February 25, 2010 4:36 am

Hartford Legislators Announce Educational Reform

from a press release:

Lawmakers from the Connecticut General Assembly’s Black & Puerto Rican Caucus, led by�State Representatives Jason Bartlett (D-Bethel, Danbury, Redding),Douglas McCrory (D-Hartford), and�Patricia Billie Miller (D-Stamford), who each serve on the Education Committee, will host an opportunity on Thursday for reporters to speak with lawmakers and education activists from the State of California regarding a “Parent Trigger” law recently approved in their state.��Similar legislation is currently being considered for adoption by the Connecticut General Assembly.

Connecticut’s Black & Puerto Rican Caucus recently announced the introduction of legislation modeling the one recently enacted in California that allows a majority of parents to petition failing schools for change.��The California law allows parents to petition a school if it has failed in the same subject areas for three or more years.��If a majority of the parents sign on, the school could be converted to a charter school or reconstituted by the school district with new staff and ways of operating.��There are currently 185 failing schools in Connecticut.

The California lawmakers and education activists who were instrumental in passing the new law in their state will make themselves available through a conference call on Thursday to explain to reporters how their law works and will also advocate for Connecticut to adopt a similar process.

State flunks out, Coach pulls CT out of the race

According to a report just released by, Alex Johnston of ConnCann, even though Norwalk may have signed on, the state did not meet the requirements for RTTT. In fact the application for RTTT funding by the state board of ed to the feds was turned in uncompleted. In fact more than 20 questions were not even answered. So, tip of the hat to the state board and Linda McMahon as board memeber for not just dropping the ball but completely ignoring their sworn responsibilties to protect and educate students and walking on dough we sorely need. This is so embarassing, that incompetence is so widespread, even among the ones in academia that are supposed to be in the know and get huge salaries for supposedly being in the know. Gallo, our neighbor in Rhode Island had the courage and fortitude and dropped the hammer, on everyone. She made it clear failure was not an option and asked for help from the teachers, the administrators and unions. They all balked. She told em, all of them, to take a walk. This lady is an American hero. We need to take note, lots of sweeping needs to be done here also. All it takes is courage and vision.
Corda warned that the city would undercut the boe budget by the stimulis recovery act funding, that in essence would put us more than 4 million in the whole for 2011. The hope was that no would notice and somehow we could get access to the RTTT resources to help cover that enormus gap. Now what?
BET is undercutting the boe budget by what 2.3 to make it loook flat. When in reality we are down 2 mil. With no construction in sight and thus no increase in the grand list, does anyone else see this train wreck coming? BTW did anyone else think that our elected reps looked like complete idiots with gold shovels standing next to a pile of manure lined up on a concrete floor, INSIDE, N.C.T.C.?
Peter

I read about an actuary who calculated that the odds of a man’s trousers falling down if he was wearing both a belt and suspenders was about 35,000 to one. What would be the odds of a man’s trousers falling down while wearing only a belt? What about only suspenders?
Barnstorm

Amazing that we can see City Hall, much less Hartford through all the smoke, mirrors and finger pointing.
I.C. McGee

Think it was 120 incompleted questions on the application.
Some days ya kinda expect it;
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=1e2_1250667214
Ouch that gotta hurt.
Than there are the days when outta the blue;
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=a36_1249840341