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Fort Bend ISD laid off 93 more teachers this week because of budget shortfalls, most of them special education teachers, but is spending money seeking new teachers?

The Fort Bend Independent School District is hiring.

As more and more teachers are getting layoff notification letters from the district’s human resources department, the district is still scouting for dozens of teachers from other countries to teach elementary pupils.

Wanted: international teachers

The district is recruiting international teachers to start teaching here for three years starting June 15. The annual compensation is $47,300.

The district hired Foster Quan, LLP, a Houston immigration law firm, to help applicants to acquire H-1B nonimmigrant visa, which would allow them to work in America legally without getting the Green Card, or to acquire Permanent Alien Labor Certification.

“Okay, I’m not saying that foreign teachers can’t add to a child’s educational experience,” Juanita starts.  “but when you set up some goofy artificial rating system for teachers that looks like Chinese algebra except less understandable and then use that to lay them off, something ain’t right. If you can’t pay the ones you’ve got, how are you going to pay for new ones?”

“I think they’re outsourcing public education,”   Thelma jumps in.  “Heck, Hon, it worked for WalMart.”

“I guess what bothers me is that we’re paying lawyers to help us get overseas teachers while we’re laying off local teachers who are going to hire lawyers  so the district will have to hire more lawyers to fight the teacher’s lawyers and …. Honey, it’s lawyerpolooza with little children’s education money,” Juanita says with disgust.

“LawyerMart, for sure,” Thelma nods.

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Juanita wants locals to remember the heady days of sending a dozen roses to the hotel room of Superintendent interviewees the day before they left town.  Or, the swanky school board retreats with taxpayer money spent on Mimosas.  Or even talk of a science center.

FBISD is broken.

The Fort Bend Independent School District will notify this week 93 certified special education teachers and administrators that their contracts will not be renewed for the 2010-2011 school year.

The non-renewals are in addition to the 85 certified regular education teachers who were notified by letter of the non-renewal last week.

The letters are the inevitable outcome of the district declaring a “financial exigency” as a result of a possible $20 million deficit for the 2010-2011 school year – the fourth budget deficit in a row.

“The folks on the  FBISD school board called themselves conservatives.  Like George Bush, they spent and spent and spent and wasted every dollar they could. I demanded a halt to the big spending fifteen years ago.  For my efforts I was called names, mainly by administrators and real estate agents,” she recalls.  “We built schools for developers, not children.”

“I told you people not to listen to the EDC Boys and the Chamber of Commerce, but nooooo…..” she says in that real sarcastic voice of hers.  “You listened to the people who were getting rich off your big spending.  And now what do you have?  Diddle squat.  That’s what.”

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It’s gotta be tough.  Getting caught, trial, prison, losing your knighthood —

Antigua’s Governor General Dame Louise Lake-Tack has signed the order revoking the knighthood of alleged fraudster R. Allen Stanford.

Attorney General Justin Simon confirmed the move, adding that notice of the revocation would be forwarded to Stanford next week. He explained that this must be done since the law prescribes that Stanford must return the insignia.

Not the insignia.  Anything but the insignia.

“So, I guess fraudster isn’t a knightable talent now days.  Perhaps fruadmiester or fraudarino are available,” Juanita suggests.

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Happy Easter to my Peeps —

And remember:  Sweet Jesus arose from the dead to get his Mazda and a big screen teevee.

Easter at a megachurch in Corpus Christi, Texas, will look like the popular TV game show “The Price Is Right.”

Sixteen cars, 15 flat-screen televisions, furniture sets and other prizes are lined up at Bay Area Fellowship Church and ready to be claimed by anyone who attends the church’s Easter services on Sunday.

“They’re coming for the loot and they’re going to leave with Jesus,” [Pastor] Cornelius said.

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Juanita would like to take this time to remind you that she said that the Supreme Court decision on corporate donations to political campaigns would come to no good.

“No damn good were my exact words,” she reminds us.

If Juanita says it’s Christmas, you better go buy some little twinkling lights.  She’s rarely wrong.

As seen in Sealey, Texas, today —-

So, now Sweet Jesus has incorporated and can donate to political campaigns.

“I thought I had proof that it had already started when I saw this yard sign sign several times around Bellville, Texas,” she says with fear in her voice.

“But then, I looked up that verse.  First of all, it’s in the Old Testament, which doesn’t have diddle squat to do with Sweet Jesus,” she says with relief.

“Second of all, I was seen all over the deepest red part of Texas,” she warns, “so I suspected it said something about ‘when the dark man cometh to reign over the lands ….’  or something like that, but, shockingly, it didn’t.  It says —-”

if my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their land.

“Now, I am not sure what exactly unhumble wicked ways they are talking about.  In my mind, that’s Dick Cheney.  And God knows we’ve got a heap o’ healing to do after Dick finished with us.  Have you ever seen Dick Cheney pray?  He talks to himself,” she says with personal knowledge.

Verdelia wants to know, “If ‘Jesus Christ, Inc’ is the answer, what the heck was the question?”

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Bubba X admits that every time the 6:00 news headlines a murder or a rape, he secretly, in the back of his head, prays “Oh dear God, please don’t let it be a black guy who’s done it.”

Bubba X knows what it’s like to be black and to be stereotyped.

Juanita feels the same way about her beloved Texas.  “Every single time a congressvarmint say something gosh-awful, I pray, ‘Dear God, let them be from South Carolina.’  And, sometimes, that works,” she says with only a slight nervous grin.

But, not this time.

You know that Guardians of the Free Republics group sending oddball letters to the Governors?

Yep.

The man at the center of the Guardians of the free Republics is Texas talk-show host Sam Kennedy – and he’s already gotten a Texas radio station in hot water as law enforcement reacted rapidly to what has been construed as a direct threat to all 50 US governors.

Mr. Kennedy “is the focal point of this, these guardians. He was in the mix in setting this whole thing up, and he’s up to his eyeballs in this Restore America project,” says John Stadtmiller, who runs Republic Broadcasting Network based in Round Rock, Texas, which broadcasts Kennedy’s weekly “Take No Prisoners” show. Restore America project, as articulated on the Guardians of the free Republics website, is part screed, part call to action to depose an illegitimate government in favor of restoring the people’s “common law.”

The website describes it as “a war college restoration strategy for regaining control [of government in the states] quietly, efficiently and quickly without provoking controversy, ridicule, violence or civil war.” It purports to have military backing for a takeover.

Juanita admits to be a radio fan.  She owns more radios than most sane people can count and listens to shortwave for fun.  “I’ve had to cut back on listening,” she says, “because it’s gotten so full of cussidness that I end up with a mouthful of my own heart before I can turn it off.  Their favorite tune is El Deguello and they have freon instead of blood in their veins.”

“And now that we find there’s a Texas connection to this group, I’m sad.  And it ain’t from way out there in West Texas where the sun knocks a brick out of the fireplace every time it goes down.  Nope, it’s in beautiful Round Rock, in the heart of the Texas Hill Country, next door to Austin, the most liberal part of Texas.  Honey, I don’t even want to think about what’s going on in the Piney Woods where the conservatives are.”

“I’ve read some of the stuff this crazy Texas man is doing.  If loco was dirt, he’d be about 20 acres.”

God bless Texas.  We’re needing it about now.

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