"Dead Bloggin'" at the APS Board Candidate Forum

I just got back from attending an hour or so of the APS Board District #1/#4 Candidate Forum at Highland High School. I had some crazy plan to "Live Blog" the event, forgetting that Highland HS has a computer network from the days of Marconi and Tesla. Nothing ruins a candidate forum like an inability to check ones Gmail every twenty to thirty seconds.

Despite the antiquated tech setup and a general bad community college classroom look at the HHS "Lecture Hall", I stuck around and took a few notes. I'm tempted just to copy/paste the prose-less notes directly into this post as a sort of litera-verite style that provides a pseudo-hip, groovy cover to the simple fact that I'm too tired and lazy to spend much time grinding my insipid notes into paragraphs. Sadly the notes are too insipid for such new-wave journalism...besides they include little petty jabs at the candidates, jabs that provided necessary entertainment for me while I watched the forum wi-fi-less, but would only serve here to show how fundamentally infantile is the mind of your humble blogger.

So I'll compromise by just making a few points from the forum:

• The forum was attended by District #1 candidates Dolores Griego and Richard Sanchez (Cecilia C. DeBaca didn't make it) and District #4 candidates Pauline Nunez, Vanessa Alarid, Marty Esquivel, John Edward and Charles MacQuigg. Ms. Alarid had to leave immediately after her opening statement due to a death in the family.
• There were roughly 75, maybe 100 people in the audience. About 74-99 of them were middle aged. Many were on the back nine of middle age, some nearing the 18th green.
  
• School board elections are refreshing in a way in that they feature candidates who are generally unpolished. The only one of the seven present tonight that seemed to have any real "I could be running for NM-1 instead" slickness was Marty Esquivel. Relative to the others Esquivel was friggin' John Edwards meets Barack Obama. I found myself asking almost out loud: "Hey Marty Esquivel, why didn't YOU run against Heather Wilson?" At the same time, Esquivel's slickness was almost unsettling at times in a milieu that featured the the folksiness of Charles Macquigg and South Valley "we suck" fatalism of Richard Sanchez and Dolores Griego.
• Speaking of Charles Macquigg, I'm guessing about half the audience only showed up on the chance that Macquigg would sound as obtusely semi-sane as his web postings and comments might make him appear. That half the audience must have been disappointed, as the guy sounded anything but crazy. Slightly conspiratorial at times, but understandable and restrained. It must be said that Macquigg's look and demeanor did remind your humble blogger at times of a sober Foster Brooks, or Lee Marvin in "Paint Your Wagon". In fact, I would not at all been surprised if Macquigg had broken into a rendition of "I Was Born Under a Wandering Star" at some point in the festivities.
  
• As a District #1 resident myself, I couldn't help feeling that District #4 gets all the best candidates. This feeling only increased every time that Richard Sanchez opened his mouth.
• Dolores Griego sounded better than Sanchez, but she too exhibited that South Valley Fatalism (Trademark Pending), complete with woeful tales about drop-outs and poverty without much in the way of solutions. It was almost as if District #1 was in a completely different city/district/state/nation than District #4.
  
• Interestingly, there wasn't really much in the way of philosophical differences between any of the candidates, at least in the context of the questions asked at the forum for the time I stuck around. They all hate NCLB. They all think the District has been run poorly. Drop-outs are a big problem. Middle School sucks. Mars needs women.
  
• What differences exist seem to be those held by District 4 candidate Pauline Nunez and the rest of the District 4 candidates. Namely, Nunez says she wants to work with Mayor Marty on school reform issues (although she opposes the idea of Marty appointing three school board members). The other candidates for District #4 and #1 were more vehement in opposing Chavez and at least one said something about "the Mayor breathing down our necks".
  
• Nunez also was more pro-charter school than most of the others, but to be honest none of the candidates came off as really anti-charter. Marty Esquivel pointed out the possible financial millstone caused by state legislation mandating that charters must be in public building by 2010. He threw a figure of $350 million out as the cost of implementing such a plan. Others like John Edward disagreed with the size of the figure. Generally it was more of a charter school love-fest, with Dolores Griego talking about her kid at a charter and Pauline Nunez (the designated by many pro-charter candidate) praising charters and making her voice really loud as she proclaimed she doesn't want to "pit kids against kids".
• I did notice that when saying "pitting kids against kids" Nunez voice got really booming loud. Like she was at the 2008 Democratic National Convention in Denver instead of the Highland High School "Lecture Hall". Really loud. Far louder than the polite just-past-golf clap reply to this booming oration.
  
• I left after almost an hour and a half, and there might have been really good questions and answers after 8:00...but I somehow doubt it. Of course if I missed the "good part", I hope someone who stuck around will let me know.
  

All in all, I'm glad Highland HS put together the forum and I was glad I attended the thing. It was good to put faces to candidate names, and I even got to talk to one of them (Edward) for a bit before things began. I also got to experience that "small town" of teaching feel by seeing several ex-colleagues, parents and other acquaintances I hadn't seen in a while. The drab lecture room had a pleasant, if distinctly middle aged, vibe.

Still, outside of the pleasant warm feeling of having participated in an aspect of democracy in action, I'm not sure much really happened at the APS Board candidate forum tonight. Truth be told, I'm almost quite certain nothing of real import did. The candidates threw some philosophical pennies into the ocean of problems in public education. Those pennies looked a lot alike and were generally the same size. The ocean was unmoved.

Remember to vote for one of those pennies on February 6th. You can also vote to renew a mill-levy for another $157 million over six years.

--For Molly. R.I.P.

You Don't Have To Be Crazy To Work Here...Well, Really You Do

Is it me or is education coverage getting better in the local papers? The Trib has a story yesterday about the woeful pay for school administrators (principals/asst. principals) and how rises in teacher salaries have principals jumping admin ship and going back to the classroom in droves.

It's something we in the biz have been talking about for some time, and it's good to see these real news stories coming out from the teacher's lounge (btw, very, very few teachers ever hit the "teacher's lounge" anymore) and into public view. I won't regurgitate the story...just go read it, and will only add a point or two to the simple fact that experienced teachers now get paid as much or more than they did as principals.

Scot's additional points:

• Being a Principal or Assistant Principal is an incredibly sucky job. Yes "sucky" is a term we teaching professionals use when discussing serious matters such as administrative pay scales;
• Reasons for why the job sucks would take up about six blog pages, but include: long hours, an onerous, confused district, whiny teachers who are themselves insane, parents who don't care or care way too much about the wrong things, inadequate budgets, standardized testing and media outlets which misinterpret standardized test scores, and little or no contact with the classroom and direct teaching, which is what got the person into the K-12 profession to begin with;
  
• In other words, nobody in their right mind would become a principal or assistant principal these days, and we haven't even mentioned the pay yet;
• Some principals and assistant principals around the district are not in their right minds, but you'd go crazy too if you had to be a school principal;
• So what we have here is a job that will drive you crazy if you aren't already crazy for seeking it in the first place;
  
• Scot is very lucky and works with consummately competent, sane, dedicated administrators at his school;
• Scot is not kidding about the competence of his admin staff, or the fact that he metaphorically kisses the ground everyday in thanks that his admin staff isn't crazy, or even worse, intrusive;
• This has not always been the case in Scot's teaching career, and his experiences with off-kilter administrators are the source of tons of funny and/or horrific stories that he will not tell now, or probably ever;
• Believe me...they're funny and horrific. Okay, maybe they're mainly horrific.
  

You're probably thinking you have the answer to the increasing principal shortage: raid local insane asylums. I kid, of course. Instead you're probably agree with Rep. Mimi Stewart (a teacher herself) that we need to pay school administrators more, enough for them to get past the fact that the job sucks and they would be crazy to do it. Realistically, I'd say you'd have to pay roughly $250,000 a year to make me forget the whole suck/crazy thing. But I'm not as financially desperate as some.

Which gets to a more serious proposal: find financially desperate teachers and make them principals. Do a little private investigation work and identify teachers with massive gambling problems, crippling alimony and exorbitantly high college tuition for their prima donna children. Offer these cases another $10,000 a year over their teaching salaries and they'll be jumping on these admin jobs like leftover doughnuts in the teacher's lounge.

Otherwise, the district and state are going to have to cough up tons more money to overcome the stink of the admin gig. Six figures minimum. And while I'm kidding about much of the above, I'm not kidding about that dollar amount. The job of principal/asst. principal is so wildly less desirable than a teaching job that it can't even be mentioned in the same universe of pay scale thought. It's a ridiculous situation that admin pay raises haven't kept up with those of teachers. One might even say it's crazy.

Playing Catch-Up With the News

A few things I missed during my back-tooth-influenza "perfect storm o' ailments" period last week (actually these three things still persist, but I don't want to talk about it anymore).

Robert Vigil: 37 months in the federal pokey for the ex-State Treasurer. Not quite the sentence I had in mind (placed in a 6 foot paper bag from Quarters' BBQ next to a side of potato salad for five years), but enough to make several folks happy, including giddy lead prosecutor Jonathan Gerson. Gerson and Co. get to save some face, and that small band of blog readers who constantly search for Vigil stories are probably stoked. For some reason, Vigil seems to have reached a low form of Internet cult status. I can't speak for other bloggers, but the number of Vigil "hits" from obscure points around the world is remarkably high.

Bill Richardson: Is still running for President. In other breaking news: hockey is violent, Jews and Palestinians are having conflicts, and whiskey costs money.

CNM (really it's still TVI) Board Elections: Yes, CNM really is having Board Elections. Why? I don' t know. Maybe Marty Chavez could practice up for taking over the APS Board with a few appointments to the CNM Board. What could it hurt? What on Earth do these people do besides decide to change the school's name from time to time? The Trib has this cool video page up with interviews of the APS & CNM Board candidates. It's like YouTube, but even more boring than the real YouTube. Check them out just for the YouTube quality two-camera shoot approach used with Robert Lucero. Tell me Lucero doesn't look just like Sterling Hayden in "Dr. Strangelove" with that low camera-angle look. Stick a cigar in his mouth and Lucero IS a delusional psychopath intent on destroying the world. Well, maybe you don't need to cigar for that.

The New Mexico Legislature: Yes, they are technically in session. No, they haven't done anything over the first two weeks. Yes, they are only working four-day weeks. No, one shouldn't infer from working four-day weeks that there isn't a concerted effort for the Legislature to do as little as possible. Yes, the Ledge still has a "Capital Outlay Request Form" webpage...all you need is your Legislator's signature. No, Legislators haven't done a thing regarding my proposal that all NM teachers receive a briefcase full of $100 bills. Yes, I am serious about the proposal....I understand the bills need to be non-consecutive (at least that's what the bank robbers in the movies tell me).

Today in Your ABQ Journal...

We all give the Journal a hard time, but this morning Toby Smith has a rollicking good read about a couple of folks bilking out-of-state hunter wannabes out of tons of money in little 'ol Glenwood. That the scam artists were women only adds to the allure. In fact, the story is so good that I bet 1/2 of those reading it immediately start thinking about turning it into a book and/or movie. Hopefully, Mr. Smith is one of those folks.

Smith's story was not the only worthwhile thing in today's "fishwrap". Amy Miller has a profile of APS Board candidate Charles MacQuigg. Ms. Miller's story has the unfortunate headline "Hopeful an APS Board Critic", missing Miller's attention to MacQuigg's litigious nature during his spotty career as a APS shop teacher. I'll have more on Mr. Macquigg later this week, after I get to check out that candidate's forum at Highland HS on Tuesday.

Lastly, anyone accusing the Journal of being anti-Richardson should be forced at gunpoint to read the entire "It's Official: Richardson is in..." series. Okay, that's a harsh penalty, Eight Amendment to the Constitution and all that. What overkill, what a waste of newspaper space, what the Hell?

I'll be the first to admit I haven't read more than about ten words of the mondo-package o' stories, but couldn't Journal honchos have spent a little less time/money/space pumping out "Richardson has a mole on his butt" copy, and more on those hunter defrauding women in Glenwood?

You Think The State Of The Union Speech Hurt, Well...

I have found that the best way to treat lingering lower back pain is to have some dental surgery. Get a root canal and you barely even notice how painful it is to get out of bed or bend down to pick up a dropped pencil. Not to mention the percocets.

Babble is playing (poorly) through a bit o' pain these days, spicing up the rare colder-than-normal last month with some jackhammering in my mouth and the intermittent feeling of a knife going in at the base of the spine.

Not that you'll hear me complaining or writing any blog entries about it. No sir-ree. I admit it, I have a pain threshold below "low" and only a smidge above "nonexistent". I am and will not be a good candidate for any brave patient awards during the remainder of my increasingly pain-filled life.

Not wishing to be construed as gender-bashing in any way, I am, in short, quite bitchy right now.

Not that you should care, and I apologize if you have happened across today's blog entry expecting, uh, anything...anything whatsoever beside me pointing out fascinating insights like "root canals start to hurt a few hours after you have one". I know...blog award material that.

Before closing this pathetic entry in order to head off to work and a chance to inflict my sparkling mood on the middle schoolers of America, I do have an education question of sorts. I received some information about tonight's APS School Board Forum, namely that the small uptown room it is to be held in is "sold out" as it were, and that I won't be able to get in the door. Is this true? And more importantly, does this provide me with the excuse to not attend the thing, and instead lie on the couch watching Top Chef while under the influence (totally prescribed, of course) of percocet?

Seriously, any info on tonight's Forum shindig would be most appreciated. I would call APS to get details, but gathering information via APS is not one of the district's strong suits. In fact, even visualizing a scenario in which one tries to get info by calling APS puts a big smile on my face. And it's hurts to smile this morning. Gotta stop smiling. No smiling today.

Monday Morning Capote-talk

I tried yesterday. As a bona fide male of the American species, I sat down to watch me some NFL playoff football and validate my existence on the high end of the testosterone scale. I wanted to share in the collective sports-watching experience, able to bat observations around this morning at work with fellow NFL-heads and cocoon in the communal TV-glow of millions and millions of Americans.

I ended up watching "Breakfast at Tiffany's" instead.

Yes, it was Audrey Hepburn for me, despite the fact the Bears/Saints game met my specific conditions for being interested in watching an NFL game:

1. Played on grass field
2. Snowing
   

Using these interest criteria, the Colts/Patriots game was right out. Oh, I'd keep track of the sports news in order to be able to tell colleagues this morning "hey, some Colts game last night, huh?", but actual viewing was unthinkable. Domed stadiums, football?

So it was Bears/Saints or bust, and despite the lack of snow early on at Soldier Field, I spent the first thirty minutes or so splitting time between the execrable Fox football coverage and Turner Classic Movies. Then I noticed myself watching more and more of George Peppard in uber-early 1960s ties, Audrey Hepburn gamely trying to seem amoral and Patricia Neal all dressed up in post-Eisenhowerian middle age moral ambiguity and less and less of Rex Grossman and Drew Brees.

By the 2nd half of the game, where the snow was really flying, I'd almost exclusively switched to the 2nd and 3rd acts of "B@Ts". And I don't even like the movie as a movie. Watching "Breakfast at Tiffany's" is rather great only as a sociological viewing experiences, an insight into a mythical late 50s, early 60s life in Manhattan to which I find myself unnaturally drawn.

I almost hate to admit it, but I'd rather be George Peppard than Rex Grossman. Does that make me less of anything that I need to care about?

Let's face it, I'm a baseball guy. I like history, I like statistics. NFL football isn't about those things, even or especially when it tries to talk up the positive impact the Saints are having on life in New Orleans. Football, NFL Football, is just plain boring.

Audrey Hepburn is anything but boring, even when she's not really convincing anybody she could ever be a call-girl. Audrey Hepburn is baseball. NFL football is Angelina Jolie. No contest.

Reflection Upon The Growing Number of Presidential Candidates

Like some old girlfriend who you kicked out of the house but keeps calling from the homeless shelter that "you're all that I've got", Americans are faced with another batch of folks who want us to care that they are running for President. President in 2009. Taking office in January, 2009, almost exactly two years from now.

Well, I say to these candidates: go away.

I will care about the 2008 Presidential race when I am good and well ready. I will care about the 2008 Presidential race when it suits me. I will care about the 2008 Presidential race in...uh, 2008 maybe?

The State of Nevada has scheduled a series of 2008 race "forums" starting on February 21st. No, not February 21st, 2008. Next month. 30 days from now. I urge, implore and scream in an almost inaudibly high-pitched voice that everyone ignore these Nevada "forums". Prove to the media and campaigns that it is possible to care about things political without having to wrap an election into it. Prove that issues matter more than the sycophantic, swarmy egocentric glorified yahoos that want us to replace our complex preferences with a simplistic choice between tweedledee and tweedledum.

And don't even get me started on "Iowa" and "New Hampshire". Don't...I'm warning you.

Argh.

P.S.: I checked out various possible Richardson for President websites, and it's "richardsonforpresident.com". The site has a richly orchestrated video about the "New Mexico Comeback". Basically, Richardson is selling himself by crowing about how awful and terrible New Mexico was before he became Governor. Third-world kinda awful and terrible. Thank Bejeezus for Bill, we were all living in cardboard boxes and eating bugs and pine needles before he came along.

A Big Bag of Money With a $ Sign On It Will Do

A brief story in this morning's Journal (viewing of vapid "Parade Magazine" ad required) recaps Our Current Governor(TM)'s proposal to pay teachers extra to work in "failing schools" and remote parts of the state. While I still like the briefcase full of $100 bills initiative I brought up in my last post better, OCG's idea is a start (okay, we know it wasn't OCG's idea exactly, but he will get and take credit in the next few months for every invention since the kiva and Roman aqueducts).

The proposal, and the brevity of the Journal story, make it unclear exactly which schools would be lousy and undesirable enough to participate in such a plan, but I'm guessing the South Valley ABQ schools near my house (Harrison MS, Polk MS, and Ernie Pyle MS in particular) would be prime targets of such a plan. Anyone who has ever checked out the APS "careers" page online knows that any even remotely sentient creature with a Special Education teaching certificate could walk off the street any day of the week and get a job at these schools. Any day of the week. My guess is that the eventual NM plan will include extra-special bonus incentives for SpEd and Math/Science, just as these ideas always seem to do.

The more important question this morning is dropping a new moniker on OCG. I've used "Our Current Governor" for about 20 minutes now, and it's not working. "Big Bill" is taken, and is old and stale. Deliberate pseudo-cool misspellings like "Guvernator" are not only extremely lame, but also bring to mind the Governor in California instead of Richardson. And just saying "Governor Richardson" is boring and misses out on the opportunity to create a nickname for the guy that combines the plenitude of positive and negative attributes the dude possesses. Not to mention the he's so out of here to run for President angle.

I'm all ears on the question. If you have a good name for the guy (and let's show a little more sophistication than "Big Evil Guy" or "The Next President of the United States" here), throw it my way through either comment or email.