Today’s news: Getting schooled

Some links via the Journal Star:

• The woman who found (the horrors!) a long brown hair on a pretzel has had her butt sufficiently kissed by the company CEO. Hundreds of people have been killed in Tibet, the nation’s economy is tanking, and Terry Bibi Baker devoted two columns to a a hair on a pretzel.
• It doesn’t take a genius to figure out than an empty public housing complex has less crime that a full one. Fewer victims and fewer criminals. Scott Janz already had it figured out.
• No where in this story about how a $1.4 million shortfall in the District 150 budget might force the district to fire teachers and possibly close schools is there ANY mention of how they had plenty of money to buy up housed on Prospect to build a new school that actually will be built elsewhere.
• Phil Luciano warns us that convicted criminals like to complain about jail conditions.
• They’re building another hotel in East Peoria. And — pay very close attention, Peoria civic leaders — the guy is getting NO help from taxpayers. NONE. It’s like total free-market anarchy over there. And the reporter who wrote this article still seems stunned that a restaurant in East Peoria could actually close up shop.
• If one views past success as an indicator of future performance, I’ve gotta think that Sharon Desmoulin-Kherat is the best possible person District 150 could have picked as the new principal at Manual High School. She turned Whittier School into arguably the best grade school in the district. It wins award after award, and families flocked to the district’s attendance zone to be sure to get their kids registered there. She has her work cut out for her at Manual. Manual has challenged. There’s some good education over there, for anyone who wants to work. But the students are bombarded with poverty and crime. government mandated reforms are going to turn the school into a home for various academies, and Desmoulin-Kherat will have the ability to cherry-pick her teaching staff. I predict success, but it depends on how much independence the district gives her, and how willing they are to have her back when the hammer falls.