Shorter Washington Policy Center

Dear Kemper,

Send $ soon.

Yours,

Mike Ennis

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I've Got to Say....

.....this would make my life a little less hectic.

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Meh

Every time I read a post like this on Sound Politics, I really miss Eric Earling.

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Remember When Rodney Tom Was Good on Education?

Reading through an old Association of Washington School Principals magazine, he got their Torch of Leadership Award back in 2009.

Since then, he's used that torch to burn down the public schools every chance he gets.

Yay, leadership.

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Yet More Evidence That Online Schools Aren't All That Great

Courtesy of Education Week, with coverage of some online schools not getting the job done in Colorado.

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Yet Another Reason Why Average Daily Attendance Funding is a Really Lousy Idea

Are you listening, Senator McAuliffe?

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What, You Want Us to Stay at the Holiday Inn?

The Washington Association of School Administrators--essentially, the superintendents and other district level staff--is having their fall workshop starting today in beautiful Grand Mound, Washington.

Where the hell is Grand Mound? It's exit 88 off of I-5, about equidistant between Olympia and Centralia. There's a Dairy Queen and a mobile home dealership, a couple of gas stations, and you may have driven through it on your way to the Lucky Eagle Casino.

Why have the workshop in Grand Mound? Because it's also where you'll find the Great Wolf Lodge Resort, where the cheapest rooms begin at $200 a night and easily stretch up to $500+ a night for some of their other facilities.

I'm sure that WASA got some kind of a deal. I hope so, anyhow. There is something to be said, though, about the optics of meeting at a Resort when we live in an environment of all cuts, all the time.

Bad PR, admins.

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When the Attack Ads Are True

They said he was a carpetbagger. He said nope, I'm from here, went to school here, and I am coming back to make a difference for Spokane.

A year later, he's on Seattle TV announcing his run for US Senate.

They said he was using the state legislature as a stepping stone. He said nope, Chris Marr is just projecting, and I'm here to make a difference for the 6th LD.

A year later, he's running for Senate against Maria Cantwell.

The thing about having the most expensive legislative race in history in 2010 is that it creates a ton of cannon fodder, and when you announce that you're pursuing a different office in 2011--not even a year later--the bodies in the closet haven't even had a chance to decompose into the skeletons in the closet.

So now the Washington State GOP is going to end up running a candidate who will be hamstrung by fundraising rules (he can't raise money during the legislative session, I believe, or during any special session), who has words not even a year old that are going to come back to haunt him, who has no statewide profile, and whose major issue in a federal race is going to be wars that have absolutely no support.

If you want to guess what the spread of Baumgartner vs. Cantwell will be, start with the spread for Cantwell vs. McGavick and then add 5 points.

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