I got mail today from those famous "insiders" John Wiley Price and Royce West, who apparently now live in, send kids to, and pay taxes to the Lancaster School District. Because, as you know, only OUTSIDERS oppose borrowing $215 million for school boondoggles. Since Price and West support Lancaster ISD they obviously can't be outsiders.

The two smiling insiders have presented a moving quotation from a historic forefather:

"Education does not benefit a man or woman for slavery."

How sad that the quote was mispunctuated. The flyer reads "Education, ..."

And how much sadder that our forefather's name was misspelled.

FREDERICK DOUGLASS, Senator West. Not "FreDDrick Douglas _ "


As long as we're quoting Frederick Douglass: "Knowledge renders a man unfit to be a slave." Knowledge, not rumor, not slander, not ommissions or even reputation.

Why don't the bond supporters who paid for a full page ad in the local paper and who bought the Price political support bother to provide voters with information about the SIZE of the bond? All the recent ads have omitted any mention of the $215 million price tag. They omit mention of the thirty year payback period. They omit even obfuscation about the pennies of tax rate impact that they have previously claimed as a tax "decrease". Knowledge is not what they want the voters to have. Fear of outsiders and a competition with homeschoolers, fine. But winning on the merits with a fully informed public? Not happening in this election.

But if you WANT to have our high schoolers trained to be bartenders, waitresses, and other hotel workers in the Moulin Rouge / Enterprise City project -- well I know a guy whose dreaming of helping you with that...

A full page ad in the local paper regarding the impending bond election offers an interesting fact.

My kids are homeschooled.

Guess what? My kids can spell the word "Treasurer", too. Ellen? Call me. I can help.

Other claims are less factual. Here are "mean ACT scores" . In 2002, the last full year of the previous superintendent's administration, we saw ACT of 17.2 but the most recent years available are down to 16.5 andf 16.4 Compared to the overall Texas ACTs LISD has gone from 95% of the mean in 1994, steadily down to 86% of the state score in 2002, and down FARTHER since Dr Lewis arrived to 81.5% of the Texas average score.

SAT scores show a parallel decline, from mean score of 847 before Lewis to 802 after he arrived. This is 86% of the state average once to 81.3% currently.

And the TAKS scores, all tests all grades, according to latest AEIS figures (and the 2005-06 won't be official until AFTER the election, isn't that convenient?) have declined from 62% of the state rate to 54.8% of that rate.

Full details upon request.

Anybody can lie in a paid political ad. First Amendment rights trump truth. I have no problem with that.


But let's not be stupid.

Well, it's HARD to "get the facts" about the LISD bond plans.

The CorganSchools.com sponsered website is still only a placeholder, as of this moment.

The district's own website continues to showcase a "frequently asked question" document that raises more questions than it answers. (Unless the apparently mis-punctuated sentence fragment answering the frequently asked question: Can the proceeds of the bond be used to purchase the 18 acre tract of land on the corner of Wintergreen Road and Dallas Avenue? is intentionally declarative: Money for land purchases for future school sites will be

Personally I don't believe the LISD "Team of Eight" has a long enough attention span to sustain a really juicy conspiracy. Quite the reverse ... the Questia e-library project goes from an unknown to the greatest-thing-since-sliced-bread in less than two weeks. A seat at a Jazz concert next to a TV personality generates a dream of "Enterprise City" in even less time. And kids in Lancaster go from comptuer illiterates who NEED laptops to become competive to computer-using naturals of the 21st century who know all about laptops even without instruction in less time than it takes to run a campaign. People who can't keep any better focus than that probably are plodding along according to deep laid plots.

But if there WERE a plot, it seems to me that the timing of the beer and wine election and the school bond would have been convenient. I mean, assuming somebody really had a vision of making the high school stadium into a city venue for professional sporting events -- soccer, minor-league football, pro javelin tossing, whatever. It just seem that fans at pro sporting venues like to drink beer. But Lancaster is, currently, dry. SO, the first step to getting a pro event into a public school facility would be getting a beer permit.

The hotel, resort, tavern, saloon and casino all would follow along naturally. And who would object? Sin Taxes are the most popular source of school financing -- the lottery already and cigarettes next year. Why NOT tax pro soccer players who come to the vo-tech high school hotel -- and the fans who buy and guzzle the beer at Tiger Stadium?

Silly, really. But all the district has to do to cut off such ridiculous speculations is admit that the whole "Moulin Rouge" thing is a side show. A distraction from the real business of teaching kids. That hotel jobs DON'T require an IB diploma, and that kids capable of an IB curriculum have more and better opportunities than clerking, waitressing, or bartending at some Vegas-style resort.

Margie Waldrop, or her husband, could come out and explain that their deals broke down and the wealthy heirs who control the foundation who own that property have backed out of the deal. That would end speculation. (And it would be consistant with the recent news about how Steve Topletz, of DB Horton, Adante, and the Lancaster "Boardwalk" development recently backed out of a land deal with the Haney Golf Course people ... I wonder, even if you trust the LISD to buy land next to Boardwalk for one of the new elementary schools, do you trust Steve Topletz to SELL that land? Interesting discussion to come next Monday...)

Or Ellen Clark, also a realtor, could come out and discuss where the best place in Lancaster might be for a new hotel -- and whether or not the site next to the High School is suitable and likely. This is a "fact" within her area of expertise. (For a change) We might find her plausible on the matter.

But.

Say a large wealthy architectural firm wanted to design a big fancy signature hotel ...

Oh, let's not be silly.