Scottsdale Teachers union leader glad ex-superintendent is someone else's problem

Eric Kurland has a dozen words of advice for the teachers, students and parents of Kentucky:

"This too shall pass. Hang on. Do the right thing for kids."

Kurland, president of the Scottsdale Teachers Association, doesn't spend a lot of time thinking about the Bluegrass State. But news from there last week hit close to home...

...Belatedly, Scottsdale's impression of Erwin reached the Kentucky board. Kurland told the Louisville newspaper: "She was like a cancer. She took the life out of our district."

Now she'll be in charge of education for all of Kentucky, a big jump from her current suburban Chicago district, which has half as many schools and students as Scottsdale."Nothing surprises me anymore," Kurland told me. "She must have improved greatly. She's an impressive woman to pull it off."

By the end of her four years in Scottsdale, Erwin was not a popular woman. In a Scottsdale Republic online poll after she resigned, 12 percent said she had made the district better, while 70 percent said she alienated people and drove away quality employees.

This from the Arizona Republic.

Homeschool chess team not allowed to defend state title

The young chess players were the first such champions in Arizona. But a team of homeschool students from the southeast Valley, called the Chevalier Noir (Black Knight) Academy, was shut out last weekend from competing, not allowed to defend its title in the Arizona Scholastic Chess Championship held in Tucson.

State chess officials allowed the homeschool students to play as teams for two years because of changing or unclear national rules on the subject, but this year, they ruled team members must come from the same school.

This from the Arizona Republic.