SCHOOL RESTRUCTURING TAKES CENTER STAGE as racism lurks under the footlights in Alabama

[Jeffersons Ghost]

SCHOOL RESTRUCTURING TAKES CENTER STAGE

Published Friday, September 21, 2007 Tuscaloosa, Alabama
School restructuring takes center stage
National media covers plan some parents call racist

The recent restructuring of the Tuscaloosa City Schools has attracted national and international media attention along with cries of racism and unfairness from parents.

Only three days after a story on the restructuring was published on the front pages of The New York Times and the International Herald Tribune, a camera crew from the national “NBC Nightly News" came to film a packed city board of education work session Thursday. Writers from “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart" were also interviewing for a possible episode.

The restructuring, which was passed with a 5-3 vote in May, shifted about 880 students systemwide, including at least 300 from schools that are doing well academically into schools in the Western Cluster that are considered in “school improvement" for missing AYP. Almost all of the children shifted to the schools on the west side of town, the Western
Cluster, were black.

I want to offer my personal thanks to The Tuscaloosa News for doing a fine job on this and other stories.

here's the link:
http://www.tuscaloosanews.com/article/20070921/NEWS/709210337/1007

In keeping with my tradition, here's some lyrics and an MP3 link:

Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?

I added the movie Bobby to my queue at Netflix ... it should find its way to my mailbox in a decade or two :-). Reading about the movie, I saw mention of an old song - Abraham, Martin & John ...

"Abraham, Martin & John" is a 1968 song written by Dick Holler. It is a tribute to the memories of icons of social change, Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King, Jr., John F. Kennedy and Robert F. Kennedy. It was written as a response to the assassinations of King and Robert Kennedy in 1968. Each of the first three verses features one of the men named in the song's title. After a bridge, the fourth and final verse mentions Robert Kennedy, and ends with a verbal image of him walking over a hill with the other three men .... - Wikipedia

Here's the song ...

* Abraham, Martin & John (mp3) http://www.janaconda.com/apics/dion.mp3

Has anybody here seen my old friend Abraham?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
He freed a lot of people,
But it seems the good they die young.
You know, I just looked around and he's gone.

Anybody here seen my old friend John?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
He freed a lot of people,
But it seems the good they die young.
I just looked around and he's gone.

Anybody here seen my old friend Martin?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
He freed a lot of people,
But it seems the good they die young.
I just looked 'round and he's gone.

Didn't you love the things that they stood for?
Didn't they try to find some good for you and me?
And we'll be free
Some day soon, and it's a-gonna be one day ...

Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up over the hill,
With Abraham, Martin and John.

[Jeffersons Ghost]

1. kick...

[Jeffersons Ghost]

2. Kicking (Not hard) to Salmon lovers across America... please help