N&O school coverage fails again to provide perspective

I was reading this N&O story about Wake school board members Kevin Hill and Keith Sutton providing background on Tata’s firing. The story by Thomas Goldsmith inexplicably ended with a quote from some random guy and included no context as to why what we think he says actually matters:

“I think the man got a raw deal,” said Arvin F. Dixon, 76, who lives just outside of Rolesville. “I think the school board should have been working together and taking care of our tax money like they ought to be.”

Who is this guy, Arvin Dixon? He’s not mentioned anywhere else in the article. Nowhere does it state whether he was one of many who called or emailed the board. At the age of 76, it’s safe to say that Mr. Dixon has no kids currently in school. Voting records show he is a white male and registered Republican who only sporadically votes in local elections.
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Chatham bunker served Cameron Village bunker

“Big Hole” bunker in Chatham County


Remember when I wrote about the secret AT&T tropospheric bunker in Chatham County, and how N&O reporter Jay Price knew it pointed to downtown Raleigh but didn’t know where? My blogging friend John Morris discovered that the other end of this Chatham bunker’s communications link was in the basement of the 401 Oberlin building in Cameron Village:

Two years after this testimony, one of the new buildings within Cameron Village housed a top secret facility with communications equipment and provisions to survive a nuclear disaster. There were many other similar installations across the country built at the same time.

John says Jay Price wrote about 401 Oberlin in a follow-up to his Chatham bunker story but the article doesn’t appear to be online.

Interesting spot for a top-secret communications facility, and a shame it’s no longer around.

Partisan? Where do we start?

“With this partisan decision, the board has now guaranteed that there will be far fewer great schools in Wake County,” board member Debra Goldman said. “I grieve for our children, our teachers and our staff. There will certainly not be the security and stability that the citizens of Wake County want.”

Yeah, Goldman grieves sooooo much that she’s canceling her political bid for State Auditor to focus on the Wake County school chirren.

What’s that? You say Goldman is only using the Wake Board of Education as a stepping stone to higher political office? Surely you jest! I’m sure John Tedesco is so outraged that he’ll drop his bid to become State Superintendent of Education, too, just so he can stay and set the Wake school board right. I mean, it’s not about him, it’s about the kids, right?

Someone please wake me when all the cheap political grandstanding is over.

via Ousting of Wake schools chief could jeopardize funding :: WRAL.com.

Tata’s culture of fear

Tony Tata


I’ve heard rumors from sources inside the school system that superintendent Tony Tata had created a “culture of fear” among teachers and staff. They say that people were afraid to speak out when something concerned them and those who stuck to their guns when they felt strongly about something were dismissed.

That’s no way to run a school system, or even an army brigade for that matter. I trust that we’ll here more of the reasoning as things progress.

School assignment madness

Two miles or two hundred feet?

You want to know how messed up the proposed 2013-2014 Wake County school assignments are? Above is a photo of our kids’ school, Conn Elementary. Highlighted in red is the long-time home of Mrs. Williams at 300 Plainview Avenue in the Belvidere Park neighborhood.

As you can see, Mrs. Williams’s property is actually adjacent to Conn Elementary. The neighborhood crosswalk for Conn runs right in front of her property. From her back porch she could honestly throw a rock and hit the school (provided of course that Principal Richburg isn’t around).
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China Shows Off an Aircraft Carrier, but Experts Are Skeptical

The Chinese aircraft carrier Liaoning

Lt. Gen. Qi Jianguo, assistant to the chief of the PLA’s general staff said “All of the great nations in the world own aircraft carriers — they are symbols of a great power.”

No, simply owning an aircraft carrier isn’t power. Anyone can buy one. Knowing how to use an aircraft carrier is a great power.

Cute, China. Cute.

In a ceremony attended by the country’s top leaders, China put its first aircraft carrier into service on Tuesday, a move intended to signal its growing military might as tensions escalate between Beijing and its neighbors over islands in nearby seas.Officials said that the carrier, a discarded vessel bought from Ukraine in 1998 and refurbished by China, would protect national sovereignty, an issue that has become a touchstone of the government’s dispute with Japan over ownership of islands in the East China Sea.

via China Shows Off an Aircraft Carrier, but Experts Are Skeptical – NYTimes.com.