Ed Kirkland divorced from reality.

The candidate's forum on Tuesday, 21 April, revealed a trustee who can persuasively and convincingly tell an audience absolute garbage.

Ed Kirkland continues to insist that the LISD has made years of extraordinary improvements in TAKS scores, and has been careful with spending. In particular, he insists the number of administrators and the amount of money spent in school administration is in line with, or below, TEA guidelines.

The hard data, provided by LISD's own PEIMS submissions and reported by their own auditors each year, indicates the complete opposite.

In fact, the test scores in LISD are rising more slowly than the state average. Any gains made, and there have been many, are nevertheless smaller gains than our neighbors have accomplished in the same period, and leave our kids farther behind. Kirkland either is not capable of understanding that, or prefers to that the voting and taxpaying public not hear it.

In fact, the share of funds spent in administration (function code 41) for LISD is more than double the share spent in other districts and in the last year of his board presidency was over three times the state average. (State average spending on admin is about 4%) We have short -changed our campuses of aides and leadership positions in order to staff the headquarters building with "directors" and "specialists" positions filled with people who never teach a class.

Maybe such staffing is actually a good thing. But that is not the case Kirkland attempts to make. He prefers to deny the facts.

He is the smoothest public speaker now running for a trustee seat, with a deep and calm voice and (when he chooses) a pleasant demeanor. But he is unable to use his gifts in service of the truth.

In the last months of his board presidency he attended a meeting at TEA with the audit team that investigated our district finances. Hear his comments on an audio recording of that meeting, archived here: http://bestsouthwest.blogspot.com/2009/04/lisd-ed-kirkland-who-is-her.html (Kirkland's comments are near the final five or ten minutes)

Again, even after an hour of hearing Dr Lewis esssentially confess to, but attempt to justify, excuse, and explain the factual situation, Ed Kirkland lambasts the TEA team for daring to come into a minority-run district and hold them accountable to follow procedure and meet standards. How DARE they pick on a minority district?

This, while denying the rest of the board -- his peers and our elected officials -- access to the same report he was in Austin responding to.

It cost this district, as was pointed out last night, over $200,000 in legal fees to make plain that somebody was "tampering with the mail" -- among other violations -- in covering up and concealing this districts' problems.

Dr Lewis lost his job at the end of that investigation.

Ed Kirkland MIGHT be able to keep his. Because, as we all know, lies, cover-ups, denials and concealment work.

At least, for elected politicians.

What do we see?

Is this a child who is struggling to keep up with his peers?

Or is this a child who is "on the right path, and moving in the right direction"?

Both could be true, of course. These are not mutually exclusive perspectives.

But the folks who believe students are on the right track and are headed in the right direct have very little incentive to think very hard, or change very much, or care very passionately.

Folks who worry that a child IS being left behind will be trying hard to change a great deal. And they care -- a lot.

Lancaster has six candidates competing for three seats on the school board.

We have nearly 300 students graduating High School within weeks of the election. They, too, will be competing for a limited number of seats -- in college classrooms, at desks in offices, behind steering wheels -- competition for a good seat is a constant.

I'm taking comments. Which of the trustee candidates do you think is most likely to help the kid catch the bus?

I see we have no less than three real estate agents running for school board this spring. Cynthia Corbin (also an accountant, and neo-journalist/blogger) primarily makes her living in Lancaster real estate. Marion Hamilton is, apparently, a part time homeseller. But the "big gun" in the real estate market is Historic Town Square's very own Ellen Clark.

I'm somewhat skeptical of the temptations brokers may suffer when dealing with a school district. There was, after all, the proposal to turn the empty lot near the High School into a casino hotel -- which proposal was, according to Larry Lewis, endorsed by former mayor, and property broker, Margie Waldrop. Former trustee Sue Mendoza some what famously was recommended by the superintendent as a property mortgage broker to any new LISD teacher, or at least those getting Dr Lewis's emails. And the district is always in need of help selling distressed properties, taken over for failure to pay taxes.

So it's nice to see at least one of the three realty agents taking the pledge I pledge that I and my immediate family, including parents, children, grandchildren and cousins, will not do business in any way, shape, fashion or form, directly or indirectly, with the school district and/or its vendors during my tenure.

I think, though, I'll let the readers figure out which of the three challengers is foregoing the profit and self-dealing opportunities.

So far as I can tell, none of the incumbents has come out against doing business with the district they govern.

It's liable to be an interesting campaign.