Kansas City, Mo., closing nearly half its schools (Democrat run, school district done)

MSNBC ^ | 3/10/2010 | HEATHER HOLLINGSWORTH/AP

[tobyhill]

The Kansas City school board voted Wednesday night to close nearly half the district's schools in a desperate bid to stay afloat.

The board's 5-4 decision came after parents and community leaders made final pleas for the district not to shut down 29 out of 61 schools as it seeks to erase a projected $50 million budget shortfall.

"The urban core has suffered white flight post-the 1954 U.S. Supreme Court decision Brown v. the Board of Education, blockbusting by the real estate industry, redlining by banks and other financial institutions, retail and grocery store abandonment," Kansas City Councilwoman Sharon Sanders Brooks said to applause from a standing-room-only crowd of more than 200 people.

[Anti-Bubba182]

If he did died feeling good about himself he was delusional. The facts repudiated his judgment totally. Clark was an imperious pig who arrogantly squandered a fortune of taxpayers money.

[Just mythoughts]

"The urban core has suffered white flight post-the 1954 U.S. Supreme Court decision Brown v. the Board of Education, blockbusting by the real estate industry, redlining by banks and other financial institutions, retail and grocery store abandonment," Kansas City Councilwoman Sharon Sanders Brooks said to applause from a standing-room-only crowd of more than 200 people.

I fled this school district when the supposed 'intelligentsia' of the liberal methodology decided they would use young children to perform a social experiment. IT was NOT redlining by banks or other financial institutions that sent me packing. IT was the sheer idiocy of putting kindergartners on a bus starting around 5:30 a.m. and 'busing' them through rush hour traffic out of their neighborhoods.

I as a parent would NEVER put my 5 year old in that situation.

These idiots have NO problem with legislating an 'earnings' tax upon business that operated within their urban zone and then belly ache, itch, whine and moan that it is some banking institution's fault for urban rot. It has been a 'crime' against humanity what these liberal social engineers have accomplished, and the literal dollar figure can never be calculated.

And I firmly believe there will be a 'heavenly' accounting for what these plotters and planners have reeked over the years upon young children. Race actually is not the issue, but the vehicle devised by reprobate double minded people of all colors to put as many into bondage as they possibly can. My heart aches for the carnage cause by these 'evil' twisted people that in the name of education set in motion actions that have destroyed so many lives over the generations.

[Sherman Logan]

The way I see it is that this is a prelude to forcing the rest of Kansas to pay for their education system because that “is where the whites went”.

Kansas City, MO, oddly enough, is in Missouri, not Kansas.

But a whole bunch of the whites did indeed move to Johnson County, Kansas.

[Tench_Coxe]

I thought this rang a bell....

This is the same school district that engaged in this little experiment back in the mid 1980's:

Money And School Performance: Lessons from the Kansas City Desegregation Experiment

[kcvl]

Judge Russell Clark

[zerosix]

Yes, KC's that school. Judge Clark, ordered the entire State of MO to cough up tax dollars to pay for "reasons of discrimination until reasons for discrimination no longer existed."

Taxation went on for at least a decade and many families that lived near KS State Line, moved out of MO entirely to avoid excessive taxation.

KCMO School District went on a spending spree that, to this day, defies belief, i.e. Computer labs that make many large companies jealous, except computers disappeared or no one knew how to install or operate; French magnet schools taught exclusively in French(?????); School specializing in the Performing Arts; on and on.

Unfortunately the reason for KC's miserable performance was not replaced: the administration and most of the Union teachers!

School system no longer is accredited or on probation now, schools that resemble collapsed public housing, on and on.

The KCMO public school enrollment no longer supports as many schools, many schools are in such disrepair that it is not cost-effective to inhabit.

Proving yet again that throwing billions at a problem will not solve that problem - especially if it is public education.

[mrsmel]

Thanks for the link, that was an eye-opening read. I can’t believe the liberals are still ignoring this, and the Sausalito district, for two examples, and continuing to insist that it’s a matter of money.

[mrsmel]

And their class sizes were no larger than 25 students at most, unbelievable that with those kinds of resources (from a blackmailed tax base, at that), they still couldn't raise scores.

[zerosix]

Of course it was. The massive flight happened when busing was ordered to achieve "racial balance in the classrooms."

Results were that with inner city kids, parents didn't participate in school activities which were far from home, slow learners and juvenile delinquents from ghettos were sitting in classes with high performing kids in upscale neighborhoods, good teachers left because of physical violence from affected students, shootings and knifings were occurring regularly, especially at athletics, shootings at school buses regular event. Well off parents refused to allow their children to be bused out of their own neighborhoods. Even black parents resisted busing their kids but didn't have the clout to refuse outright.

Nice schools in very nice neighborhoods began looking like ghetto schools. People not only left the public schools, many who didn't move, put their children in private schools.

The fact remains is that it was never Brown v. Board of Ed. that drove the stake in the heart of KCMO schools, it was liberal management, black and minority school board making awful decisions and always firing school head any time they disagreed with the "black experience" and for a number of decades, will only hire minority to head the district, whether or not barely qualified.

[zerosix]

A close look at the district's teachers will give the viewer a good idea why - many of them barely read and write or meet any kind of educational standards. Good teachers left due to retirements but not being replaced because of hazards (physical violence from students, parents or other teachers).

School board insisted that teachers needed to "reflect the classrooms," meaning that if majority of students were black, teacher MUST be black also, regardless of qualifications. Of course, that meant principal and administrators at school also be "minority" which always meant black.

When you have a school whose "theme" was "African-centered" meant all classes revolved around whatever was deemed "African."

What sane parent wanted their kid to suffer their entire adulthood because of this kind of preferences being placed at the top of their education.

[muawiyah]

There’s KCMO and KANKAN ~ different places and states of mind.

[SAJ]

Right you are, sorry for the error!

[N. Theknow]

When the Jimmy Carter appointment, Judge Clark, started ordering vast expenditures in the school system with Olympic sized swimming pools, computers, labs, etc. everyone knew this day would come.

Just a matter of time.