Matthew.Ricchiazzi

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• Commented on Part of Buffalo Billion to Assist with Parkway Removal in Falls
  Let's use some of that billion to remove the rest of the robert moses parkway, the 190, the 198, the skyway, and route 5....
• Commented on Preservation Award Winner: Kathleen Mecca
  Congrats Kathy! Very much deserved award! Thank you so much for your tireless efforts. We all owe you an enormous debt of gratitude....
• Commented on WNY Environmental Alliance tells NYDOT to take a hike.
  We shouldn't be talking about a "downgrade" in the first place. The 198 should be entirely REMOVED from the Kensington to the 190. A highway is entirely unnecessary on that 2 mile strech of park. Cars can just as easily...
• Commented on Join the cast and crew of the feature film The Romans
  Don't get me wrong. I don't want to say anything disparaging about the Mafia. If there was ever the need for such an organization to rough up politicians who have lost their way or to protect neighborhoods from hoodlums, it...
• Commented on Join the cast and crew of the feature film The Romans
  Does anyone find the title oozing with anti-Italian prejudice? With the title "The Romans", and making the express link to Juilius Ceasar, the writer and/or producer seems to be suggesting that organized crime (and/or political corruption)has been an Italian cultural...
• Commented on Book Review: Government Schools are Bad for Your Kids
  I've always wondered why the parents of charter school kids aren't irrate. Charter kids are being discriminated against: why are charter kids worth less than district kids ($14k vs $26k p/student operating costs)? I would think that Charter parents...
• Commented on Book Review: Government Schools are Bad for Your Kids
  That's not true. In Ireland, they have state-financed parish schools. In Hong Kong, even for profit schools can participate in their voucher program. The Swedish system of friskolor ("free schools") was instituted in 1992. These are publicly funded by school...
• Commented on Book Review: Government Schools are Bad for Your Kids
  Vouchers make private, parochial, charter, or other education as accessible as possible for everyone. There are even voucher systems that prohibit some schools from charging in excess of the voucher value, or even prohibiting schools from selecting students based on...
• Commented on Book Review: Government Schools are Bad for Your Kids
  Relative to BPS, I think that Catholic Schools are a very attractive option for many families living in the city. In the context of a universal voucher program, they would be able to compete quite well. Only liberals would look...
• Commented on Book Review: Government Schools are Bad for Your Kids
  I'm not the one throwing around the word "conservative". It's being hurled at me as a slur. I'm not at all a radical. I view myself as a moderate, both in terms of policy perspective and temperment....
• Commented on Book Review: Government Schools are Bad for Your Kids
  I need to correct my own typo above: "...distributed via a voucher system so that parents are NOT discriminated against for choosing to educate thier children independent of the state, and in effect having to pay twice..."...
• Commented on Book Review: Government Schools are Bad for Your Kids
  The rural issue is certainly relevent. A great competitive strength of cities will be the education options that they offer. With higher urban densities, we can provide lots of specialized options for students. Suburban, and especially rural, schools will be...
• Commented on Book Review: Government Schools are Bad for Your Kids
  No, that is ridiculous. Catholic schools are declining in enrollment because poor and working class parents can't afford to pay twice: once for the schools that they don't use, and again for tuition. You can grasp that, right?...
• Commented on Book Review: Government Schools are Bad for Your Kids
  I'm not sure what points your making in your first few paragraphs. I'm not suggesting that people shouldn't be paying school taxes to fund public education. I'm saying that those revenues should then be distributed via a voucher system so...
• Commented on Book Review: Government Schools are Bad for Your Kids
  These are all very good points, and certainly markets need to be well regualted with strong consumer protections when necessary (like banning tuition contracts with lock in periods, for instance). Regulating a voucher consortium of independently managed and governed schools...
• Commented on Book Review: Government Schools are Bad for Your Kids
  You're absolutely right. But parents and students can respond quickly by transfering to another school. Big mistakes are fixed quickly: the school closes. But out of that creative distruction will emerge the best methods, innovative techniques, and cutting edge technologies...
• Commented on Book Review: Government Schools are Bad for Your Kids
  I see it differently. I see the root of the problem being a management problem, which has created an unresponsive. I'm advocating a solution for many problems: - Excessively top heavy - Excessively hierarchicial - Excessively centralized decsion making -...
• Commented on Book Review: Government Schools are Bad for Your Kids
  Of course this is a civil rights issue. Let's ask the poor -- offen times minority -- parents of students who are stuck in failing schools. Do they think the quality of thier kids' education is a civil rights issue?...
• Commented on Book Review: Government Schools are Bad for Your Kids
  A universal voucher consortium of independently managed and governed schools, the restructuring for which I advocate, doesn't reduce the quality of public services. Allowing students to opt into private, parochial, charter, or public schools that actively compete for students...
• Commented on Book Review: Government Schools are Bad for Your Kids
  Your assessment couldn't be more wrong. Liberating poor kids from failing public schools is the civil rights issue of our time. Giving students and families more choices and liberating them from a one-sized-fits-all government controlled monopoly doesn't hurt anyone --...
• Commented on Book Review: Government Schools are Bad for Your Kids
  Your first point -- The real value of charters is the decentralized management. The dysfunction in the current system is that principals are powerless liasons to a central office buraucrat in a system that is too hierachical and too top-heavy,...
• Commented on Book Review: Government Schools are Bad for Your Kids
  No, because those union constraints ask of us too much. It's not union busting when you're professionalizing teaching. I want teachers to be paid MORE. I want teachers to be more RESPECTED, with more RESPONSIBILITIES, and EMPOWERED to INNOVATE. I...
• Commented on Book Review: Government Schools are Bad for Your Kids
  The state has undermined Catholic's ability to educate their own children by compelling families to pay twice: once for the public education that they don't use, and again for tuition. That very obviously undermines Catholic schools. Evidence: Pierce v. Society...
• Commented on Book Review: Government Schools are Bad for Your Kids
  There is a causal relationship between the state having undermined Catholic schools (which for generations educated poor ethnic minorities with a deeply values-laden education), and the endemic rise of juvinile deliquency today. By design, the unions want to undermine the...
• Commented on Book Review: Government Schools are Bad for Your Kids
  The debate isn't about whether or not we should have a universally educated populace that is accessible to everyone -- of course, that is a deeply American value. The debate is about how we craft a service delivery system that...
• Commented on Book Review: Government Schools are Bad for Your Kids
  I don't know what planet anyone is living on if you think that suburban schools are performing well. As a nation we are underperforming. Our rich kids are underperforming rich kids elsewhere, as are our poor and middle class kids...
• Commented on Streetscape Projects Receive BBRP Funding
  Byron is such a puppet of Rudnick. He doesn't have the self confidence to have an opinion of his own, that he needs Rudnick there lending him legitimacy to make sure he's thinking the right thing. We are a city...
• Commented on Dissolve the district school system... and reimagine what public education looks like in Buffalo
  In a market consortium of independently managed and governed schools, schools would specialize based on student needs. Rather than presuming that one size fits all, we need to recognize performance differentials and allow schools to customize themselves based on the...
• Commented on Dissolve the district school system... and reimagine what public education looks like in Buffalo
  It's not just shifting people around, because we would be fundamentally changing the system in almost every respect. Making schools independent and empowering principals like chief executives would be a rather profound and meaningful change, just as empowering students as...
• Commented on Dissolve the district school system... and reimagine what public education looks like in Buffalo
  In the context of a voucher consortium of independently managed and governed schools, schools would specailize to the niche needs of subsegments of the student population. For students who are in need of strict disipline or correcting anti-socail behavior, they...