Outsiders have started weighing in on the Memphis City Schools charter surrender.
The Chattanooga Times Free Press opined two days after the Memphis City Schools voted to surrender its charter. The lengthy editorial says in part:
I'll be blogging on the MCS' charter surrender and the SCS' fight for special school district status here.
Wendi C. Thomas is a metro columnist for The Commercial Appeal. Follow her on Twitter at @wendi_c_thomas.
The Chattanooga Times Free Press opined two days after the Memphis City Schools voted to surrender its charter. The lengthy editorial says in part:
Given the ground Hamilton County and Knox County school systems have covered since similar merger referendums in 1994 and 1986, respectively, the Memphis school board has made the right call. A merger of the two systems may be hard initially, but in the end it will bind Memphis together and force progress to solve what has become an untenable and, ultimately, unsustainable fracture in the Memphis area.
I'll be blogging on the MCS' charter surrender and the SCS' fight for special school district status here.
Wendi C. Thomas is a metro columnist for The Commercial Appeal. Follow her on Twitter at @wendi_c_thomas.









Well, it’s time I let some of you people (those who are privy to my current situation) onto what I am really about. So now I shall take this time to clue you in as to how well I have managed to sustain myself at the expense of others. How have I figured out some methods or tricks to survive relatively with such limited resources? Well, let’s just say I looked for the nearest “fire escape” from my lifelong situation (to put it metaphorically). As of lately, I have found that these benefits have worked out well to my advantage. They are not all such negative results. As a matter of fact I have adapted quite well, probably to the extent that people shall now regret it. Frankenstein’s monster has turned on him FOR SURE. And my, how the grapes of wrath sure have a backfiring or boomerang effect. Watch your heads!
First of all, let me just pose my opening statement here in the form of a question: How long did certain of you useful idiots expect to get away with trying to manipulate and destroy my reputation and think that it would never turn on you? How much of a fool do you think I am to never know how to successfully reverse the game you play on me to MY advantage? Did some of you actually think there would never be a day of reckoning for the way you have conditioned society? What results from my circumstances in life did you think you really would always be that clandestine about? How long did you think you would escape accountability? How long did you think your schemes would not catch up with you? Well, you can thank the local public educational system for how I turned out. I’m a product just as well of theirs, along with what has proven about them to be an obvious failure. I am also living proof in how the invention of “vocational rehabilitation” has failed, as well. Not only is it an absolute failure, to say the least, but also as far as I am really concerned, it has turned out to show itself of being a façade – A HOAX!!! A lot of false advertising for the purpose in misleading some unsuspecting stooges and puppets into being controlled – the same way I was -- but only I wised up and figured out a better chess game. Do some of you morons actually believe the gimmick called “vocational rehabilitation” ultimately works? HAHA!!! You must be joking, right? Are you KIDDING? Tell that to some of gimps that have only kept a job no longer than 2 or 3 months at a time. What a track record to dirty up one’s reputation, thanks to the false advertising of a failing system known as “voc. rehab”! PLEASE! I believe that garbage works just like I believe in Santa Claus. Is that why it works so many of those who are still out of a job? Did it work for me? No, and it wasn’t because I quit too early in the process, it’s because I could see ahead of the time that looking down that road it has only one real direction – one that is doomed for failure. People get help from “job coaches”(warning! a buzzword for job “babysitters”) for the “clients”(voluntary test experiments … er… ummmm…game show or sweepstakes contestants?) to perform well or sufficiently enough. (“Good little retarded boy!”) Well, no, sorry, I see right through the bullshit. I don’t but it anymore. Never will, either. Forget it.
And let me tell you something: If I cannot prove FROM MY OWN EFFORT that I can get MY OWN jobs, or that I am able to achieve success from my OWN academic strength or challenge by adequate teaching ability and growth in the regular classroom with REAL credit, WITHOUT being babysat or having my hand held across the road, carried and pampered to the finish line – then I don’t want what “special education” had to offer me! It was an insult to my I.Q.! It was also not worth the embarrassment that I endured to forfeit a challenging education replaced by enhancement of “self-esteem” as the PRIORITY that exceeds the level of my natural ability to perform.
We don’t go to school to be given an easy way out or handout – WE GO TO GET A REAL EDUCATION – AND ONE THAT HAS CHALLENGE!
This opportunity was robbed from me! I was cheated of my future! I was given a handout, dishonestly earned! It was all HACKED!
I DID NOT GRADUATE from high school in 1994, I was given a diploma, of which I destroyed and threw away years later – BECAUSE IT WAS NOT EARNED THROUGH MY OWN EFFORTS! AND NO, I will not get another one – not do I want one, either! IT WAS FAKE! IT WASN’T REAL!
I do NOT accept it! It is an insult to me to be a babied through grade school years the way I was, and I am not going to pretend like it never happened or sweep it all under a rug, because THAT WOULD BE A LIE! AND I DON’T LIE ABOUT MY EDUCATIONAL CAPACITY! Is that clear?
Any educational levels I might have SEEMINGLY accomplished in grade school (elementary – middle – high) were STAGED! It was entirely hacked and I have disowned it already and have disassociated from such a hidden defeat already now for years. I did not get the victory I wanted – so I will not reflect on something that is an obvious failure!
It is a page of history I have wiped out from existence, as long as I can help it. Special education was (and still is) a blueprint for failure. It may as well be a school-hour scheduled day care for children and adolescents. It is a huge disservice, a huge expense (including financially) and is over-rated. It is a blueprint destined for failure. There is no real challenge from it. I had day-care in elementary school, day-care in middle school, and day care in high school. It was utterly a fiasco. What’s more, it was much like a combination of, or cross between a “day-treatment” facility/institution, and a senior-citizen center; in other words, a complete entertaining waste of time and brain function/development. Activities for the model day schedule would mostly include stories (read to us like we are children of a kindergarten class gathered in a school library around a librarian) playing bingo, card games, etc.– and so THIS is what kind of pathetic excuse there was to pass for an education??? Why not just go to Orange Grove Center and be treated like gimps? (I ended up “working” there eventually in high school, anyway, thanks to “vocational babysitting”–oops! I mean—“REHAB”!
So one might ask: where do I go from here? What might I propose? Well, here’s the two-fold answer, quite simply, for that two-fold question: absolutely NO-WHERE and NO-THING. Yep. That’s right. I mean that literally. You got it. That is the way I manage my losses now. I do not contribute to society any more than they did to me. I intentionally have it that way, remaining a complicated burden (by design) living off of their tax dollars and being a parasite, gladly. But the ends justify the means. This is not MY blueprint now to compensate MYSELF. This is certainly justified as vindication for all the times past I was manipulated. So now, after all the times of being cheated and screwed over, the tables have finally turned. And now I joyfully continue to manipulate the system, drawing SSI (oh, by the way… keep ‘em comin’ tea baggers! HEH! And stop whining! HAHA!!) And now it is MY turn to have the last laugh all the way to the bailed-out banks, as I cheat the system and screw the economy, enjoying my ongoing life for so long now being a happy little leech. I know it sounds cold, but oh well. I hope it hurts the perpetrators in what happened to me over the years, though the course of my life, slipping through the cracks. Now it may punish others along WITH them, but oh well. Sometimes innocent people must suffer. One bad apple can spoil the whole bunch, as the old saying goes, right? Okay. C’EST le vie! Hahahaaa!!! SUCK-EERRRRS!!!
Maybe not EVERYONE contributed to my demise, but they didn’t exactly do what was necessary in fighting hard enough to prevent it. Life has consequences, you know. Time to pay the piper! I take great satisfaction AND PLEASURE in watching the doom of society unfold now before their very eyes. I ask again: How long did some of you folks think you’d really get away with sweeping this all under the rug? ARE YOU SERIOUS? What kind of fool you take me for? You are kidding, right? Yeah, you must be. To think you can screw me over the same way for so long? I don’t think so, doesn’t work that way, as far as I am concerned. Nope. Y’all gotta pay. Yep, yep, yep. All is fair in love and war. Not only that, but now because of how my driving ability was compromised through impaired functionality during the my most crucial stage of development (age 15 to 16), you people who contributed to that conspiracy can now feel the guilt whenever you see me WALKING to get somewhere and possibly just about anywhere within the local area. That is right. And I hope it is TOTALLY INCONVENIENT and FRUSTRATING AS CAN BE if or when you ever have to rely on me getting somewhere important enough to meet with you because it takes way too long in getting there. I also hope you lose patience waiting for me, but you HAVE to, and have no choice, because I might have something you want or might need from me. I am sticking to this oath. I have vowed this curse on those who take me for granted in certain ways. And I also hope that this ongoing lifelong demonstration of mine serves as a living model for you to reflect on and deeply think about. And no, I do NOT plan to ever get or use a bicycle or long distant public transportation (airlines, Greyhound bus, etc.) for your sakes, other than what I like to do locally here, every now and then. I want certain of some of you people to notice whenever you are driving, and see me walking alongside the road on a sidewalk, etc. having a big smile from ear to ear, sticking out my tongue, and having fun, having the time of my life, playing games with your minds, gladly taking my sweet time, while you pay more at the gas pumps, and I save more money.
Because I LOVE to smear all of what is currently going on everywhere now – the fiscal crisis, financial breakdowns (even in the automobile industries) back in, and all over your worried faces! I actually rejoice in your adversities. Yes. I’m serious. You deserve all of what happens to some of you! I want you – certain of you – to feel the pang of your utter failures that you had something to do with in causing for myself. I want you to live with the consequences from YOUR mistakes. I want to haunt as many of you people’s consciences as possible, that were in on all of it. Every single time, every day that goes by in your lives, that you look at my circumstances and life situation, I want you to feel this: to be burdened by the taxes you must keep paying because of what you failed to prevent from happening to me. The unfortunate peril you bring on yourselves – some of you. Let this all serve as a valuable lesson to you. Your past shall haunt you for a very long time. Maybe this shall motivate what you still have time to in rescuing today’s youth. Perhaps THEY won’t become throwaways from the social engineering methods that you either perpetrated or approved of. While you still have time, I would advise you to save this new generation – before it is too late. You may be too late in repairing any of MY damages, but you still have a chance with these youngsters. Besides, as it clearly shows, you don’t have to worry if whether or not I am being compensated enough – believe me – I am – and in more ways than you can ever imagine, my friends. I manage to survive what you have caused me just fine. Living well is the best revenge. I may not have a mansion, but the little shanty I DO have is good enough for moi. But anyway, maybe you still have time to salvage this younger generation before THEY add to your already pre-existing economic loss. Perhaps maybe even though you might not identify with MY hardships, then you may be able to lighten some of the load you are appointed to soon fatefully have (if not already) and the whiplash effects from these hardships that are your own now. But make no mistake about it; you will not escape the wrath and justice being served to you in spades. And I know, and am confident in this, that any difficulty you will soon have more of, if not already, is due to what past difficulty I had, and is what you bring onto yourselves. It serves you right to suffer this sort of punishment. It isn’t violence I describe here, but natural circumstances I wish to see come into your lives so that you will regret what you have done before in the past.
I also never plan to get married nor have any children. Certain of you in power who have pulled the strings on my life (controlling and monitoring how well I get ahead on this road called life) Want to possibly continue your vicious cycle upon other generations as well, so you are certainly not worthy of even my seed for you to corrupt like I see you now do to other children who have parents that are my age. This cycle you want to profit from has officially ended as for anyone O procreate into existence for any further future generations – FOREVER!
And your neglect has brought about ALL (or MOST) of these things now happening, whether through TRAGEDY, economic setbacks, or reduction of population/regeneration for you to socially engineer with your societal poisons. I only now look forward to the day of redemption for those who slipped through the cracks on account of you, and I want to see a day of reckoning happen in more ways than you could ever imagine, folks. I shall now do the honors of hammering the final nail on the coffin, anticipating your arrival with destiny to become simply another page in history. So farewell, happy trails, and may we never meet again after you are ultimately destroyed. (Hey, you made your beds, now you can lay in them, sillies.) This concludes my final public statement. I shall now hold my peace. Goodbye.