March 24, 2009
The stimulus money is finally hitting, but the thoughtful public (and if you are reading this you are, no doubt, thoughtful) is asking, “What pray tell is the stimulus stimulating?” Is it producing jobs or is it, as a friend (Graham) recently said, “Liberal Christmas”? The early returns are in and I am afraid the answer is, well, both troubling and downright comical. I will give only one exhibit here: the
McCaskey
School District
—that is the School District of Lancaster City for those of you unfortunately born outside of Our Fair County. Proof has arrived that the McCaskey District, long on spending short on productivity, needs stimulation. A few years ago I remember seeing a billboard in the city hailing this great progress with the District (read the statistic careful):46% of McCaskey students not in the bottom quartile of PSSA testing.
Read it again. They were advertizing this as success. Yikes! So, they need stimulating. Here is the good news on that score—the money is on the way! Here is the story from the Intelligencer Journal (here is the story and the chart):
Over 12 million dollars are headed to the District. Maybe now stimulation will occur…maybe…perhaps. Ok, it will not. Here is what I saw posters for this week—see the musical on the middle of the first page of the newsletter below (Only click this link if you want to lose all hope in stimulation):
Somehow I thought stimulation would be less angry.
