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Kansas Blog Roundup for September 12, 2008
Read more: Kansas Blog Roundup for September 12, 2008There won’t be a Kansas blog roundup today. I’m in Scottsdale, Arizona attending the State Policy Network conference. We’ve been busy from dawn to way late at night, and there just hasn’t been time.
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Does Kansas Economic Development Work?
Read more: Does Kansas Economic Development Work?A commentary by AFP’s Alan Cobb (Yes, but it’s only $1.3 billion) reports that Kansas economic development efforts are not working. Can the same be said about Wichita’s?
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Is Richard Crowson Cartooning For or Against the Wichita School Bond Issue?
Read more: Is Richard Crowson Cartooning For or Against the Wichita School Bond Issue?A recent Richard Crowson cartoon drums up support for a proposed bond issue for USD 259, the Wichita school district, by noting the cost is only 11 cents a day. And, he notes, test scores are up in many schools. I don’t know if this is an argument for or against the bond issue. If…
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Mark McCormick’s Wichita School Bond Bias
Read more: Mark McCormick’s Wichita School Bond BiasWriting from Scottsdale, Arizona Today’s Mark McCormick column in the Wichita Eagle (Opponents of school bond skip specifics) provides an example of this columnist’s bias, and how this bias leads to his rapidly losing credibility among Wichitans. Bias is okay for a columnist. Everyone is entitled to a point of view. After reading a few…
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Wichita School Safe Rooms: At No Cost?
Read more: Wichita School Safe Rooms: At No Cost?Writing from Scottsdale, Arizona At the September 8, 2008 meeting of the board of USD 259, the Wichita public school district, safe rooms were on the agenda. A few things I learned: It appears that it was by serendipity that the district discovered that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) would help pay for the…
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Ohio School Choice Improves Public Schools
Read more: Ohio School Choice Improves Public SchoolsThe Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice has produced the report Promising Start — An Empirical Analysis of How EdChoice Vouchers Affect Ohio Public Schools, which finds these results: This study finds that the EdChoice program produced academic improvements in voucher-eligible public schools. … This study adds to a large body of empirical research that consistently…
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Wichita School District: TIF Action Tests Accountability and Ethics
Read more: Wichita School District: TIF Action Tests Accountability and EthicsThe real problem with this TIF district, however, is the conduct of the applicant, who is a member of this board. At a meeting of the Wichita City Council, Reverend Harding told the council that he had informed his fellow school board members of what he was doing. But two members of this board have…
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Testimony before the USD 259 Wichita Public School board regarding the Ken Mar TIF
Read more: Testimony before the USD 259 Wichita Public School board regarding the Ken Mar TIFFrom John Todd. President Rogers, School Board Members, and Superintendent Libhart, I thank you for this opportunity to speak. My name is John Todd. I live at 1559 Payne in Wichita, Kansas, and I am opposed to the Ken Mar shopping center TIF that was created by the City of Wichita on August 12, 2008,…
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Wichita School Bond Issue Cartoons are Funny
Read more: Wichita School Bond Issue Cartoons are FunnyHelen Cochran of Citizens for Better Education has released a political cartoon whose topic is the Wichita school bond issue. She’s told me this is the first of a series. They’ll appear in the Wichita Eagle each Monday, and on CBE’s website right after that. Click here to go to CBE’s website and see the…
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Government Workers Are America’s New Elite
Read more: Government Workers Are America’s New EliteShould a special license-plate program for California government workers allow them to drive without regard for traffic laws? Is it possible for a firefighter to earn more than $200,000 in a year? The Foundation for Economic Education reports on these and other matters in Government Workers Are America’s New Elite.
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Are airlines pilots the best judge of airline economics?
Read more: Are airlines pilots the best judge of airline economics?I’m not positive about this, but I’m sure that the demand for air travel between Wichita and Oklahoma City is very low. Google maps tells me that the driving time from one city’s downtown to the other is two hours and 30 minutes. The drive to a city’s airport, arriving way early to make sure…
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Kansas State Fair: Who Isn’t There
Read more: Kansas State Fair: Who Isn’t ThereHaving spent about 20 hours the past three days collecting signatures on petitions at the Kansas State Fair, I have this observation: After looking at several hundred names and addresses, not one was from a town or city in Johnson county. I collected signatures from other northeast Kansas counties, but not one from Johnson county.