Wednesday, January 4, 2012

Last holdout surrenders

Steve Rivkin


Like our beleaguered forces at Wake Island, Steve Rivkin's surrender is an honorable one as he is moving on up to another job in Chicago at the University of Illinois.

Rivkin was elected to the Amherst School Committee two years ago and shared a foxhole with Catherine Sanderson, constantly drawing fire for daring to question why Amherst spends sooooooo much money per student with less than stellar results--especially with low income, minority students.

If fellow school committee members decide they want him replaced before the next town election in the spring, they need to send written notice to the Select Board within 30 days so the Select Board can call a joint meeting with the Amherst School Committee and pick a successor to fill out his term.

Or if the School Committee is too lazy to ask for a replacement, the Select Board can take it upon themselves to fill the position with just their majority vote.

Either way, only the "usual suspects" need bother to apply.

5 comments:

  1. If folks really care about ARPS, they have the opportunity to weigh in and offer their opinion on how Ms. Geryk is doing running the show (http://www.arps.org/). Deadline is January 9th.

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  2. Thank you Steve Rivkin for sharing your time, concern, knowledge and expertise in economics and education. You are a stand up, straightforward person who challenged the people around you to do right by the children of Amherst. You will be missed.

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  3. Thank you for your hard work and service to the community Steve. Sorry to see you leave.
    Ali

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  4. What the Rivkin tenure on School Committee should remind us is that the chattering class in Amherst is deeply conservative and not particularly interested in self-reflection.

    The belief in the value of dissent to the quality of our public discourse is no greater here than anywhere else.

    If you dare to challenge our sense of superiority in the way we have always done things, you are headed for the public takedown, and it is guaranteed to be personal and ugly.
    The problem is bigger than any one elected official can handle.

    Thank you for your service, Steve.

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  5. Now that Steve and Catherine are gone, our School Committee members can be themselves and break out the pom-poms.

    Good-bye, Steve............good-bye to critical thinking and any pretense of governmental oversight.

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