Mayor Baker’s op-ed piece struck a sour chord… Basically his message was thus…
It’s money, do what you have to take it…..
It is reminiscent of what a client would demand of a whore. It is reminiscent of what a boss would say to a female employee who had to feed her family and knows he could count on her “not saying no”.
Baker seems to know too little. I doubt that he knows the value is $5.8 million and not $6 million. I doubt that he knows it covers 6 schools across three years (not counting the planning period according to Penny Schwinn), meaning if split evenly it comes to $322,222 per year if not counting that planning year…
Baker seems to not know that this money will be bitten in two by the hiring of a leader over 5% more than what some principals make in New Castle County. ($152,380) thereby leaving the remaining $169, 841 per year extra for the running of each school…
Baker seems not to understand after himself running the city of Wilmington, how little $169,842 dollars per school will do to raise test scores of children who go home to no meals, go home to fights and violence inside moldy walls, go home to areas where death walks by their windows nightly, and expects those children to suddenly respond to a test that even successful, professional adults have trouble understanding what question is being asked upon it….
In fact, it looks like Baker just walked off the plank of the stupid boat and fell into the stupid ocean.
Seriously, I’m trying to toggle my mind around this… Why would someone who fought the Civil Rights battles of long ago, even write tripe like this?
A.) Does he simply not know?
B.) Did he get paid for it, so it is like Michael Jackson endorsing Pepsi? (Great Balls of Fire said the hair follicles).
C.) Was he tricked into making a fool of himself?
I would probably guess the first is correct. (A). He like many people doesn’t know the details…
He sees it as “Hey buddy, got a couple of dollars here I’m givin’ out… want some of them?” The right answer for that is: “sure”…..
But when it goes this way: “Hey dude, that’s a nice house you got there…. Look, I’ll give you $30 dollars if you sign it over to me…” The right answer is “no ‘effin’ way, dude. It’s worth much more than that….”
I’m surprised that Baker doesn’t know the difference.
kavips 
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October 15, 2014 at 12:42 pm
John Kowalko
John Kowalko, on October 15, 2014 at 1:39 pm said:
Mayor Bakers Delaware Voice column is the first evidence I’ve seen of legitimacy and truthfulness in Governor Markell’s assessment of Delaware schools. Markell’s contention that college bound students are in need of remedial math programs is certainly “highlighted” and proven by Mr. Baker’s calculations of the $6 million dollars over five years to six schools that would not allow one red cent to reach the students needs or reduce class sizes. It is appalling to realize that the many termed Mayor of the largest Delaware municipality has such obviously unremediated math skills that he could somehow conclude that this money equals a 10% increase in funding per student over state averages, let alone be sufficient, (if it weren’t already restricted to funding a burgeoning bureaucracy), to pay for “smaller” class size and “critical services”. Perhaps Mayor Baker or the author/ghost-writer can explain his image of this “seed” money in the context of Jack and the Beanstalk and bring on the golden-egg laying goose since the Governor has already traded the cows (cash-cows/RTTT money $100m spent on consultants) for the beans. In the interest of fairness I tried to replicate Mayor Bakers math calculation and used “Common-Core, common denominators and finally common sense to determine that he had either displaced a few decimal points or needed to immediately sign up for the Governor’s remedial math courses as soon as the Governor restores those cuts that eliminated “math-specialists”. Good luck Mr. Mayor in finding someone to balance your checkbook.
October 15, 2014 at 4:51 pm
delawareway
well done, John!