Dilemma for Alameda Schools

by Dennis Green

Current Superintendent of the Alameda Unified School District, Kirsten Vital, is energetic, engaging, bright and very articulate. But she also faces an almost impossible situation.

She has inherited a district plagued by declining enrollment, at least one underperforming school which may go charter, a teaching staff with iron-clad job security, a recent parcel tax (Measure H) challenged in the courts, and state takeaways of funding. What is a superintendent to do?

Well, a new ballot measure is in the early planning stages, one which will ask Alameda property owners to assess themselves a new school parcel tax substantially higher than school tax Measures A & H combined, perhaps as much as $1,000 per property per year, (and if it passes, replacing them), and one that might also be in place much longer, perhaps in near-perpetuity. It will likely exempt seniors, (using a short, unpublicized window for opt-out), but may include landlords, so that renters will also help support the local schools.

Following Base Closure and the refurbishment of the Harbor Island Apartment complex, AUSD enrollment declined between 1996-2006 by nearly 900 students, which would ordinarily mean layoffs of 30-45 teachers. Projections show that until the completion and sale of substantial new housing at Alameda Point, now quite uncertain, enrollment will continue to decline.

Ordinarily, some attrition in the teaching ranks would help soften the resulting funding losses, but many Alameda teachers are younger, the Boomer Generation over 60 in a minority. AUSD has 554.5 teachers/ counselors, with 15 first year teachers and 68 (8%) at the top of the salary scale with 27 years. Only 28% have 21-27 years of experience.

Moreover, teachers hired into the district from elsewhere, who would in many districts be set back in the pay scale to a cap equivalent of eight-ten years experience, are in Alameda instead given full credit for years taught. A teacher coming here, say, from San Leandro with 18 years experience is given credit on the pay scale for all 18 years, at a much higher pay rate than transfers into many California school districts.

Class size is also a thorny issue. For example, in the AEA contract, class size reduction legislation allows for an average district-wide class size in K-3 of 20.1. Changing these class sizes has to be negotiated with the teachers’ union.

Some cynics say that such legislation is a strategy by teachers' unions to counter declining enrollment, and there is little evidence that such reductions improve outcomes.

So declining enrollments do not equal teaching vacancies.

Superintendent Vital is pursuing many economies, paring down non-teaching staff and looking at various partnerships with Alameda City departments, such as innovative uses of city parks. But such economies don’t begin to make up for funding shortfalls.

Closing or consolidating schools is not necessarily a wise option, because closing a school can result in enrollment flight to private schools, canceling out any cost savings in the process.

The necessity of new funding for AUSD is apparent, but the terms of that new funding are still under consideration. What exactly, in other words, will earn voters’ approval?

For the coming parcel tax proposal, timing and strategy are critical. It may go before the voters as early as June, 2010, or as late as November, 2011. It will almost certainly present a “Heads I win, Tails you lose” strategy, whereby failure of the new parcel tax will keep Measures A & H in place.

And while the campaign for Measure H threatened the loss of music and sports programs and featured glossy mailers and lawn signs displaying trash cans and the motto, “Don’t throw our Schoolchildren in the trash!” the next campaign will likely be more substantive and less gut-wrenching. More sober and economically difficult times call for a different approach.

©2009 Dennis Green

Sister Sarah

by Dennis Green

Don’t you just love it. Sista Sarah Palin capturing the far right wing of the “NoBama” GOP, and stiffing John McCain and all his staffers in the process. I pray to the gods of our founding that she succeeds.

Because a majority of Americans are really stupid, gullible and easily led, we as a nation get what we deserve, especially in the way of leaders. These half-wits and dimwits and nitwits joined together, after all, to elect George W. Bush twice, well, at least one and a half times. They also, in a kind of knee-jerk reaction against their own previous choices, then elected Obama.

Go figure.

But the populist popularity of Sarah Palin is truly breath-taking and mind-boggling, to say the least. She comes off, in her book and in her interviews, as self-righteous, defensive, shallow, uninformed and biased. A perfect fit, perhaps, for the American electorate.

If the U.S. Congress has proven itself totally dysfunctional in regard to health care reform, they merely have proven themselves representative of the American people, who continue electing these dolts, as doppelgangers of the voters, to office. And yet, only 14% hold Congress in high regard, even less than poll as respecting the GOP, only 17%.

Sarah is perfect. She’s not elitist, i.e., educated or sophisticated or complicated in any sense. Not from New York, or even San Francisco, let alone Capone’s Chicago. She loves her “First Dude” and carried his latest baby to full-term in spite of its disabilities. Like a majority of Americans, she believes in the “Right to Life,” unless you have four legs.

I can just imagine her in the White House, and I hope that you can too. Tupperware Parties! A single parent mother in the West Wing, along with the First Bastard Grandchild… Re-decorations with indoor/outdoor carpeting and chintz. New White House china from WalMart…

And from the White House, she’ll be able to see the Pentagon, and order our military forces into battle in Iran, going rogue big time!

But if Americans, in a moment of inattention, can elect a black man to the presidency, someone they can’t stand by even to the end of his first year in office, they can surely elect a redneck woman, and quickly abandon her too. With a media devoted 24/7 to tearing any president down, she will provide them far more comic fodder than even George W. “What Me Worry?” Bush did. They’ll have a field day. And so will you.

But with global warming, and a “Mayan” calendar ending at 2012, it may not really matter which of the many un-qualified candidates American elect to national office. If “The End of the World Is At Hand,” who really gives a damn? Not me.

©2009 Dennis Green

72 Virgins

by Dennis Green

There’s a very funny satire making the rounds about a “labor stoppage” among suicide bombers because of a reduction in the number of virgins who will await them in Paradise, from 72 to merely 63. Their union, “BOOM!” (Brotherhood Of Osama’s Martyrs), has declared a strike, and for the time being no members will be blowing off their members.

And of course, besides laughing my heinie off, the satire got me to thinking, for the first time really, about this whole concept of such a reward in Paradise. I mean of all the women I’ve had relations with, only two of them were virgins, and with one of them, things went very badly and were all downhill from there. That’s a 50/50 chance of misery. Not great odds.

So why would anyone want to be rewarded with 72 of these inexperienced young ladies? Of course, all this comes about in a culture where women aren’t allowed out in public without a male escort, preferably a family member or a husband, and must cover themselves from head to toe with thick, un-clinging fabric. But that’s a very weird notion about feminine virtue.

So far as I know, no such virtue is expected of the men in these societies. And I’ve heard the explanation that the men were always off fighting battles in these cultures, leaving the women at home, and that the women therefore had to be heavily protected from…what? Themselves? Or perhaps from the 4-F guys who stayed behind.

If these are the standards by which Jihadists say that we in the modern West are decadent, I’m sorry, but I think any man who would blow himself up for 72 virgins is just plain nuts. I can’t even imagine trying to manage a harem of 72 non-virgins.

And what about the female suicide bombers? What do they get? 72 truck drivers? 72 plumbers? I mean, they have to get some kind of reward besides getting the hell out of there.

So, no, I don’t think we will ever be able to comprehend these people, or their culture, or their beliefs. Something is seriously amiss here. All those hymens! I don’t care if those women are circumcised, that’s just too much painful friction. Some folks’ Paradise is another man’s Hell.

And where are they getting all these virgins anyway? I mean, I don’t doubt that any female making it to 18 in that society could be virginal, but are they simply killing them all on their 18^th birthday and then sending them to Paradise? Or is it true, as the poet Wallace Stevens says in “Sunday Morning,” that the “ripe fruit never falls”?

Even Jesus, described in the Koran as a major Prophet, tells us that “in heaven there shall be no male nor female,” and I’m assuming that also means there will be no hot sex. If that’s the case, we better get it while we can, while we’re still alive on earth. So much for virginity!

While we in the decadent West feel that sometimes virginity is a burden, especially the virgins who unburden themselves before the age of consent, most fathers with young daughters can understand the protective instincts of the Muslim culture. At the same time, we won’t stone those unburdened young ladies to death in the soccer arena either.

And, we don’t strap on explosives and blow ourselves up in the public marketplace or square to kill innocent strangers. We seem to value life more than we do virginity, at least in the context of modern sexual liberation. I can’t help but think that’s a good thing.

©2009 Dennis Green

Peace in the Middle East

by Dennis Green

All you need to know about the Middle East right now is that support for U.S. President Barack Obama in Israel is down to 4%. Since his speech in Cairo, the fear there is that the American unilateral backing of Israel will begin to weaken as Obama offers negotiation and peace overtures to Iran, Syria, Egypt, Lebanon and Jordan. They also know that Israel, and our foreign policy toward that nation, is the lynchpin to peace in the Middle East.

Nothing else really matters. Since 1948, America has sided with Israel against her Arab and Persian neighbors no matter what actions she has taken, and no matter what her treatment of the Palestinians might be. This U.S. stance — far more than our meddling in other nations there, and even more than our invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq — has stimulated radical Islamic Jihad and hatred of the West.

The reasons for that unilateral support of Israel are many, including the powerful Israeli lobby in the U.S. which many American Jews support with their contributions and their votes. But each of the various Jewish communities in the U.S. is very different — Chicago Jews different from New York Jews, San Francisco Jews very different from the Jewish community in L.A. — and there is a lasting schism within American Jewry following the Six Day War in 1967.

Beginning with a split among Jews in New York between those who favored keeping the territories captured by Israel in that war, and those who favored returning them and aiding in the creation of a Palestinian State, Norman Podhoretz founded the “Neo-Conservative” movement, a new wing of former liberals who joined the GOP and began lobbying for the “One State Solution” in Israel favored by radical conservative extremists there.

In the meantime, Israel practices apartheid against its Palestinian population, bullies its neighbors, and has invaded southern Lebanon and Gaza, committing many war crimes against civilian populations in the process, as determined by investigations by the United Nations. The only Jewish leader who seriously negotiated with Egypt, Menachim Begin, was assassinated by a right-wing Israeli extremist, and moderate Israelis favoring a Two State Solution are marginalized.

And all the while, the U.S. continues to pour more than $4 billion a year into Israel, completely now in weaponry, not peaceful aid. And after stealing nuclear secrets from the U.S., Israel has developed more than 200 nuclear warheads, further de-stabilizing the Middle East. And we don’t even blink.

In one sense, nothing else matters in what we do there — not in Afghanistan, or Iraq, or in Pakistan, or in our dealings with Iran. So long as we continue this uncritical, unilateral support of everything Israel does, Jihad will continue, and the U.S. will be a prime target.

It isn’t likely that our policies toward Israel will change. But if we lessened our foreign aid to them, even threatened them with sanctions if they don’t vigorously pursue resolution of the Palestinian homelessness through the Two State Solution, such actions would do more to relieve tensions in the Middle East than a hundred thousand troops will ever achieve.

©2009 Dennis Green

Tyger, Tyger, Burning Bright!

by Dennis Green

It’s all about the nookie. Not the golf, not the celebrity, not the marriage vows. It’s all about the nookie. And when a husband strays, especially a new father, what does that say about the nookie?

Well, it’s just possible that there wasn’t any. Not at home. No nookie going on at home… Just an outside chance. That sexy blonde woman he is married to…now just another wife. A new mother. Maybe she didn’t have time for him, or the inclination.

And I hate to break your hearts, but women also stray. Some of the hottest love affairs I’ve had were with married women. And every woman I’ve been married to has been there too. It’s all about the nookie.

There either is, or there ain’t no nookie going on. And if, for whatever reason, the relationship, the marriage or the affair, is post-coital, or non-coital, you’ve always got a choice. You can go without or find some elsewhere. I doubt very seriously that if Tyger, Tyger had been burning brightly at home he would have strayed.

And when a married man, or a married woman, strays, the outrage is unavoidable, and so, if the stray gets caught at it, is the guilt. The recriminations come next, but somewhere in all the melodrama the real work of being married gets lost. Being married is the hardest thing we will ever try to do, and some of us succeed better at it than others, but it is truly god-awful hard work.

And Lord knows the woman who sits at home with the new babies while her husband is dangling out is to be pitied, not to be blamed. But besides the philandering hubby, she is the only one who really knows about the nookie, and whether it plays any part in the dramatic action, even somewhere offstage. And if she feels inadequate in any way that can only add to her grief.

But as for Tyger, or any man, or any woman, who strays, I think we should all be very careful before we rush to judgment. Even if we are completely without sin, or the same sin, the stone we hurl today may come back to bonk us on the bean tomorrow. Karma is like that.

Fidelity is highly overrated. And its incidence exaggerated. Even during Victorian times, many married men frequented bordellos, and they don’t distribute condoms to married U.S. soldiers during wartime because of buggery in foxholes. The gossips get all het up about “the media, and rap music and all those lingerie commercials,” but the truth is that boys will be boys and girls will be girls and that ain’t gonna change.

And adultery is just plain damned exciting fun. Although it’s there prohibited in the Ten Commandments, it doesn’t figure at all in Jesus’ Two. In fact, “Love thy neighbor as thyself” could be inviting, depending on the neighbor!

Perhaps nookie is not even the best measure of a person’s character — where he or she gets it and at what cost — as they say, marriage is a lot more expensive than the Chicken Ranch. Perhaps we will be judged not by the nookie we get or give, but by what it is that pre-occupies our thoughts and our conversations, by how we treat “the least among us,” by the things that we make and the good that we do.

What a concept! Maybe even Tyger, the first billionaire golfer, will find, in the midst of all this nookie and talk of nookie and his fabled “disgrace,” something to do with all that money besides spousal support and bills for freelance nookie. As even Paul McCartney sang, “Can’t buy me love!”

And the Saturday daytime bartender at the Lemon Tree has already written the tagline for his new sponsorship by Trojan condoms: “Put a little Tyger on your Wood!” I see a whole new career for our man…

©2009 Dennis Green

The Tragedy of the Commons

by Dennis Green

Listening to Melinda Gates, whose foundation fights disease and especially childhood deaths in African nations, it’s obvious she doesn’t understand the implications and consequences of what she’s doing. Delivering malaria, smallpox and HIV vaccines, teaching mothers about the importance of breast-feeding, keeping a baby warm, etc. sounds fine and noble, but comes from a very narrow perspective.

She expresses a lot of guilt, as a citizen of the First World, of a developed country, that somewhere in the world people are going hungry, or living in poverty and suffering. She is as geeky as her husband, in a sort of delightful way, wearing a hairdo I haven’t seen since 1989.

She says she wishes she had earned a “biology degree, when we’re working with the science and stuff.” So do I. If only she had met and studied with Garrett Hardin, Professor of Human Ecology at UC Santa Barbara, who understood far better than the Gates do, “The Tragedy of the Commons.” He wrote an article with that title way back in 1968 that had an enormous impact on such do-gooders.

And a few years later, Hardin published an essay called “Lifeboat Ethics: the Case Against Helping the Poor” in 1974 in Psychology Today that had even more impact, and created a great controversy at the time. What Hardin said, basically, was that shipping food to Africa that would simply get turned into more babies who would grow up in poverty and distress was less than enlightened.

Hardin was the world’s foremost advocate of population control. He saw how the proliferation of human life impacts the whole of the ecology wherever it occurs. In Stalking the Wild Taboo, he championed abortion as a last resort form of birth control, long before it was ruled legal in Roe v. Wade. He was not sentimental about “saving the lives” of unwanted children.

Gates sees the world as a mother would, one child at a time. Keeping that child alive is her only concern. “We can save a child’s life for ten dollars!” she says. But there’s an arrogance there under the surface, masquerading as charity and generosity. It shows now and then in her eyes.

Hardin, on the other hand, thinks globally, was one of the first and the best to do so. His book, Exploring new ethics for survival: the voyage of the spaceship Beagle, sees the planet as a closed system of limited resources that cannot afford to take everyone who ever existed on board. Those growing populations have already de-nuded the American Prairie, shrunk the savannah and the tropical rain forest so severely whole species have gone extinct. If humans never died, the planet soon would.

Hardin’s core genius is best expressed in “The Tragedy of the Commons.” He uses “tragedy” in its philosophic sense, as “the solemnity of the remorseless working of things.” The commons is the village commons where everyone is allowed to graze his cows. The incentive to each herdsman to add another cow to his herd is obvious. The benefit of adding one animal to his herd is greater than the overgrazing that results, because the costs of overgrazing are shared with all the other herdsmen, whereas the profits from the sale of that one animal are not.

“Therein is the tragedy,” Hardin writes. “Each man is locked into a system that compels him to increase his herd without limit -- in a world that is limited. Ruin is the destination toward which all men rush, each pursuing his own best interest in a society that believes in the freedom of the commons. Freedom in a commons brings ruin to all.”

For all their wealth and wisdom, Bill & Melinda Gates do not comprehend this most basic and elemental scientific truth. They are doing far more harm than good.

©2009 Dennis Green

Changing Hearts & Minds

by Dennis Green

Well, like anyone else, I hate to admit it when I’m wrong, but every now and then, I am. I think I’ve been wrong about Afghanistan, and the prospects for our involvement there. Two events have changed this heart and mind.

The first was President Obama’s acceptance speech for the Nobel Peace Prize, one of the most eloquent and articulate statements about war and peace since Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. He wasn’t defensive, but defended the necessary use of force, of armed conflict, of war itself. And in front of that audience, doing so took enormous courage.

Secondly, and a few minutes later, I watched a Tivo of Charlie Rose interviewing General Stanley MacCrystal, leader of our forces in Afghanistan. He is also eloquent and articulate, but more importantly, he is a decent man. Not merely a brave and decorated soldier, but a decent man.

How can I tell? Well, to begin with, I’m an excellent judge of character. I have made my living by reading people most of my adult life — students, employees, clients, audiences, voters — and my success, my livelihood, my very being, depended on my ability to judge people and their basic nature, and their reactions.

Also, I had an excellent teacher. My own father, who never gave me five words of spoken advice, yet nevertheless taught me what it meant to be a decent man by simply being one, by his example. Of course, he was imperfect in many ways, but he was a good, solid, decent human being. He didn’t wink or fudge or cheat or speak out of both sides of his mouth. Even his obsessions were short-lived.

MacCrystal debunks the many myths about Afghanistan — that there has never been a central government, that sectarian loyalties such as being Pashtoon are more important than being Afghan, that no security partnership is possible — and he is convincing. His confidence helps, but it’s ultimately his decency that persuades you he isn’t lying.

I wish he’d been out there sooner, speaking as he did on Charlie’s show at great length, in-depth, taking tough questions and giving thoughtful and complete answers. And very few journalists other than Charlie Rose, perhaps Bill Moyers, could do the job, could bring out the best in the man without fawning all over him or lobbing softballs.

And Obama showed just the right degree of humility in accepting the prize, acknowledging that he is still “in the beginning” of his efforts to change America’s role in the world’s quest for peace. If the literal meaning of “Islam” is “Peace,” I suspect Obama will see that its promise is fulfilled.

But when he says that “there is also evil in the world,” he is absolutely right. If anything, his speech made it clear that simplistic notions of pacifism are something that he cannot afford. Nor can we. If I had any traces left in me of the knee-jerk anti-war youngster who took to the streets protesting the War in Vietnam, Obama has called me on my bullshit.

And MacCrystal has convinced me that something good may yet come about in the sorry wastelands of Afghanistan. It’s been quite a morning!

©2009 Dennis Green