Improving Education in Alabama (and Some Rambling)

There is something good in The Western Star this week, but you have to look past the unreadable dark front page and other faults*.

The good is the Guest Editorial by Priscilla Dunn, our representative to the Alabama House of Representatives. In this week's issue, she writes in support of the plan to expand the Alabama pre-kindergarten program.

I am assuming her facts are true (she is not employed by the newspaper). Dunn writes that "children that attend a quality pre-k are less likely to repeat a grade, less likely to require special education classes, and more likely to graduate from high school." Sounds like a wish list for Bessemer education, doesn't it.

Pre-k in Alabama is entirely voluntary, and some parents say that a public program for four year olds infringes on the family. Apparently they don't understand the definition of the word "voluntary."

Now governor Riley is promoting a plan to expand the program (story)from the current level of around 2300 to around 21,000 kids. He says the legislature has to find a way to fund it and the money would come from the Education Trust Fund. Paul Hubbert, executive secretary of the AEA (and sort of the real governor of the state, but that's another story), says the governor needs to find another source of funding.

Huh? This is education. It makes education in Alabama more effective. Test scores will go up. Why should it not be funded out of the Education Trust Fund?

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*faults such as hypocrisy.

For instance criticizing "stupid, idiotic,...anti-gun crazies..." on the editorial page while running a front page story headlined "Described as 'good person,' local man killed in Bessemer." The story relates how bullets were fired from a passing car leaving Timothy Horton dead. Something doesn't add up there. On the editorial page he is promoting the very gun ownership that allowed Horton to be killed.

Oh, here is the rest of Dale Jones' description, "...these stupid, idiotic, tree hugging, pro-government, global warming, anti-war, anti-life, anti-gun crazies are openly trying to run this country into the ground." I think he would include me in that group, except I I am not sure what "anti-life" means. And the country has already been run into the ground by the republican administration!

So Jones must be anti-environment and conservation (like Rush Limbaugh), anti-government (Dale this will get you in trouble with Dick Cheney!), pro-war , pro-life (except when it comes to government sanctioned killing... both in "wars" and in regards to the death penalty), pro-gun (like the killers of Timothy Horton).

I know that Jones and a couple dozen other people still support the war and the president, but I am so glad that there are only 410 more days until inauguration day.

Nothing, I mean, nothing could be worse than having this administration remain in power more than one day longer than necessary. Every day I become more disgusted at the president, and I am even trying to avoid listening to him. But his lies about Iran are so blatant that he is having difficulty trying to hop, skip and jump his way through it.

That's enough rambling for today. I have a take home final I need to work on. More about Bush later.