Wednesday, July 09, 2008

KCMSD:Shit or Get Off the Pot

I've been reading with interest all the hooplah regarding the Kansas City School District and their last ditch attempts to derail the Independence School District and blah, blah, blah. By now, everyone knows about how the KCMSD is behaving like bitchy ex-wives dividing property with their ex-husbands. It's not because they want the property in question, it's because they are bitter and want the Independence people to be just as miserable as they are.

From what I can see, Independence only wants to get ready for the school year. To do right by the families and children they serve. To behave as an education system should. KCMSD, on the other hand, has seemingly forgotten just why the hell they are even there.

Up until moving to the "big city", I lived in small, rural towns. The education systems are almost always the same. The school board is primarily composed of people who actually have children attending the schools. The actions of the school boards are governed by the needs to the very people they serve.

I look at the board members of the KCMO district, and I see nothing that reflects a true desire to help children learn and succeed. The board is more interested in money, and politics, and their own self preservation that they have forgotten just who they work for. The school district has no accreditation, and I don't see any attempt at getting it back. The buildings are falling apart. They go through superintendents like Paris Hilton goes through sexual partners.

The system is a failure. A complete and total failure. Everyone knows it, and finally the parents of Independence did something about it and voted the remaining Independence schools left in the sinking ship district to a district that actually gives two shits about whether their kids can read past a 4th grade level.

If I had my way, I'd remove every single one of the blood-sucking bastards from the KCMO School District and replace them with people who were genuinely concerned about the educating of children. How would you know who to pick? Just make the school board positions either no-paying or low-paying positions so those who were still interested were not in it for the money. That's how it works in rural areas. Hell, I'd even participate if it meant that kids actually learned how to add and subtract, instead of how to bang on an African drum.

I can't hardly bare to read anything about the KCMSD anymore, it makes me sick and puts me into a blind rage.

I need to go now and take a breather...

1 comment:

Xavier Onassis said...

You are absolutely right!

Independence is trying to scrape up the dead rats, hose down the floors and get the schools ready for students and the Kansas City School District is blocking the way and saying "You don't get SHIT until you PAY ME! Screw the kids, where's my $12 million dollars that I can waste and squander on my failed and unaccredited abortion of a school district?"

Has there ever been a bigger poster child for white flight than the terminally disfunctional Kansas City School District?

Oh, wait...there was that guy in Swope Park who ran into a telephone pole, pulled out a loaded rifle and just started shooting at random people.

That would fuck with driving your kids to school. Or trusting them to a KCMSD bus.

Abandon Kansas City until they can fix their own fucking problems.

If they can reform themselves into a safe, nurturing, cultured community that welcomes families and businesses with a first class school system, a 21st century, Green infrastrusture, mass transit and a TIFF architecture that is true to the original intent of TIFF that lifts up neglected areas instead of enriching already affluent areas, then you just might get the mass influx that the city needs.

But why should people submit their children to a mass social experiment that the city government, school board and status quo doesn't want to see changed?

Fuck 'em.

Show me some progress and maybe I will consider moving there.

But don't count on me to fix your problems.