If you were on the board of a successful corporation, what would you do if asked to pass an edict that would, with certainty, reduce your operational revenue by 5 percent ... by 10 percent ... by an unknown but certain percentage? Well, I know what I would do, and that's vote "no."
A simple choice, really.
And that's what the Blytheville School Board did Monday night (after putting it off as long as they could). They said "no" to school choice for the upcoming school year.
The only problem with this position is that the school system is the only thing in town that stands to benefit from it, and that's why community organizations such as the Chamber of Commerce and Blytheville Unlimited got off their normally conservative behinds and wrote letters to the editor coming out in favor of school choice.
I think the State Legislature will push school choice down the throats of reluctant school systems statewide next year or the year after, and if that happens, Blytheville Public Schools and others in the same position will just have to adapt.
Personally, I don't think it will be that great a hardship.
A few people may move to town encouraged by the option of putting their kids in other nearby school systems, maybe hundreds of people. But most of these people would never have moved to Blytheville in the first place without the school choice option, so the school system won't lose anything there.
A few current students will no doubt opt out for various reasons -- and that's where the lost revenue comes in -- but maybe some of those moving to town will put their kids in Blytheville schools after all, once they see that it really is a decent place to go to school.
I guess we'll just have to see how it all goes down.
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The guy in Denver named McGovern who ramrods the NCAA pickem' contest we run in the paper called "Bracket Bucks" called the office yesterday, mainly to remind me to send him a check for our entry in this year's contest (we've been doing it for 10 years or so now).
I had to tell him I hadn't turned in a check request ... that I was expecting a bill. He reminded me that he doesn't send bills, just calls the folks who don't pay him. So as all good dun-ees would do, I told him, "The check's in the mail."
Anyway, he had one other interesting tidbit to pass along.
Of all the thousands of contest entries from this nationwide contest that runs in hundreds of newspapers, there are exactly two entries with the correct Final Four teams picked.
Two.
And one of them is from Blytheville.
He wouldn't tell me the name, so he might have been just trying to butter me up to get me to send him a check, but with the Final Four teams including the odd combination of a No. 8, No. 7, No. 2 and No. 1 seed, it's easy to see why so few got the Final Four correct.
He said both those entries had missed too many other picks to be eligible for the $25,000 grand prize, but that whoever of the two comes out the best on this weekend and Monday's games would win $2,500.
Better than nothing.
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Watching the Cardinals' game yesterday was a bit difficult, what with a four-hour rain delay eating up all my VCR time. I got home in time to tape the following four hours of Fox Sports Midwest programming so I did get it all taped, I just had to watch two different 30-minute shows and two different hour-long shows to watch the game.
It finally got over with during the first few minutes of the Blues hockey game tape that started at 7 p.m.
All that piddling around aside, the game was a welcome change from the first two games this year which were both 1-0 pitching duels ... not the most riveting TV. This game ended with the Cardinals up 7-6, and there were four or five home runs and some interesting plays on top of that, particularly a fly ball hit by Matt Holliday off the top of the wall that may or may not have been tipped by the center fielder and then was deflected off the wall and caught by the Cincy right fielder. After replay and messing around, the bases were loaded and Holiday had an off-the-top-of-the-wall single.
Weird play.
dtennyson@blythevillecourier.com