Anger mixed with frustration mixed with sadness...

This is what you get when you blindly follow the 'free market.' Oro Grande is only about 50 miles from where I'm from.

The New York Times
September 17, 2004

Collapse of 60 Charter Schools Leaves Californians Scrambling
By SAM DILLON


Ken Larson was pacing the floor of his office in a tiny elementary school in Oro Grande, Calif., surrounded by the chaos of fax lines beeping, three beleaguered secretaries peppering him with questions and phone lines ringing for the umpteenth time.

It had been a month since one of the nation's largest charter school operators collapsed, leaving 6,000 students with no school to attend this fall. The businessman who used $100 million in state financing to build an empire of 60 mostly storefront schools had simply abandoned his headquarters as bankruptcy loomed, refusing to take phone calls. That left Mr. Larson, a school superintendent whose district licensed dozens of the schools, to clean up the mess.

"Hysterical parents are calling us, swearing and shouting," Mr. Larson said in an interview in Oro Grande last week. "People are walking off with assets all over the state. We're absolutely sinking."

The disintegration of the California Charter Academy, the largest chain of publicly financed but privately run charter schools to slide into insolvency, offers a sobering picture of what can follow. Thousands of parents were forced into a last-minute search for alternate schools, and some are still looking; many teachers remain jobless; and students' academic records are at risk in abandoned school sites across California.

Investigators are sifting through records seeking causes of the disaster, which has raised new questions about how charter schools are regulated.

"Until the Charter Academy went into its tailspin, few people predicted that these crashes could be so bloody, but this has been a catastrophe for many people," said Bruce Fuller, a professor of education at the University of California, Berkeley. "The critics of market-oriented reforms warned of risks with the philosophy of let-the-buyer-beware, but in this case, buyers were just totally hung out to dry."

Jack O'Connell, the California superintendent of schools, said in an interview that a majority of the state's 537 charter schools were making a solid contribution to public education. But Mr. O'Connell has concluded from the disaster that the state must apply "tough love" in regulating them, "to keep this kind of near-bankruptcy and chaos from happening again," he said.

"If there's mismanagement and malfeasance, we'll come in and put you out of business," he said.

Back in 1999, the national movement to provide alternatives to parents through charter schools, which face less burdensome regulation than other public schools, was gaining steam. Many charter schools have since flourished, and experts say that some of them offer an excellent education. But in Southern California, there were signs of trouble soon after C. Steven Cox, a former insurance executive whose only educational credential was his brief service on a local school board, founded the Charter Academy.

State auditors are now scrutinizing Mr. Cox's financial records to determine whether he exaggerated enrollments and to sort out claims from a line of creditors, said Scott Hannan, director of school fiscal services at the California Department of Education.

"But our highest priority is securing the student records," Mr. Hannan said. That is a sore point with Mr. Larson, who said that thousands of students' immunization and academic records had been virtually abandoned all across California.

Mr. Larson, superintendent of a tiny school district in Oro Grande, a Mojave Desert village 88 miles northeast of Los Angeles that looks like a set for "Bad Day at Black Rock," has converted a storeroom at his school into a warehouse for the records. He has arranged for dozens of file cabinets holding student records to be trucked to Oro Grande from schools that have closed across the Mojave Desert, he said, but he has no way to collect records and equipment left behind elsewhere.

Mr. Larson said Mr. Cox approached him in 2001, preaching the charter school gospel that money spent on filing reports to government regulators would be better spent in classrooms, and asking the Oro Grande district to license him to found charter schools. The Oro Grande school board approved the idea, and two other California districts forged similar relationships with Mr. Cox between 1999 and 2001.

Mr. Cox eventually founded 60 satellite schools in low- and middle-income communities stretching from Chula Vista near the Mexican border to Gridley, 140 miles northeast of San Francisco, and under California's financing formulas the state paid him about $5,000 annually for each student he enrolled. As his business grew, he hired his wife, son, daughter-in-law and other relatives to work at his corporate headquarters in Victorville, near Oro Grande.

But by early 2003, Mr. Cox had become mired in several costly confrontations with the California Department of Education; one centered on whether 10 of his schools were in violation of a 2002 law barring charter operators from opening schools in counties they had not registered in. The state withheld more than $6 million that Mr. Cox had expected to receive.

Mr. Cox sued, seeking to force payment, but lost that battle after running up huge legal fees, and the state withheld money as a result of other disputes, too. By the summer, Mr. Cox's financial difficulties had grown severe, and on July 28, the trustees of one of the four charters responded to the mounting crisis by voting to close the schools they had licensed. Mr. Cox stalked out of that meeting and stopped responding to most phone calls.

Within a week and a half, trustees voted to close the rest of Mr. Cox's schools, and his second in command announced to scores of employees gathered at the Victorville headquarters that they were out of a job. Kim Ehrlich, a billing supervisor, said she spent the first half of August with workers dismantling the offices around her, phoning local utility companies across California to turn off the power at Charter Academy schools, then lost her job.

The sudden collapse blindsided even the charter school principals. Melody Parker, whose Village elementary school in Inglewood was one of the most popular schools in Mr. Cox's organization, said that although her budget had been slashed and Mr. Cox had grown aloof, she never imagined that his organization could fall apart.

"It hit us like a tornado," Ms. Parker said. On Aug. 12, she informed teachers that their jobs were gone, and the next day she told hundreds of parents gathered at the school that it would not open for the fall term. Many had still not found schools by the second week of September, she said.

"The collapse was so disheartening,' said Dwayne Muhammad, who works in a funeral home and whose daughter Aisha was to attend the Village's fourth grade this fall. "Everybody began rushing to find alternate schools."

Mr. Muhammad has visited eight schools in the weeks since, all of which have been full, he said Monday. "We've been left by the wayside."

The nonprofit California Charter School Association said in a report this week that 80 percent of the students displaced from Mr. Cox's schools had since enrolled in other charter schools. Some teachers, like Maria Boatwright, who taught first grade at the Village, have found new jobs at other charters.

But teachers all across the state have reported difficulties in finding new teaching positions because most schools had hired their staffs by the time the academy collapsed, Mr. Larson said.

At the interview in Oro Grande, he produced a stack of letters from distraught, jobless teachers. Travis D. Taylor, who taught art and science to students at a Charter Academy school in Gridley, wrote to say that he had not been repaid the hundreds of dollars he spent on books and science equipment for his students.

Mr. Taylor's mother, Shelly, said that since the collapse, Mr. Taylor had been unable to find another teaching job. With his debts mounting, he has been harvesting rice "to keep his head above water," she said.

Mr. Cox did not respond to requests for an interview left on his voicemail, sent by e-mail and relayed through former employees. Mr. Larson has not been able to reach him either, he said.

One of Mr. Larson's secretaries interrupted the interview to announce that the landlord of a school forced to close in Los Angeles was threatening to dump desks and student records in the street to make way for a new tenant. Mr. Larson wrestled with the notion of driving a truck to Los Angeles himself to fetch the assets.

"There's 100 desks down there," he muttered. "What would we do with 100 desks?"




http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/17/education/17charter.html?hp=&pagewanted=print&position=

For those of you confused by the cover of "The Economist" I posted a few days ago:

Look at this for background.

So... I was at work the other day and get a strange call on my cell phone... my brother!? I hadn't heard from him in at least 6 months. Apparently Los Angeles hasn't swallowed him up.

In fact, he's coming to DC tomorrow night! Still a bit stunned myself but I'll manage. Any recommendations as to what to do with him?

Now I've just got to get rid of this cold... Blech!

Quite possibly could be lost footage from Office Space... or maybe not...

The guys in this video probably worked about as hard as Peter did, at least.

Search for chair_test.wmv if it doesn't open automatically.

Absolutely perfect....

Bizarre--

Mood of Blagoveshchensk customs officers should improve

Aromatherapy lamps are to be installed at customs posts in Blagoveshchensk, Amur Oblast, Vostok-Media news agency reported in July. In an effort to improve the mood of customs officers, maintain their psychological well-being and reduce stress, their union has initiated the aromatherapy drive. Customs officers will also be able to take aromatherapy courses.

-- Russian Far Eastern News (September 2004)

(Keep in mind, Blagoveshchensk is on the border with China, north of Manchuria.)

People who own white Sport Utility Vehicles should be whacked upside the head. No... probably worse. Just like any parent who decides to name their child 'Chastity.'

Yaay! Redheads finally get a little more respect! And so cute!!

Red Letter Day for Red-Heads at London Zoo

LONDON (Reuters) - They say blondes have more fun, but redheads will have the edge on Sunday when they get into London Zoo for free to view a rare new-born ginger-coloured monkey.

The endangered south east Asian Francois Langur monkey, called Laa Laa, has typical baby orange fur which in six months will turn a glossy black.

London Zoo said 9,500 red-heads had already downloaded free vouchers from its Web Site.

"It has been very popular. We will accept all shades of red, auburn, titian, ginger, you name it," a Zoo spokesman said.

Ginger Sunday will also allow red-heads, often the butt of jokes in Britain, to win some friends since the vouchers allow them to bring a friend, be they brunette, blonde or even bald.

Britain has one of the highest concentrations of redheads in the world, but a recent survey showed that 9 out of ten were teased at school about their hair colour.

A national utility company even decided to poke fun at redheads when it ran an ad campaign during 2000 which showed a family of gingers above the caption - "There are some things in life you can't choose".

You've got to hand it to this guy---

Ghana: Opposition party wants US to pay for 1966 coup

GHANA BROADCASTING CORPORATION RADIO 1
Saturday, July 31, 2004

(FBIS Transcribed Excerpt)

The EGLE (Every Ghanaian Living Everywhere) Party has asked the US government to make amends for derailing Ghana's progress through the sponsorship of the 1966 coup d'etat that overthrew the government of Dr Kwame Nkrumah.

According to Mr Danny Ofori-Atta, chairman of the party, the Central Intelligence Agency's recent declassified files clearly admit the role of the United States played and it was only fair that it made up for causing Ghana's economy to stagnate ever since.

He has, therefore, called for a total cancellation of Ghana's 5bn-external debt and the setting up of "credit guarantee for a private company capitalized with 5bn which will be in the form of a 30-year US Treasury insurance guarantee to back the capital of the private company to be listed on the Ghana Stock Exchange". (Passage omitted)

(Description of Source: Accra Ghana Broadcasting Corporation Radio 1 in English -- state-owned, government-controlled radio)

I wish this were a surprise-- but it unfortunately was only a matter of time:

Bombs rock American and Israeli embassies in Tashkent, Uzbekistan

Well, the whole Democratic convention has been and will be analyzed and hyped so there isn't much original I would add.

The only thing I can say is that I am extremely glad to see them reaching across party lines to formulate "American" policy instead of "Democratic" policy. I know it's only talk until it is lived up to but it puts a lot of momentum towards turning the corner from the 50-50 stalemate we've been stuck in.

We'll see.

Just when you thought North Africa didn't need any more problems, with grinding poverty, Islamic extremism and the crisis in Darfur....

The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has launched an urgent appeal for $83 million to curb a deadly locust plague ravaging north and western African crops. Government ministers from Algeria, Chad, Libya, Mali, Mauritania, Morocco, Niger, Senegal and Tunisia met in Algeria this week to discuss efforts in their countries to deal with the problem before drafting a plan at regional level.

News clip from today's Global Development Briefing by the Development Executive Group

 
Unfortunately, my blog is one of the first things that has to go when I get busy but here's something to show that I'm still around....  

US Cuts Off Aid to Uzbekistan

It was a slow day and the sun was beating
On the soldiers by the side of the road
There was a bright light
A shattering of shop windows
The bomb in the baby carriage was wired to the radio

These are the days of miracle and wonder
This is the long distance call
The way the camera follows us in slo-mo
The way we look to us all

The way we look to a distant constellation
That's dying in a corner of the sky
These are the days of miracle and wonder
And don't cry baby, don't cry, don't cry

It was a dry wind and it swept across the desert
And it curled into the circle of birth
And the dead sand falling on the children
The mothers and the fathers and the automatic earth

These are the days of miracle and wonder
This is the long distance call
The way the camera follows us in slo-mo
The way we look to us all

The way we look to a distant constellation
That's dying in a corner of the sky
These are the days of miracle and wonder
And don't cry baby, don't cry, don't cry

It's a turn-around jump shot
It's everybody jump start
It's every generation throws a hero up the pop charts

Medicine is magical and magical is art
The boy in the bubble
And the baby with the baboon heart

And I believe
These are the days of lasers in the jungle
Lasers in the jungle somewhere
Staccato signals of constant information
A loose affiliation of millionaires
And billionaires and baby

These are the days of miracle and wonder
This is the long distance call
The way the camera follows us in slo-mo
The way we look to us all

The way we look to a distant constellation
That's dying in a corner of the sky
These are the days of miracle and wonder
And don't cry baby, don't cry, don't cry

"The Boy in the Bubble" by Paul Simon
Graceland album

This has been running through my head as I hear the news and (try to) deal with a lot of stuff that has been coming up in my life recently. Hope to be posting a bit more soon.

"Holy Men in Tights!"-- A Superheroes Conference

A call for papers at a conference hosted by the Cinema Studies at the University of Melbourne, Australia

I know a few people who could submit papers here no problem....

Interesting:

Global Dispatch: From Turkey to Tibet
The Guardian, Monday February 23, 2004

Brian Whitaker tries to pin down the boundaries of the Middle East and discovers that over the years it has been all things to all (self-interested) people

I have been writing about it in the Guardian for almost four years and I'm fairly sure that I have been there, but I have to confess that I don't know for certain where the Middle East is.

The only consolation - for me, if not for those on the receiving end of US Middle East policy - is that the state department, the Pentagon and the military are as confused as I am.

Read the entire article

This is disturbing:

Spying Commonplace at the UN, Diplomats Say

It reminds me of a story one of my former professors used to tell. A native of Ceaucescu's Romania (one of the more paranoid Communist satellites), she was celebrating the new year with her family in Bucharest when she, knowing her phone was being monitored, said simply into the phone (without dialing or having it ring):

"Happy New Year"

and a man's voice on the phone responded:

"Happy New Year to you too."

and no, that last post wasn't an april fool's joke...

Happy April Fools Day!

This came out at least a week before but this is just too funny to be true...

Canada Could Ditch Winter Blues by Annexing Caribbean Paradise Some Canadians (including members of Parliament) are lobbying for Canada to annex the Turks and Caicos Islands!

Here's the site they put up to promote the idea

The Turks and Caicos is a small island group near the Bahamas, thousands of miles from even the closest point in Canada. They've got a population of not even 20,000 people and they're talking about making it a possible new province?!

Where I come from, life is unfit to be lived. Given the strong winds and poor public transport, whatever you plan to do turns into an immensely arduous undertaking. At the age of fourteen you are already incredibly weary, and you don't get a proper break until you're fourty-five. Very often people go out shopping and don't come back, or else they write a novel and on page 2,000, they suddenly realize how confusingly out of hand the whole thing has got and start all over again from the beginning. It is a timeless life, one of the gtreat achievements of which is the chance to die in one's own bed.

From Russian Disco by Wladimir Kaminer (Ebury Press; August 1, 2002)