Our priorities are not Obama's priorities

Unfortunately, all 4 of Obama's 2nd Inaugural priorities of (climate change, immigration reform, gun control & gay marriage) do not touch on the 2 top priorities for everyday working people and their children.  Obama seems to ignore the 2 priorities of 1) "lessening the crippling $16 Trillion debt that we are leaving our children and grandchildren"  2)  improving the economy and job opportunities.

Cuomo Silent on Repeal of Triborough

In his State of the State speech, Andrew Cuomo failed to mention the most important NY State government reform available to help failing school budgets and town, county and city budgets.  REPEAL OF THE TRIBOROUGH AMENDMENT.  If we repeal the Triborough Amendment,  teacher and municipal unions would no longer be able to collect automatic step raises after their contracts expire.  In other words, these unions would be more likely to negotiate new contracts quicker if they know that step raises and other clauses of their old contracts were no longer in effect.
This repeal of the Triborough Amendment would save NY State tax payers millions of dollars.  Some of these dollars could be used to keep schools open and children better educated.  No other state in the USA has anything like the Triborough Amendment.  This amendment contributes to the fact that NY State is last or close to last in Economic Growth.

I wonder why Governor Cuomo avoids this reform which a majority of New Yorkers support?  The answer - Cuomo is in the tank for teacher and municipal unions.  Also, it is now very obvious that the NY State press and media are in the tank for Cuomo, because our journalists hardly mention or editorialize about Cuomo's avoidance of the Repeal of the Triborough Amendment.

NY School Commission is Clueless

The commission's proposal is a joke, right?  They are proposing more failure for our public schools.  Do you know that only 3 states require Masters Degrees of their public school teachers (NY, Mass., and Ohio)?  The other 47 states equal or out-perform these states.  Advanced degrees hurt the teaching profession.  We don't need scholars to teacher our children.  We need down-to-earth passionate people who love to communicate with children.  Scholars often are not good at communicating with children.  Scholars often want more money for academic competence, whereas bachelor level teachers are more likely to love the art and results of teaching at a down-to-earth level.  As far as year-round school, this proposal is dead on arrival due to lack of funding.  Ask former governor Mario Cuomo.  The liberal public school elites have definitely run out of solutions for our failing public schools.   Let's try more charter schools and parent school choice via vouchers to allow parents to spend the vouchers to send their children to any public, private or parochial school that they deem best for their children.