I Report, You Decide

                                                           

USAA Magazine was kind enough to fire up their calculators and determine your, and each one of your family's share of the $1.2 trillion dollars in student debt.  USAA says it comes out to $69, 870 dollars per citizen.

You might want to start saving your nickels and dimes because Obama has thrown out enough pay back waivers on student loans, to include debt forgiveness after 20 years, that you might end up footing the bill.  As a first step, Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren wants to cut interest rates on student debt to zip, saying the treasury shouldn't be taking advantage of our students with those five and six percent loans.  She has also admitted that, once she gets her nose under the tent, she wants to forgive all student loan debt...and you know who ends up paying for that.

On the K-12 school front, Campbell County, Kentucky pulled out of the federal school lunch program.  School officials said they were losing millions of dollars in school lunch revenue because kids were opting out of Michelle's brown rice and broccoli and bringing their own lunch to school.  So the school district finance auditors ran the numbers and found that they come out ahead by giving up those federal school lunch dollars and have put hamburgers and meatloaf and fish sticks back on the school menu.  According to USA Today hundreds of school districts have joined Campbell County's mutiny and opted out of the federal food program.

On the Fast Food Front two rather schizophrenic government rulings emerged in the same week regarding the management and operation of fast food franchises.  First a liberal appeals court ruled that if an individually owned franchise is sued, even if the corporate entity had nothing to do with the matter,  then damages can be elevated and punitively added to the corporate chain that the individual franchise operates under.

However, in California, Democratic lawmakers in Sacramento passed SB610 which gives both corporate and individually owned food franchises the right to ignore corporate governance on how the franchise is operated.  The bill received massive state labor union support because they believe they can achieve huge salary increases for fast food workers, thus driving up salaries for other service  related employees in that state.

Back on schools, Amy Lacey, Principle of Hempstead Middle School down in Texas was fired because she urged her largely Hispanic student body to speak English in class since both state and national measurement tests are given in English, stressing the essential need for English to do well in the exams.    Here is what she said:

          “As many know, on November 12, 2013, I made an announcement over the school’s intercom in which I stated that the academic language in Texas is English, and the STAAR [State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness] test and TELPAS [Texas English Language Proficiency Assessment System] are in English. I informed students it would be best to speak English in the classrooms to the extent possible, in order to help prepare them for these tests. This is not my rule or that of the district, but per state regulation, consistent with Section 29.051 of the Texas Education Code. Using English to the extent possible would also allow non-Spanish-speaking teachers a better opportunity to assess understanding and learning. This is in keeping with Title 19, Texas Administrative Code 89.1201 c.”

This was enough to set the largely Hispanic town off and charge Ms. Lacy with being racist.  The school board fired her and immediately began looking for a replacement that would look more kindly on Spanish being spoken in the classroom.

I report...you decide.