what Nathan thinks but is too chicken to say

Poor Nathan: in his attempts to sound “reasonable” and “informed” (what do these silly words mean anyway?), you waste so much time on posts that deny a certain objective truth that you surely, with your fancy-pants education (I highly recommend all readers  click through on this link–Latvia and Jazz saxophone? Nathan is a Renaissance-fucking-man) will concede. The truth:

There’s New York and nowhere else. There. I wrote it. Now, can we dispense with the whole “only New Yorkers will care about this post” apologetics and get back to bitching about Pre-k? Thank you.

The reason fine upstanding fellows like Nathan and I are going to slowly go insane trying to educate our children is that there just aren’t enough schools in NYC. Not too few good schools–just too few, period.

There are a lot of reasons for this, and if you have about forty-six years of your life to dedicate to reading a single book, Robert Caro’s stalwart biography of Robert Moses, The Power Broker, covers almost all of them. Over-priced land, payment of 70s era social triage bills, the collapse of the stock market sending yuppie-puppies into the public system, too much spending on roads and bridges and not enough on schools…take your pick. Bottom line, New York needs more seats to fill with young butts.

Unfortunately, help is not on the way, despite what Republican Education Secretary Arne Duncan says.

Here’s the New York Department of Education’s “understanding of new school needs” as it relates to my district: the DOE will “assess the availability and appropriatness” (my itals) of finding space into which new schools can be “incubated.” Care to have that translated into English: YOU WILL NEVER GET A NEW SCHOOL. BORROW MONEY, STEAL IT, DRIVE A CAB. YOU WILL NOT BE GETTING A FREE EDUCATION IN THIS PART OF BROOKLYN, DICKHEAD.

This, mind you, is in an area where applications for Pre-k track at about 15 applications for every available seat. Then, if the city ever does build a new school, of course you can expect it to be located on a toxic waste dump.