FREE WHITEWATER

Monthly Archives: January 2008

School District

School Board Meeting for December 17th

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I’ll focus on one part of the December 17th Whitewater Unified School Board meeting — the discussion of changes to the English language curriculum. (That’s Language Arts, for specialists.)

The revisions may overcome some prior course fragmentation, but I cannot be alone in thinking that competitive, talented students would benefit with something more than AP English as the capstone of their accomplishments. WHS principal Dalzin talked about a rubric, but I’ll offer an algorithm for the schooling of competitive students: Read, Write, Speak.

There is no sound reason that competitive students should not focus on all three skills at each grade level, for all four years of high school. Placing an emphasis of writing beginning in tenth grade, rather than in each year of high school, is asking too little of talented students. In fact, it’s asking too little of almost any student. ‘Style and Rhetoric’ may be the course for college-bound students who ‘don’t especially love English,’ but should our program be tailored to a child’s preferences or an adult’s judgment of a fine education?

When I posted on “Choice in Education,” I had something like the following in mind. Here’s a challenge — establish an English program that’s a ‘great books’ program. Combine it, if you’d like, with a four-year great books history program. I know that’s heresy, but go ahead — set up one class — just one for now — that runs for four years, with an established list of great books. (Kindly set aside the tiresome debate about what constitutes a ‘great’ book. If a person can express a preference for a given beer or brat, then he or she can pick one book over another.)

In that class, over those years in each year, students will read, write, and speak about these books.

I am convinced that students will have better competitive results on standardized tests and — more importantly — as a matter of substantive knowledge, than any other English program our district now offers.

Where did we go wrong, when we thought that a canonical curriculum was too ‘conservative?’ for us, and that in substitution we needed any number of clinical-sounding course names and topics? It shows how captive we have become of bureaucratic thinking that the idea seems so radical. It is, really, just the foundation of a bold adventure. This curriculum would offer any number of creative possibilities.

It would do more, though. It would, I think, demonstrate that we’re not as competitive as we could be, and that we’re stuck in the timid belief that English cannot be taught substantively; instead, that it must be taught only through the language and manner of professional educators’ theories.

I would remind readers that many high school preparatory and college courses are not so constrained; it is not by necessity that teaching should be this way.

Somewhere along the path that saw school libraries become ‘instructional materials centers,’ merely to adopt a terminology that falsely seemed clinical and accurate, we lost our way.

City

Predictions for 2008

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Former New York Times columnist William Safire used to write an annual predictions column, with multiple choice answers to questions, each new year. Here’s my local, amateur version in honor of Safire’s efforts. My predictions will be listed below the questions.

1. In 2008, the biggest Whitewater event will be
A. July 4th holiday
B. Memorial Day Parade
C. Christmas Parade
D. Celebration of another UWW national athletic championship

2. Winner of the 2008 election for Whitewater Municipal Judge will be
A. one among challengers (Ben Penwell, Art Coleman, or Colin Cheever)
B. incumbent Dick Kelly
C. Steve Spear as a write-in candidate
D. no one will vote

3. Leading vote-winner of the City of Whitewater presidential election results in November will be
A. John McCain
B. Barack Obama
C. Hillary Clinton
D. Rudy Guiliani

4. Whitewater will see the resignation of
A. a Common Council member (other than Kim Hixson)
B. a City of Whitewater department head
C. the leader of a prominent community group
D. none of the above

5. Between now and year’s end, the unemployment rate in Whitewater will
A. drop sharply
B. drop slightly
C. remain unchanged
D. increase slightly

6. The challenge of housing for students will be
A. solved
B. unchanged
C. worse
D. students? They’re not supposed to be off-campus anyway!

7. Overall vacancies in our downtown, and across the city will be
A. up significantly
B. basically unchanged
C. down slightly
D. down significantly

8. A local dentist will be nominated for a Nobel prize in
A. medicine
B. economics
C. peace
D. crowd-control

9. Market-penetration rate of the Whitewater Regsiter will
A. remain unchanged
B. decline slightly
C. decline significantly
D. increase after a subscription drive targeting lunatics

10. In 2008, Whitewater will receive news on how many new, large commercial businesses will locate to our city?
A. one
B. two
C. more than two
D. none

Adams’s guesses:

1. In 2008, the biggest Whitewater event will be
A. July 4th holiday (although I think that UWW will win another national championship; my answer is based on attendance alone)

2. Winner of the 2008 election for Whitewater Municipal Judge will be
A. one of the challengers (Note: I have no preferred candidate at this time; I merely think it’s a hard office to hold.)

3. Leading vote-winner of the City of Whitewater presidential election results in November will be
B. Barack Obama (Note: I have no preferred candidate at this time; I do think Sen. Obama will be the Democratic nominee, and would easily carry the City of Whitewater.)

4. Whitewater will see the resignation of
A. a Common Council member (other than Kim Hixson) and
C. the leader of a prominent community group

5. Between now and year’s end, the unemployment rate in Whitewater will
D. increase slightly

6. The challenge of housing for students will be
C. worse

7. Overall vacancies in our downtown, and across the city will be,
B. basically unchanged

8. A local dentist will be nominated for a Nobel prize in
D. crowd-control

9. Market-penetration rate of the Whitewater Regsiter will
B. decline slightly

10. In 2008, Whitewater will receive news on how many new, large commercial businesses will locate to our city?
A. one

We’ll see how we did at predicting at year’s end.

City, Police, Press

Questions for a Reporter, and the Community

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Readers of FREE WHITEWATER know that I have written about the lawsuit against Larry Meyer, former investigator of the Whitewater Police Department. This is a public matter involving the conduct of a public employee. It tells much about how that employee was supervised and managed. Most recently, in a post entitled, “Clear Information in the Lawsuit Against Larry Meyer,” I wrote about coverage of the lawsuit from Bliss Communications, publishers of the Janesville Gazette and The Week (and their online versions).

I have always been opposed to a settlement of this matter than contains a confidentiality provision, that would prevent discussion of a public matter, involving public duties, at public expense, from a public employee. So far as I recall, press accounts of the lawsuit have never addressed this issue. (For my opposition to a confidentiality provision, see my posts entitled, Questions on the Settlement in the Larry Meyer Case and Cat Has Your Tongue?)

No public official has defended confidentiality in this matter, although I have invited Whitewater Police Chief Jim Coan, or anyone he might designate — should he lack the confidence to defend the issue himself — to offer a defense. I would post that defense in full, and reply thereafter. I made this offer on December 28th, and Chief Coan has not replied.

(Note to Coan: A literal reading of Genesis declares that all creation took only six days; you have already allowed eight days to lapse without a reply to my invitation. How hard can it be?)

There are new court filings in the case (from January 3rd), in which counsel for the Defendant, Larry Meyer, supports a motion to compel settlement.

Here are my questions for the reporters of the Gazette and Week, with a bonus question added afterward.

1. On Confidentiality. Attorney Braithwaite, representing Meyer, includes two unsigned versions of a settlement agreement in this case. These versions appear as Exhibits B and C of Attorney Braithwaite’s January 3rd affidavit. Both versions contain lengthy confidentiality provisions. Each of these provisions expressly and specifically lists your newspaper, the Janesville Gazette.

These two versions of the settlement agreement in this public matter are littered with confidentiality provisions against the public interest.

Why has your newspaper not reported that the settlement includes proposed confidentiality agreements involving a lawsuit against a public employee, involving a public matter, at public expense, during the exercise of public duties?

2. On Quoting the Walworth County District Attorney, Phillip Koss, in your December 22nd Gazette story, entitled, “Cvicker Decides Not to Settle Suit.” You quote D.A. Koss at length, protesting against the idea of a ‘global settlement,’ where charges in a prior criminal matter would be reduced in exchange for the settlement of the civil suit against Meyer.

In Exhibit A of Defense Attorney Braithwaite’s January 3rd affidavit, Braithwaite includes a copy of an email from D.A. Koss.

Will you report on that email, and in light of it, what do you believe that it says about whether discussions of a global settlement actually took place, and Koss’s candid estimation of the merits of discussing a possible global settlement?

Bonus Question:

When the Gazette reports on a story on December 22nd, why does it run the same copy in the Week with a different date, December 31st? I understand that it’s publication in a second paper, but why not indicate that the story is a republication of an earlier story? The story is not ‘new’ on DEcember 31st, it’s nine days old. Why not indicate that the story is a republication?