My local Cincinnati Firefighters can get a call that someone is having a heart attack. They will send out a fully staffed fire truck to investigate. Once the first guys investigate, they will call for the firemen’s ambulance that will take the person to the hospital. You probably have at least 10 firemen involved in every call. You probably need three with the ambulance. Most of what they do is make-work stuff. Because of increases in technology and improved building codes we don’t have many fires anymore. They have to do something to justify their existence.

I know some local firefighters and they are good men and honorable public servants. I respect them and service they provide. They could do just as much with less though.

Our school unions haven’t been any better. I haven’t taught nor have I been trained to teach, but I doubt I could do much worse than some of the results coming out of the Cincinnati Public Schools. I am convinced those teachers don’t teach anyway at some of them. A friend of mine went to one of the worst in the City as a sub and they told him he could stay all year on the first day (just for showing up). He got to the classroom and the kids were fighting so hard they were drawing blood. They didn’t listen to him one bit. After one day he left and never went back.

I support the Walter Williams argument of academic triage.

From wiki: Triage is a process of prioritizing patients based on the severity of their condition so as to treat as many as possible when resources are insufficient for all to be treated immediately.

First determine who can be saved, then try to save the most with what you have. Over one in five kids in the Cincinnati Public Schools is listed as disabled. That is district wide. In the bad schools it is the highest. That is an amazing statistic. And it has grown significantly over this decade.

The government pays for some of the disabled kids through SSI (not all of those kids get SSI, but I would love to know the number and how it has changed over the years). I have heard of psychologists that have been offered money or sexual favors for an SSI disabled qualification. The mothers approach the session like a job interview trying to convince them to sign off to get the check. There are women here with multiple disabled kids and I think each one gets 600+ a month. They have websites that coach people on how to attain social security disability for children.

And imagine if your child had to attend a class where other kids were coached to be disruptive. Imagine how bad that is for our system of public education. Who would have thought that if you pay good money for children with disabilities you will wind up with more children with disabilities?