BY DAN VALENTI

PLANET VALENTI NEWS AND COMMENTARY

(FORTRESS OF SOLITUDE, THE WEEKEND EDITION APRIL 17-9, 2026) — For more than a score of years, THE PLANET as well as all other objective observers have plotted a reciprocal but opposite correlation between performance in the Bitchfield public school system and the amount of taxpayer dollars fed into the belly of the beast with a ravenous, nay, insatiable appetite for those precious dollars. The more money fed into the bottomless pit, the worse the performance gets.

One line goes up the chart, and the other line plummets. They intersected about 25 years ago, maybe longer.

SAVE THE DATE. DAN VALENTI book signing, 2 p.m. Sat., April 25, Barnes & Noble Pittsfield. Stop by for your free gift!

Superintendents, school committees, administrators, teachers, support personnel, and politicians come and go, but the inverse relationship between spending and performance remains. City schools lose millions each year because of school choice, student population declines, administrative staff grows, but nothing and no one has been able to stop the bleed-out.

The most recent action causing angst occurred when the school committee voted to close Morningside School. What caught THE PLANET‘s eye wasn’t so much the decision, which seemed inevitable, but the reasoning behind the decision, as expressed by Supt. Latifah Phillips.

Queen Latifah, an outsider ill-equipped to handle insider politics of  corrupt city except to be steamrolled by them — and gratefully, we might add — uttered a rare truth. A high-ranking city official actually leveling with taxpayers? We had to mark the calendar.

She said up front that “the goal [in closing Morningside] is not to save money.” In other words, let’s give said taxpayers a big, neon middle finger. THE PLANET’s guess is that she was mouthing words fed to her by school committee chairman, Mayor Lumpy. Who gave Lumpy the message remains a mystery within an enigma wrapped by a conundrum.

If it’s not to save money, then what?

“The goal is to reinvest that money to make change,” Phillips said.

Stop us if you’ve heard this one before.

———- ooo ———-

Change to what? Except for platitudinous generalities, the Queen wouldn’t or couldn’t say. She said the 374 kids in pre-K through 5th grade will be dispersed in the fall to Allendale, Capeless, Egremont, and Williams elementary schools. She didn’t not share with worried parents the plans for the upcoming crazy quilt of transporting the lids. For all anyone knows, the city plans to sardine the kids into cattle cars under the slogan “Work Makes You Free.” Somehow it would seem fitting.

During the meeting, committeewoman Sara Muil made a tearful motion to shut down Morningside. She cried a river, and our spies tell us she’s up for an Oscar for Best Supporting Performance by a Misguided Do-Gooder.

The school population at Morningside won’t ever be mistaken for the kids in Grant Avenue School in Mayfield. That’s where The Beaver, Whitey Whitney, Larry Mondello, and Judy Hensler went back in the day when everything made sense.

Here are the beyond-sad numbers:

• Just under 90% of the Morningside pupils are “high needs” kids.
• More than 80% are of “low income.”
• A full quarter of the schoolers come in as “English learners.”

You tell us. How is learning supposed to take place?

In short, the school system must pretend it’s about education when academics are actually “play pretend.” There’s no way basic academic skills can be taught to such a sub-population. For all the money fed into the system, city schools are in the business of cleaning up the human detritus of a total social, cultural, and communal collapse. They are for warehousing a deprived population dreadfully resistant to learning.

That’s a truth no city official will ever utter.

Have a great weekend, everybody.

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“[Public] education is a system of imposed ignorance” — Noam Chomsky.

“OPEN THE WINDOW, AUNT MILLIE.”

LOVE TO ALL.

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