3rd party auditor/registrar ABS Quality Evaluations, Inc needs to investigate. 8:38:40 AM
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Irving Park PTA - District 7 Forum Thanks to a tip-off from Bill Davidson, while plugging for votes outside the Bur-Mil polling station last Saturday, I did manage a gracious late invitation to last night's candidates' forum at Irving Park Elementary. Nothing much new from my opponents that wasn't covered in Monday's 90 minute 3-man forum at Temple Emanuel. I did get an education though from our 4 school board candidates. Violence and discipline were high on the lists of concerns for parents. They've been partners in building Irving Park Elementary back into a school they can be satisfied with, but kids do get older and the trouble at Aycock over the horizon has them definitely worried. Meeting Dot Kearns for the first time, here is her comment that struck me the most (paraphrasing): "We have all these mandates and now we have more with No Child Left Behind...it's not just a school problem. Violence is part of our society. These kids are coming to school not prepared and are already in trouble. They play all these 'technological' games with violence." That, along with Mrs. Kearns other comments gave me the first impression that this is not a person who we can expect to champion any real change in the system. While she alluded to the problem of mandated action, it struck me that she is actually quite comfortable being an agent of implementing other people's mandates rather than being a local agent of change for any home grown resistance to what is coming out of Washington and Raleigh. She is after all a member of the party that thinks the No Child Left Behind Act, which she pretends to decry, "Doesn't go far enough." I certainly don't approve of the Stepford Wives ad that SOS ran in the Rhino, but I must admit that reflecting the morning after on the other comments made by Dot Kearns and Kris Cooke their responses where so similar and generally non-descript, that I am having trouble keeping straight who said what. (My son Alex was taping so I guess I can go back later to the video evidence...If you want a private showing let me know.) I think it was Kris Cooke who pointed out that one of the stresses in the system is the more than 10,000 children in Guilford County schools who are designated as having learning disabilities. That's out of 67,000 students. That strikes me as an awfully high percentage. I imagine there are at least two good explanations for this: One, more learning disabled students mean more federal money. And two, designating the students as the disabled ones in the learning process shifts the blame for poor outcomes away from administrators. Jim Kirkpatrick was much more real for me. He was extremely well spoken and I think he convinced the audience of 50-60 that along with his former experience in local government he has a genuine grandfatherly regard for wanting to "elevate the educations" of children. He did reference his work at church in helping his wife manage something like 250 pre-schoolers on Sunday mornings and the appreciation it gave him for the difficulty of the task at hand. That reminded me that Jim is an active member of the rapidly growing evangelical Westover Church that is trying to reach out and be a larger presence in the community. Can't say for sure, but I suspect that the Mann/Dewey/Humanist clique that is comfortable with Dot Kearns on the school board, is likely suspicious that a Kirkpatrick victory means that Guilford County will suddenly go soft on something as critical as keeping the 10 commandments out of the schools...God forbid that part of the solution to violence in the schools might be to let teachers mention to kids that they shouldn't lie, cheat and steal. (BTW: Here's my solution to that issue. Bring the 10 commandments back, one at a time, starting from the bottom and working the way up until parents complain. Until you get the full set I don't think you are in violation of Federal law.) Bill Davidson got off to a rough start then got better during the question period. In his two minute opening statement (which drew a salty rebuttle from Kris Cooke in hers) he read from a script (strange for a teacher I thought) disavowing any approval or support of the Stepford Wives ad which endorsed him. He also quickly addressed the charges of racism, anti-Semitism, sexism and firing from his teaching position that have been leveled against him. That was quite a mouthful to cover in two minutes and perhaps why it needed a script. He pinged off his responses; Being against the School "Choice" Plan does not equate to racism. Having a Christian prayer group with students after school does not equate to anti-Semitism. "Sexism, where did that come from?" (Being a Christian I bet.) and, "I have my records. The school board did not fire me. If that was the case they could plainly state that." As I said, he got better addressing specific questions. His top priority of bringing discipline back into the schools did seem to resonate with the crowd. He does not match the political polish of the other candidates, but he could convince enough people that having another former teacher from the trenches would be an improvement for the school board. Highlights I think I provided: With a question on support of school funding by the Board of Commissioners I took the opportunity to poll the crowd, "How many of you think our shools are within 10% of where we want to be? (long pause) I mean how many think we are close to being near where we want to be - within 10%?" A couple in the very back row cautiously raised their hands. That was it in the crowd of 50-60. I didn't barter down, but got nods as I responded, "Folks if we are 30-50% away from where we want to be, how are we going to get their by incremental changes?" Additionally, if money is the problem, who thinks a 10-20% tax hike in the county tax bill is realistic? I proposed that we need a totally new approach from the ground up. I mentioned another school system that had just saved $700,000 out of a $3,700,000 budget for maintenance simply by outsourcing this activity to someone who makes it their profession. I suggested that the schools should focus on their own core competency of teaching kids. Why wait for funding and planning to catch up with a growing district? How about the idea of having private developers build and lease schools to the system? Then, we don't need management teams and staff looking over $500 million dollars or school construction projects. "Let's focus on kids, teachers and principals." Got nods on all of this. (and confirmed in after glow chatting.) I also drew big time agreement in my closing statement with this comment, "We need public schools not government schools. When parents and the local community are in control we have public schools. When Washington and Raleigh are in charge we have government schools." (Sorry Ed, that actually played well in real life.) I wrapped up pointing out that if voters were happy with what they have been getting and they want more of it, then they should go with the status quo and continue to vote as they always have. And while, "elect me for change" is one of the most hackneyed political catch phrases, I think I was convincing that Jim Capo is not talking about merely the facade of change. I closed by saying that, "If you want to see parents and taxpayers get back in control of how things are being run, please consider voting for me." A good sign: It looked like a little more than 30 of the flyers I left on the literature table were taken by the 50-60 people in attendence as they walked out.
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