Here’s a video of at least part of Rossi’s appearance in Silverdale. If you know of more, please send me the link and I’ll be glad to post it.
Unfortunately, I was unaware he would be here, else I would have done the video myself.
I take that back. If his only appearance here was what’s reflected on the video and waving to folks from the car at the Whaling Days parade, well then I don’t feel that we’ve missed much. When he comes to Kitsap to give a campaign speech of some kind, I’ll be there.
Thanks, by the way, to James Olsen for providing the link to the video.
I heard Rossi held a rally prior to the parade, which would have included a speech of some kind. Sounds like the campaign staff failed to provide notice to the Kitsap Sun (or at least to Steven Gardner).
I sent a link to Steve Gardner and his editors the day of the event with Flip camera YouTube coverage of Rossi events. I’ll send that along again.
It is amazing that fall-over-me coverage was given Christine Gregoire’s Titanic Tour to BI and Bremerton, but a reporter can get anything on Rossi. Hmmm, they don’t call it the Red Sun for no reason.
Someone shared these comments on Rossi visit to Whaling Days:
“FOr the Record: the Dino walkers in the Parade alone totaled 86 and when Dino was speaking the crowd swelled to 2-3 times that number. When Dino and his wife Terry came down along the staging area people flocked from all the entries to shake his hand and you could hear the applause and chanting long before you could see him as he came along to his entry!”
I was in the parade with the Slaughter County Rollervixens women’s rollerderby league. I was dressed in my Ref outfit and one skates when I realized that we were directly in front of the Rossi group in the parade staging area. So I saw him up-close for a while and even shook his hand when he walked by and introduced himself. Talk about weird. I shook his hand and wished him good luck. (At the back of my mind I knew that he was going to get pasted this election.. I love the Gov!) He gave a breif speech to the supporters at the parade before they marched off.
I’ll share some photos I have of Rossi in the background and some Roller derby girls in the front.
So, Jake, considering your certainty regarding the outcome of the election, do you know something we don’t? Namely, will King County’s ballots again be counted LAST?
You don’t have to squint to read the writing on the wall for Dino. The Governor re-election campaign fundraising has been blowing Rossi out of the water. She has remained consistently ahead of him in election polling for a long time. Governor Gregoire has done a great job with the state and balanced budgets and grew the state economy and pass legislation that the voters of Washington wanted.
Dino has done squat for the past couple years. Squat. Name me one piece of legislation that Dino has passed or helped pass since the last election. He wrote a lame self-help book, whined about loosing and started a bogus frivolous election lawsuit that was a national embarrassment.
And to top it all off the Obama presidential campaign is going to sweep Washington and have an extremely positive down ballot effect since the democratic base and independents are going to turn out in record numbers. I have yet to actually see anyone who is actually excited about John McLame.
http://politicalwire.com/archives/2008/07/29/strategic_vision_obama_leads_in_pennsylvania_washington.html
Of course King County is probably going to turn in their polling results last. They are the biggest county with the biggest elections office with the most ballots. In fact ONE THIRD of all Washingtonians live in King county.
Kind of interesting that an ad against Rossi has almost convinced me to vote for him.
Seems he turned down an across the board pay raise for teachers. GOOD FOR HIM!
Now a pay raise for teacher MERIT is something else…something worthy of a pay raise. But to reward the non productive two year ‘tenure hugger to retirement’ teacher is ludicrous.
In my opinion… Sharon O’Hara
The problem is, if you pay your teachers low wages, you don’t attract good teachers. It is a double edged sword, but I am inclined to lean towards the children and teachers and increase their pay.
perhaps there is a way to have structured pay raises based on merit, I would be open to reading that plan.
Of course there is a way to pay teachers on merit…but the TU won’t allow it.
They prefer the same pay across the board so the mediocre teacher is paid the same as the producing teacher….and how they apparently keep the union strong and growing.
The largest, strongest political union in this nation…. the teachers union…and choking the life out of a future for this country.
Under their guidance the United States is scraping the bottom of the world educational standards.
The TU turned down the Gates Foundation offer to reward teachers for producing…
You, sir. If you are really inclined to lean toward a quality education for the children couldn’t possibly be for more teacher pay as it now is distributed.
Unless all you care about is the TU support and votes…we’ll get more of the same…graduating students who can’t compete in a world market.
In my opinion… Sharon O’Hara
It seems to me that the teachers still want to teach and the students still want to learn. The teacher’s unions aren’t to blame, their purpose is to protect the teachers and engage in collective bargaining. The collective thought part of it bothers me a little, but I’m not sure that’s the case. The union members in South Kitsap voted on whether to participate in the late start Wednesday for collaboration time and if I remember correctly, the ayes won by one vote. Their was no big outcry, no protests, no walking off the job. I’m guessing the teachers who voted against it are participating. Probably cheerfully. Democracy at work. Role modeling to the students. The teachers and the students are doing what they are supposed to be doing. Teaching. Learning. Conducting themselves in a professional manner. Getting along. Working things out. We could learn something from them.
We’re going to have to look at ourselves for this, meaning the parents, the citizens, the voters, the elected officials, and the school administrators and leaders. The school is a reflection of the community, if the public school has become a political battlefield, well…
All teachers are not equal…and is the only profession in the country that gives tenure after two years.
No business gives ‘tenure’… only teachers get it thanks to the TU. Presumably the have it because the majority of teachers aren’t capable of keeping a job without it.
Schools are a reflection of parent involvement or indifference and/or community involvement.
Learning something from the calm, teachers teaching, students learning you describe must mean the majority – if not all – of your students pass the WASL and other tests along the way….or do your teachers complain and make excuses why their students fail?
It must also mean your college bound graduating students are educated enough to qualify immediately into the college of their choice.
How do your graduating seniors compare in knowledge with the graduating seniors in other schools in the state, the nation, the world?
If your students are educated to your standards – whatever they are – so be it.
In my opinion… Sharon O’Hara
I think tenure can be negotiated. Who is negotiating for you and what are their skills? More careful consideration when hiring might be a good idea, to avoid wanting and having to fire someone. Better human resource people. A quality of life that makes the best teachers want to live here. Free interpersonal skills training workshop for the whole town.(jk)
I don’t disagree with anything you’re saying, but it’s not union bad, me good. You can’t leave out the human element. The Galbraiths did some time and motion studies during the 1950’s on factory workers in an effort to increase productivity,etc.. They and everyone else were surprised to find that money isn’t the number one motivator for why people work, it was second. The number one motivator was job satisfaction and pride in their work. Knowing they are doing a good job and being recognized for it.
I compare my local public school with the Central Kitsap School District, which was named one of the top 100 high schools in the country last month. How are we ending up with such a different outcome? It’s a stones’ throw away from here, the demographics can’t be that different. Is it the open AP classes? The education level of the community? Is it the teaching staff?
What are this community’s standards and expectations? That’s a good question. I don’t know. The community should be having those conversations. Maybe some parents don’t know they have a say or the right to expect an equal educational opportunity for their student(s), for all the students. Maybe they don’t know what to ask for or who to ask. Perhaps it’s just an every man for himself mentality.
I have questions, too. Why was anyone voting against late start collaboration? If it’s a progressive, proven teaching tool, why would anyone vote against it? Do the teachers have a choice on whether they want to be in the union?
I think it’s an exciting time for the field of education. Information can be disseminated so quickly regarding who’s doing what where, what’s working, what’s not. I can go to the Charlie Rose website, click on Education series and see what the 2007 Teacher of the Year, who teaches in Prineville, Oregon, has learned about educating young people. It’s amazing.
I hope you have a good day, Sharon.
Thank you, Karen. Every day is a good day for me…and hope it is for you as well.
What do you mean when you say you compare your school with CKSD and it was named one of the top 100 schools in the country last month, then go on to wonder about your different outcomes.
Do you mean SKSD is less productive?
Nobody voted against your collaboration efforts…they were against less school time for the students.
Other professions collaborate together on their own time…they don’t take away from patient time or retail selling time…but your school took away from school time for the kids.
Money has never been the great motivator of life work satisfaction…not a surprise to anyone.
Does that mean all teachers are good teachers and should be paid the same? Please.
Does that mean the best quality and brightest students deliberately go into teaching when they can make more money going into a different profession and not be held down to the mediocre teacher/TU standard?
If your school isn’t producing the quality education needed…open your eyes…it might be the mediocre teacher at work.
In my opinion… Sharon O’Hara
I’m not an educator, I wish I was, or an expert on organized labor, so I’m not going to debate the specifics. It’s nonproductive and too broad to say the state of the public school system is the fault of the union.
I think that collaboration time is time well spent. It’s continuing education, networking, support. Hey, maybe someone is even discovering during that time that their heart really isn’t in teaching and they’re not that good at it and change career paths.
Other professions do collaborate on their own time, but my dime. Conventions, expensive dinners, team-building hunting and fishing trips. Golf and health club memberships. All tax deductible.
There is no easy answer but respect and support for students and the teachers and the work they’re doing everyday would be a good place to start.
Karen…The ‘fault’ if you will, can be laid directly on the doorstep of the parents inattention….in my view.
The union gathered votes, fine tuned itself and its control and turned into the beach bully…due to the parents inattention.
I’m not an educator …but a shocked and surprised citizen that we have let our kids and country down. No one was minding the public education store.
As I see it … Sharon O’Hara
So what are you going to do? Take the power back? Appeal to them to police themselves? The union has done good things. It has helped make teaching a profession, a profession in which people can actually support a family. It has stopped discriminatory hiring and firing. Maybe it has outlived its usefulness or broadened its scope of authority into areas it shouldn’t have. What do we do now?
Nothing is all one way or another..”…the union has done good things…” of course it has.. but to make all levels of teachers ‘equal’ in pay isn’t one of them. Nor is the two year tenure.
As far as making teaching a ‘profession’…it has made it a joke. Most professions pay according to worth. The more the employee does for the company/organization the more the employee is compensated. What on earth is wrong with that?!
Only the teacher’s ‘profession’ discourages innovative teachers who can teach. What other profession pays all level of ’employees’ the same? No other organization or company could afford it. Only the tax supported TU and their heavy load of mediocre teachers…the tenure to retirement tree huggers.
The cost has been the dumbing down of America and mediocre teachers who can’t teach.
IF the TU really cared about the children’s education it would allow teacher pay for performance to encourage more quality teachers into a profession and to justly reward the teacher who can teach.
Quality producing teachers should be among the highest paid profession in this country for the importance of their work…not the inert average teacher of 2008.
Another union should be started using only quality and gifted teachers and the current death grip of this foe of quality education TU should be broken.
Of course it depends on what matters most… the children’s education or the grip of the TU?
What do YOU want to do about it…what are you willing to do?
As I see it… Sharon O’Hara