Dear Talmadge Heflin:
First of all, your name is clearly fictitious. I’ll thank you in advance for dropping the ruse and instead using whatever name your mother actually gave you.
Now, about that op-ed piece you wrote in the Dallas Morning News today, wherein you criticize DISD for not making good use of the money from the 2002 bond and for “spend[ing] lavishly on extravagant new projects.” One paragraph in particular caught my eye. It’s this one, about the recently constructed Emmett J. Conrad High School:
Conrad High cost nearly $50 million to build. At a colossal 325,000 square feet, the massive new complex is home to 670 students who enjoy almost 500 square feet each. Even more impressive is the interior of the schoolhouse. Featuring a state-of-the art computer room for graphic design, a media center, a technology room and an on-site steakhouse restaurant, the school boasts some of the best technology and amenities that taxpayer money can buy.
I just want to make sure I understand. We should not provide students with state-of-the-art computers and technology. Is that what you’re saying? We should hook them up with TRS-80s? Because I disagree with you there. I think to prepare kids for the job market or to get them ready for college, we need to give them the best technology taxpayer money can afford. Yes, that.
Now, I do have to admit that when I read my tax money had been used to install a “steakhouse restaurant” in the school, I got a little cheesed (no pun intended). Because good computers are one thing; a “steakhouse restaurant” is something else entirely. That sounds like lavish spending!
Except then I did a little googling and learned that the Outback Steakhouse at Conrad is a learning laboratory, part of the Texas Restaurant Association’s Education Foundation Entrepreneur 101 program, “which teaches kids how to cook, manage food service operations, and run their own businesses.” Once I read that, I said to myself, “Awesome.”
And then, “Talmadge Heflin,” I said something else to myself. I said, “That Talmadge Heflin is either lazy or he’s a liar. And given that he’s gone through all the trouble of concocting that fake name for himself, I think I know which one he is.”
In closing, watch yourself, mister. I don’t like the cut of your jib.
Sincerely,
Tim Rogers
28 comments
i dunno, Tim, dude’s got a pretty snazzy web site: http://www.talmadgeheflin.com
Alabaster is funnier.
I vote for “wanker”
And Talmadge, stop waking up with aces.
Sometimes I get the impression The Dallas Morning News is just trying to punk us.
Do they serve beer at that steak house?
As a volunteer at Conrad, I just about threw up my Dr. Pepper when I read the “editorial” (??????) opinion of Mr. Heflin. His numbers are just flat out wrong. Per the Conrad stat sheet for ‘07-’08, with grades 9-11, Conrad had a total population of 927 students. This year they added the magnet schools and a senior class, and it is nowhere near the number of students listed.
Conrad lies in the heart of formerly “singles only” apartments that were opened to families by the courts in the early ’80’s. It is one of the highest density, high crime areas in Dallas, and last 70% of the population scored below 40% on the ITBS reading tests, 35% passed the previous years Math TAKS test. There is not any area in Dallas that needed a school that could offer the students an opportunity like this more.
Old news – Outback pulled out of the restaurant, like a year ago – something about liability insurance coverage. But seeing todays economy, there may have been more behind-the-scenes factors helping them decide to withdraw. That having been said, Outback has made a commitment to the school to “consult” on getting the restaurant management magnet up and going. Without the hands-on help that a restaurant chain could have offered to help jump start this program, it is being revised and modified to suit the dining needs of the teachers and staff.
The kitchen at the school is nice, but having seen many kitchens in my time, it is not deluxe. It does have the required elements to produce food, with a dining room to learn service in.
They have a hard-working teacher this year with many years of restaurant management skills, and a teaching degree to boot. I, with the help of the community, have had a cookbook drive to provide the school with needed resources (over 300 books) – it does not have the hopes of a strong PTA to take on this role. Currently I’m trying to find a good (free) point-of-sale computer system so they can learn how to program the software.
Many of the students already work in fast-food, and they just want to find a way from where they are, to where they can be – in food. Oh, and they all want to meet Bobby Flay.
I’ve been a community volunteer in Vickery Meadow, where Conrad HS is located, for more than 8 years. That’s a very tough neighborhood with many families doing the best they can do to survive. Crime-ridden apartments are gone and this new high school stands there as a beacon of hope for kids who don’t have much reason to hope based on the cycle of poverty in which they are stuck. I’m sure if Talmadge Heflin googled around, he’d see that $50 million for a new high school isn’t completely out of line. DISD has certainly been financially irresponsible, but you, sir, are way out of line to suggest that providing these at-risk students with a state-of-the-art high school was improper.Wanker.
I think they should hook em up w/ Commodore 64’s.
talmadgeheflin.com is owned by:
Registrant:
Bob Blackmer
6119 S. Briar Bayou
Houston, Texas 77072
United States
As the editor who published that column, allow me to note that there’s an even worse problem with the piece. Heflin (yes, that is his name) got a basic fact completely wrong. He wrote that DISD provides none of its financial data online. In fact, it does. We’re publishing a correction on Viewpoints tomorrow.
Current year enrollment information on Conrad (referred to this link by Kent Fischer) https://portal.dallasisd.org/mydata/SL/SD/ENROLLMENT/Enrollment.jsp?SLN=28
1,314 students total. 9th grade has 625 students, 12th only 146, pointing out the very obvious need for educational programs emphasizing drop-out prevention in this population.
tough break, sharon, kudos for acknowledging the error
and, as per the column, this cat is a director of the Center for Fiscal Policy at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a nonprofit, free-market research institute
what does that description of the center mean? why use the term free-market? it doesn’t mean anything at all? don’t Republicans understand that when they use this type of nonsensical jargon that they’re immediately rendering them as useless blowhards
i’m gonna name myself a director of the Center for Integrated Solutions, a free-market, value-oriented, e-tailer that provides synergistic, real-time knowledge transfer to targeted in-the-pipeline clients seeking fast-track, outside-the-box, performance-driven products in today’s ever-changing marketplace
what a joke the GOP and blowhards like Mr. Heflin have become
JRP, reading that masterful-but-meaningless spew of corporate-consulting jargon, I just had a terrifying nightmare that it’s 2000 all over again, when many good people actually drank that koolaid at “Process Improvement Seminars”.
Why was 2000 terrifying? After all, I had great stock options and a corporate canteen. Why, because 2001 followed 2000. Then I along with tens of thousands of both koolaid-drinking and non-sipping folks were out of jobs and out of stock options. Wait – 2009 is going to follow 2008, isn’t it? Yep, terrifying.
And Tim, thanks for summing it up for all of us, I’m sure.
jrp – Um, the Texas Public Policy Foundation is expressly non-partisan
Hold up – you have 15 people on the ed board, and nobody could fact check an opinion piece?
Can I write an opinion piece?
Bethany, you do so every day, and just did, to our delight.
but Heflin is a former GOP state rep…so he’s no longer a Republican because the place he works for labels itself non-partisan?
read For the record’s post and then drink some more of that eight-year-old juice
and non-partisan is one of those fraudulent terms that’s become an increasing part of the lexicon over the past decade…right up there with synergies and value-added integrated solutions
back in ‘99, 2000 me and some colleagues used to vulgarly joke that when one company acquires another it sprays its synergism all over the purchased entity
useless jargon and part of the reason the Dow is down 40% or so over the past year, but that’s for a different and much-longer, and more in-depth discussion that i’ll be picking up with friends at the Belmont in about two hours…join us
there’s typos in there but i don’t care, Bethany, i’m outta here…see you tomorrow
Yay! A baby!
Ha Ha, what a correction: “Talmage Heflin, director of the Center for Fiscal Policy at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, provided inaccurate information in his Viewpoints column yesterday. The Dallas school district does, in fact, provide financial data online for the public to evaluate.”
How about adding: “He also miscounted the student enrollment at Conrad High School by almost half, and the school does not have steakhouse restaurant within. And we really didn’t fact check any of his other statements, either.”
Mr. Heflin, maybe if you had a real job instead of one that earned based on the “spin” you spew for your clients (spelled l.o.b.b.y.i.s.t. you would have a little more tolerance for what others are trying to do to improve this world.
I heart Amy S.
me, too
Ditto!
People still read the DMN? WHY?!
Kevin Sherrington
I read it because the doctor said I actually need to raise my blood pressure, and a Rod Dreher column about not voting or a Steve Blow column about doohickeys will do it for me.
Wait..that sounded a lot less dirty in my head.