Re: School Board Has Surplus of Candidates, Dearth of Platforms
I just read your article on school board elections-First I was very
opposed in this election-not unopposed. Second i was talking about
making the system do something for poeple. A point you might have
caught had you read everything that I
said as opposed to picking out one Sentence to make your point. I'm
not sure that your journallism is any better than the Times Dispatch.
Thank you for your response, I have corrected the typo where I said you were unopposed. For everyone's information, candidate Art Burton of 6th District ran against Chandra Smith who won by a majority of about 350 votes. In response to my quoting you out of context, this was the longest article I have yet posted and I attempted to maximize the amount of direct quotes and minimize my responses so the candidates' words could speak for themselves.
I did read your entire profile and there was lots of material I wanted to use, like "we know the results of having undereducated people who are hopeless and in despair.".* As a student I was penalized for being smarter than the other kids and as a result I have fewer points in the job market today than many who are less educated than me, so who is undereducated? Perhaps you should have said "we know the results of anyone who opposes the school system who are hopeless and in despair".
I believe from your profile that you are probably honest, hard-working and well-intentioned in your fight against the industrialists and city planners. I don't think anyone disagrees that poverty and run-down facilities are a problem. Speaking as a patron of a different institution however I hope you will understand that you definitely belong on my blacklist with your fellow academicians, and the words in your profile definitely show that affinity in force. The biggest problem with public schools is that they are "perceived" as education when they are actually not, so the perception of the school system you described is completely accurate in my opinion and the people have said so. Perception is going to be hard for your institution to maintain in the 21st Century, because as homeschooling grows public schools will discover they are only one competitor among many, and do not have the monopoly on education that obligates any child to attend or passes the responsibility of poverty and other civic issues into your hands.
For our readers, a majority of the candidates I rated against were elected to office. The one victor among those I praised was Keith West of 7th District who won by 15 votes. (Although I spoke well of incumbent Betsy Carr she had both positive and negative aspects to her platform from a Libertarian viewpoint.) It should be noted that several of the candidates I rated poorly were unopposed, and several of the challengers ran against each other. Candidate Doug Goodwein of 8th District whom I mentioned favorably also wrote to us with his opinions. For full election results go to http://originmedia.gatewayva.com/rtd/multimedia/Election06/Results/.
*http://www.richmond.com/election/output.aspx?Article_ID=4392816&Vertical_ID=127&tier=1&position=2
If you have opinions you'd like to add to this thread please send them to henrico@richmondliberty.org and they will be posted!