Dear Source:
We have a Public Services Commission which, in light of recent unfavorable press and lawsuits is back-pedaling ad nausea in an obvious effort to try and salvage their sorry incompetent selves. And we have a commission which has sent to the Legislature a no-go on Ms. Spampinato's appointment as Commissioner of Education. This, backed with reports of automated messages apparently received by many residents on their home phone lines, admonishing them to attend the hearings and trash her appointment. Does that reek or not?
There are some good senators on board right now but not enough, and too many of the others are themselves basically ill-educated but elected to office by similarly ill-educated locals who rely on street gossip and election fish fry gatherings which are so often replete with the, "vote for me, I get you job" sort of privilege. Do you all forget how Roy Schneider became Governor and how quickly he became so unpopular that dark-horse Turnbull took the next vote? Oh, and Turnbull was a former Commissioner of Education whose tenure as such was a documented complete disaster?
The education system here in the Virgin Islands has been abysmal for way too many years. The children who are fortunate enough to have good parental guidance do well in the public school system and many do make it to stateside colleges, most of then never returning to their VI home. The majority fail and become statistics on the minority scale. A change is sorely needed and it's about damned time that the bahn-here parents who truly care about the future of their children and grandchildren start paying serious attention to what is in their children's best interests.
You can't change the past but you can change the future. Or, as Ziggie Marley said, "You don't know your past, you don't know your future…"
Professional help? Real professonial help? Education help sorely needed, recommended and endorsed by Governor DeJongh after obviously much research? What's your problem? She does what she does and has never professed to be a permanent fixture in any educational area. She comes in, does what needs to be done and, mission accomplished, she moves on to the next distressed area which needs her particular expertise. She's not coming here to be buddy-buddy touchy-feely. She's coming here as a professional to turn around a totally maladjusted system, to give teachers the tools which they lack and to implement measures to ensure that Federal education funds are properly used and NOT sent back as has happened year after year after year… So, what's the problem?
Matters not a damn to me whether she's black, white, yellow or whatever.
You commission naysayers need to backpedal BIGTIME on this one and the full Senate needs to stop worrying about the next paycheck and realize that your children and grandchildren are the future but that they deserve a good education – which they're not now receiving and haven't been for many years.
Anna Clarke
St. Thomas
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