Don't Be a Deadbeat. This is Your Blog, Too.

Victor Romano approached me at Food and Tunes to talk about the school.  He says we need one.  Why I have to make Victor's argument is beyond me.  He's more than capable of making it himself.  He makes a great argument, which I now have to summarize because Victor is too lazy or shy to insert it as a Comment at the end of the "School Daze" post.  Or, he could have asked me for a guest post, and he could have spelled this out in a regular column just like this one.  Victor, if I didn't like you so much, I wouldn't waste my time doing your work for you.

So here's Victor's argument:  We have lots of families that have children.  Those children have to go to school somewhere, and the breadwinners of the households do not necessarily want, and cannot necessarily afford, to send their kids to private school, like Country Day or Cushman.  The natural school for most BP kids is Miami Shores Elementary, followed, I guess, by some middle school, then North Miami Senior High.  But Victor says Miami Shores Elementary is no longer an "A" school.  It's dropped down to a "B."  I don't know who decides, or on what the rating depends, but this is what Victor says.  Gratigny, the natural destination for some BP kids, is reportedly a "D" school, and Bryan has reportedly risen to a "C."  But Victor says he and parents like him and Kelli want an "A" school.  And they want it to be a public school.

Victor says he and his similarly situated friends are very unhappy about the lack of a public "A" school, and if they couldn't find one to which to send their cherubs, they might have to move.  I asked Victor where he would think of going, and he cited Miami Lakes as an area that fills the bill.  In fact, he says, the reason we have so many empty houses may well be that we don't have a good enough school.  But Victor, I weakly plead, if you haven't heard, it's been kind of a bad economy for everyone, and there are empty houses in lots and lots of places.  Let me tell you something, Fred, says Victor, with a "checkmate" smirk, the areas with great schools don't have this kind of vacancy rate.  Houses there are full, and property values remain higher than elsewhere.  Curse you, Victor, and the Red Baron, too.

My thought was we keep BP residential, and see what we can do to help Miami Shores regain their "A" rating, but Victor wants us to have our own school.  He wants us to class up our neighborhood, now and forever, with one of those nice Charter Schools.  So Victor, do you want a high end grocery store, too, so we'll have something better than Publix.  No, says Victor, just the Charter School.

This could be a cultural difference, or maybe a generational thing.  Victor is a Yuppie, and I'm an old goat, so Victor wants things like Charter Schools, and I just want to be left alone.  I'm probably old enough to be Victor's father.  I want the kind of cell phone that isn't burdened with a camera, and Victor probably just bought the iPhone V, or 5, or whatever fanfare they use.

So I don't know.  Victor makes a really compelling argument.  It's very persuasive.  I still wish MSV would just take better care of their school, so we can be who we are.  I think I'll continue to resist, but it's hard to argue with Victor.  Especially so, because I really like him and Kelli, they're great neighbors, and I don't want them to leave.  Can't we get a committee to approach MSV to offer to help them figure out how to regain the throne?  Our Commission, if it wasn't so busy fussing over dumb stuff, and trying to be what it shouldn't, should be doing that.

By the way, Victor, if you can get off your butt, step up to the plate, and meet your own responsibilities, I'll pull this post, and you can replace it with your own elaboration of your own argument.  You'll be my first guest.  I once offered a guest spot to Jacobs, but he's not the man you are. Come on, Victor.