The Spellings Report: Flying The Friendly Skies (Again)

Around here, we like to keep an eye on the many comings and goings of U.S. Education Secretary Margaret Spellings.

It seems as though we're not alone in our obsession interest in Washington's Educrat-in-Chief.

Alexander Russo's This Week in Education has given us a helpful roundup of this week's travel plans by the globe-trotting head honcho of the United States Department of Education.

Within the next five days, she'll be meeting with the CEO of a gigantic multi-national corporation in Washington, visiting a New Orleans charter school that has temporarily relocated to Lubbock, Texas, then delivering a commencement speech in Houston. Friday evening, the Secretary will be attending a corporate mixer reception in her honor.

I find it interesting that the press will only be permitted to cover Spellings' commencement address at the University of Houston and her visit to the KIPP charter school campus.

Heh. I wonder why Ms. Spellings doesn't want those reporters and their cameras showing up at that "reception?"

After all that travel, the secretary will probably be exhausted and in need of another relaxing overseas sojourn. Maybe she'll return to Jordan for a second visit to that exclusive five-star resort on the Dead Sea. While there, I wouldn't be surprised if she managed to squeeze-in another visit with Jordan's beautiful Queen Rania Al-Abdullah.

Meanwhile, back in the real world of public education, several schools around the country have been forced to eliminate field trips for their children due to rising fuel costs.

Instead of continuing this profligate waste of taxpayers' dollars on all this travel, perhaps the secretary should consider canceling a few of her (and her entourage's) future taxpayer-paid junkets trips and donating the monies thus saved to one of those needy districts.

Leadership begins at the top and should be by example. In these fiscally lean times, the Secretary should show some restraint in how she personally chooses to waste spend her Department's funding and how she uses her staff's on-duty time.

On the other hand, if Secretary Spellings really needs wants to go on those trips, she could always do what so many of us teachers, students, and parents end-up doing: the Secretary and her useless drones numerous minions staff could try selling a few boxes of chocolates or holding a bake sale in order to raise the needed funds. -------------------------------See our latest education-related entries right here.