Monthly Archives: January 2012

you get what you pay for, I suppose

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Big news seems to be that West Chester Area School District is maintaining it’s bond rating.  They get what they pay for I suppse, but the reviews I hear on this school district don’t qualify as raves.

Start with how much bullying is tolerated in the elementary and middle schools, how they don’t really want gifted student programs, and many other issues.  What happened to the language programs in at least the elementary schools? What’s up with in essence, science in a box?  I saw first hand via a friend, what qualified as “homework” in basics like social studies.

All I see out of West Chester Area School District is a dumbing down of students.   I remember last spring something coming out about rankings – I don’t remember West Chester being so hot  when it came to stacking up side by side against other school districts.  According to the Philadelphia Business Journal the top ten included Tredyffrin-Easttown, Radnor, Lower Merion, Unionville-Chadds Ford, Central Bucks and others.  But not West Chester. West Chester according to the statistics was 41 in this ranking of PSSA scores.

Where do charter schools and private and catholic schools fit into this equation? Because it seems to me a lot of folks in Chester County have their kds in those kinds of schools to escape the public school system.

Whatever, I don’t pretend to be an expert or even an afficianado of public schools, but I don’t understand how a district I hear serious complaints about is rated so high? But then again, I don’t pretend to understand school districts or school boards – truthfully most of the time to me all I hear out of them is noise – kind of like what Peppermint Patty and the rest of the Pesnuts gang hear when the teacher is talking – that wahhh-wahhh-wahhh-blahhh-blahh-blahh noise.

Maybe West Chester Area School District is all that and a bag of chips.  I don’t know. There is always a first time.

barns, barns, barns

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I am obsessed with barns.  I looove barns. I love to photograph barns.  In fact, I have photographed so many barns in Chester County, that I might be able to share one barn a day for quite a while.

Today’s barn is the “This is Woman’s Lib” barn.   Malvern Patch actually has a story on it today.  It is the barn on the banner of this blog for the time being as it just tickles my fancy more than some of the ohters.

I have heard a couple of stories on the barn.    Was it a social statement of the day? Was it nothing more than tongue in cheek? How did it get there?  It’s been picked up on other blogs over the years, including this past September 2011.

I don’t know what tomorrow’s blog barn will be…but I will pick one….

the road too traveled…route 352

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Route 352, A/K/A North Chester Road  is too damn busy.  Last night, there was another fatal accident. 

This road winds and meanders through multiple municipalities and I am told the police do try, but still the crashes keep on coming.  Probably because people think it’s a country road you can fly down, but it is very deceptive.  It has many twists and turns, and dips.  And oh yes, there are the deer, and the people who pop out of side streets near Immaculata without looking.

But can anything more be done?  Maybe now it’s time to look at the road again? People just fly up and down it no matter what time of day or night.

I have seen some of the accidents in the last year.

I have seen a car jammed up an embankment that threaded trees on Hershey’s Mill’s property.

I have driven the speed limit on this road with giant SUVs jammed up my ass because the speed limit isn’t fast enough.

For a problematic road, it just doesn’t seem to me that enough attention is paid to it.

How many people have to die on it ?

Update: Willistown woman killed in East Goshen Crash (VIDEO)

Published: Monday, January 09, 2012   Woman, Cats Killed After Car Slams Into Home

The accident happened Sunday night in Chester County. And it’s not just me thinkng about how fast people go on roads in Chester County.  Just read this column by a woman named Regina Fried in Malvern Patch. It orginally appeared on her own stand alone blog, January 2nd.

follow that chickenman and more fun in west vincent

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Chester County is a cesspool of convoluted politics, depending upon which municipality you are in.   I am told that one that people really want to have changes in before it’s too late is West Vincent.

West Vincent was the scene of a recent attempt of eminent domain for private gain at Ludwig’s Corner.  West Vincent tried to seize the horse show grounds.

One West Vincent Supervisor, Clare Quinn, lost her job over it. Of course, given it was a non-profit (French & Pickering Creeks Conservation Trust) at year-end, are we super shocked they did that?

Now Clare is proving to be an interesting study.  She apparently wigs out at residents at meetings and did she really call one a bitch???  She waxed poetic in a slightly fluffy article December 14th on how conservation was her heart or some such horse manure. I still don’t get how she actually thought she could be a conservationist by day and land grabber by night?

Of course what made me almost drop my teeth in this soap opera in the country, was when West Vincent voted to give Clare Quinn full health benefits.  She costs the taxpayers money by a failed attempt at eminent domain for private gain, and now she will cost them some more so they can pay for her healthcare?  REALLY? Was she not offered COBRA by her former employer?  It takes balls to ask the taxpayers you tried to screw for full health benefits.  Sheesh, maybe we should all get jobs in West Vincent, yes?

Even the stench of cheese in the breeze is damn amusing.  Oh that is a reference to eminent domain loving supervisor Ken Miller. I used to buy his cheese from Birchrun Hills Farm…no more.  I won’t put money in the pocket of a man who sanctions eminent domain for private gain and actually has the balls to call himself a Republican. Now he is still giving off a waft of funky monkey given what the chickenman wrote about on December 21st.

If you are interested in the shenanigans of West Vincent (and truly this blip on the map could seriously give reporters months of joy and headlines without getting boring), then you need to sign up for CHICKENMAN.  Chickenman rocks.  Chickenman is like the Delco Tom Paine of Chester County.

Now I have also been following two YouTube channels truthforwestvincent  and aswestvincentturns.

daily salvo: supervising the supervisors (about west vincent’s eminent domain attempt)

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as the west vincent turns continues….

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Apparently attempted eminent domain is not the only issue in West Vincent…..who knew Chester County was such a cesspool where local politicians are concerned?

greetings and salutations….

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It’s time for a new blog…about Chester County, PA.

As seen through my eyes.

Fasten your seatbelts, because occasionally it may be a bumpy ride.