Tony repentant

To the editor: My apologies for all the misinformation I’ve been spreading and thanks to Kathryn for correcting and chastising me. I am not only corrected and chastised but, finally, converted. Go DV! Go Tom! Go Candi! And gratis particularly for revealing that 26 million out of 63 million is a “majority” of funds spent on general education. Somehow I thought that was less than half. I am, like, so totally stupid. Let’s see: 63 million budget, 26 million spent on education, 37 million on everything else. Makes sense for a school. What-EVER, right, Kathryn? Example: I thought that Anne Arundel’s AP Scholar rate, which is twice Delaware Valley’s (they have 13 times as many students but 25 times as many scholars), might have some meaning to administrators, even semi-literate school board members, students and us beleaguered taxpayers, and might provoke reform. How could I have been so wrong. And on PSSA results, which show that the longer students stay in the DV system the lower they score against their statewide peers, I thought this might catch the attention of someone, somewhere who cares about public education in this county, this state and in this country. As Rick said when told, in “Casablanca,” that no waters were available there, I was misinformed. Kathryn doesn’t mention in her “Response to Tony Splendora” Delaware Valley’s SAT scores. Curious omission, methinks, but I’m sure my constant references to below-average postings in a state at the bottom of our national list were likewise wayward. I should have remembered Tom Finan’s response when told these lamentable facts: he said, indelibly, that inner city kids are dragging the state average down. I almost fainted, but now realize that this must have been some kind of sublime bureaucratic witticism that my impoverished education precluded me from appreciating. Eighteen years of post-secondary education are obviously not enough. Mea culpa. Thanks to Kathryn for clearing up the responsibility conundrum: It’s the teachers who are responsible for the education of students at Delaware Valley, and especially for their reading habits. My God, I think I see the light! What a relief to learn that the superintendent of schools and her husband, our director of secondary education, have nothing to do with which teachers get hired, based probably too often on their coaching experience. See, Tony? Sports isn’t really that expensive after all, just as Kathryn says. So glad that’s cleared up. In the end, as the Finans slide into bathetic but wealthy retirement in the next few years, one hopes our school board is already searching for a newly minted Ph.D, someone who actually wrote a dissertation, someone with ideas and educational fire -- not merely bureaucratic lust -- to enliven Delaware Valley academically and make it an institution we are, all of us, proud to support. Good luck and God bless us every one. Tony Splendora Milford