The Ackermonster's Demise is in Motion

I've always hated Arlene Ackerman-- the current Philadelphia School District Superintendent-- ever since she weaseled her way into our city, back in June 2008.

My first clue was when I scoured the District website during the start of the 08-09 school year. It told me absolutely nothing on what they were working on, only pages of propaganda, including their oh-so original mission statement of how "our mission is to encourage the growth.." and the usual bullshizz.

I came across the page dedicated to Ackerman. Her photo was pretty. Thinking back to how over-glorified my school's principal, Linda Carroll, was, I decided to do some research to get an idea about who this "Arlene Ackerman" really was. (I found that her real photo was not at all pretty.)

A simple Google search sufficed, and I quickly had two, very good articles from the San Francisco Bay Guardian:

http://www.sfbg.com/39/39/cover_ackerman.html
http://www.sfbg.com/39/39/x_oped.html


Arlene Ackerman had a horrible, quite recent history with the San Francisco and Washington DC school districts. Although she was somewhat sucessful in improving their academic statistics, she had literally destroyed their abilities to function whenever anyone disagreed with her, by her refusing to speak during meetings, or skip them altogether. It was like one childish tantrum after another.

Further, she refused to speak with the press, and had her lackeys "speak" with anyone that faintly expresses disaproval with her policies.

Ackerman has this dillusional mentality that anyone that isn't with her is working against her.

And the scary part is that this happened twice, consecutively, in San Francisco and Washington DC. Two years later, she's here in Philadelphia, after immaturely quitting her Superintendent jobs in those cities, and accepting a huge six-figure pay raise for herself.

At first, I was freaking out. I was hysterically muttering, "She is freakin' crazy. I can't let her do this! Not again. NOT AGAIN!"

I printed out about ten copies of each and placed them around my school auditorium, just in time for a parent meeting with none other than Ackerman. I knew that in the previous Districts, Ackerman had won over much of the parents' support, before she turned on them. I hoped to speed up the inevitable process.

I soon forgot about what I did, and eventually she ordered "weekly assessments", around March 2009. The assessments were multiple-choice math and English "quizes" that everyone had to take on Fridays. The teachers in my school were furious, because most of the questions either didn't make sense, or they were too advanced for us to attempt to answer. And they also took up class-time.

So. Teacher support? Slightly severed. They probably just thought, "Oh, its just the usual District screw-ups."

I slowly spread the word about Ackerman's craziness, and, coupled with the weekly assessments, I quickly felt that nearly every student in the school felt no sympathy or support for her. Even our genius all-A student despised the Ackermonster.

All the teachers, including me and some of the students, then heard about this plan:

Link to Imagine 2014:
http://webgui.phila.k12.pa.us/offices/s/strategic-planning

No one of us supported it. Unless you're a parent.

So, student organization support-- Hacked off. Once again.

Of course, I was scared for myself. If I did something more drastic-- like ask her something provoking in a public meeting-- I might be in danger, like that Alan Wong, especially this early in the stage. But with teacher and student support being killed off as I write, the only thing left until Ackerman's destruction would be to kill off her overwhelming parent support.

(This is why I never supported parent involvement. They don't understand anything, less of all educational politics. They're too easily victims of propoganda.)

I figured, I can't do anything. The stage is set. I just have to wait and let history repeat itself.

So now, since the beginning of June, I've heard rumours that the public support of Ackerman was waning, and that she's causing trouble over there. "About time, though faster than the last two times," I thought. Maybe I had a bigger impact than I thought.

I Google'd her again, and I learned that the Philadelphia news media is changing their outlook of Ackerman to one of disgust-- which was exactly what happened in SF and WDC.

The past is repeating again, for the third time.

The next step is that Ackerman will publically comment about this, and then her support will really plumment.

Take that, Ackermonster. ..Shows you for meddling in our city.