Livingston: Still no plan
The Manchester Board of School Committee will hold a special meeting on Monday, February 29th to discuss the redistricting of the city’s schools. The meeting was set back in December. Superintendent Debra Livingston was supposed to present her redistricting proposals, but the agenda instead includes a letter from Assistant Superintendent Christine Martin saying Livingston quote
“will be asking for an extension to this deadline as she continues to work on a viable plan for our students. We are in need of more time to refine a plan that presents a redistricting option not previously brought forward.”
Girard: Dusts off redistricting proposal
The letter was dated yesterday, the day the agenda was made public. On the agenda, however, is a proposal from Committeeman at-Large Rich Girard which revisits recommendations made by district officials in two thousand seven and recommended by former Superintendent, the late Tom Brennan in 2013.
The proposal solves the district’s problem with pre-school by relocating the entire program to Parker Varney, Gossler Park and Northwest elementary schools. To accommodate this, these schools would be converted to primary elementary schools with grades pre-K through three. Parkside would become an upper elementary school with grades four through six. West High School would contain grades seven through twelve.
Brennan: Advocated for reconfiguration
In reconfiguring the grades to alleviate severe crowding at Northwest by making better use of the available space on the West Side and better align the district to its stated academic priorities and goals, the plan frees up enough classroom space on the East Side to redistrict the elementary schools. Without a presentation from Livingston, who has been away on vacation this past week, it remains to be seen exactly what the board will do with respect to redistricting on Monday night.
Beaudry: Pressed to poll board
Also on Monday’s agenda is the ratification of a phone poll taken of the board on February 19th regarding whether or not to cancel classes for the Manchester high school students who are not taking the S A T as the standardized assessment on March 2nd. The board voted nine to five to accept the administration’s recommendation to close the high schools to non S A T takers. Girard, Vice Chairman Art Beaudry from Ward Nine, and committee members Debra Langton from Ward Two, Lisa Freeman from Ward Five, and John Avard from Ward Ten were opposed. Mayor Ted Gatsas abstained from voting.
MSD: No plan on redistricting or testing
In support of the administration’s proposal, the board received emails from each of Manchester’s four high school principals stating their support of the school closure. Manchester is the only public school district we know of in the state that is taking the extreme measure of closing schools to non-test takers for the day. Nearly thirty five hundred kids won’t be able to go to school that day.
News from our own backyard continues after this.
Uncovers more election law violations
Project Veritas has released the third in a series of videos from an undercover sting operation launched here in New Hampshire to investigate voter fraud. In the video, the undercover investigators videoed volunteers for the Bernie Sanders campaign stealing Donald Trump signs. The interesting thing about the volunteers is that they were from Australia.
During several interviews with the Aussies in both Manchester and Nevada, it was learned that they were sent by and paid for by the Australian Labor Party with Australian tax dollars. So, not only are they on video stealing Trump signs, they admit to stealing Hillary Clinton signs and stealing and swapping Clinton campaign literature with Bernie’s, they admitted to being sent by and paid by the Australian Labor Party. Why is that a big deal? Well, it turns out there are federal laws prohibiting such contributions from foreign nationals.
OKeefe: More to come
In rather amusing interviews, Project Veritas leader James O’Keefe spoke not only Sanders’ national field director about the illegal in-kind contributions to the campaign, but also the national press secretary about that and the voter fraud committed here in New Hampshire. You can only imagine their responses.
By the way, the Aussies admitted to being planted by their party on behalf of Bernie in Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina, where the video was first released to the media yesterday. As to things we’re particularly concerned with here in New Hampshire, like flagrant voter fraud, stay tuned. There are more videos to come. We have, of course, linked to the latest one.
Trump: Taking it from all sides
The five remaining Republican candidates for President clashed in a rather lively debate in Texas last night. It’s their last appearance before Super Tuesday, where nearly half of the delegates needed to win the nomination are up for grabs. With commanding leads in most of the ten states that will cast votes, front runner Donald J. Trump took heavy incoming fire from rivals Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio on multiple issues, not the least of which were past business dealings where they claimed Trump had paid a million dollar fine in 1980 for illegally employing workers from Poland to work on construction projects in the United States.
Rubio: Swung for the fences
When Rubio called it a problem, Trump retorted that the real problem was that none of them on the stage had ever employed anybody while he’d employed tens of thousands of people and skewered Rubio for his stance on amnesty and his problems with credit cards. A combative Trump also took aim at the questioner from Telemundo and Radio Talk Show Host Hugh Hewitt for their questions, dismissing Hewitt as someone whose radio show has no ratings and saying to Hewitt he knew he was good for ratings, but that he should ask some of the other candidates questions, too.
Carson: Attack me, please!
So focused were the questioners on Trump, Cruz and Rubio, that at one point, Dr. Ben Carson humorously asked his on stage rivals to attack him so he could get some air time.
That’s news from our own backyard, Girard at Large hour ___ is next.
