Kids Going 120 Miles to School

Do "minority kids" do poorly in school because "those people" don't have a high enough regard for education? You know you've heard variations of this argument about a 1,000 times. The L.A. Times published a story that I personally found poignant on a number of levels.

The Los Angeles Times, Thursday, January 19, 2012
Death Valley Students Face
Loss of Lifeline
By Teresa Watanabe

A school bus carries students from Death Valley High School in Shoshone to a Native American village in the national park. (Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times / January 10, 2012)

California has pulled funding for school transportation for the rest of this fiscal year and may eliminate it entirely next year. In Death Valley, where some students have a two-hour round trip, the cut is 'catastrophic.' ... It is 6:54 a.m. Marlee, a 14-year-old with raven hair and red nail polish, climbs aboard. She is one of nine students who spend more than two hours riding this bus 120 miles every school day to and from the Furnace Creek area to their school in Shoshone...

The long distance and light passenger load make this bus ride exorbitantly expensive. The Death Valley Unified School District spends about $3,500 a year for each of its 60 students on home-to-school transportation — compared with about $26 per student in more densely populated districts, according to data compiled by the California School Boards Assn.

So when Gov. Jerry Brown announced that lagging state revenue would require eliminating all school transportation funding for the rest of this fiscal year, it hit this tiny school district harder than just about any other in California. Death Valley Supt. Jim Copeland calls the cut, which took effect Jan. 1, "catastrophic."

For students like Marlee, the issue goes way beyond dollars and cents. The bus is her lifeline from the desolation of the desert to a wider world of teachers and friends, school sports and art projects and academic stimulation.

"School is the highlight of my life, and we can't get to school without the buses," Marlee said after a recent morning ride.

Educators statewide have decried the busing cuts as particularly unfair to small and rural districts that shoulder disproportionately high transportation costs. They are scrambling to reverse the move with legal action, letter-writing campaigns and legislative lobbying. Some are arguing that if cuts have to be made, they should be distributed equitably across the state ...

Of course, Governor Brown, like all the Democrats and Republicans in California, is playing games. The object of his game is to convince California voters to approve his retro tax plan. Meanwhile, he talks big about "investing" in big ticket projects for California's future [Translation: shoving a lot of money into programs favored by particular interests joined at the hip to the Democratic Party Machines].

There is no lack of criticism of California's once great system of public education. The problem is that most criticism comes from the so-called "conservative" side of the aisle. While everybody is busy obsessing over Barack Obama Democrats versus the barbaric Republicans we are in for another rough ride in 2012 at the state and local level in California.

The Road to the Future: California Water Management Reconfiguration

The real politics in California has nothing to do with environmentalism. This is simply self-promotion by urban metropolises for increasing water supplies. The conflict is for the diversion of surface water supplies. This takes place while California's coastal cities continue to disregard
new supplies through desalination because of its costs. Rural regions have painted themselves in the corner through their depletion of groundwater supplies.

It is a classic urban vs. rural water war. Cities gave themselves a blank check for growth through diversions of surface water from rural regions. Now, every diversion sparks conflict. This has nothing to do with the environment, just users fighting for supplies of surface freshwater. It could be resolved simply by regional planning and sustainable prioritization of regional supplies by regional users. The longer the diversions are the focus of the conflict the more intense it
will become.

Two large sub-states should be mapped, with Los Angeles included in the southern sub-state. The secessionist map of the Central Valley separatists did not include Los Angeles. Clearly, this was a self-serving proposition. All supplies stay in the sub-states. Regions are established within the sub-states that are basin-based and anticipate imbalances within the sub-states in regards to supplies, but NO diversions can be authorized outside of each sub-state. Mull it over. California simply is unable to dodge desalination. It cannot continue to rob Peter to pay Paul. Regions need the capability of defining their own priorities in water use and resource development.

Rural regions are rapidly transforming with the growth of population. Their economic uses and residential uses are increasing coming up against the stone wall of restricted supplies. This proposed water management reconfiguration is the only one that will open the door to users and avoid economic and political catastrophe. Without new supplies, there will be only ghost towns and agricultural crises. Without increasing supplies of water, there is no way to avoid running out and the only question will be: "Who will take the fall?".

Republicans Losing Grip on Rural Areas?

Having recently posted about the Democratic Party "Crash" in Los Angeles, I think it's only fair to note an interesting diary posted on the Daily Kos about Republicans in trouble in rural America.

Republicans Losing Grip on Rural Areas
by Devilstower

The non-partisan Center for Rural Strategies was founded to try and keep rural issues visible in elections that sometimes seem to focus only in the cities that host $2000 a plate dinners and 50,000 person stadiums. Since the Kentucky-based group was founded, one thing has been consistently true in the results of their polls of rural voters -- America's small towns and countryside have been running red. However, it seems that may be at an end.

But the new survey, of 804 likely voters living beyond cities and suburbs, indicates that the Republican formula for winning presidential elections is losing a key component.
...

Forty-six percent of the survey respondents indicated they'd vote for an un-named Democratic candidate for president if the election were held today; 43 percent favored a Republican. That's a statistical dead heat, given the poll's margin of error of plus or minus 3.46 percent.

California is one of those states where wingnut Republicans take a large rural vote completely for granted. The diarist at the Daily Kos, of course, only thinks in terms of "Blue" Democrats vs. "Red" Republicans. For California there are earth-shaking implications for the Green Party particularly when it comes to explosive issues like water-rights.

Stay tuned.