Zimmerman Speaks Out

In retrospect and not as a rationalization, during that meeting my attention was more focused on the prospect of furloughing 249 teachers than what I thought to be "routine" personnel issues.It was the administration's fault this was not addressed. I trusted them and they simply violated that trust.They can apologize all they want but it does not change the fact they still achieved their purpose, sneaking their appointment into the position.
There are certain issues that I feel, if not addressed, will make the whole attempt at a redesign of the curriculum an exercise in futility.They need to be identified and discussed in the open to adequately resolve them. I will commit to that and will use this blog as a sounding board if OK,d by MM.As a point of information, I understand the Safety Task Force will now be a closed meeting with a select group of people. Apparently the last meeting was cancelled due to the overt vociferousness of a concerned parent. That person, I was told, was my wife. I fully support her efforts to discern the truth about the violence occurring in WAHS. To me a change in the structure of this meeting appears to be a direct violation of the sunshine law.
The administrators in charge of student services, from the top down, either have to get honest with the people of Allentown and learn to deal with them or find other positions.I will refer this to the solicitor for the school district and if not satisfied, the Secretary of Education and or the State Attorney General.
Sincerely,
David Fehr Zimmerman
Board Member ASD
At Mr. Zimmerman's convenience, this blog will glad to host his views on issues which may impede the success of any curriculum redesign.
UPDATE: I have closed comments here, please place comments at School District Front Burner

Gethsemane 1934

Maria Magdalene (Mary Magdalene) is the Russian Orthodox Church located on the Mount of Olives, in the Garden of Gethsemane in Jerusalem, Israel.
The church is dedicated to Miryam of Migdal, a follower of Jesus. Maria Magdalene was the first to see Christ after he was resurrected, and was a crucial and important disciple of Jesus, and seemingly his primary female associate, along with Mary of Bethany, whom some believe to have been the same woman.
The church was built in 1886 by Tzar Alexander III as a commemoration for his mother, Empress Maria Alexandrovna of Russia, in the traditional tented roof Russian style, including seven onion shaped golden domes. Photograph dates from 1934

Pennsylvania as Pig

A report yesterday in The Morning Call said thousands of gallons of drilling fluid used in hydraulic fracturing were spilling into the Towanda Creek. A disaster team was brought to the site from Texas. At the time of publication on wednesday, in The Times-Tribune (Scranton), the well blowout was continuing for over twelve hours. How many actual gallons of the carcinogenic witch brew actually contaminated the land and waterway will probably never be known. The well is operated by Chesapeake Energy Corp., which is one of the biggest and best equipped operators in fracking. The report said nobody was injured. That referred to immediate injury from the blowout. How many will suffer ill effects from contaminated water will be determined by future doctors, now still in elementary school. Gotta love Pennsylvania. We are the state with one of the biggest state houses. Our legislators have the largest staffs. Our governors, term after term, Democrat or Republican, appoint their minions to turnpike, bridge and other no-show commissions. I remember when in the late 70's, the lottery was the solution to keeping Pennsylvania's pig trough financed. Now we have added casino's and sacrificed our environment with hydraulic fracking. Reform is a barge, which floats by on Pennsylvania's contaminated river called Denial, every four years.

An Allentown Tradition

This photo, circa 1948, shows a Lehigh Valley Transit sweeper trolley passing Zandy's first steak shop, on the corner of Hall and St. John's Street. Also visible in the photo is their current location (upper left hand corner, please click to enlarge photo), in the former Park Movie Theater. After the Park, and before Zandy's, it was a textile dye factory. These two blocks served as a business district at the southern end of the Eighth Street Bridge. Zandy's started in 1940, and today the third generation carries on the business.

Mike Miorelli Fails to Credit Molovinsky

When I saw Joyce Marin's picture on the front page of The Morning Call yesterday, I was proud that molovinsky on allentown was able to bring the story to the attention of the public and media. The photo caption mentioned subsequent criticism of the hiring. That criticism occurred on my blog for the five days before Steve Esack printed his report. In those five days my blog story and comments grew to include an explanation by board member Zimmerman and a note from Superintendent Zahorchak. I didn't know if Esack's report would credit me as Michael Molovinsky, or molovinsky on allentown. I was shocked to instead find a local internet blogger. When I called Esack yesterday, he was genuinely embarrassed. He had written molovinsky on allentown in his story. It is journalism 101 to acknowledge who broke a story, when you write a subsequent piece based on it. This was not the first time a reporter has apologized to me for my name being deleted from his article. It was time to confront Miorelli. Although reporters have come and gone, Mike Miorelli has been metro editor of The Morning Call since 2001. Miorelli claimed that the reporter verified everything himself, including his own subsequent conversation with Dave Zimmerman, and didn't lift anything directly from my blog. That's true Mike, the only things that the newspaper got from this blog is the knowledge that Marin was hired, school directors were snookered, and that the public was upset.

UPDATE: Bill White, Morning Call columnist and journalism instructor at Lehigh, defends Mike Miorelli's position in the comment section of his blog. White invites bloggers to be guest instructors at his class, and his students to start a blog. I suppose he trains the student bloggers to be anonymous local internet bloggers to feed story ideas for the real writers at the Call.

Hailstorm at City Hall

Sara Hailstone, Allentown's Director of Community Development, was expecting to meet with several business owners concerned about being relocated by the hockey arena. Instead, she was confronted by a conference room full of merchants and several of their representatives. She started the meeting by questioning the presence of the Morning Call reporter, Matt Assad. Several merchants said they requested his presence. Hailstone got an earful from merchant after merchant, complaining of everything from poor communication by the city, to alleged outright intimidation by the strawbuyer, Summit Reality. She conceded that the City is the undisclosed buyer, and agreed to proceed with more respect for the merchants. I'll leave more details of the meeting to Assad's coverage, presumedly tomorrow. I'd like to mention an irony that only an old timer, like myself, can appreciate. Over the years we have invested untold $millions on Hamilton Street. We put up the canopies, we took them down. We have reconfigured the parking spaces endless times. We have created a Parking Authority that charges meter rates as if we were a destination. We burdened the merchants with endless regulations concerning their signs and their security gates. At the end of all this, what we essentially have, are those that were in the room today. Save for them, we would have no downtown. We have rewarded their lifetime of work, loyalty and investment with deceit and threats.

UPDATE: Matt Assad's article in today's paper pretty much tells the story of the meeting, but softens the tone present. Assad must maintain some working relationship with Hailstone, I do not. The merchants were very annoyed by tactics utilized by the city agent. A Korean daughter spoke of the pressure inserted on her father, and the effect on his blood pressure and health. A hispanic woman told of her 11 year old sister being harassed on the phone by the strawbuyer. She even wondered aloud if their minority status encouraged the disrespectful attitude. As the merchants revealed their resentment, Hailstone's body language and replies stiffened. Sam Hong, of New York Fashion, would like the Mayor to visit his store. Although two stores wide, and a major merchandizer on Hamilton Street, Pawlowski has never visited. Considering that he has been Mayor for 5.5 years, and Community Development Director for 3 years before that, perhaps he's not coming.