‘and riding skateboards down the halls’
The most important local election here in the Emerald City is not the mayoral or aldermanic, but Madison Board of Education. Can you even name the candidates? Even the Werkes had to look them up. They are social justice educrat Blair Mosner Feltham (her website) and DNR computer specialist and father of two, Badri Lankella (his website). For an open seat on the seven-member board. Yet, we’ve seen no yard signs, received no social media messaging, heard no radio, opened no mailings from them. (They are doing candidate forums, however.)
Madison’s best and brightest would rather run for alder or county board. Who was the last business leader, high-profile attorney, or civic mover or shaker to seek the position? Mary Burke? Sure as heck fire wasn’t David Blaska!
We don’t want to be the Greta Thunberg of education but maybe the sky really is falling for public education in Madison WI.
One of the candidates will help choose a new superintendent. Pray God it is not another terminally Woke clone of Jennifer Cheatham! Which it will be if Feltham is elected. She’s the one who says “Our schools are products of white supremacy.” Of course, she is endorsed by the teachers union and the Defund the Cops Capital Times.
Voters should dive into results of the school district’s safety and student wellness survey. Of the respondents, 48% were students, 37% parents, and 19% faculty or staff. Many had only praise for Madison’s 52 public schools. Some read like this:
“Our experiences to date at Nuestro Mundo and Sennett have been outstanding. Thank you!”
But these are more representative:
From parents:
As a parent I find it so sad that my child smells marijuana every day and sees truly abusive treatment of her teachers on a daily basis. … All three of my kids have said things like, “My teacher does not care if I show up or not. They have much bigger problems.”
Please ensure that there is a monitor on the Toki buses. My 8th grader was punched in the back of the head last year multiple times by another student.
Restorative justice isn’t happening. Administration isn’t documenting behaviors. No one is helping the staff or students in the most danger.
My child has been bullied and beat up in 2 different classrooms by several students.
My daughters are more likely to be assaulted by their classmates than a stranger or a random school shooter.
My child is often hit at school, and the school doesn’t really care. … Closed fist to the face hit. I brought it to the attention of the classroom teacher, and nothing was done.
Indeterminate source:
Safety is a HUGE concern at West High School especially in the public restrooms. Students are almost ALWAYS doing drugs in the bathrooms. Students are threatened with knives and told not to snitch.
MMSD needs to focus more on the rights and safety of the well behaved students … MMSD is too focused on the rights of the misbehaving students.
Not segregate races when it comes to race discussions.
Not push too hard against the idea of traditional families.
The MS grading scale converts all failing students to a grade of D.
From teachers:
We currently have students that come to school high, that roam the halls and do not go to class, that get into fights. … they swear, speak loudly, yell, ride bikes and skateboards down the halls.
I have had fists flying in my classroom, called for support, and none has come, numerous times this year. I have had parents come in screaming, threatening to “beat my ass”. … The school district touts black excellence, but as a staff member at a school with the highest amount of black youth, it seems as though blinders are on when it comes to our school.
Hearing the N-word is also a regular part of our diet of foul language. …MMSD needs to get over itself and start having some real consequences for these kinds of behaviors.
As I type this, I’m listening to a kid walk down my hall screaming, “Fuck you.”
If I had a kid, there is no way in hell I would put my child through the nightmare MMSD schools have become. … I don’t get paid enough to put myself through the inevitable cursing out, or being completely ignored.
Blaska’s Bottom Line: Chicago mayoral candidate Paul Vallas warns: “We will not have true public safety in this city until schools become part of the public safety solution.”
Education
Blaska Policy Werkes 
There was plenty of oder at those Mary Burke era school board meetings.
LikeLike
“There was plenty of ODOR at those Mary Burke era school board meetings.” fify
The Gotch
LikeLike
Like the odor the BADgers left on the court?
LikeLike
Don’t try to discuss sports you never played and know less than nothing about.
And the ODOR was more like the steaming, fetid redolence of the Lazy @$$ Blogge Idiot TROLT and his comically pathetic Bi-Polar bares, THE_WORST_TEAM_IN_FOOTBALL!
The Gotch
LikeLike
what do the Bears have to do with the BADgers? Having a hard time tracking a conversation pickle chip?
LikeLike
You’re absolutely right, the Badgers had a winning season and post-season.
The phuque-witted, laughably inept midgets of the midway LOST_A_RECORD_TEN_GAMES_IN_A_ROW.
Heh! Two (2) of those were to the 13 Time World Champion Green Bay Packers who call TitleTown their home!
Try harder.
The Gotch
LikeLike
GO CUBS!!!!!
LikeLike
Ordure in the court!
LikeLiked by 1 person
funny.
LikeLike
beat me to the punch…..
LikeLike
The reason many (and I know several) teachers that live in Madison, send their kids to private or adjacent district schools. Teachers no longer work past their early retirement dates.
LikeLike
Pingback: ‘Coming to school high’ – Wisconsin Family News
“If I had a kid, there is no way in hell I would put my child through the nightmare MMSD schools have become,” a Madison public school teacher says.
BUT….there are still quality alternatives, minus the hellscape. The Catholic schools in Madison, for example.
AND, you don’t need to be in the pipeline for sainthood via the Vatican to call your state representatives and demand school choice. The kind with universal scholarships that pay for Junior and Sally to go to any accredited Wisconsin school.
The Guv won’t go for that? Get rid of him!
LikeLike
I don’t think one school board member will make much difference. Paul Skidmore showed how the left will get rid of anyone they don’t like.
MMSD (Madison metropolitan school district) is headed toward MSD (Milwaukee school district) faster than anyone thinks.
I just heard, Wisconsin DPI says teaching English is Racist. Go Figure!
LikeLiked by 1 person
Public schools in Madison will continue to become ever more dystopian as long as leftist loonies dominate the school board and the compliant local media refuse to give adequate coverage to the chaos engendered by woke administrators, teachers, and parents, all of whom are so blinkered by a toxic progressive ideology that they’ll gladly sacrifice the children in their care on its altar. All part of the Grand Transition to an “equitable” utopia just over the horizon.
LikeLike
Bob,
What the DPI has said in saying that “teaching English is Racist” is that they do not want any young children of color to be the next Henry Louis Gates Jr.
Talk about racism.
Henry Louis Gates Jr. is “A native of Piedmont, West Virginia, Gates earned his B.A. in History, summa cum laude, from Yale University in 1973, and his M.A. and Ph. D. in English Literature from Clare College at Cambridge in 1979, where he is also an Honorary Fellow.”
He is one of the smartest people that I know of and would be very happy to meet him or just see him at a seminar on anything he wanted to talk about.
Or.
How about former President Barak Obama?
Certainly a very intelligent man. Disagreed with his politics but thought he was very smart.
Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. Dubois are two other very intelligent black men that I would have been very happy to have met.
The DPI is setting these young people of color up for failure.
In my mind, they are the RACISTS!
LikeLike
Terminally unhappy, generationally unfulfilled, laughably needy despicable Lefties forever require that their flagging self-esteem get goosed…some way…ANY WAY…and what better way to accomplish that than to have a certain…um…demographic forever in need of their…um…help.
We in the business call it the Messiah Complex, or more appropriately, White Lefty Savior Complex.
Despite its Meta-Ruinous effects, don’t expect it to change anytime soon; weepy Lefty’s addicted, and the only ones that don’t know it is them!
The Gotch
LikeLike
The greatest fear I have in all this is that these students will lose all hope of redemption. If your education has left you with no options of a better life, no options of advancing yourself, no options of anything beyond the current shit hole that you live in, you see no hope in this life of redemption. This leaves you with only a couple of options. Do the whole drug and alcohol scene, become a thief, or do worse as what difference does it make if you are a loser.
The hope of redemption is important! Even if it is only right here, right now in an interpersonal relationship with another person, you need to have the hope that you can find hope of a better future with that person. Sad to say, but that is why I think we have so many divorces and so many children who grow up in houses that their birth fathers have long gone.
Ever watch some of these shows on T.V. where the woman says she has 5 children who all have different fathers?
This has become the new norm in our society.
Sucks!
LikeLike
Unfortunately, our youth are already being conditioned to believe that they have little to no control over their personal circumstances by forces other than our education system. It is being done through targeted propaganda on social media, likely with the intent on turning people into leftist drones at a young age when their minds are still malleable. There has been a huge spike in depression and similar mental health disorders starting around 2010, and there is an undeniable correlation between that and the explosion of social media around the same time. The most susceptible demographic? Young liberal women. Yes, many educators are making this worse. But social media has grown to a provably toxic influence on too many, and Congress is right to put its industry on a short leash. I’m at the point where I think the world would be a better place without it.
A woman having five kids by different fathers is abhorrent. But not as bad as the ones who deliberately get pregnant to win the affection of some guy with multiple partners, and then abort the baby when the philanderer chooses someone else. I’ve read accounts like that from people who work in women’s shelters, and they’re sickening.
LikeLike
I find it very painful to read casually lobbed, derogatory comments about Mary Burke’s tenure on the Board.
While I didn’t always agree with her votes, no one can justifiably diminish her enormous, overwhelming commitment to try to make the schools better for all students. One thing that stands out to me for what it says about her character, which none of us can claim, is that this very wealthy individual chose to live modestly in the South Park neighborhood.
I am not blind to the fact that we live in extraordinarily divisive and partisan times. Nonetheless, if we can not ever stop to discern the truly noble from the archetypical political asshole, then we will do a grave disservice to our respective causes.
LikeLike
Truly noble…possible I suppose. Truly clueless seems more likely.
Elon Musk is someone I consider truly noble.
LikeLike
Pingback: State Journal endorses critical race theorist | Blaska Policy Werkes