WSVN-7, Miami video: Student walk-out for Trayvon gets out of control. March 27, 2012.
http://wn.wsvn.com/global/video/popup/pop_playerLaunch.asp?vt1=v&clipFormat=flv&clipId1=6883323&at1=News&h1=Student walk-out for Trayvon gets out of control&flvUri=&partnerclipid=
Article at:
http://www.wsvn.com/news/
An embarrassing case of flash mob dรฉjร vu in North Miami Beach - NMBHS students use the pretext of protesting death of Trayvon Martin to steal in plain sightPer this disturbing South Florida story yesterday that was picked up on The Drudge Report, and thus got more attention worldwide than it would have ever received thru simply local Miami TV newscasts -and which happened just five blocks from where I grew-up in North Miami Beach in the 1970's- it's NOT like this sort of thing hasn't happened before... like last month, as I wrote at the time, below, and mentioned here on the blog because I suspected that this sort of thing has happened previously under Principal Ray Fontana.
So, what exactly did Miami-Dade Schools Supt. Alberto Carvalho do a month ago in the way of punishment? Anything you heard about?
No, nothing.
I know what I saw a month ago, but the Miami Herald, as usual, continues to whistle-past-the-graveyard when it comes to troubling social incidents like this involving school kids, unless it happens in Coral Gables or Pinecrest!
That is, except when someone who knows what's going on like longtime NMB resident, civic activist and blogger Stephanie Kienzle manages to gets a letter into print that somehow escapes the oblivious PC policies of One Herald Plaza.
Like the sort of myopic thinking there that causes them to actually think for even a moment that that initially running an eight-sentence AP story on the incident in NMB is an adequate response -and which doesn't even credit the Miami TV stations who actually reported it yesterday- rather than having one of their own reporters do some actual journalism, since it was demed important or troubling enough that The Drudge Report linked to WPLG-TV/Channel 10's Noon newscast.
As usual, the Herald's performance on a local South Florida news story they should own nationally, is completely inadequate:
How embarrassing!!!
It's exactly the same deluded mentality that causes them to bury negative stories about parent McClatchy Company's earnings reports in their puny little business section, usually without any reference to declining readership and revenue numbers at the Herald, and run 3 or 4 sentence fragments from AP that say, well, nothing.
Sometimes, they even run those banalities and only credit "Wire Sources," as if that means anything to anyone.
Here's that 2008 Kienzle letter I refer to earlier, which I sent out as an email to lots of folks i know shortly after originally seeing it because it was 100% true, reason enough to send it, but also thus making it unusual to see in the Herald. Carolyn Guniss was the Editor of the Neighbors section for NE Miami-Dade back then, and was apparently a victim of the Herald's many employee purges over the past few years due to declining readership and ad revenue.
Right, chicken or the egg?
I've never met Carolyn Guniss, but from my perspective, based on the essay below, it's unfortunate that she was forced-out, since her willingness to give space in the newspaper to well-informed people in the community who are actively challenging South Florida's establishment's Conventional Wisdom and orthodoxy, is NOT something that's currently replicated in either the Herald under Jay Ducassi or ever seen in the Sun-Sentinel.
I suspect that if she were in charge, there'd be MUCH MORE compelling news product for readers -and advertisers- compared to the overwhelming number of articles and columns that I see everyday that seem to largely exist to comfort the powerful thru stenography rather than chronicle thru objective journalism.
That unwillingness to challenge the powerful is perhaps best explained thru the Herald's
constant coverage of MDPS Supt. Albert Carvalho.
Frankly, I'm surprised that the Herald doesn't sell "I heart Carvalho" buttons at their customer service counter, given their weird sycophantic coverage of him, where seldom is heard a discouraging word...
And as I'm always reminding you here on the blog, as blah and uninteresting as the Sun-Sentinel's Education blog has become the past two years, the Herald STILL doesn't even have an Education blog in the year 2012!
That speaks volumes!
If you ask me, there ought to be an entire page in the Herald on Sundays that is full of well-informed contributions like this!
-------
Miami Herald
Soapbox
OJUS ELEMENTARY'S BOUNDARY IS POLITICAL
April 13, 2008
Enid Weisman, the Miami-Dade Public School Region II superintendent, has changed the boundaries of Greynolds Park Elementary School by moving children who live one block from their school to Ojus Elementary, which is more than two miles away.
Children who now walk to school in less than five minutes will be forced to be driven through extremely heavy traffic twice a day.
Those kids whose parents don't have cars will have to wait for a school bus in unpredictable South Florida weather, hoping the bus even shows up. This ordeal could take up to 30 minutes each way depending on the bus route.
This is not the first time Ms. Weisman has arbitrarily drawn school boundary lines. Take, for example, the boundary line between North Miami Beach and Dr. Michael M. Krop Senior High schools.
For some reason known only to God and Enid Weisman, children who live in Eastern Shores and Sunny Isles Beach, a mere hop, skip and jump from NMB, travel well over five miles or more to Krop High.
On the other hand, students who live in Pickwick Lake Estates, less than one mile (or about eight minutes by car) from Krop, are directed to NMB.
Granted, NMB is slightly closer to Pickwick than is Krop, but how on earth can you justify sending Sunny Isles Beach residents to Krop?
Both the NMB/Krop and Greynolds Park boundary lines were drawn purely along socioeconomic or, as the politically incorrect would say, racial lines.
They have absolutely nothing to do with where children live, but everything to do with draining our lower income neighborhood of even more of its much needed funding.
By making sure that NMB and Greynolds don't achieve or maintain status as an "A" school, the bulk of state money will go to Krop, Ojus and the new K-8 school called Aventura/Waterways .
The areas that already have the money will get even more. Ms. Weisman knows where her power base is and she sure knows how to suck up to it.
Weisman must stop tinkering with school boundaries that work only in her imagination. The children of Miami-Dade County would be better served by getting rid of administrators with political aspirations like her and putting the money where it rightfully belongs -- in the classroom.
STEPHANIE KIENZLE
NORTH MIAMI BEACH
It occurred to me when I was watching the videotape at the top that some of you reading this may well recall the mass student walkout at Miami Edison High School a few years ago, which happened LIVE during the local Miami Noon newscasts that day.
That was yet another situation where the adults at the Miami-Dade School Board & MDPS literally cowered in fear of actually having to call-out the behavior of their own students, and admit that, well, maybe... some of them weren't all future brain surgeon/diplomats after all.
Any media types out there reading this blog post might want to try to put on a charm offensive and get the videotape from the NMB Walmart, too.
You don't have to be Hercule Poirot, Agatha Christie or Sherlock Holmes to know that given the law of probabilities, once you have a large enough sample size, you can make a few hypotheses that are likely to be accurate.
Mine is that at least a few of the kids involved last week were ALSO involved last month, which only further burnishes NMBHS's bad rep the past 15 years, as everyone in NE Dade and SE Broward who pays any attention to these matters sees the entirely predictable results of some very conscious social re-engineering/redistricting at MDPS years ago, when Dr. Krop High School opened.
Bad educational and social policies that continue to have their negative ripple effects to this very day.
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Tue, Feb 28, 2012 at 3:45 AM
Subject: FYI: Flash mob of North Miami Beach Sr. High School students attempt to swarm the 163rd Street Walmart with M-D Metro Police in pursuit with flashing lights
-----
Well, as I said above:
Mail Delivery Subsystem
show details Feb 28
Delivery to the following recipient failed permanently:
Technical details of permanent failure:
Google tried to deliver your message, but it was rejected by the recipient domain. We recommend contacting the other email provider for further information about the cause of this error.
----- Original message -----
