Lofton's response

In Tuesday's Trentonian, you'll read about Trenton School Superintendent Rodney Lofton's response to the fiasco that left hundreds of city students corralled into a gym rather than attending classes the first few days of school last week.
We were pretty harsh with our school superintendent-as-a-clown front page, and Lofton - as the school district's top official - deserved it.
But you've got to respect his response to such harsh criticism, and Mayor Doug Palmer's subsequent public flogging of him.
Rather than cry about being picked on unfairly, scream racism, or point the finger at someone else, Lofton's only public statement has been to own up to the problems, apologize to students and parents, work as fast as he can to fix the problem, and pledge to do better in the future.
That was the public response.
Let's hope the behind-the-scenes response is the only thing that's going to make a dent in problems like this in Trenton's schools ... a take-no-prisoners assault on the tenure system and protection of incompetence.
Lofton needs to fire some people ... maybe a lot of people ... and he needs Doug Palmer's support to do it.

Who's running this circus?

Where do we even begin when it comes to the disaster that was the first day of school in Trenton?

Hundreds of students show up for the first day of school, and are corralled into the gym to twiddle their thumbs because ... AGAIN ... the school district was unable to do something as basic as schedule classes for everyone.

And that's after the district spent $500,000 of taxpayer funds to hire an outside firm to handle scheduling.

Apparently, the scheduling of classes ... something that's been done in every school district in the country every year since the beginning of modern public education ... is too complicated for the bozos running the Trenton School District.

And that's why we ran with the front page you saw on today's Trentonian. Hard-hitting? Yes. But also well-deserved.

And if we did anything to help create an environment that led to Mayor Doug Palmer going ballistic and ordering an immediate fix to this problem, that's great.

His outrage today and our front page are an understatement of the anger that this situation ... the latest in a long string of failures by the Trenton School District ... has sparked among parents and taxpayers.

Lofton's response

In Tuesday's Trentonian, you'll read about Trenton School Superintendent Rodney Lofton's response to the fiasco that left hundreds of city students corralled into a gym rather than attending classes the first few days of school last week.
We were pretty harsh with our school superintendent-as-a-clown front page, and Lofton - as the school district's top official - deserved it.
But you've got to respect his response to such harsh criticism, and Mayor Doug Palmer's subsequent public flogging of him.
Rather than cry about being picked on unfairly, scream racism, or point the finger at someone else, Lofton's only public statement has been to own up to the problems, apologize to students and parents, work as fast as he can to fix the problem, and pledge to do better in the future.
That was the public response.
Let's hope the behind-the-scenes response is the only thing that's going to make a dent in problems like this in Trenton's schools ... a take-no-prisoners assault on the tenure system and protection of incompetence.
Lofton needs to fire some people ... maybe a lot of people ... and he needs Doug Palmer's support to do it.

Who's running this circus?

Where do we even begin when it comes to the disaster that was the first day of school in Trenton?

Hundreds of students show up for the first day of school, and are corralled into the gym to twiddle their thumbs because ... AGAIN ... the school district was unable to do something as basic as schedule classes for everyone.

And that's after the district spent $500,000 of taxpayer funds to hire an outside firm to handle scheduling.

Apparently, the scheduling of classes ... something that's been done in every school district in the country every year since the beginning of modern public education ... is too complicated for the bozos running the Trenton School District.

And that's why we ran with the front page you saw on today's Trentonian. Hard-hitting? Yes. But also well-deserved.

And if we did anything to help create an environment that led to Mayor Doug Palmer going ballistic and ordering an immediate fix to this problem, that's great.

His outrage today and our front page are an understatement of the anger that this situation ... the latest in a long string of failures by the Trenton School District ... has sparked among parents and taxpayers.