News Cut: February 19, 2009 Archive

Moving on?

Posted at 9:03 AM on February 19, 2009 by Bob Collins (10 Comments)
Filed under: Schools

Less than three years from the time she was selected as St. Paul's school superintendent, Meria Carstarphen is already thinking of getting out of town, according to reports today. She's a finalist for a superintendent's job in Austin, Texas. The news comes almost three years from the day Carstarphen was selected as St. Paul's school chief in March 2006. A concern at the time was she tended not to stay in one place very long.

The first school officials appeared to hear of her desire to leave was when she put her Summit Avenue home up for sale, although they tried to dampen speculation by saying she only intended to move into a condo instead.

Her predecessor, Pat Harvey, only stayed for 6 years, and considered leaving for Portland halfway through her tenure.

Her predecessor, Curman Gaines, lasted seven years. He, too, let his name be floated for an out-of-town gig (Seattle) halfway through his tenure. But he had spent 25 years in the system, coming to St. Paul as a science teacher in the '70s.

Why don't school superintendents stick around longer? The Pioneer Press analyzed metro school district salaries last year and found them rising faster than teacher pay. It documented how far districts are willing to go to keep superintendents around, usually with car allowances and bankable vacations and unused sick days.

Gaines was considered one of St. Paul's best superintendents. A comment at the time from a teacher's union official might explain why. "He's one of us. He's home-grown. He knows the state and what's going on. We don't want to lose him - and I didn't have to say that," Sandra Peterson said in 1995.

What direction should St. Paul take now? Should it look for someone local or try to attract someone else's superintendent who's ready to move on?

Update 2:18 p.m. - MPR's Paul Tosto, who knows more than a little something about the education beat, sends along this report that shows the average urban school superintendent lasts for three years. In 1999, it was a little over two years.

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A view of the homeless

Posted at 11:26 AM on February 19, 2009 by Bob Collins (3 Comments)
Filed under: Life

How do you perceive homeless people?

A story out of Boston today raises the question. A homeless man found a woman's wallet. A homeless man found it and returned it, which is what got the headlines in the city.

But perhaps the story was actually in the last sentence of the story:

Susan Clancy regrets not knowing the man's name, but said his honesty
has changed the way she perceives people living on the street.

Why is it news when a homeless person commits an act of honesty?

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The Southwest strategy

Posted at 11:43 AM on February 19, 2009 by Bob Collins (2 Comments)

Southwest Airlines made itself an aviation star by -- mostly -- avoiding direct competition with the big airlines. It flew to Midway instead of O'Hare. It concentrated on Love Field instead of the giant Dallas-Ft. Worth and all the big airlines. It flew to Providence and Manchester, New Hampshire instead of Boston.

It never came to Minnesota, partly because there wasn't a place to fly here without competing with Delta/Northwest. Rochester and St. Cloud aren't close enough to the Twin Cities.

That changed last fall when Southwest announced it'll start flying to Minneapolis St. Paul next month, tackling Northwest/Delta head-on. The company was quick to dampen speculation that it had changed its strategy and was now unafraid to go head-to-head with the majors. After all, Minneapolis-St. Paul was the first city Southwest added since adding San Francisco in 2007.

That changed today when Southwest announced it will start flying into Boston -- the home of Delta in the most profitable northeast market.

The Wall St. Journal's Middle Seat Terminal blog says it marks a historic change in the Southwest business model.

"This is another step back in a long line of moves that changes Southwest's historical business model," wrote aviation consultant Scott Hamilton, of Leeham Co., in an e-mail to the Terminal. "Southwest used to avoid big city, congested airports and/or hubs of other airlines by focusing on secondary airports. It's run out of secondary airport and now has no choice but to go into the big-city airports. With rising labor costs--Southwest now has one of the highest labor costs-to-expenses in the industry--Southwest has to go where the passengers are chasing revenue."

And that's bad news for the former-hometown airline, but good news for consumers. Lower fares tend to follow when Southwest moves into a market.

For example, a Minneapolis to San Francisco roundtrip flight can be found on Southwest for March for $240. The pre-Southwest service (it doesn't start flying here until March 8) on Delta/Northwest costs anywhere between $500 and $1,000. The same flight on Delta/Northwest after Southwest starts service here is going for $320.

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Carstarphen's view

Posted at 12:44 PM on February 19, 2009 by Bob Collins (0 Comments)
Filed under: Schools

St. Paul school superintendent Meria Carstarphen released a statement this afternoon following reports she's in the running to be the superintendent of schools in Austin, Texas.

I am proud to be the Superintendent of Saint Paul Public Schools and am continuing to work to serve the District's students, families, staff and community members every day. It is well known that I very much enjoy my job here and remain deeply committed to achieving the vision that we have set forth over the past three years.

In that time, SPPS has repositioned itself to address, not only current, but future needs. We have a strategic plan that takes us through 2011. We have a process in place to develop recommendations for systemic changes that are needed. The Board, the community and the SPPS staff are well aware of the need to continue the change process.

SPPS has big work ahead of us in the coming months with preparations for spring testing, Large-Scale System Changes and budget reductions. I am committed to leading those efforts.

It is my understanding that the superintendent search in Austin is a closed search and I am not in a position to comment on that process. Any questions regarding that process are best directed to Austin.

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The veteran football

Posted at 12:58 PM on February 19, 2009 by Bob Collins (0 Comments)
Filed under: Politics

Was a flap on the House floor about veterans, "gotcha" politics - Minnesota style?

Things got a little hot on the floor this afternoon when a lawmaker recommended pensions for retired military veterans be deductible from taxable income in the state. The amendment to a tax bill came from Rep. Dan Severson, a Sauk Rapids Republican and veteran. He said it would create jobs by attracting veterans to the state.

"There are a lot of veterans who will get this who were never in a combat zone," said Rep. Al Juhnke, a DFLer from Wilmar, whose son is in Iraq.

Rep. Bev Scalze noted there are other people from Minnesota in harm's way -- she cited police officers -- who aren't getting a tax break.

"Let's not just talk about them (veterans) being a priority, let's show them," countered Republican Tom Emmer.

House Minority Leader Marty Seifert said there are only six states that don't offer a tax break for military pension earnings. "We have ways to pay for this, we're just not voting for any of them," he said.

Rep. Ann Lenczewski, who chairs the Taxes Committee, said the Legislature has already doubled combat pay for active military, provided property tax relief for veterans, and "did things for the VFWs and American Legions." She said it was unfair to give breaks to career military members, and not to active members.

"The poor grunt who's coming back from Iraq is going to have his earnings taxed to pay for this," Rep. Tom Rukavinia, DFL-Virginia, said. "It doesn't seem fair that someone making $100,000 a year is going to get a $2,000 tax break while we raise taxes to help other veterans who don't get a tax break."

Some lawmakers contend the amendment was an attempt to get legislators on record "opposing veterans."

The amendment failed, mostly along party lines, 70-57.

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Defending pilots

Posted at 2:41 PM on February 19, 2009 by Bob Collins (2 Comments)
Filed under: Disasters

Pilots hate the media. It's been that way for years. It's not without good reason. They think the media doesn't know anything about why airplanes fly. And some of the cable TV anchors obviously don't. Unfortunately, America often relies on them for news.

Throw a plane crash into this, and the rhetoric can get pretty heated. The Colgan Air crash in Buffalo is one such example. There's no question that media reports are quick to try to piece factoids together into some coherent explanation. That's not a media character flaw. The first question people ask after an accident is usually, "what happened?" Possibilities are not conclusions, however.

On his excellent blog, Blogging at FL250, "Sam" (we don't know his last name or what regional airline out of Minnesota he flies for) gets a good broadside off:

I'm not going to speculate on what caused the crash. All that I know about the circumstances are what's been reported by the NTSB thus far and repeated in the media. The morning after the crash, enough was already known that there were only a few likely culprits. I myself suspected it was one of two scenarios. The first known facts made one seem most likely, and subsequent information is now shifting the investigation towards the second possibility. The media hasn't reported accurately on either scenario, with a few exceptions. There's a decent chance that more information will come to light that will take the investigation in a completely different direction before it's all over. To say I have any idea what really caused this accident would be a farce. I will, however, give my take on some of the ways the known information has been interpreted and reported to the general public.

And:

All those answers will come with time; in the meantime, any certitude on the part of the media, most of their sources, bloggers, or web board participants is mere affectation.

Many of the nation's best aviation reporters are pilots. There isn't a separate set of laws for physics for people who fly airplanes for living vs. those who fly for some other reason.

Take James Fallows of the Atlantic, for example. Fallows, a pilot, does a great job in his post today of explaining what the word "stall" is in aviation.

For the pilot of any airplane, large or small, the practical implications of a stall center on whether you are pulling the airplane's nose up (by pulling the control wheel or stick backwards, toward your body) or pushing the nose down (by pushing the stick forward, away from you). Everyone who has ever flown an airplane has gone through stall-recovery drills. These involve climbing to a safe altitude; pulling the stick back more and more until you raise the nose so high and make the angle of attack so great that the airplane stalls and begins falling toward the earth; and then immediately pushing the stick forwardas the very first step in getting the airplane under control and flying again.

Pilots themselves, of course, object to suggestions the crew might have done something wrong. We don't know they did. We don't know they didn't. Besides, they're dead and don't get to defend themselves.

But it's entirely possible that they were guilty of nothing more than human survival instinct in the 5 seconds they had to figure out what was happening, and get it fixed.

Here's the scenario when a plane stalls close to the ground. Pretend you're the pilot. You're 1,000 feet off the ground when your plane loses its lift because you're going too slow. The ground is coming up fast in your windshield. What do you do? Pull the plane's nose up? Or push it down?

The correct answer? You push it down... toward the ground you don't want to hit. It -- and not the engine power -- is the most immediate way to can gain enough airspeed to get the plane flying again.

Where Fallows errs in his article today -- and where he gives ammunition to the Sams of the world -- is with this paragraph:

So if these reports stand up over time, and if the evidence ultimately shows that whoever was controlling the plane reacted in exactly the wrong way, it will be the rare case of a professional air crew, out of panic or for whatever reason, forgetting an elementary procedure that they certainly knew. After the USAir water-landing in the Hudson, many people observed that the casualty-free outcome was both an individual and a collective achievement. Individually, the air crew (pilot, copilot, attendants) reacted with supreme competence. Collectively, everyone involved did exactly what they had been trained to do. If what the WSJ says turns out to be what really happened, the Colgan-Buffalo crash will be a startling case of individual failure, which in turn will raise questions of how a professional air crew could have reacted this way.

How? Because with only 5 seconds to get it right, every neuron in your brain is telling you not to push a plane closer to the very thing you're trying to avoid.

The truth (probably) is: By the time it got to that point, the result was almost inevitable. The real question -- and I suspect the real focus of the investigation -- is how it got to that point.

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Retirement is not an option

Posted at 3:50 PM on February 19, 2009 by Bob Collins (7 Comments)
Filed under: Economy

If you're over the age of 50, you can probably relate to my colleague, who took a look at the closing Dow average today and proclaimed,"someone wants me to die here at my desk."

To paraphrase: "Retirement is not an option."

The Dow closed at its lowest level in the last six years.

What's our next benchmark? If the Dow drops another 180 points, it'll be at the lowest level since October 28, 1997, the day the "Asian flu" halted trading on the New York Stock Exchange for the first time... ever.

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