Friday, September 17, 2004
Isn't the free market wonderful? Who needs Public Schools when we have the robust American Free Enterprise system? It's just common sense that if you only have one hamburger joint in town service and quality are bound to not be as good as when it is forced to compete with hamburger joint 2, right? I actually heard Bill Sizemore, an infamous local anti-tax activist, seriously make this argument in a radio debate in which he accidentally declared, a little too openly, his belief in the elimination of public schools.
Today many lucky children in California are getting an extended Summer vacation! Yippee!
Here is a nice little snapshot of America's future:
It had been a month since one of the nation's largest charter school operators collapsed, leaving 6,000 students with no school to attend this fall. The businessman who used $100 million in state financing to build an empire of 60 mostly storefront schools had simply abandoned his headquarters as bankruptcy loomed, refusing to take phone calls. That left Mr. Larson, a school superintendent whose district licensed dozens of the schools, to clean up the mess.
"Hysterical parents are calling us, swearing and shouting," Mr. Larson said in an interview in Oro Grande last week. "People are walking off with assets all over the state. We're absolutely sinking."
..... and here is the coup de grace:
One of Mr. Larson's secretaries interrupted the interview to announce that the landlord of a school forced to close in Los Angeles was threatening to dump desks and student records in the street to make way for a new tenant. Mr. Larson wrestled with the notion of driving a truck to Los Angeles himself to fetch the assets.
No Child Left Behind Indeed!
