What’s up with Phil Rumore? I respect his ability but find his lack of respect for the people of our city despicable. He learned how to negotiate with historically collectively incompetent school boards. Corrupt Albany does his will and he has a stacked deck of friends on the School Board elected in a separate May election by less than five percent of the electorate. He and his anti-child alliance with Crystal Peoples and the corrupted Grassroots and Black Sisterhood organizations lobby intensely against moving the farcical board election to November. Teachers have great pay and benefits while the poorest city in America cheats impoverished students out of their right to a decent education. Rumore has no guilt forcing a young child into a system knowing that chances are overwhelming that the child is doomed to a life of tragedy, probably pealing potatoes in a prison kitchen. He blames everyone but himself. The graduation rate fell to 46 percent last year and the taxpayers paid $25,500 per student. All could attend Nichols and we’d have $10,000 a year in a college fund for each. There are nine ex-principals in City Hall getting $90,000/year. We hire and promote based on whom you know and not on how good you may be at your job. Phil fights standards and expects us to lay back while the standard math and English testing grade averages continue to fall into the abyss.

On March 21 a contingent from Buffalo State Students for Peace participated in a March on Washington marking the sixth anniversary of the Iraq war. The anniversary resonated with the thoughts of more than 1,300,000 Iraqi dead; 2,118 Afghani dead in 2008; 4,926 dead US soldiers combined; and the untold thousands of dead Palestinians. Despite the 10,000 marchers, the “mainstream” seemed to take a political and intellectual vacation.