Whitewater has a public school district, and so she has public schools, and those public schools have goals for the students under their care. On September 23rd, eight days ago, some of the district’s principals (and two administrators) presented the goals for their students. (Other presentations will follow, presumably in October.) These goals are at…
Education
City, Crime, Cruelty, Education, Ethnicity, Immigration, Local Government, Mendacity, Migrants, Police, Race, University, UW System
‘Do Deportations Lower Crime? Not According to the Data’
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
Anna Flagg writes Do Deportations Lower Crime? Not According to the Data: In one of Donald J. Trump’s earliest moves as president, days after his inauguration, he revived the deportation program known as Secure Communities. Proponents argue that it helps prevent crime and also increases the police’s ability to solve crime through collaboration with federal…
Education, Law, Open Government, Public Records, School District, Wisconsin
School Board Applicants’ Letters of Interest
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
Last week, I posted on the applicant interviews with the Whitewater Unified School Board for a vacancy (following the resignation of board member Jean Linos). See School Board, 9.16.19: Applicant Interviews and Reporting. Seeing that the agenda for the meeting lacked key information, and a local newspaper’s reporting (Gazette; Beleckis) was deficient, I submitted a…
Assault Awareness & Prevention, Education, Ethics, Law, Marketing, Misconduct, Negligence, Nepotism, Official Misconduct, Sexual Harassment, University
For UW-Whitewater’s Administration, Talking Points Won’t Be Enough
by JOHN ADAMS • • 9 Comments
Yesterday, I posted on The Marketing of Misinformation: UW-Whitewater’s Use of a Counterfeit ‘Campus Safety’ Study. Today, here is a look at some of the university administration’s talking points in response to long-standing acts of sexual harassment and assault on campus. (They’re from the new university chancellor’s recorded interview with a local newspaper.) From the video…
City, Education, Fact Checking, Marketing, Mendacity, Public Relations, University, UW System
The Marketing of Misinformation: UW-Whitewater’s Use of a Counterfeit ‘Campus Safety’ Study
by JOHN ADAMS • • 16 Comments
Education, Health, School District
School Board, 8.26.19: Health
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
School Board Meeting 08/26/19 from Whitewater Community TV on Vimeo. Whitewater’s school board met in regular session on Monday night, with an agenda of 17 items. Item 8D was a mental health presentation from Dr. Lanora Heim, the district’s director of pupil services. The presentation appears from 1:01:00 to 1:19:36 on the video above, and…
America, Democrats, Education, Politics, Republicans
Differing Partisan Views on Education
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
A few days ago, a commenter (‘J’) at this website linked to the Pew Research Center’s latest survey data on partisan views of education. See The Growing Partisan Divide in Views of Higher Education. Kim Taylor (of Pew) summarizes the survey: Americans see value in higher education – whether they graduated from college or not. Most say…
City, Education, School District
School Board, 8.12.19: 4 Points
by JOHN ADAMS • • 6 Comments
Updated 8.13.19 afternoon with video. Whitewater’s school board met in special session on Monday night, with two main agenda items: hiring a new middle school principal, and considering among several expenditures from five-hundred thousand dollars available to the district. A few points to consider: 1. The school board unanimously selected Chris Fountain, most recently of…
City, Education, School District
School Board, 7.22.19: 13 Points
by JOHN ADAMS • • 8 Comments
The Whitewater School Board met on Monday, 7.22.19, and from the agenda there was a brief discussion about the learning that is fundamental to any educational program (about which I wrote yesterday). See School Board, 7.22.19: One Worthy Question. Today, a few other points to consider: 1. It’s a mature board: most members have been…
City, Culture, Economy, Education, Health, Poverty, School District
School Board, 7.22.19: One Worthy Question
by JOHN ADAMS • • 2 Comments
Whitewater’s school board met in regular session on Monday night, with an agenda of 16 items, of varying importance. In a two-hour, open-session discussion of over a dozen items, with topics great and small (and at least one board member as interested in wheedling or badgering himself into future meetings as any deeper question), there…
City, Education, School District
Changes at Whitewater Middle School
by JOHN ADAMS • • 2 Comments
One reads that Whitewater Middle School principal Tanya Wojciechowicz has resigned, after a few months in which her departure seemed probable. For those months, one version or another of this post awaited publishing. The best one can now confidently say is that Whitewater Middle School will for months remain a work in progress. It…
Education, Science/Nature
Nutty Stories Don’t Seem Nutty to the Unprepared
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
Hobbes famously observed that reason is a spy for the passions (“the Thoughts, are to the Desires, as Scouts, and Spies, to range abroad, and find the way to the things Desired”). Whatever else one may think of Hobbes, in this he was, sadly, too often correct. So when one reads a story that battens…
Education, School District
Educational (Among Other) Uncertainties in Rural Communities
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
Near Whitewater, another rural school district, Paymyra-Eagle, may dissolve and be absorbed into surrounding communities. That there are so many uncertainties about what might happen to the Palmyra-Eagle district, and how this might affect surrounding districts, should not surprise. From a lack certainty about local rural schools, economies, and government one cannot expect districts near…
Babbittry, Business, CDA, Corporate Welfare, Economy, Education, Employment, Government Spending, Local Government, WEDC, Wisconsin
Public Money for Unskilled Manufacturing Jobs is Money Wasted
by JOHN ADAMS • • 1 Comment
In times of historically low unemployment, communities are simply wasting public money when they subsidize unskilled manufacturing jobs. The jobs, jobs, jobs mantra only makes sense in conditions of unemployment, unemployment, unemployment. Despite relatively low unemployment, ‘community development men’ in places like Whitewater still push business subsidies for companies using unskilled labor. Pretending that dead-end…