A Tiny Reminder that Texas Ain’t the Only Goofy Ranch
This one comes to us from Chicago, where a school board candidate objected to replacing the current 55 year old building used to teach special needs students. The building is pretty crappy.
… some of the problems with the current facility: hallways too narrow for wheelchairs, inadequate bathrooms, no air conditioning, and so little space that they’re forced to use a janitor’s closet for teaching.
Jan Shaw spoke to the school board last month —
“Don’t build a magnet that’s going to be pulling more special needs children into the district that we’re going to have to educate the whole way through,” Shaw said.
When later asked if maybe, just maybe, that statement was a tad offensive to children with special needs, Jan had a ready answer.
Shaw says, “I could see somebody who’s got special needs kids who wants everything for their child saying somebody told me no. How dare you say no to the poor little child? Of course those kids need to be educated. I understand that…but I also think somebody needs to represent the taxpayers around here.”
Oh, I get it. This is what Matthew meant about separating the sheep from the goats.
Jan, you old goat, you’re going to hell.
Thanks to Angela for the heads up.
She’s running for school board on an anti-school platform? These anti-government (but running for government office) Tea Party types are starting to specialize.
1As an Illinoisan, I am gabberflasted (worse than flabbergasted) So, Texas you do not have it all collared.
2That’s the Wheaton-Warrenville Schools, in DuPage County, where I used to be a RINO because the only way to get elected to anything in DuPage was to be on the red team. The collar counties around Chicago proper are RIFE with such idjits and – I’m going to generalize shamelessly here – EVERY school board in the country has a whole raft of PTA folks who think the 3 Rs are all that should be taught and that they are indeed each spelled with an “R” at the start.
The thing ya gotta know about Illinois is this: they have more units of government, and more things you can get elected to, than ANY OTHER state in the Union. That means there’s a lot of opportunities out there to get your very own bully pulpit. I should know, I got elected to one myself.
The OTHER thing ya gotta know about Illinois is that the only reason it’s blue is Cook County and a large Democratic minority in the collar counties. Otherwise, it’s indistinguishable from Indiana, Kentucky or Missouri, depending on where you are.
I spent my entire career battling the NIMBYs, (not in my backyard) the BANANAs (build absolutely nothing anywhere near anything) and stooges like old Jan Shaw here. And what’s my reward?
Now I live in Ohio.
3Jan, you unfeeling, ignorant, dolt. If educated, those special needs children will grow up to be taxpayers. Also, if their parents are in good standing with the IRS, the SS administration, the state of Illinois, and their local jurisdictions, they are taxpayers. Your job is to represent *all* the taxpayers in your district.
4Based upon her comments, it seems that where Jan Shaw went to school they did not believe in educating special needs children either.
5June,
Nailed it. Thanks.
daChipster – living outside Music City, USA and visiting Paducah, Kentucky, Kokomo, Indiana, Metropolis, IL, on a fairly regular basis, I concur. I do however, admit, Indiana grows some very good-looking grassland.
Paducah has an EXCELLENT seafood restaurant (Whaler’s Catch) and you can cross the river to Metropolis to gamble with the olds~
6Oh dear, I left out the best part of Metropolis, Illinois – they have an actual Superman statue and you can take your picture with it~
7Like those children’s parents aren’t taxpayers? Good grief. I gotta get austinhatlady in on this.
8Until I retired last November, I worked for the Texas agency that ran programs for individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities (the descriptive phrase that is not only THE acceptable one but the most accurate and polite one), both minors and adults. And I lead a Sunday school class for five women with intellectual disabilities who range from unable to read to working on GED. Read this story early this morning and
9was so angry that I couldn’t comment. Regular reader and commenter and personal friend SusanF urged me to comment. So here goes: based on his reasoning reasoning, the school board also shouldn’t upgrade the facilities for gifted students, promising athletes, and talented band members because the system would attract those students from elsewhere and have to educate them all the way through.
Bravo Nefer: well written.
Our young daughter, who has developmental delays, also has a wonky immune system. She had H1N1 a couple of yrs ago and a Type A influenza strain broke through (or around) her flu shot right before Christmas (fever of 106). I wonder how ole Jan would feel if some of those tax-paying, lawyer-wielding parents sued the pants off her crappy BOD for keeping their kids in a building which was making them sick? (BTW, we live in small town Texas and my daughter’s classroom is state of the art). I hope they take Jan’s candidacy and flush it down one of those inadequate toilets.
10Does she actually want to educate anyone all the way through?
I’m guessing not.
11Sounds like one of those people who thinks anybody with any degree of disability should be locked away in some “institution” so the rest of us don’t have to worry our pretty little heads about them. Fortunately, those “institutions” don’t exist anymore. Too bad, because she certainly belongs in one of them.
12BarbinDC nailed it.
13I have lived in Chicago,Kansas, Indianapolis and Central FL, and to my utter exasperation, these useless slugs are thriving in all states- much like the pro-gun morons.
As I was reading today’s selections, it dawned on me that what we need are some of those hard-working housekeepers all over the country to mobilize, take this country in hand and give it a good old fashion scrubbing and disinfecting! If mine hit the streets of the US with her Clorox, rags, brushes and elbow-grease, this country would shine like a new dime, and there wouldn’t a trace of the mold and vermin that litter our lives, now.
We have an extraordinary number of people who don’t have a clue what citizenship is about, who have no gratitude for what this country has provided them, and no sense of duty towards the general welfare…Jan Shaw exemplifies their attitude.
I’m aware there’s always been some like this, but we seem to have a consarned epidemic of them over the past 20 years or so, and if I were Empress (which TexasEllen and I have kidded about before) there would be a whole lot of plow-cleaning and ripping of new ones going on until they learned they had responsibilities and duties, not just whiny complaints. I’ve got an adult autistic son with more civic responsibility than Jan Shaw…yeah, he’s developmentally delayed and may never be able to earn his own living, but he’s not a selfish snob.
14Thanks, JJ, for printing this. (I’m the Angela in question or at least, I’m another Angela and I sent it to her). Her follow-up response in particular made me crazy with it’s implication that asking for an accessible building is “wanting everything”. If you’ve ever dealt with an inaccessible bathroom with a wheelchair, you know how important accessibility is. And I’m with you, EMoon, my 16 year old Aspie has way more civic responsibility than this woman.
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