Watching City Hall #212 “A fair breeze blew … the white foam flew … the furrow followed free … We were the first … that ever burst … Into that silent sea.” (Sam Coleridge – ‘Rhyme of Ancient Mariner’) Sometimes when things really suck, I take refuge in art. … Or, in poetry. … I dance. (thank God, I seldom sing) … I camp. … I jog to the Bay and walk. We not only need such outlets, … they are an absolute necessity. The above stanza from Coleridge is the best piece of poetry I’ve ever read and I’m a poetry freak. It combines alliteration and onomatopoeia more skillfully than anything done before or since. … It is a masterpiece. … It is a thing of beauty. … It edifies the soul by showing what a human can do if they pursue things other than money and property and power. … Right now, lots of bad things are happening all around me and I feel helpless in stemming the negative flow. Soooo, I listen to the old ‘Beautiful Day’ tape Jens cut for me. I reflect upon poetry. … One more piece: “If you can keep your head when all about you … are losing theirs, … and blaming it on you.” That’s from Rudyard Kipling. Blame shift is very popular in life. … In government, it is endemic. … Where do I go with that? … Let me start with the thing that’s bothering me most. Arlene Ackerman must go Dan Kelly must go. … Eddie Chin must go. … and, Jill Wynns must go. Emilio Cruz has earned another 100 day campaign against himself or his wife or whomever else he supports for political office. … The details. Urban Pioneers Program Murdered In typical SFUSD fashion, Principal, Wayne MacDonald, the legendary head of the Urban Pioneers Charter School was not informed by school Superintendent, Arlene Ackerman that she was presenting another motion to destroy the 30 year old program to the split Board of Education. … Clearly, Ackerman had gotten to Board President, Emilio Cruz and knew she had the votes to destroy the program whose excellence makes her so jealous. … Lord, Lord … does that bring back memories. Ten years ago, I was a Special Ed. Teacher with SFUSD. I taught at what was then, Portrero Hill Middle School. Another teacher and I created a program to stabilize a school ruled by gangster students. My partner and I decided to ‘team’ teach. He was an English teacher. He used his classes to create a student government for the school. He registered students to vote and held elections. … I took the idea a step further and created a student court system and student police force. Yellow jerseyed students with stacks of citations on clip boards roamed the halls writing-up students cutting class and escorting them to their proper classes. … The place calmed down quickly. Malcontents went before a jury of their peers. The gang ‘tags’ that covered the exterior walls of the bunker-like school were replaced with amazing graffiti murals that inspired rather than incited. We created a student run TV station. We did a snack bar and contracted services as groundskeepers and computer assembly workers. My students made money at legitimate endeavors instead of pushing drugs or selling their bodies on the street. … Of course, Dan Kelly and Wally Rojas (Kelly is the longest serving member of the SFUSD Board and Rojas was the rip-off Superintendent Kelly brought in from New York) … Kelly and Rojas killed the program. … The way they did it came back in a flash when I read how Kelly and new Superintendent, Ackerman killed the Urban Pioneers program. Secret session … victim not notified Bureaucrats don’t like change. My school’s principal (one true sleaze bag named Ron Cabral) … Ron told me: “It doesn’t matter if a program actually exists, as long as it looks good on paper.” … As a matter of fact, they preferred for programs to be ‘only on paper’. It limited the potential for liability. It limited the possibility of kids actually moving up in the continuum of care and upsetting the status quo. One by-product of our program, for instance, rendered a long standing ‘Resource’ class superfluous. Hell, we had all of the woman’s students in our class. Things were getting better and she was looking at an empty room. The lady who ‘taught’ the resource class was not into change. She drove a Mercedes to school and was the building union rep. Teaming with the district administration, the union approved the dismemberment of my program. All students were removed. (Some 300 of the school’s 600 students had joined us) The union and district built a case against me. I’d exposed them to sanctions by federal and state authorities by moving students between classes. (I only took the worst students from the English class into my class, then, only on a temporary basis until their behavior improved - I was a behavior teacher – Masters in working with ‘Severely Emotionally Disturbed) … The principal informed me that because I wasn’t certified to teach English, I’d put the district at risk. … I let them run with this for a few weeks, then sprung my English credentials on them. They almost shit their drawers. … Oh yeah, I had a double-certification and my program was thus, completely legal. The district records were such a shambles that they’d somehow lost my records and had no idea of my qualifications. They’re incompetent idiots. I demanded a hearing. One was scheduled in the district’s personnel office. When I arrived, I was told the hearing officer was off sick and I should come back the next day. … When I came back, I was told that the School Board had met in secret session (it was a ‘personnel matter’) … had met the previous evening and decided not to renew my contract. I still don’t know what the reasons were. Like Urban Pioneers, I wasn’t informed of an impending hearing concerning my program. It’s such a common pattern. We’ve seen Elections Director John Arntz do the same kind of shit at the behest of many of the same people regarding IRV (Instant Runoff Voting). Kill the new. Defend the status-quo. Principal Cabral had bragged to me that he’d “eased other teachers out of the profession” and I laughed at him. He was such a pathetic coward who hid in his office with a cop sitting by his desk all day. … But, he sure got my scalp. Rojas joined in, of course. As did longtime Board member Dan Kelly, who led the fight to destroy Urban Pioneers also. 8 years later (last year) I ran into Kelly at an event I was covering for the SF Call and reminded him of the events he’d orchestrated. … He laughed in my face: “The statute of limitations has run out. You can’t file a complaint now!” … What a prick. Who suffers? The kids, of course. Programs that work. Programs that transform malcontents into productive citizens are murdered because, by their very nature, they engender change. ‘Cure’ the trouble makers and you lose federal funding for them. … It’s insidious. So, what are you gonna do? You do whatever you can. I can write. I helped stop the Brown/Burton machine from sticking us with Burton’s daughter, Kimiko as Public Defender. Kimiko’s husband is SFUSD Board President, Emilio Cruz. Cruz gets great jobs from Willie because he’s Burton’s son-in-law. He ran Muni for awhile. They put him on the Board of some charity thing with a big salary, then Brown appointed him to the School Board. It was Cruz who provided the coup de grace to Urban Pioneers. Let’s make a little jingle for the thugs in this one: Cruz, Chin, Kelly and Wynns Killed Urban Pioneers and that’s a sin. Cruz, Chin, Kelly and Wynns Should never hold public office again. Cruz, Chin, Kelly and Wynns Cruz, Chin, Kelly and Wynns Cruz, Chin, Kelly and Wynns Remember their names and all of their kin. Not that I hold a grudge. … Not much. You hold one too, good citizen. The machine counts on you not remembering who the hell voted for what for more than 5 minutes. You join me in proving they’re wrong. … Keep that little jingle in your head until the next school board election … or, can we recall them??? Hmmmm Recall Cruz, Chin, Kelly and Wynns That’s … Cruz, Chin, Kelly and Wynns Down with the bastards! Also, of course, vote a big fat ‘No’ on the school district’s 250 million dollar bond request. Any district that regularly kills their best programs does not deserve another 250 million which they’ll certainly divert into channels such as the consultant they hired to bring down Urban Pioneers. Bottom line? Massive school districts don’t work. They get top heavy and tied to the status quo. They’re dinosaurs unwilling to change. They should all be broken up into Charter schools like Urban Pioneers. Charter schools work. This is why big school districts do everything possible to destroy them. Their unions are just as bad. They are about protecting their own turf. When I went to Kent Mitchell of the local teachers union, he told me they would not only not help, they would support the Principal and Resource teacher. When I said I wished to resign from the union, he laughed at me too. “You have to pay us to work here. … If you want, we can donate your dues to charity, but you must pay.” So, I’m paying them to destroy the best program the kids in that school ever had. … Go figure. Newsom suppresses own poll Eileen Left showed up last night just as I was crashing. She was carrying a pair of black stiletto heels by their straps in one hand and a bottle of champagne with 2 glasses in the other. She had a burning cigarette clenched in her teeth as she pushed aside a chair and sat down on the end of my futon. My friend gravity made her clinging black gown slide halfway down her thighs as she settled. Eileen: “You deserve a glass of champagne old man!” h.: (I stared in wonder as did the little black cat sleeping next to me) “I deserve a piece of ass, but I’ll settle for the champagne any day.” Eileen: “In your dreams, codger.” h.: “So, what did I do right?” I asked as I propped myself up on one elbow and moved the feral cat to my hip. (‘Sister’ – avail for adoption thru this site). Eileen: “I was with that guy from Newsom’s campaign and he says they’re putting together a push-poll right now cause your boy, Gonzalez kicked Gavin’s ass in a real poll they ran last weekend.” h.: “The one they phoned me on last Saturday?” Eileen: “One and the same. … He wouldn’t give any numbers but it seems Matt’s pulling numbers from Gavin when they hoped he’d split the left further. They are freaking terrified. Seems a bunch of them are on the payroll on a ‘don’t get paid if you lose’ basis and they’re realizing Matt can actually beat rich boy.” h.: (tossing off the first glass of bubbly) “No shit!!” Eileen: “I swear on my mother’s virginity. … They’re running this new poll in-house so they can slant it and skew the issues. Stuff like: ‘Do you support Supervisor Newsom’s desire to clean up the streets?’ and shit like that. It is truly feeble. … Have another glass, geezer. You were right again.” She pulled her dress the rest of the way over her head and leaned back beside me, propping her head against the wall as she continued to drink. She never wears a bra and was down to a pair of jet black thong panties. I began to think impure thoughts. h.: (Getting back on task – we’ve been in bed together lots of times and nothing ever happened) … “They’re doing a pure ‘push poll’?” Eileen: “Nothing but. As a matter of fact, you should expect nothing but push polls from now on. Gavin’s not a good loser and they ain’t gonna show him anything bad from here on. … Also, they’re furious that their campaign staff is full of leaks. They just won’t give them anything bad to leak.” h.: “They’re going to run the rest of their campaign from Fantasy Land!?” Eileen: “That’s what I said, boy. … (she sat her glass down, immediately started to snore, but quickly awakened with a snort) … “I’m gonna take a little nap here. If you cross the center line of this bed, I’ll castrate you.” My cat, ‘Sister’, sat on my hip and watched her in awe. … Cats all love Eileen. … I can understand why. Disagreements? Corrections? Stuff em! Praise? … send to: