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Mark also writes a regular blog for timesleader.com.
Call this our summer of reconciliation. It is as though the contract fairy came to town after years of absence, tapped a bunch of stubborn people on the heads they had been butting, and brought peace to our public schools.
We took mom to Manhattan on Saturday to see “South Pacific.” Driving out of Gotham we ran into the inevitable gridlock that masses like a clogged drain at the entrance to the Lincoln Tunnel. As we crawled and stalled, I thought “This is great traffic management in action!”
Beach balls periodically bounced off the mortar boards during most of the ceremony. One woman asked, “Who is that lady?” when Superintendent Nancy Tkatch came to the podium. And Silly String started flying shortly after diplomas were doled out. But the highlight of the Northwest Area commencement Thursday – pushed to so late a date by a teacher strike – clearly was Dr. Jennifer Bau, a soft-spoken alum of little public note with a big message for the small school.
It’s an epic 12 years in the making, at a cost of millions, with a cast of thousands (of taxpayers). It’s a saga of high rollers gambling on creative financing, of adversity overcome only to discover more adversity. Let’s call it “Law &Order: TVU (Taxpayer Victims Unit)”
I’d like to praise SMG for quickly deciding to release an unedited copy of its contract for managing the Wachovia Arena. I’d like to laud them for seeing the open-records light, and giving us the full contract the day after I wrote a column critical of the fact that dollar figures had been removed from the first copy we got.
By sheer scale, the new portals in the Wilkes-Barre levee are barely two peepholes in a wall 42 feet high and miles long. Yet in the grand scheme, they are long-needed reconnections to a long-lost ancestor, a break in a barrier that separated us for seven decades from the reason we are here.
If you decide to walk outside you are exposed to the weather, rain or shine. You can’t insist that the rain and snow avoid you because you have some sort of proprietary secrets you don’t want to get wet.
Saturday’s front page had one of the most compelling local news photos I’ve seen: The widow of State Trooper Joshua Miller bending to kiss his coffin as it seems to dangle in thin air over the abyss of his grave.
With the sad news that Attorney Robert Powell must forfeit his yacht “Reel Justice” as part of his plea agreement in the courthouse corruption scandal, we can now openly ask what has been on many a mind:
I’ve got a great idea: Let’s give attorney Robert Powell half-a-billion to build a cargo airport in Hazleton. He promises we’ll get the business.
SCRANTON. – Bishop Joseph Martino has announced extensive reappointments of clergy throughout the diocese, with substantial shuffling in Luzerne County.
LEHMAN TWP. – Around 8:30 p.m. Tuesday, Lake-Lehman School District earned the dubious distinction of having the longest-running teacher contract dispute in Luzerne County.
LEHMAN TWP. – With three members voting no, one voting by phone and one absent, the Lake-Lehman School Board approved a final budget for the 2009-10 school year that increases taxes about $47 for the average property owner.
WRIGHT TWP. – You’re a high school sophomore, you’ve been around less than one-fifth of your expected life span, and you just learned you’re going to die. What would you do?
DALLAS TWP. – Camp tents and card games and toy horses that whinny? These kids may be in rooms full of desks and it may be June, but isn’t there some kind of law that says summer school can’t be fun?
HARRISBURG – In the ongoing state budget battle, Gov. Ed Rendell has agreed to drop all funding for the four-year-old Classrooms for the Future grant program, which pumped nearly $1.2 million into Luzerne County public schools last year to provide training, computers and other high-tech equipment.
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