Wonderful and Special, You Are...

Tarot Cards...

So last night I got my Miss Cleo on with Nay and Brian. I gave them each tarot readings, which were pretty accurate, then gave myself one. All i can say is WHOA, shit was on point like hell. It was scary how it was exactly what I was feeling and why I don't have a relationship and such. But according to the cards I have a positive outcome in the end so all hope is not lost. On another note I will be a college graduate in about 4 more months...SCARY!

Random poetical shit...

My heart is very…fuckin…angry
It beats weaker every day
It beats stronger every day
Its schizophrenic
Every
Day
And its your goddamn fault
Why do you have to be so…perfect
The possessor of all that sits on that secret checklist
You know the one we all make where we put down
Those key ingredients that make the perfect man
“Has good teeth…”
“Has a big dick…”
“Has good credit…”
“Can hold a conversation…”
“Has good hygiene…”
“Looks good clothed…”
“Looks good unclothed…”
“Did I mention, has a big dick?”
Mmm…you definitely got that…
But its more than the marked boxes that make me unable to look away
Its that probing intelligence that makes me want to mind fuck you
Each and every time you speak…
Those eyes that hold such mystery and suspense
That I could curl up on a couch and watch them like late nite cinema
And that aura of confidence
And cockyness, and innocence
That I just want to pick up with my tongue
And hold in my mouth
As it caresses my tongue and slides down my throat
So I can carry a part of you
Everywhere

So don’t be surprised when you read this
Or take it as anything more than an exercise in expression
There are some things better left unsaid
And some truths that should never leave ones head
Because I don’t love you
I hate you
And I love you because I hate you
And hate you because I love you
And I want…you
You.
Please?
You.

I love niggers, but...

Sometimes they have GOT to go.

Interesting...

Stop the busing?
WHERE BLACK STUDENTS ARE BUSED

BY ICESS FERNANDEZ
The Wichita Eagle

If busing ended, black neighborhoods would need another school.

To add more than one school, the district would need a bond issue.

Experts say that without busing, Wichita schools would likely be segregated.

If the Wichita school district follows community sentiment and ends busing for integration, administrators say, the district will have to build at least one new school. In community meetings this fall, and in a survey whose final results will be released Monday, residents told district officials that they want integrated schools but also want mandatory busing to end. Most who responded support building or renovating schools so more kids can go to school close to home.

But first, taxpayers and district officials must wrestle with some tough questions:

• How many new schools? The district buses nearly 1,800 black students each day from an area stretching northeast from Kellogg near Washington. The district says it would have to build or renovate schools in that area to accommodate the students. "If busing stopped tomorrow, we don't have enough school buildings for kids," said Martin Libhart, chief operations officer for the district. "We would need a phase-in plan for a new building or phase in old buildings."

• How to pay? Administrators say the district's capital fund could pay for one new school at about $6 million. Anything more would require a bond issue, as the 2000 bond work is ending. Voters will continue to pay for that $285 million bond issue until 2019.

• Would new schools be integrated? If so, how? Experts at the Harvard University Civil Rights Project, which has studied school desegregation plans nationwide, say that ending busing always means a return to segregation. School board president Connie Dietz said the board is determined to prevent that.

The next step

After releasing survey results Monday, the district will begin another survey -- this time of parents whose children are bused for integration.

"The vocal folks are the ones without kids," Superintendent Winston Brooks said. "We've not heard a lot from parents."

The first survey was mailed to 25,000 district residents; 5,306 were returned.

The community meetings drew about 600 people and covered whether the district should keep busing, bus differently or stop busing. At the Oct. 25 meeting, Brooks told the crowd that if busing ended, the district would probably have to build new schools in the area from which black students are bused.

Brooks said last week that any changes the district made probably wouldn't come until the 2007-08 school year -- the soonest that a new school could be built.

Black students from northeast of downtown -- the "assigned attendance" area -- are bused for grades K-12 to schools outside the area. Another 480 white students, chosen by lottery, are bused for one year to either Mueller or Adams elementary schools.

The busing takes place under an agreement reached in 1971 with the U.S. Department of Education's Office of Civil Rights, which would have to approve any changes.

"Whatever we do, I feel confident that with the board, every child will receive equal education," Dietz said. "We are not going backward in this district. There's no way."

But Brooks said that, because of the city's housing patterns, some level of segregation is inevitable with neighborhood schools.

"I do believe that if we discontinue busing we will have more segregation," he said. "We are certainly more diverse now than 20 or 30 years ago. But we are not completely integrated."

What it will look like

If black children who are bused for integration go to school in their own neighborhoods, district administrators say, the greatest pressure would come at elementary schools.

They believe most middle and high school students would choose to stay at their current schools, leaving about 1,000 elementary students to attend neighborhood schools.

"If we left the schools the way they are now, we wouldn't have enough seats to take students back," Dietz said. "To do that we would have to build a new school for 600 to 700 students."

Administrators estimate a new elementary would cost $6 million to $6.5 million, plus land. Jackson Elementary, which opened in August 2004, cost $7.3 million, and was built to hold 600 students. It has 466 this year.

But busing also costs the district. USD 259 expects to spend $1.1 million on busing for integration this school year.

Dietz said the district also could consider changing two magnet schools -- Buckner and L'Ouverture -- to some form of neighborhood magnet school.

"We could take away magnet status or make neighborhood magnets with neighborhood status," Dietz said. "That means neighborhood kids would get first dibs."

The district would not distribute the returning students among existing schools, Libhart said, because those schools would become overcrowded.

"One of the things we don't want to do if we bring back kids is to bring them back to a worse situation," he said. "Physically we can make it work, but the end result is that you'd bring kids back to a situation that would hamper student achievement."

Dietz said that the options have not been fully investigated and that the board has not discussed them. Any decisions also would depend on conversations with the Office of Civil Rights, she said.

Officials with the Department of Education declined to comment except to say they were working with the district.

"Until we know what OCR lets us do, there are too many questions we can't answer," Dietz said.

Parents' opinions

White and black parents questioned by The Eagle were divided about what the district should do.

Karen Simpson's oldest child was chosen by lottery to be bused to Mueller in 2003-04. All three of her children attended the school's summer program in 2004, and they liked it so much that she signed all of them up to be bused there.

She likes the busing plan because, as a single parent, she doesn't have to drive them to and from school.

"People are concerned with sending white kids to the black neighborhood," she said. "But they have to remember that they're going to school, not running around in the neighborhood."

Rebecca Spears and her two children moved from Iowa last summer. Her daughter was chosen in this year's lottery to attend Adams. This is the family's first experience with busing.

"Honestly, it's a big inconvenience," Spears said. "I drive them instead of sending them on the bus because it takes them an hour to get to school. There's a school not even 2 miles up the street from the house."

Kevin Myles, president of the Wichita chapter of the NAACP, said he believes busing is a means to an end, and, at this point, the only solution to segregation. His daughter attends Brooks Magnet Middle School, and his son attends Beech Elementary. They are not bused for integration.

"Busing may not be a perfect solution, but it's got to be better than surrendering to the way it used to be," he said.

Karmeleta Burnett was bused for all her school years, as is her son.

"I don't think that busing should depend on the color of anybody's skin," she said. "If that's what they're going off of, then it needs to end.... I have a 6-year-old son. He can't go to Buckner because he's black, but the white kids in our neighborhood can go to Buckner. Does that make any sense? It's based on the color of their skin."

Return to segregation?

Gary Orfield, co-founder of the Harvard University Civil Rights Project, said that returning to a neighborhood school model means returning to segregation.

"Desegregation is difficult and imperfect, but segregation is worse," Orfield said. "Schools are turning back to 'separate but equal,' which is really unequal. It's never equal."

He said that districts that have stopped busing but tried to desegregate schools have always failed.

"I think people are sleepwalking into those things," he said. "I've never seen a district become fully integrated after they've abandoned their desegregation plan."

Orfield said busing guarantees educational equality not only for blacks but also for all minorities. A return to neighborhood schools, he said, doesn't.

"The important thing for minorities is that this is the only leverage that they have," he said.

Joyce Haws, spokeswoman for the National Association of Neighborhood Schools, disagrees.

"We shouldn't be using schools to bring about social change," she said. "Schools should be used for education, not for social engineering."

The association has found lawyers for a dozen school districts that were trying to end court-ordered busing. The organization has also supported its members in school board elections.

For the districts the association has worked with, Haws said, returning to neighborhood schools was long and expensive.

"It will take a number of years to return," she said. "It will have to be phased in."

Contributing: Christina M. Woods of The Eagle

Reach Icess Fernandez at (316) 268-6544 orifernandez@wichitaeagle.com.

NOW YOU KNOW

About 1,800 black students are bused to the following schools to balance the racial makeup of their student bodies:

• Elementary schools: Anderson, Beech, Black, Bryant, Cessna, Chisholm Trail, Clark, Cloud, College Hill, Dodge, Enterprise, Franklin, Gammon, Gardiner, Griffith, Harry Street, Hyde, Kelly, Kensler, Lawrence, Lincoln, Linwood, McCollom, McLean, Minneha, OK, Payne, Peterson, Pleasant Valley, Price-Harris, Riverside, Seltzer, Stanley, White, Woodland, Woodman

• Middle schools: Coleman, Curtis, Hadley, Hamilton, Marshall, Mead, Pleasant Valley, Robinson, Stucky, Truesdell, Wilbur

• High schools: East, Heights, North, Northwest, South, Southeast, West

Source: Wichita school district

NOW YOU KNOW

BLACK STUDENTS IN ASSIGNED ATTENDANCE AREA

Of the 3,604 black students in the area from which busing for integration is mandatory:

• 1,552 are in elementary school; 831 are in middle school; 1,221 are in high school.

• 732 attend neighborhood schools.

• 1,797 are bused to schools in other neighborhoods.

• 1,075 attend schools for special programs such as magnet schools, special education and special transfers.

Source: Wichita school district

NOW YOU KNOW

COMMUNITY SURVEY PRELIMINARY RESULTS

Preliminary results from the survey were released in October. The final results will be released Monday. Among the findings:

• 78.4 percent of those surveyed support building new schools or renovating existing schools to eliminate busing and return to neighborhood schools.

• 16.9 percent think mandated busing still is necessary.

• 87.7 percent think children would perform better in a neighborhood school.

Source: Wichita school district

What the community has said

"It is a flawed system. I make no bones about the fact. I think that it's appropriate that we discuss ways to improve the system. But I just don't accept the fact because there are flaws, return to 1954 and see if that works better."

-- Kevin Myles, Wichita NAACP president, father of Brooks middle school and Beech Elementary students

"My daughter said her and her best friend wouldn't have their friendship if it weren't for busing. I know busing wasn't created for the sole purpose of integration, but it did have a positive outcome. It's given African-Americans the courage to go out of their neighborhoods and make new connections.

-- Inga Taylor, mother of bused Heights High School student

"If I want to send him (my son) across town, then I should be able to because I'm a taxpayer. If I want my son to jump, skip and roll through the mud across the street to his school, then he should be able to."

-- Karmeleta Burnett, mother of bused L'Ouverture elementary student

"I feel it definitely should be the parents' choice, not the school district. They shouldn't just have the demanding say so."

-- Jimmy Anderson, father of bused Northwest High School student

"We are all American citizens. It's not fair that one group is bused and not others. Why are we just doing the AAA area and Caucasian Americans?"

-- Karen Simpson, mother of bused Mueller Elementary students

"We love the school (Adams), we love the teachers, we love the staff, but someone decided because she's white she has to be bused? We moved into the neighborhood to go to this school, we should be able to go to that school."

-- Rebecca Spears, mother of bused Adams students

A test

Vince Young

That is a baddddddddd muthafucka right there. Recognize game.

Thought of the day...

"There have been 2,378 coalition deaths, 2,179 Americans, one Australian, 98 Britons, 13 Bulgarians, two Danes, two Dutch, two Estonians, one Hungarian, 26 Italians, one Kazakh, one Latvian, 17 Poles, one Salvadoran, three Slovaks, 11 Spaniards, two Thai and 18 Ukrainians in the war in Iraq as of January 3, 2006, according to a CNN count. At least 16,155 U.S. troops have been wounded in action, according to the Pentagon"

So let me get this straight. Almost as many people have died in the "War on Terrorism" as the actual act of terrorism that started the whole shit? Crackas, niggas, scratchbacks, chinks, slufs, bukbuks, kikes, and everyone else, GET YOUR HEAD OUT OF YOUR FUCKING ASS AND WAKE THE HELL UP!!!! Something is wrong with this statistic, and something is wrong with you if you ignore it. *Steps off the soapbox*