RE: Checks on School Spending

My comment was not about you Mr. Ball.  It is difficult to not respond personally when someone is blasting away at someone who has your same job title.  When someone blasts incompetent teachers, I tend to want to defend them even though I know they do exist.  My comments were about my district and others like my district.  You suggest I don't know what I'm talking about because I've never been there.  Wrong.  You are probably a very hard-working and unselfish person - but that does not mean that everyone who holds your job title is.  I watched the collapse of (9-12) education in California for 35 years and fought it every step.  I have observed more than you know.

[Moderator's Note: I have appreciated the postings from Rob and Richard, which document some of the tensions that result from the present system of governance.  The issue probably isn't who is right and who is wrong - or who is good and who is bad - but how better to harness the ideals and energies of dedicated people at all levels of the system.  During the final two days of the Dialogue I hope we can go beyond the symptoms of a problem - and we've been hearing a lot about that in this particular exchange - to look for possible solutions together.  --Bob Carlitz]