Kucinich, who served 16 years in Congress, was Cleveland mayor in the late 1970s, and ran for president in 2004 and 2008, plans to hold town hall-style forums across the state in Centerville, Columbus, Parma, and Elyria Monday through Thursday. He kicked it off by talking to reporters at the Ohio statehouse.

“When state revenue for public schools decreases because of money which goes to private for-profit charters, public school officials must make up the difference by asking local property taxpayers for more money,” Kucinich said. “It represents a deliberate, destructive undermining of the public education of Ohio’s children. What is our educational philosophy today? Let for-profit corporations exploit the mass of children by controlling the state government?”

“With that last line, he was referring to state legislators “who have accepted millions of dollars in campaign contributions from charter-school operators, notably William Lager of the Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow and David Brennan of White Hat Management,” according to the Columbus Dispatch….

According to a report released in advance of DeVos’ visit, since the 2012-2013 school year, $3,744,988 in state funding originally meant for children attending Van Wert County’s local public schools “has instead gone to privately run brick-and-mortar and online charter schools.” In turn, said the report from Innovation Ohio, “local taxpayers in Van Wert…have had to subsidize these larger state payments to charter schools to the tune of $1.4 million—money that should have supplemented the larger state aid amount but is now being used to subsidize poorer performing, privately run charter schools.”

Excerpt from dianeravitch.com  4/29/07

No stranger has been in my condo today but I find my screen on a horizontal, not vertical plain.  I recall long ago having posted a recipe for correcting an upside down screen but it kind of presupposed that a mischief maker had done the trick.  If you know how I can get upright again please tell me 

Sorry, I didn’t mean to mislead you with hopes for a rosy post. I’m just “cleaning out” my papers again and came across the following which is the beginning of a story I never finished, from 1-4-98, titled “Something About Ida.”

At 62, Ida was an imposing old girl, having inherited her large frame from her mother’s father and her seeming aloofness from her father. Not a very nice person, but she meant to be. She was an enigma to herself,  and others often dismissed her as being too complex and self-centered.

A woman of many talents,  she has come to believe if not totally accept that in some aspects she is irrevocably stunted. As she sees it, her task is to live a life of integrity, while allowing for her very real  and intransigent shortcomings.

At times she wonders if her view of her shortcomings is a cop out. Is her perception of her developmental hang-ups pathological or not? She grasps for an analogy when reflecting on this. Like a man carving  himself out of a block of wood: is he a block of wood with delusions of grandeur or a creative spirit working to free himself from his unconscious?

For d’Verse–tho when I looked earlier I saw no Mar 23 listed as Open Link.

MY MIRROR iS A LIAR

It is my fifth birthday and

I am in pigtails, swinging

on the garage door,

wondering if I will still

be me

when I am grown.

Seventy-five years later,

I am.

So clear and well-written! It should be helpful to many. And you show much compassion for others.