I'm glad it's only poor kids who go to public school

[AENeuman]

List of San Francisco Unified proposed cuts to make up their $113 million deficit:

$11.5 million: A freeze on teacher and other employee pay increases tied to experience

$9 million: Unpaid district-wide furloughs

$8 million: K-3 class size increases

$7 million: Cuts to staff development days

$6.4 million: Cuts to unrestricted general fund expenditures

$4.3 million: Cuts to school programs for underserved students

$4 million: Cuts to STAR/Dream School funding for struggling schools

$2.6 million: Cuts to central office spending related to categorical programs

$1.4 million: Cuts to arts and music block grant

$1.2 million: Cuts to P.E. teacher incentive program

$1 million: Safety, violence prevention cuts


Hope the public schools kids are up to the challenge, It will take a Sotomayor-like effort to succeed. If not, good for me. My kids will have less competition getting into colleges and professional jobs. Works out for Target and the Army too. They will have a huge pool to choose from...

[DaddyTorgo]

damn

[wade moore]

This is happening all over. My wife didn't get a raise last year and likely won't this year either. I'm hearing rumblings on increased class sizes for the elementary schools, despite the fact that a new school opens next year.

etc, etc, etc.

Unfortunately, for city/county budgets the schools are a HUGE part of that budget - so when cuts are necessary, it's a pretty easy target.

[panerd]

Originally Posted by AENeuman

List of San Francisco Unified proposed cuts to make up their $113 million deficit:

$11.5 million: A freeze on teacher and other employee pay increases tied to experience

$9 million: Unpaid district-wide furloughs

$8 million: K-3 class size increases

$7 million: Cuts to staff development days

$6.4 million: Cuts to unrestricted general fund expenditures

$4.3 million: Cuts to school programs for underserved students

$4 million: Cuts to STAR/Dream School funding for struggling schools

$2.6 million: Cuts to central office spending related to categorical programs

$1.4 million: Cuts to arts and music block grant

$1.2 million: Cuts to P.E. teacher incentive program

$1 million: Safety, violence prevention cuts


Hope the public schools kids are up to the challenge, It will take a Sotomayor-like effort to succeed. If not, good for me. My kids will have less competition getting into colleges and professional jobs. Works out for Target and the Army too. They will have a huge pool to choose from...

I am a public school teacher and I am sorry to burst your bubble but... more $ <> more success. Don't get wrong I don't turn down pay increases but none of the things in that list will have any impact on whether kids are educated in San Francisco or not. (And most of the stuff like "staff development" and STAR teachers and central office "central planning" are pure junk programs IMO) Want to see the results of "throwing money at a problem"? Look at any urban public school system in this country. Money is NOT the solution.

[molson]

Since education is usually the last thing to be cut in a state budget crisis (it's not helpful politically), there's a lot of waste there.
Furloughs/freezing pay is going to save a lot of jobs though. The rest of state government has been doing that for years in most places.

[molson]

Originally Posted by panerd

I am a public school teacher and I am sorry to burst your bubble but... more $ <> more success. Don't get wrong I don't turn down pay increases but none of the things in that list will have any impact on whether kids are educated in San Francisco or not. (And most of the stuff like "staff development" and STAR teachers and central office "central planning" are pure junk programs IMO) Want to see the results of "throwing money at a problem"? Look at any urban public school system in this country. Money is NOT the solution.

Ya, my general education budget philosophy is pay teachers more and cut the hell out of most everything else. Teaching should be a more prestigious profession, with more competition for the positions, more elite academic requirements, and teachers should be subject to firing without cause (so idiot teachers can be easily fired).

[AENeuman]

I am a public school teacher who lives in San Francisco but teaches in San Jose. i taught in san fran for several years, it's just a mess. they went 13 years without a cost living increase! the high school classes i had were all over 42 students and there were never more than 38 chairs (not that there was room for 44 desks mind you)

I know there is a lot waste, and this city takes it to an art form. however, at some point the lack of funds, support, and training will have an effect on learning (not saying these cuts will cause it, but it's getting there). perhaps the worst thing is this takes away any motivation for a "good" teacher to stay with the district.

[gstelmack]

Originally Posted by molson

Ya, my general education budget philosophy is pay teachers more and cut the hell out of most everything else. Teaching should be a more prestigious profession, with more competition for the positions, more elite academic requirements, and teachers should be subject to firing without cause (so idiot teachers can be easily fired).

One of these days I'm going to find the quote from the Florida Secretary of Education back when Florida was one of the early states to lay off teachers (back in the 1980s) and she was asked why her budget wasn't cut at all: "Our department provides a critical service to education". And the teachers DON'T????????

They go after teachers and class sizes because the parents see that directly, whine to whoever controls the purse strings, and push for taxes or a bigger education budget, so they can continue to build new office buildings and hire new administrators. When a County level superintendent makes $200K+, often with contractually-obligated pay raises (which are conspicuously lacking for teachers and other employees), administration is making WAY too much money.

[SportsDino]

I'd gut school administration across the board, massive center of waste, and often all those fools trying to look like they have a purpose end up causing more messes to clean up in the education system. I have not seen a good idea come out of school administration in ages, and i've seen plenty of money wasting bad ones.

[JonInMiddleGA]

Originally Posted by SportsDino

I have not seen a good idea come out of school administration in ages, and i've seen plenty of money wasting bad ones.

I wouldn't disagree with this part at all.

That said, and YMMV obviously, but in the counties in Georgia I know best (at least three of them) I don't know of a single person above the level of secretary/receptionist who is in school administration who didn't come out of the classroom to get there.

[BishopMVP]

Originally Posted by gstelmack

They go after teachers and class sizes because the parents see that directly, whine to whoever controls the purse strings, and push for taxes or a bigger education budget, so they can continue to build new office buildings and hire new administrators. When a County level superintendent makes $200K+, often with contractually-obligated pay raises (which are conspicuously lacking for teachers and other employees), administration is making WAY too much money.

Yup. Up here we have Proposition 2.5, which doesn't allow a town real estate tax increase over 2.5% unless approved by voters in an override. So every year they cut some prominent part of the school budget and then put it up to the voters to re-approve funding for it in the override, and almost every year it passes.

Regardless, schools up here will be hit hard too. They were supposed to be hit hard last year, but part of the bailout included money earmarked for Massachusetts schools. People/gov't, being as shortsighted as they are spent all of that last year instead of extending it over a 2-3 year period and now the budget will be even lower than last year's projections, ensuring there will be teacher layoffs etc, even at the wealthier schools. (Kind of putting the lie to the thread title - yes urban schools are worse in almost every measure, but schools across the board are having to cut programs/increase class sizes. As for teacher pay, there is the cluster of rich town schools that always dominate the MCAS rankings all competing for 2nd in who pays the most (around 55-65k) but far and away #1, about 10k above that, is Boston itself.)

[DaddyTorgo]

Originally Posted by BishopMVP

there is the cluster of rich town schools that always dominate the MCAS rankings

WOOT!!! WELLESLEY FTW!!!!!

[CamEdwards]

Fairfax County Public Schools are taking a big budget hit as well this year. From what I can tell the biggest impacts for my family will be the loss of elementary school strings (which means we'll be paying for private music lessons for my son) and no more full-day kindergarten, which will be big considering the twins start school next year.

[Young Drachma]

Even if you're feeling altruistic and want to say, work at a public school, the insane process to do so, is a huge deterrent. I mean, goodness.

The fact that it's easier to get hired at a college than at a K-12 public school is nutty. And by easier I mean, there aren't intentional barriers put up to make it super difficult.

[BishopMVP]

Originally Posted by Dark Cloud

Even if you're feeling altruistic and want to say, work at a public school, the insane process to do so, is a huge deterrent. I mean, goodness.

The fact that it's easier to get hired at a college than at a K-12 public school is nutty. And by easier I mean, there aren't intentional barriers put up to make it super difficult.

Since I started coaching last spring I've filled out 6 different CORI forms (that I think basically prove I'm not a convicted sex offender) - luckily I haven't had to pay for those, but I know a girl who was trying to substitute teach at multiple schools and she had to pay $50 to get forms for every different one. It's things like that that are just unnecessary barriers having so many people in administration should solve, but the increased bureaucracy actually results in it being harder instead of easier to do things.

Originally Posted by DT

WOOT!!! WELLESLEY FTW!!!!!

Yup... and you could probably name the other 10-12 too. And as much as the teacher salaries help attract better candidates in the beginning, the success is mostly from parental involvement, something which will never be solved by throwing any amount of money at any specific school. Boston Latin is a fantastic school from Boston - because the parents cared enough to push their children towards it. In Freakonomics Levitt had his best study imo where he showed that while magnet schools have higher rates of graduation and college attendance they are actually no higher than the rates from applicants who were "left behind" in the "poorer" public schools. Gladwell expanded on this in Outliers (i think) where he showed that according to standardized tests students at poorer schools improved just as much, if not more, during the school year, they just lost it all over vacation while the kids from richer schools were improving during that time as well.

[Galaxy]

Originally Posted by BishopMVP

Boston Latin is a fantastic school from Boston - because the parents cared enough to push their children towards it.

Would I be a wrong to say this is one of the not talked about problems in schools, the lack of parental support or caring? You could throw all the money in the world at the schools, but would it really work without parental support?

[BishopMVP]

Originally Posted by Galaxy

Would I be a wrong to say this is one of the not talked about problems in schools, the lack of parental support or caring? You could throw all the money in the world at the schools, but would it really work without parental support?

Certainly seems that way to me. But it would require parents to admit they are (at least partially) at fault. And elected officials to tell them they are part of the problem. Take your pick on which of those is more likely to happen.

[gstelmack]

Originally Posted by Galaxy

Would I be a wrong to say this is one of the not talked about problems in schools, the lack of parental support or caring? You could throw all the money in the world at the schools, but would it really work without parental support?

Then you've got Wake County that until we got a new school board in wanted to bus kids all over the county, making it even harder for parents, ESPECIALLY the poor, to get/stay involved with their kids...

[MrDNA]

Originally Posted by Dark Cloud

Even if you're feeling altruistic and want to say, work at a public school, the insane process to do so, is a huge deterrent. I mean, goodness.

The fact that it's easier to get hired at a college than at a K-12 public school is nutty. And by easier I mean, there aren't intentional barriers put up to make it super difficult.

As someone currently going through this process, I thank you for your understanding. And people wonder why I punch them if they say "But teachers get the summer off!"

[ColtCrazy]

My wife graduated 2 1/2 years ago. Several principals have used her in maternity leave positions and she has subbed a lot, but there's no permanent openings for her. Likely won't be next year either. We are surviving on my one teacher salary with 4 kids (I have no idea how).

It's a sad situation around Indiana. The state originally cut school budgets 3 percent. Then, they expanded it to 4.5 percent. Apparently our district needs to cut 800k by next year. Fun considering we are in the state's third poorest county and all but one school is a title one school.

Education across the country is looking bleak. And we are already behind other countries for what we do.

[Coffee Warlord]

My girlfirend is almost certainly losing her 4th grade position. They are in the hole 16 million, and need to cut a good 200+ jobs.

And of course, a hearty fuck you to tenure. They are primarily cutting the 'extras', (music, art, etc). All the certified teachers in those positions who have tenure are automatically kicked back into real classrooms, shoving out anyone non-tenured, performance be damned.

[MrBug708]

LAUSD hasnt cut one Admin position in a few years now, but are cutting teaching jobs left and right

[gstelmack]

Originally Posted by Coffee Warlord

They are primarily cutting the 'extras', (music, art, etc).

This, aside from local assignment issues, is a huge reason we've done the belt-tightening necessary to get our kids into a private school. Our daughter takes big advantage of the art, music, and drama programs available even at her first-grade level.

[gstelmack]

March 2008: Wake Schools: Teachers Would Bear Brunt of Budget Cuts :: WRAL.com

September 2008: Wake schools approve 4 percent salary increase for superintendent - Education - NewsObserver.com

Similar stories abound. And for those who don't want to read the article, that raise took the superintendent to $312K / year.

[JeffNights]

Originally Posted by AENeuman

List of San Francisco Unified proposed cuts to make up their $113 million deficit:

Works out for the Army too. They will have a huge pool to choose from...

Before I rage I'd like to know what the fuck you are implying, I have a pretty good idea, but usually I like clarification before I call you that ignorant.

[judicial clerk]

I could be totally wrong, but it looks like the San Francisco city budget looks to be somewhere around 3.4 bil. I wonder where they aren't making cuts.

[lighthousekeeper]

Originally Posted by AENeuman

perhaps the worst thing is this takes away any motivation for a "good" teacher to stay with the district.

as long as there are lazy folks who want summers off, there won't be a lack of teachers.

[Abe Sargent]

Originally Posted by panerd

I am a public school teacher and I am sorry to burst your bubble but... more $ <> more success. Don't get wrong I don't turn down pay increases but none of the things in that list will have any impact on whether kids are educated in San Francisco or not. (And most of the stuff like "staff development" and STAR teachers and central office "central planning" are pure junk programs IMO) Want to see the results of "throwing money at a problem"? Look at any urban public school system in this country. Money is NOT the solution.

Don't look at Detroit, they don;t have money for anything, that's always the issue.

[Abe Sargent]

Originally Posted by SteveBollea

Um...the idea that the Army and the rest of the military recruits out of the working and lower-middle-class isn't big news. After all, there's a reason why I always saw military recruiters around the "ghetto" mall around here, but I never see them in the rich areas of town.

I went to a rich high school, I wasn;t one, I was poor but right on the border of the school district, by like one hundred feet, so I was in. There were recruiters there all of the time, and the ASVAB had hundreds of students taking it. I don;t think you can make that generalization based on my info.

[JonInMiddleGA]

Originally Posted by SteveBollea

Um...the idea that the Army and the rest of the military recruits out of the working and lower-middle-class isn't big news.

It also isn't anywhere near as true as the perception. Check out this study for example.

It finds that the middle class ("...areas with median household income levels between $35,000 and $79,999 were overrepresented, along with income categories between $85,000 and $94,999") is actually over represented in the armed forces while both ends of the economic spectrum are slightly under represented. By 2005, the bottom 20% of the economic scale accounted for only 13.7% of the recruits.

And the 98% high school graduation rate for recruits from 03-05 is significantly higher than the 74% graduation of the 18-24 population as a whole.

After all, there's a reason why I always saw military recruiters around the "ghetto" mall around here, but I never see them in the rich areas of town.

There's more than one reason, including the cheaper rent at the "ghetto" mall.
You could also consider that blacks (almost identically to whites incidentally) are under represented in military recruiting, making up less of the recruits than their percentage of the population. Meanwhile the recruit-to-population ratio for Hispanics is 1.09.

[Greyroofoo]

The military does love those pesky High School Diplomas or GEDs

[AENeuman]

Originally Posted by JeffNights

Before I rage I'd like to know what the fuck you are implying, I have a pretty good idea, but usually I like clarification before I call you that ignorant.

Rage on my friend...

Assuming these cuts cause fewer students to have the skills (or resources) to be successful/accepted in college, does it not make sense that they will then look for opportunities that do not require college skills?

IMO, the military is great in that they do accept people who might not be able to succeed/afford college right away.

[BishopMVP]

Originally Posted by AENeuman

Rage on my friend...

Assuming these cuts cause fewer students to have the skills (or resources) to be successful/accepted in college, does it not make sense that they will then look for opportunities that do not require college skills?

Mainly due to the economy, the military just accepted a record number of college graduates, (and met its recruiting goals for the first time since the draft was ended in 1973.) Plus I'm from a rich town and my friend is flying back to his FOB in the morning, with his brother set to join him in Afghanistan in a couple months, so that part also falls apart. If you actually want to look at it, it ends up being Southerners and people from rural areas that are overrepresented, at least in combat positions, but that wouldn't fit the accepted liberal hypothesis.

[Dutch]

Originally Posted by SteveBollea

Um...the idea that the Army and the rest of the military recruits out of the working and lower-middle-class isn't big news. After all, there's a reason why I always saw military recruiters around the "ghetto" mall around here, but I never see them in the rich areas of town.

A lot of people love to confuse "volunteering" for the military like "volunteering" for the Peace Corp or the county cookie bake. That's a big misconception that allows people to make negative perceptions such as the one above.

The "volunteerism" of the military is only so that we aren't all drafted. After that, it's now up to you whether you serve or not.

I don't see any business trying to recruit entry-level people who are already rich or have amazing jobs. That would be a waste of resources. Perhaps our public education could take some notes from the military which is still bloated and mismanaged (it's a socialized program afterall) but is leaps and bounds ahead of the public school system as far as getting more bang for the buck.

[JeffNights]

Originally Posted by AENeuman

Rage on my friend...

Assuming these cuts cause fewer students to have the skills (or resources) to be successful/accepted in college, does it not make sense that they will then look for opportunities that do not require college skills?

IMO, the military is great in that they do accept people who might not be able to succeed/afford college right away.

Succceed? I love ignorance.

Have you talked to anyone that went fresh into college? They can't even tie thier own shoelace anymore.

Today's army is a modern high-tech force where even the single infantryman has many different devices that need to all be balanced together in the modern battlefield. Thats just the grunts.

Take a MLRS operator for example, a 19 year old 3 months out of his A.I.T will receive an urgent request for support from a fire squad that had some bad news prop up in front of them, they will relay grid Coord's to him, and he must now reference that and plot his waypoints. He selects the battery he will use, adjust flight angles, and what type of detonation to use and then send them on thier way. This happens in about all of 30 seconds, why? Because people's lives are at stake, and this young man will SUCCEED.

So please by all means, continue thinking that our military is full of poor students who could not get into college and gee whiz if we had recruting depots in them rich towns we'd be set!(oh by the way, there's a large recruiting center right on the main drag in downtown birmingham, which one of the richest cities per capita in the nation)

Point is I'll take the young person who had taken personal accountability and done something other than self-serving over the scrambled eggs brain college kid who came from the rich part of town.(And yes, I do indeed have my bachelor's, so poo)

[AENeuman]

Originally Posted by JeffNights

Succceed? I love ignorance.

Have you talked to anyone that went fresh into college? They can't even tie thier own shoelace anymore.

Today's army is a modern high-tech force where even the single infantryman has many different devices that need to all be balanced together in the modern battlefield. Thats just the grunts.

Take a MLRS operator for example, a 19 year old 3 months out of his A.I.T will receive an urgent request for support from a fire squad that had some bad news prop up in front of them, they will relay grid Coord's to him, and he must now reference that and plot his waypoints. He selects the battery he will use, adjust flight angles, and what type of detonation to use and then send them on thier way. This happens in about all of 30 seconds, why? Because people's lives are at stake, and this young man will SUCCEED.

So please by all means, continue thinking that our military is full of poor students who could not get into college and gee whiz if we had recruting depots in them rich towns we'd be set!(oh by the way, there's a large recruiting center right on the main drag in downtown birmingham, which one of the richest cities per capita in the nation)

Point is I'll take the young person who had taken personal accountability and done something other than self-serving over the scrambled eggs brain college kid who came from the rich part of town.(And yes, I do indeed have my bachelor's, so poo)

Come on, really? A pissing match? Ok I'll bite. I'm not sure putting a "recruting" depot in a rich town would succeed. Nevermind the problems they may encounter with "thier" shoelaces

Seriously, what I think I did was give the impression that being in the Army is akin to working at Target. I did not mean that. I do however still believe that fewer college opportunities will result in a growth in non-college fields. I think the Army will benefit from having a growing pool of very qualified kids who cannot afford or did not have the resources to get into a college.

Obviously what I said came off as demeaning to what you do(?) have more experience with. I am sorry for that.

One of the things I love about FOF is people make gross generalizations about issues they have little knowledge of, only to get the wrath of those who do. In this case, I made a gross generalization of the Army, and, to be fair, you made a gross generalization of college freshmen. Which by the way, I teach and prepare and am quite proud of their success. The same way as I imagine you are of the grunts.

[flere-imsaho]

Originally Posted by JeffNights

Take a MLRS operator for example, a 19 year old 3 months out of his A.I.T will receive an urgent request for support from a fire squad that had some bad news prop up in front of them, they will relay grid Coord's to him, and he must now reference that and plot his waypoints. He selects the battery he will use, adjust flight angles, and what type of detonation to use and then send them on thier way. This happens in about all of 30 seconds, why? Because people's lives are at stake, and this young man will SUCCEED.

Actually, I think this is a potentially great example of the kind of person who can succeed in the army but would not yet be ready to succeed in college.

Going to college, he/she is going to be presented with a plethora of open-ended options, and to get the most out of those opportunities (the way I define "succeed") he/she is going to have to get themselves focused on what they both need and want, and figure out how to chart their own course to that end.

In the army, on the other hand, after making an initial selection, he/she is going to be trained for a specific duty that, while it may involve some complex thinking and decision-making, does so within considerably narrower parameters.

Now bear in mind that I think the #1 problem for college students is (and has been for quite a while now) that they don't quite know what they want out of their eduction and thus they're not willing to demand anything from their education, I'd say it's likely that many of them would do much better in another situation where a lot of this is either simply proscribed for them (i.e. the Armed Forces) or isn't relevant (most retail/service jobs).

Of course, I think kids should be going to college later, when they have at least an inkling of what they want and need out of their education for the career they want to pursue. If it wasn't for that pesky "possibility of dying" thing, the Armed Forces would be a great place for many kids out of high school because at least most would come out of the service with some sort of skill.

[molson]

Didn't want to start a new thread but this caught my eye. Central Falls (RI) high school decided their school sucked so they're firing everyone:

I used to work in the the city government of Central Falls. It's a pretty sad place. I'm not sure what to think of this approach though.

http://www.projo.com/ri/centralfalls...9.3c21342.html

[flere-imsaho]

I killed the thread with that post?!

molson - Chicago Public Schools has been using a similar technique recently. They even go to the point of shutting down the school entirely. On one hand it sounds like throwing out the baby with the bathwater, but on the other hand some of these schools have become so associated with failure that it seems unlikely they could overcome that image.

[PurdueBrad]

Originally Posted by molson

Didn't want to start a new thread but this caught my eye. Central Falls (RI) high school decided their school sucked so they're firing everyone:

I used to work in the the city government of Central Falls. It's a pretty sad place. I'm not sure what to think of this approach though.

http://www.projo.com/ri/centralfalls...9.3c21342.html

As a teacher, gotta love Arne Duncan's comment. What a &*$%ing douche.

My district just fired 90 teachers because the state, Obama and Duncan's home state I might add, can't come up with the $2.4 million they owe us so we're $4 million in the hole.

[JonInMiddleGA]

Random thought #1 -- a 7 member board for the smallest town in RI? WTF?
Lemme see here, what's that old adage, an elephant is a mouse designed by committee I believe it goes.

Random thought #2 -- The motto of Central Falls, RI (according to their city webapge)? "A City with A Bright Future"

[molson]

Originally Posted by JonInMiddleGA

Random thought #1 -- a 7 member board for the smallest town in RI? WTF?
[/i]

It's the smallest by size (a ridiculous 1 square mile) but it's very densley populated (about 20,000 people). I think it's surrounded on 3 sides by Providence. It's really just a bad neighborhood of Providence.

Even considering that though, yes, they have an oddly bloated, competitive, sometimes corrupt, and perhaps mobbed up, city government. (I'm not confirming the last part, I just heard things)

[JonInMiddleGA]

Originally Posted by molson

It's the smallest by size (a ridiculous 1 square mile) but it's very densley populated (about 20,000 people). I think it's surrounded on 3 sides by Providence. It's really just a bad neighborhood of Providence.

Ah, the article lacked that context for the "smallest" description. Obviously it isn't necessary for the audience it was written for but that distinction was lost on me in spite of catching their location in Providence County. I just interpreted it as a school system similar to some very small municipal ones that exist down here.

[flere-imsaho]

Originally Posted by PurdueBrad

My district just fired 90 teachers because the state, Obama and Duncan's home state I might add, can't come up with the $2.4 million they owe us so we're $4 million in the hole.

That sucks. I'm also in IL, but our district has the luxury of a pretty healthy tax base, and has also been run in a pretty fiscally responsible manner (not that yours hasn't). A similar topic came up at a recent board meeting (the lack of provision of X million dollars from the state) and there was general hilarity all around at the thought that the state might ever provide it.

Another example is that the state apparently has a fund for capital replacements to which you can apply. So in our district apparently one school has a couple of old boilers that are about to fail (end of life). After our application, the state told us to apply for funds when the boilers actually failed, even when we pointed out that replacement at that point (due to duress) will be more expensive.

So the board just moved money from another part of the budget and will cover it ourselves.

[Noop]

Education is not what it use to be any more. One idea a friend of mine had was to just teach the kids from home. They would set up something that allowed the kids to see the teacher and be taught virtually. If I remember correctly this method if adopted would save a lot of money. One draw back would be who would watch the kids when they're home.

[BishopMVP]

Originally Posted by molson

It's the smallest by size (a ridiculous 1 square mile) but it's very densley populated (about 20,000 people). I think it's surrounded on 3 sides by Providence. It's really just a bad neighborhood of Providence.

Even considering that though, yes, they have an oddly bloated, competitive, sometimes corrupt, and perhaps mobbed up, city government. (I'm not confirming the last part, I just heard things)

Eh, it's in Rhode Island, let alone surrounded on 3 sides by Providence? I'd say that confirms the last part. At the risk of offending anyone who has ever cared about Rhode Island, it's always struck me as one big, dirty, mobbed up city outside of Newport and maybe the northwest near Cumberland. I'll throw some of those MA border places like N. Attleboro, Brockton and Fall River under the bus too.