By DAN VALENTI

PLANET VALENTI News and Commentary

Let’s just begin with a tribute to Tom Brady and the New England Patriots, who answered all doubters by coming up big in the clutch to win the team’s fourth Super Bowl. Brady joins the ranks of the all-time greats and put his stamp on the claim of greatest QB evah!. As for the game, Brady earned Super Bowl MVP honors, the third time he’s done that. As for the defining play, “The Butler did it.”  It was Malcolm in the middle. What a sweet, inflated feeling.

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First in a Three-Part Series

(FORTRESS OF SOLITUDE, MONDAY, FEB. 2, 2015) — There’s a petition being drafted. There’s a momentum building.

There is a point beyond which you cannot steamroll a plebiscite. Pittsfield citizens and taxpayers have been ignored throughout the three+ years of the Bianchi Administration. If that terrible spell is to be broken, it will never have a better opportunity than it does now.

Vote for the Vote, Because It’s Not a Matter of ‘Investment’

THE PLANET refers to a growing awareness among Pittsfield’s citizens and taxpayers of what The Suits have done to them, pressing forward unopposed and without sufficient information for an intelligent decision on an unnecessary, unaffordable $130 million school construction project.

What is the issue here? It’s not so much a matter of money. Rather, the issue is the very fate of democracy itself in Pittsfield. Does it matter? Does the process mean anything? Does the citizen deserve a direct say in serious, life-altering changes proposed in government.

Your view of public education is not in question. To our knowledge, no one is against doing all we can to offer the best education possible for our young people. No one — despite The Suits’ eagerness to brand anyone who questions the wisdom of the decision as “against The Children” and “against ‘investment’ in education.”

Investment.

When “They” use the word “investment” in connection with this suspect project, they desecrate the meaning of the word. An investment is a commitment of resources made after careful study of sufficient information such that one has a reasonable expectation of regaining not only the original amount of input capital but a percentage of that in return.

What do we see in this case?

1. The Suits making the commitment of resources

2. No careful study, that is, open, honest, and objective examiniation

3. Insufficient information and facts

4. No reasonable expectation of a return

5. The input capital will be lost

6. The show for it, taxpayers shall have a shiny new building in which the same old ineffective methods shall perpetuate ever-more diminishing academic returns.

It’s not the building that creates learning. It’s what take place inside the building. It’s not the Pings. It’s the golfer. It’s the singer, not the song.

 The Kids Gets Dumber While Taxpayers Get Poorer

The problems plaguing the Pittsfield Public Schools, and they are significant, have little to do with bricks-and-mortar. Astute parents have been pulling their children out of the PPS to the tune of $3 million to $4 million each year under school choice. That amounts to hundreds of students, year after year, such that for the first time in the city’s history, it’s public student population has dropped below 500. For perspective on this, when THE PLANET attended 10th grade, the PPS had more than 12,000 students going to double-sessions at one high school that had a closed campus at lunchtime.

Like everything else in Pittsfield, public education is not primarily about teaching and learning. It is about politics and money.  The schools have become a cash-cow, the permission slip to make annual multi-million raids on the public treasury with little accountability for performance. A relatively small handful of school department employees — notably administrators and teachers with seniority — benefit while tens of thousands of taxpayers are driven ever closer to financial extinction.

On the surface, this would seem to be a bad bargain for a community. However, when one factors the political lust for power, the PPS possesses the trump card over would-be and actual office holders: political clout. While the so-called casual voter stays away from the voting booth in droves, driven into Nadaland by the thievery of those in office, the bargaining units led by the teachers union hold enough clout to hijack elections.

Thus, year after year we get the Wonderbread of safe political wimps such as Dan Bianchi, whose starting position with a $100 million-plus school department for FY ’16 is that there is no room for cuts. Why, man, the PPS through its white-bread superintendent Jake (Jive) McCandless has gone on the record months — even before any public deliberations over the municipal budget — that just to remain level-funded, the schools will need a 4.something% pay raise — primarily for pre-negotiated salary hikes. Meanwhile, the kids get dumber and the citizens get poorer.

As for Jive, he got the message. He doesn’t respond to honest questions from THE PLANET. He hides behind his desk like a cat in a room of bulldogs, complicit with Bianchi in perpetuating what amounts to a legal scam. Nonetheless, THE PLANET keeps the invitation open to both of them: You name the date you want to go on the air with us, live with no notes, and it’s done. There is yet time to rebuild the relationship you have chosen in the one case to destroy (the mayor) and in the other not to begin (the superintendent).

A Lack of Control Doesn’t Help Matters, Either

Meanwhile, the schools have lost control of the classroom. That is why the schools are not properly preparing our young people for higher education of for the Dreaded Private Sector. It isn’t because of bricks-and-mortar. It’s because a kid can tell a teacher “F**k you” without consequence.

Tomorrow: Part II in this Series Picks Up Here

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“Crazy rhythm, here’s the doorway. I’ll go my way. You’ll go your way. Crazy rhythm, from now on we’re through.” — Doris Day, “Crazy Rhythm,” from the movie Tea for Two, (1950).

“OPEN THE WINDOW, AUNT MILLIE.”

LOVE TO ALL.