Somehow the NYT missed that people are not only pissed about the sloppy process by which school names were axed, or not, but that @SFUnified hasn't had one day of in person school, doesn't expect to, and BOARD DIDN'T EVEN DISCUSS ANY OF THAT
HERE is what people are really pissed about. Sure, have a (much more rigorous) debate about school names. But should that take priority over...reopening? Increasing access to remote learning for low income kids? Really? missionlocal.org/2021/01/the-sa…
Sloppy, craven process + utter failure to deliver for kids.
I plan to vote against every single school board member who decided to prioritize their time and SF's collective attention accordingly. And I will not be the only one.
Also, that they voted to keep Willie Brown's name on a school when axing so many others...let's not pretend this doesn't have to do with his machine and their desire to hold onto their jobs. Just all around disgusting.
That @SFUnified is going to have to spend at least $400K in this sloppy attempt at historical justice instead of spending that money getting chrome books or tutors to kids in the Bayview or TL or the Mission is just the most egregious mismanagement of public resources
This sums up the dysfunction with, and furor at, the @SFUnified board. I don't know that this remedy is the correct one, but if the board cannot get its priorities straight, the board must go: sfchronicle.com/opinion/openfo…
If it were just the sloppy and anti-critical thinking renaming process, would have amounted to a collective "oh well, San Francisco" eye roll. But it's prioritizing THAT while failing THESE:
The failure to implement at least some outdoor school is to me the biggest failure. Most schools have decently large-->huge physical plants. We would have at least had outdoor learning for the youngest and/or most vulnerable/least connected.
They've NEVER EVEN DISCUSSED
San Francisco is blessed with mostly temperate weather that makes it possible to have outdoor school most days even without big tents, if cost was a factor, and all of them with tents. It's just INSANE that more schools, especially in temperate climes, have not moved outdoors.
During the 1918 flu NYC school kids had class outside wrapped in blankets and seal-skin sleeping bag type things with a HEATED SANDSTONE at bottom.
Sure, some names should go (Serra, for example). But is this the thing the @SFUnified board should be spending its time on when kids have not been in schools for almost a year?
There’s pitiful connectivity to online classes in a lot of communities. Improving THAT seems like a higher priority this year.
1/ I've watched (part of) Navalny's "Putin's Palace" exposé, and I suggest you do same. (It is subtitled.) It's half psychological profile/biography and half @60Minutes style follow the money report, citing rafts of documents, using drone footage. Now...
2/ I cannot verify its claims. You'd need to be a Russian speaker commanding a team of forensic accountants, for starters. But the pattern of Putin using "wallets"—old friends and cronies to horcrux his vast stolen wealth—is well known. He may be richest person in world.
3/ "Putin's Palace" hones in on one...palace...estimated to cost $1.3 BILLION. But it's the pattern of how the money is hidden that's more nefarious, esp put against what Russia spends on its people in pensions and otherwise. Here's a @CNN summary cnn.com/2021/01/20/eur…
3/ This kind of direct and illegal pressure on DOJ (and Georgia, and god knows who else) to overturn election results isn't in the articles of impeachment but maybe it should be.
If Republicans think two weeks is going to present a better set of facts, boy I don't know.
WHO THE FUCK JUST HELD OFFICE AND WHAT KIND OF GOLD PLATED TOILET DID HE HAVE
Aside from everything else, like false equivalencies, which is the Times' Achilles heel, always, these two stories are a serious mismanagement of reporting firepower.