Hot For Teacher Unemployment And School Board Troublemakers

How about those Des Moines schools? 300 teachers being laid off? As always, the real story is buried deep in the comments. Here's an example:

The school district blew the one cent sales tax on new stadiums. They emphasise sports over learning. This entire district has their priorities all catty-whompus. It started with Dr. Eric Witherspoon, and it continues today even though he is gone. Trust me, no one at the administrative level will lose their jobs, they will push the layoffs to the front-line teachers and educators.

This is probably as close to reality as it gets.

It's interesting how the school district can't keep up even though they got the "optional" sales tax made permanent by the Democrats in the Iowa Legislature.

Nevermind that the State of Iowa has millions to give to profitable companies like Whirlpool.

Over in Iowa City, the school district there continues to mess around with borders and nobody seems very happy with any of the choices. The district there is using RSP and Associates out of Olathe, KS to draw up all the scenarios, and their offices are maybe a 20 minute drive from where I am.

One name I see keep popping up in the stories is that of Tuyet Dorau, who is a new school board member in Iowa City Community School District since last fall's elections. The local newspaper there, the Press-Citizen, seems willing to constantly quote her.

Dorau comes off as yet another bedwetting liberal activist who is content to spread misery at the expense of everybody else. Witness Dorau's wish to "pair" a couple of elementary school so that K-3 are at one school and 4-6 are at another. That would not be a hit with parents who have children spread out over a number of years. Dorau also has a fetish for forcibly moving around children based on socio-economic status, which based on my experience looking at school district shenanigans over the years is little more than a sick joke.

Worse, Dorau blabbed about how she would like pick off part of the Clear Creek-Amana School District in order for the ICCSD to acquire their new high school, rather than having the ICCSD spend money on a new high school for the growing North Liberty and Coralville area. Even the stupidertendent for the ICCSD nixed that idea. Dorau will likely keep opening her pie hole in the future. She should be fun to watch and make fun of again.

Speaking of school board troublemakers, former Des Moines School Board member Jonathan Narcisse is challenging The Big Lug for the Democratic nomination for Governor. Narcisse also says he'll run as a third party spoiler if he doesn't get the nomination. I've actually liked some of what Narcisse has said in the past. He's a good kind of troublemaker in that he challenged the lefty status quo in the Des Moines School Board but he paid a huge price by speaking out and got censured by the other board members, which caused him to give up and not run for re-election. There's no way Narcisse will win the nomination, but he'll be entertaining. That's one to watch.

I've also been enjoying the Tax Update Blog's ongoing coverage of the State of Iowa's film tax credit scandal. Those tax credits were destined to be a scandal from the beginning.