Can school district administrators be cured of educratese?

The Verde Independent’s June 22 editorial, “We could use more leaders like Superintendent Goodwin, Mayor Currier,” notes that politicians and bureaucrats are “famous for talking a lot but never saying anything of substance.” I’ve noticed some educators in Cottonwood are particularly notable for an abundance of impressive verbiage that says little.

Back in February, Bill Helm wrote about Cottonwood-Oak Creek School District implementing the “World Café” program to provide a “powerful space for community conversations to emerge” in which “its strength comes from the way that the questions are framed and the opportunity provided for participants to move between tables and meet new people where new perspectives are exchanged.” The possibility of new insights is enriched as participants “engage in ever-widening circles of thought.”

If ever-widening thought circles in a powerful space of mingling participants fail to make your head spin, try wrapping your perspective around the “McREL Balanced Leadership Principal Evaluation System” approved at COCSD’s March 22 board meeting. This “online evaluation rubric” will ensure that school principals already imbued with “Balanced Leadership” training are fulfilling expectations of “moving their schools to a shared vision for students’ success.” This shared vision into which schools are to be moved consists of “Building a Purposeful Community, Managing Change, and Focus,” which, we are assured, are the three components necessary for successful leadership in school systems.

It is certainly commendable that school board members may now be allowed to leave their tables and meet new people with different perspectives, but I can’t help but wonder how school administrators previously schooled in administrative skills and supposedly hired to exercise those skills can possibly do their jobs when they are constantly being re-educated and tested to ensure their re-education was effective.

Perhaps straight-talkers Superintendent Goodwin and Mayor Currier should be invited to enter the powerful space of the COCSD’s World Café to examine ways COCSD administrators might explain in plain English how this jargon-infested administrative re-education helps students succeed. They could start the conversation by defining the word “symposium.”

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The European Union isn’t just tyrannical, it’s stark raving mad.

Kicked into survival mode by the Brexit referendum, the EU stood on its tippy-toes, waved its arms, and roared through its media mouthpieces. Alas, most Brits were not frightened into submission. They were mad as hell and not willing to take it any more.

The mandated placement of “refugees” in EU nations against the best interests of those nations’ citizens is rightfully cited as a major source of discontent. But there is more to EU mandates than forced acceptance of foreigners.

Thanks to EU “green energy” mandates, Indonesian and Brazilian rain forest is burned and converted to oil palm, soybean, and sugar cane plantations. Meanwhile, forest is cut in the Southeast U.S. and pelletized for use as a less-efficient fuel for coal-burning power plants.

Millions of tons per year of these “biofuels” are produced with fossil-fueled machinery and shipped to Europe and the UK in cargo ships powered by some of the dirtiest-burning fossil fuel on Earth.

It’s mandated anti-ecological insanity.

Brexit is the “end of the world as they like it” for global corporations who will no longer be able to bribe just one especially corrupt regulatory agency to pave their path to guaranteed profits.

Hot, hotter, hottest June?…

The Verde Valley didn’t get sloshed — quite the contrary, winter was dry, with record heat in February. Spring then became cool and moist, but unusually high atmospheric pressure has turned the thermostat up again this month.

New daily records were set for Cottonwood/Tuzigoot (Cottonwood station was moved to Tuzigoot National Monument in 1977), one nearly matching the all-time high of 118°F set June 26, 1994:

• 105 on June 2 broke the 1956 record of 103.
• 108 on June 3 broke the 1996 record of 106.
• 109 on June 4 broke the 1996 record of 108.
• 110 on June 5 broke the 1996 record of 107.
• 113 on June 19 broke the 1968 record of 108.
• 117 on June 20 broke the 1936 record of 109 and was 1° hotter than Phoenix Sky Harbor Airport.

Cottonwood lacked a weather station from 1937 through 1948, but it appears that average June high temperatures continue to rise. Here’s a history of new record average highs:
 1922: 97.3
 1924: 97.6
 1956: 98.7
 1960: 99.3
 1974: 102.1
 1994: 102.6
 2016: 102.7 (estimated)

Nine of the 15 hottest Junes occurred this century. Nine of the 15 coolest Junes occurred prior to 1963.

Cause for panic? No. Average global temperatures have been on the increase since the “little ice age” ended in the 1800s. It would be odd if records weren’t broken and more worrisome if most were record lows instead of highs.