Prometheus 6

So Darkstar and I had this conversation on a mailing list. It harkened back to this post, and my position was, give me substance rather than political rumor and I'll be judgemental as hell. I suppose I should wait for him to post about it, but he says he's confirmed the political rumor to his satisfaction. A couple of rounds of email later we found our compromise: the minimum data he could provide that I would react to.

I suppose he won't mind if I share.

OK, if you have a high school with dismall scores and a school administration that has no ideas to improve the scores, and you have an active alumni association of the high school who wants the scores improved, isn't there a need to try to change how things are doing because what is currently happening is not working.

Some people, seeing the effectiveness of Coppin working with Rosemont to improve their scores, talked with the Coppin president to come up with a working partnership to help improve the scores.

Meanwhile, Lt. Gov. Michael Steele is on a tour of schools in the state to help come up with ideas to improve school performance, state wide. He gets the details of how Coppin helped improve Rosemont Elementary School scores. At a press conference, he stated that he wants to work with Coppin and Douglass to improve scores by changing the ciriculum. Some people see this as a "take over" and object right away. The Black Dem politician was one of them. The pol goes to Coppin's president and states objections to a "take over" and voices objections to the link with Michael Steele.

The president states that there is no take over, in fact it's not allowed. He wants to help improve the ciriculum. That misunderstanding gets cleared up but the pol is still against Coppin getting involved
and mentions Coppin funding.

Meanwhile, multiple Maryland State University Regents are telling the president of Coppin that he needs to back off.

The president of Coppin backs off because he's not a political animal and doesn't like what is going on.

If that's not enough, then I don't understand.

The point of the story is obviously to support Mr. Steele or expose an unnamed Democrat. And I can think of any number of interpretations and filler. More than enough ways Steele could have represented that would make a total rejection of his involvement an understandable reaction...for instance, I suspect the Coppin contact came before Steele became involved. I myself feel he's too chummy with too many CCC types.

IF that was the whole story, and IF I were the unnamed Democrat, I might make a big, stinking, hairy deal abput how much Mr. Steele represents the politics of active enemies of the community, that I recognize he's only now trying to do something symbolic with one school because of his Senate campaign when as Lt. Governor he should have been pushing hard for our schools all this time, blah, blah...

I'd engage the politics of the move rather than the move itself, which I would both support and spin to my own end.

I'm not ignorant of politics. I just got priorities.