One of the things I never do is connect the dots. I also never follow the money, or listen for the other shoe to drop. This warm and numb attitude has made me the happy-go-lucky guy I am, a guy with an unwavering smile on my face even while I sleep.
This morning, after waking with my ever-present grin, I even laughed a little when I learned about Fantase Public Schools. They have started a new program up there called Engage Fantase to recapture students who have dropped out of school because they were bored with the public kind of education. These students can hardly wait to savor the new educational delights that will deliver them forever from ignorance and shame. The program will hire its own teachers. It’s a private enterprise, and it must be really great.
Last week the Fantase School Board voted 4-1 to approve this privatization plan that is the Frankenfish monster of Florida’s very own Atlantic Education Partners chosen by the Fantase board to run the program under a smacking brand new contract that will send, and I’m all for this, lots of New Mexico dollars to Forida …Florida, hmmmm?
Why does that word “Florida” have such a familiar ring to it? What could it be about Florida that brings to mind our very own eternally unconfirmed Education Secretary-designate, Hanna Scantron?
Seems like the folks at Atlantic Partners and Hanna were all there in cahoots in Florida together once upon a time, a happy family cluster with Daddy Jeb Bush as the patriarchal force in working his assbackwards magic on Florida’s education system. I know it’s hard to believe, but this family bliss happened before Hanna had ever set foot here in the desert, before she had her first green chile, before she had her first New Mexico micro brew.
It seems to my way of thinking to be only right, and fitting, and appropriate, and proper, and inevitable that Hanna remember her dear past associates. She of the Scantron has bestowed her blessing on us by coming here to stay awhile and play awhile in our beloved NM, playing in the sunshine with New Mexico’s kids as they fill in all those bubbles on all those test forms that Hanna Scantron loves so. Hanna is just like her boss, the Gov. Susana who gave away New Mexico’s social services to her business friends in Arizona. Hanna remembers her old buddies back there with the gators, and palmetto bugs and she goes all weak in the knees.
With an open hand, an open heart, and tears of eternal friendship tracing down her cheeks, Hanna Scantron has given her dear buds at Atlantic Ed. an inside track with the Fantase School Board. That’s influence, baby, and I applaud that sense of power, that sense of loyalty, that sense of nobility, that sense of purpose, that sense of dedication to old friends back in Florida who will suck a few more million dollars from the New Mexico economy for the chance to exploit, I mean serve these high school dropout types. All this warm fellowship speaks highly of Ms. Scantron. But, dagnabit, dots do waver in front of my eyes, and I am beginning to connect them. I must smile. I must resist.
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