Weight

I have been getting the RoyalRunAround.

Sunshine law requests that take nearly 2 weeks to be filled... administrators requesting to see my article before it is printed...

Not to mention the heartbreaking school board meeting where I had to sit through a 2-hour-long barrage of cuts the school district will soon be making. Not painless — these are funds that will be taken out of the "special" programs. Minority Achievement, Gifted, Special Education programs will all suffer.

Writing about this is difficult.

On the one hand are these administrators who are, by now, practiced regurgitators of fluff. On the other are academics who see only a waste of money in the district.

And there are real people and real children and I am nearly paralyzed. I'm not from here. I'm young, I don't have children, I don't pay Columbia taxes, and I will be gone soon. Where is my authority to weigh in on these issues?

Frankly, the fear of the "media" focusing on the wrong information or missing the big picture is the only thing that keeps me going.

It's exciting that our blog is getting traffic. It's exciting to hear people talk about it when I'm sitting in a coffee shop, it's exciting to discuss educational policy theory with an experts...

But at the end of it all, this exciting opportunity for analysis and "good" coverage is just sad. It's a sad, difficult situation.
--------
I missed Wednesday's class this week because I had an interview with one of the very busy people yanking me around, while promising information this week.

I think I'm doing good work on the K-12 beat, I just feel like there isn't enough time for us to cover everything that needs to be covered before the April 8 election.

I'm feeling about 100 times better about this shells project.