Tuesday, September 01, 2009

Supts Object to Charters, Stinson Trial Begins

Blogging will continue to be pretty light this week as other priorities take center stage. The redesign of one of my courses means writing new lectures at the start of the new semester. And my new position requires scholarly writing, so a lot of research awaits final treatment. But I'll get caught up as soon as I can.

In the meantime, Commissioner Terry Holliday travels to south central Kentucky today where he will hear objections to charter schools from local superintendents. The superintendents fear the creation of an elitist set of schools. And they will object to unfair comparisons that are made between public schools and charters which may not be required to welcome every child, provide transportation, or who may not be expected to meet the same standards for suspension or expulsion; rendering the public schools a dumping ground.

Elsewhere, the trial of Jason Stinson began in The Ville, and the judge,
threw out 1,500 pages of evidence Monday in the homicide trial of former Pleasure Ridge Park High School football coach Jason Stinson, after ruling that prosecutors turned over the information too late to the defense.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

While the coach at the Louisville public high school isn't guilty of homicide, he is guilty of creating and perpetuating a culture of abuse. As a result, an athlete died.

The typically American cult of athleticism has always dissuaded parents from protesting barbaric training sessions for their student-athletes. The same parents would never have allowed a regular classroom teacher to use such measures to produce results in academics.

What this trial will do is get high school coaches across the United States to re-think their strategies for building quality athletic programs. In the end, this is something that will be a win both for parents and their student-athletes. It is only too bad a young man had to die for reform efforts to get underway. This is precisely the type of negative publicity Kentucky did not need.