Laura Dekker: Check Your Local Listings!

Posted on by Sarah Brodsky

Laura Dekker is still waiting for permission to set sail; latest reports say the Dutch court will issue its decision on Friday.

Dekker is bending over backward to respond to criticisms of her plans. She’s delaying her trip until after this school year. She says she’ll study while she’s sailing, and take exams when she stops at ports along the way. She’s already submitted to an IQ test for the court’s scrutiny. (What will they ask her to do next? Postpone the voyage until she gains entrance to Harvard Law School?)

Another boat will shadow her in the most challenging waters, and a veteran sailor has volunteered to escort her the entire way.

And the big news is that she might have her own reality show. I can hear the response now: “These reality shows have gone too far. People need to stop doing outrageous things to get on television.” But I think a show could be a positive thing. It would involve a lot of close monitoring of Dekker’s voyage, and probably extra safety measures. Dekker would not be able to recklessly head off into a storm or other dangerous situation into which a film crew would not agree to come along. (Although I doubt Dekker would act foolishly on her own, considering that she intends to break up the trip into short segments and take other precautions, the close presence of people and cameras should reassure everyone further.)

I’m looking forward to hearing the court’s decision. There are just a few more days to wait!

Springfield Deserves a Small Amount of Praise for Its Red Light Cameras

Posted on by David Stokes

Don’t worry, I still detest red light cameras and think they are a total violation of our rights. I think the state should ban them throughout Missouri. However, I give Springfield some credit for truly using them for public safety purposes rather than as a back-door revenue generator. The article in the Springfield News-Leader (link via Combest, who is a very safe driver), details how the city has made almost no money from the cameras, although the company that installed them has certainly made its share.

I am not generally someone who gives much credit for intent over results (that is a mindset of the left side of the political spectrum), but I am going to make a slight exception here. I still think the people of Springfield should demand that the cameras be removed, but it is better if they are only used for traffic enforcement, and not as a money raiser. Springfield’s city traffic engineer (Earl Newman, quoted below) sums it up nicely at the end:

St. Louis’s mixture of significant additional revenue with those public safety benefits worries Newman, who is concerned the financial windfall muddies the water.

“When you’re making a lot of dollars, that means people are still running lights,” he said. “And it’s going to give the appearance it’s being done for the money.”

Chicago Thinks About Privatizing Its Water System

Posted on by David Stokes

According to a little-known website, the Drudge Report, Chicago is considering privatizing its water utility. This would follow on the heels of: a very successful privatization of a local highway, the Skyway; the successful near-privatization of Midway Airport (it was successful because even though the deal fell through, the city got to keep the enormous down payment); and the not-successful-at-all (at least not yet) privatization of the city’s parking meter system.

This is something that could, and should, also be considered by Kansas City and Saint Louis. Both cities function with private utilities providing electricity and gas, but both have municipal water systems. In St. Louis County, even the water is provided by a private company, Missouri-American Water. Both St. Louis city and Kansas City have a valuable asset at their disposal that the private sector is fully capable of operating. I hope both cities are willing to give this a careful review, just like Chicago appears to be doing.

Local Food in Columbia Public Schools

Posted on by Sarah Brodsky

The Columbia Daily Tribune examines school lunches in this interesting article. Like many districts, Columbia Public Schools is trying to serve healthier lunches. And the locavore philosophy is in fashion, so the district wouldn’t mind jumping on the local food bandwagon, either.

But the district is learning that buying local is easier said than done:

One hurdle is finding the local produce to feed 10,000 or more children per day. The demand for local produce continues to grow, but local suppliers are too few for large institutions such as schools, Fullum learned.

Too many farmers in “Missouri are growing hay, wheat and soybeans. We don’t use that in our kitchens. We need spinach. Farmers have to change that. Our farmers are just now getting the idea that maybe our schools and our university are potential customers and maybe we should do more specialized farming,” she said.

It looks like the district is allowing the locavore philosophy to distract it from its goal of serving healthy food. Local produce is not the only alternative to canned or processed food. For example, fresh oranges are nutritious, and they don’t have any added salt, sugar, or preservatives. But they’re shipped in from warmer climates, so locavores overlook them.

The district should seek out healthy products to serve at lunch, regardless of where they come from. Restricting itself to food grown in Missouri could limit kids’ diets, besides burdening taxpayers. (Even if it gets a grant from the Department of Agriculture, the money had to come from taxpayers at some point.) And it’s unrealistic to expect demand from schools to change Missouri’s agricultural output, which is at least partially determined by factors like climate and soil quality that are outside of Columbia Public Schools’ control.

If some parents care about where the food comes from as much as how healthy it is, that’s their choice. They can buy food at a farmers’ market themselves — and send it to school with their kids in a lunch bag.

“Say It Ain’t So, Claire, Say It Ain’t So”

Posted on by David Stokes

The headline of this Missourinet post really got me riled up, but the body of the report calmed me down a bit. According to Missourinet, (link via Combest), Sen. Claire McCaskill favors sending senior citizens a check for $250 each, as proposed by the Obama administration, to make up for the fact that there is no cost-of-living-adjustment this year for Social Security recipients. Why is there no COLA? Well, there isn’t any inflation, so why would anyone get a COLA? That isn’t good enough for AARP and friends, who have been demanding a vote-buying bribe new stimulus payment to seniors of $250. According to the article, McCaskill:

favors giving Social Security recipients a single 250-dollar payment next year. Paying for even that, however, is an issue.

Later on in the article, it says:

She’s not yet committing to vote for the 250-dollars. She says she’ll wait to see how the money is found.

So, I guess I have to hold back for a while until the votes are finally cast, but I am certainly concerned that McCaskill, or any other Missouri member of Congress, might support this ludicrous payment to seniors that has absolutely no purpose to it other than satisfying an interest group by giving them money the country simply does not have. Take from the young and give to the old. It’s like a geriatric Robin Hood. (We have a video coming out about this shortly. It is in editing right now.)

This blog has praised McCaskill a number of times for her opposition to earmarks and other fiscally responsible stances. I hope that the article’s headline is wrong, and we get to compliment her again. We’ll wait and see.

Springfield Still Has Those Pension Blues

Posted on by David Stokes

With a vote looming in two weeks, there are still a number of unresolved issues about the Springfield pension system. How should they construct the citizen board overseeing the pension? Which employees should be moved to the state’s local government pension system, known as LAGERS? Does this suit with horizontal stripes make me look fat?

I certainly agree with the argument that the unions who will receive the pensions should have less of a role on the board than the taxpayers who will by paying for the pensions. To that end, the nine-member board idea sounds much more reasonable than this proposed 11-member board:

O’Neal and Chiles want greater taxpayer protections, with O’Neal arguing that the five members of police, fire and retiree would need only to recruit one of the six citizen members for a majority.

I think public employees will have to accept decreased benefits in the future as America’s fiscal reality sets in. I have sympathy regarding this issue for the uniformed employees who put their lives on the line for us each day. I have less sympathy for the regular government workers, many of whom work hard every day for the public, and some of whom spend every moment from day one on smoke breaks, while counting their time until the rule of 80 sets in. I have a government pension from my time at St. Louis County, but if the county needs to reduce those pensions (small as mine will be) because of fiscal demands in the future, I promise you I will be the absolute last employee to complain about it.

It will be very interesting to see how this vote turns out. The Show-Me Institute has some interesting things to offer on this subject.

Oregon: “Land of the Empire Builders” ? and Charter Deniers

Posted on by Sarah Brodsky

A proposed charter school, Excelsior Prep, has been turned down by a school board in Oregon. Surprise, surprise:

“We were expecting this,” said Excelsior Prep Board member Tonjia Haskins after the meeting. “They have been opposed basically since the beginning.”

Getting charter applications denied by Oregon’s school boards is par for the course, but what’s outrageous in this case is that the reasons given are the charter’s impressive standards and goals. Here are the district advisory committee director’s comments:

“They thought they could go out and hire teachers for half of what public teachers are paid to deliver a more difficult curriculum than most public schools currently offer,” he said. “I don’t question their commitment at all, in fact, I applaud it, but they didn’t know how to get it done.”

So an intention to be more efficient and academically rigorous than traditional districts is reason enough to deny a charter! Charter proposals in Oregon don’t stand a chance — charters that want to do better than the districts aren’t allowed to go forward, while few students would ever enroll in a charter that made no improvements over the traditional public schools.

“Lack of community support” is another common criticism of Oregon’s charter hopefuls, and it was brought up in this case, too. Again, it’s a test that charters can’t pass. Most parents won’t sign on to a school that doesn’t yet exist, especially if the charter proposal constantly fluctuates in response to district demands. The problem is compounded because marketing has to be limited to word of mouth, for who would pour money into an advertising campaign for a proposed school that may never be approved?

We can’t foresee whether any charter will succeed, but we shouldn’t summarily write them off as failures and forbid them to open. If a charter doesn’t find enough community support or neglects to keep its promises, students will abandon it to return to the traditional public schools.

I’m anxious to see the result of Excelsior Prep’s appeal to the Department of Oregon. Knowing the state’s track record, I can’t be very optimistic.

School to Farm

Posted on by Sarah Brodsky

When teachers in the Harlem Success Academy charter schools observed that students were struggling with farming references on standardized tests, they decided to do some unconventional test prep. They took their classes to a farm and let them learn firsthand about sheep and pumpkins.

Some people (namely, commenters on the New York Times website) see this as a sign that teaching to the test has gotten out of hand. I think the field trip is more reasonable than most of the test prep that goes on in schools. Children who struggle to read a passage on a standardized test because they’re unfamiliar with farms will run into the same problem whenever they come across agricultural terms in a newspaper or a novel, so schools are right to address the deficiency early. And a field trip to see farm animals gives students direct knowledge of the world, unlike a day spent memorizing “test-taking strategies” that have no application outside of the classroom.

The traditional approach to test-prep — practice questions, out-of-context vocabulary lists, and lectures on the process of elimination — doesn’t work very well, but many schools fall back on it because it’s easy to implement during regular class time. It’s great that a charter has approached the problem creatively and found a hands-on way to give kids an advantage on tests.

Of course, students wouldn’t have to go all the way to a farm to learn about chickens if enough chickens lived in the city. Local governments should bear in mind the educational repercussions when they consider banning farm animals.

A House Is a Man’s Castle, Fortress, and Barnyard

Posted on by Sarah Brodsky

Clayton residents are debating whether the city should restrict pet chickens. This Post-Dispatch article presents the usual quotes from neighbors who abhor all things farm-related. Also noted are the people who want Clayton to promote chicken ownership actively:

On the other side of the issue is Clayton resident Stan Braude, a biology professor at Washington University.

Braude said after the meeting that he hoped the city would encourage more residents to have a few hens in their backyards.

What would Clayton have to do to increase hen ownership? I’m imagining a chicken incentive program, reminiscent of Cash for Clunkers — or, alternatively, a fresh eggs buyback program.

I hope Clayton avoids both regulation and encouragement, and instead allows people to make decisions about chickens for themselves. If anyone can’t stand to live in a city that permits chicken raising, they can always move out to Chesterfield.

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