By DAN VALENTI

PLANET VALENTI News and Commentary

(FORTRESS OF SOLITUDE, MONDAY, NOV. 24, 2014) — It’s interesting that since THE PLANET has been pounding on the millions of dollars Pittsfield loses each year to school choice, The Boring Broadsheet has taken up the cause. We are glad for it. Our love of communication, our love of newspapers, has driven us to prod The BB into better, more relevant, harder hitting coverage.

For a while, readers and viewers have noted how The BB has played “me, too” with THE PLANET. We break a story, and the attention it gets forces The BB to follow suit. Many examples can be cited, including the Monterosso-Berkshire Works coverage, the Frieri firing, and 100gate.

The student population drop story that ran as the lead story on page one Saturday (11/22) is a case in point. That The Eagle has now added its voice to our aria (grande voce) provides greater coverage of the song. You first read about the public school population dipping below 6,000 in Pittsfield on this website.

Really, Jake? You Have to ‘Study’ It? 

THE PLANET has to chuckle at the bewilderment (even stupefication) expressed by Pittsfield school supt. Jason “Jake” (JIV) McCandless  in reporter Jim Therrien’s story. A few points are worth nothing about McCandless’ reaction:

(1) The superintendent’s defensive attitude in noting that all country districts save one are losing students. This is true, but THE PLANET reminds JIV that he is the superintendent not of county schools but of Pittsfield schools. An aside would have us note that by far the best candidate for superintendent of schools to come along in years (maybe decades) couldn’t even get the time of day from the school committee. We speak of Christine Canning.

(2) JIV said the enrollment drop in Pittsfield will cause the department to look at why it’s happening. Duh-ah. Pittsfield have been losing students (and millions of dollars) to other districts for all the time of JIV’s tenure and long before, and JIV only now concludes it must be studied? This, my friends, is politics. It certainly isn’t enlightened school administration.

(3) JIV said “something structurally  … will have to change,” a sly plug for the unneeded but lucrative $130+ THS building project, perhaps? He noted that a committee has been formed to study the problem “because we have to try to understand why this is happening and how we can get better.” Earth to JIV: While THE PLANET wholeheartedly agrees with your statement, we can tell you right now — If your serious about finding the causes, the last thing you want to have is an in-house committee looking at it. Politics, politics, and more politics. For that matter, THE PLANET fails to see how, in light of a plummeting of enrollment of students, building a new high school that the city doesn’t need and cannot afford will help.

(4) In Therrien’s story, JIV says parents “should not panic.”Folks, when the GM tells the fans through the press “don’t panic,” it’s time to, well, panic.

School Choice Reporting Reveals More Dishonesty

School choice has been kicking butt and taking names in the city for a number of years now, taking hundreds of students and millions of dollars with it. This clearly show that Pittsfield schools, despite receiving 70% of a massive nine-figure municipal budget, cannot compete.

This leads to an aspect of school choice that almost everyone, including The Eagle, has overlooked. Credit where credit is due: THE PLANET only found out about this during a lengthy interview with Supercitizen and former school committeeman Terry Kinnas.

Pittsfield taxpayers lost $2.1 million last year to school choice. Bad enough, but you will hear administrators boast of the “progress” represented by that number. They will tell you that the number of parents pulling their kids out of Pittsfield schools fell from 398 to 373. What they don’t tell you is that they do not count losses to the BART Charter School in Adams.

When you include the losses to BART, you have to add another $2.2 million lost to Pittsfield taxpayers, bringing the grand total to $4.2+ million. Thus, be extremely careful before you accept any numbers or “data” from McCandless, the administration, or the school committee. The info is likely to be the product of corrupt, crafty, cunning, and crooked processes.

Garbage in, garbage out; Politics, Politics … All is Politics.

Pittsfield loses students because of competition, plain and simple. You won’t fix that with $130 million woorth of new bricks and mortar.

You want to add and not lose students, Pittsfield? Then get serious about the classroom and not about salaries, pay hikes, and adding positions to an already bloated bureaucracy. Require school uniforms in the middle and high schools. Enforce — instead of ignore, which Pittsfield School Department is now doing — the district’s policies on bullying and drug use.  In other words, get real.

Until that happens, JIV, it’s all politics, politics, and more politics.

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“Anger, she smiles towering in shiny metallic purple armor. Queen jealousy envy waits behind her, her fiery green gown states at the grassy ground.” — Jimi Hendrix, “Bold As Love,” from the album Axis: Bold as Love, (1967).

“OPEN THE WINDOW, AUNT MILLIE.”

LOVE TO ALL.