How many US Presidents have they killed off by closing schools named after them here in NYC? We've been tooling around Virginia visiting the homes of Jefferson, Madison and Monroe and I realized that two of these schools have been closed. That's presidents 3 and 5. Madison is lucky that 3 US Senators and a Supreme Court Justice went to his school. But with pressure from all the other closed big schools, the guy who wrote the US Constitution can't have long.
Number two, John Adams --- soon to be closed. George Washington HS was done in before WalBloom. Let's see, I'm trying to go in order. Andrew Jackson? Closed, pre WalBlooom. I forget, is Van Buren on the current list? Teddy Roosevelt – gone. JFK went down last year thus killing him off twice in less than 50 years. Is Walcott the Lee Harvey Oswald of the DOE? Is Bloomberg the reincarnation of John Wilkes Boothe? Given his civil rights record in denying parents of color the most basic rights enjoyed by suburban school systems, he just might be.
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| Mayor Bloomberg, don't close me |
Can we have a separate corps of closed schools named after assassinated presidents once they close Lincoln? With JFK gone, Garfield and McKinley need schools named after them so they can be closed one day. Can we add almost assassinated presidents like Regan?
Why not put Eva Moskowitz schools into the assassinated presidents district just for some bad karma?
Since there is a clear goal of closing every school named after a US President it's really too bad we don't have a school named after George W. Bush.
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The above thoughts came on a 5-day trip to Virginia and Washington DC. We spent a night in Winchester - and George Washington really slept there when he had an office in town in 1755 - and a night in Charlottesville and visited Thomas Jefferson's Monticello, did a drive-by of James Monroe's house and finished up with James Madison's Montpelier.
Spending a day with the ghosts of the guys who wrote the Declaration of Independence and and the US Constitution leads one to thoughts of democracy or the lack of that exists in our school system.
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Notes: The Saturday Night Special will be a regular feature published at 7PM every Saturday - when I remember.
Add to that, the presidents as also rans:
ReplyDeleteSamuel J. Tilden High School . . . is a defunct New York City public high school in the East Flatbush section of Brooklyn.
[William H. Seward] High School
The DOE, pre- and during Bloomberg have been thorough.
"Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!" The Great and Powerful Oz has spoken!"
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