The Hollow Mayor: Updates on Julian Castro

A great new site has one stop shopping for Barack Obama's chosen Texas crony, San Antonio Mayor Julian Castro; among the "highlights":

• Castro's 15% increase in the homicide rate 

• Castro's city has 37% of schools failing. 

• Castro's roach infested public housing.

In addition, today's San Antonio Express-News details the roll-out of Castro's pre-K initiative:

In what the mayor recently described as a “Herculean effort,” 20 members of the city's staff have been on a learning curve to become educational experts while developing the program. They were trained on the job by educational consultants at taxpayers' expense, but it was City Manager Sheryl Sculley and her staff, not educators, who built Pre-K 4 SA. 

After a nationwide search costing $175,000, a CEO was recruited from Harlandale ISD at an annual salary of $176,000. The job requirements specified “a master's with a focus in early childhood education, preferably a doctoral degree, and a proven record of achieving excellence,” along with other experience and skills not present in the person selected. She has a master's in educational psychology and supervision, and served Harlandale as a principal for 23 years and as head of curriculum and instruction for nine years. 

Since Pre-K 4 SA's success will be measured by third-grade STARR scores in reading and math, we are interested in the academic performance of children educated under the leadership of the new CEO. The 2012 report of third-grade performance on the STARR in Harlandale shows that 33 percent failed to attain a satisfactory reading level and 43 percent failed in math.

Read more: http://www.mysanantonio.com/opinion/commentary/article/Pre-K-4-SA-promises-empty-so-far-4587637.php#ixzz2VqZm1KPy

 Finally, this surprisingly honest piece from Al Jazeera (yeah, that Al Jazeera) takes the cake:

Given the parallels between the lives of Castro and Obama, it would seem impossible for Obama not to have noticed the two-term mayor. Like the president, Castro earned a degree from Harvard Law School. Like Obama, Castro is the son of a single mother. And like Obama, some of Castro's relationships can be seen as a challenge to mainstream political thought.

Obama's personal connection with Jeremiah Wright, his former pastor, and his more tangential connection with William Ayers, a 1960s radical with whom Obama served on two foundation boards, have drawn vehement criticism from some conservatives.

For Castro, however, it is his mother - a leading figure of Texas' La Raza Unida party, a nationalist Mexican-American movement that seeks equal rights for Latinos, who could become a lightning rod. 

For Julian and Joaquin, both sons of Texas, statements like the ones their mother made in an interview with the New York Times Magazine, attacking one of the greatest sources of San Antonio pride - the Alamo and the battle for Texan independence - could prove problematic in their ability to sell themselves as Mexican-Americans. 

Rosie Castro said "the ‘heroes’ of the Alamo were a bunch of drunks and crooks and slave-holding imperialists who conquered land that didn’t belong to them", potentially a major contributing factor to conservative criticisms of her two sons.

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Update: To say nothing of his ongoing campaign finance scandal.