On the radio
So, the first questions out of the box involved whether I missed living in Westchester (not at all - you try getting caught in nasty traffic on the 287 or the Sprain or on Central Ave on a Saturday afternoon, coupled with generally unfriendly people, by Buffalo’s standards), and ribbing about the weather in Buffalo (no, a cloudless 50-degree morning does not constitute a heat wave).
The radio show is run by two law partners from White Plains, and the first segment involved a client of theirs who had recently gotten himself into some trouble in Family Court down in Yonkers. They had a pretty insightful discussion about where the breakdown is that permits a kid so young to get into so much trouble so fast, and what society in general could do to minimize that from happening when the family obviously is broken down.
We began by discussing some pretty abysmal math scores from Buffalo city schools, and I spoke about Superintendent Williams’ efforts to reform the city’s schools, and how certain entrenched interests - both labor and management - are at odds about how and whether the schools should be reformed. We talked about flex time for schools, and the possible extension of the school year, and I noted that the one thing that would help New York improve in a lot of ways would be for these competing interests to all show a little flexibility so that progress can occasionally be made.
They were particularly galled by the fact that the http://www.buffalonews.com/editorial/20050616/1050134.asp“>Buffalo city school’s budget is larger than that of the http://www.ci.buffalo.ny.us/document_1947_3.html“>City itself.
The segment was over pretty quickly, and we’ll talk again about other topics.
Step one a lot of times involves convincing our downstate cousins that upstate and western New York aren’t wholly populated by the cast of Deliverance.
