Saturday coffee.

Short weeks seem longer.

There was no school on Monday in honor of Martin Luther King. But Thursday night was open house, which made it a 13 hour day. The art room was mobbed with kids and parents, which is always a good sign that something is going right.

About a half dozen parents came up to tell me that they had me as their art teacher. We’re talking 25 years ago.

Last night we went to see a documentary about the radical activist lawyer, William Kunstler, at the Gene Siskel Film Center.  The film was made by two of his daughters, Emily and Sarah, both of whom were there to talk about their memories and answer questions.

There were more than a few old timers who worked with Kunstler. His Chicago ties go back to when he became nationally famous as the lead lawyer at the Chicago 8 Conspiracy Trial. Our friends Len and Jim shared stories from when back in the day they worked  as young lawyers with Kunstler at Wounded Knee defending the leaders of the American Indian Movement. The showing last night was a benefit for the National Lawyers Guild.

I voted yesterday, but not for governor.

I have no love for Pat Quinn, who is running in the Democratic primary to remain as governor. In fact, I had every intention of voting for his opponent, Dan Hynes. Hynes is endorsed by both state teacher unions, mainly over Pat Quinn’s intention to mess around with teacher pensions. Hynes has suggested he is opposed to an attempt to create a two-tier teacher retirement system.

I was going to overlook Hyne’s connections to the Chicago Democratic Machine and to the fact that his father, Tom Hynes, was a key player in the 80s to block Harold Washington from being mayor after Harold won the Democratic primary.

But then Hynes ran an ad using the dead Harold against Quinn, who supported Harold but was fired from his job as Washington’s budget chief. My stomach turned. And when I early voted at the local library yesterday, I skipped the governor’s line.

Push for R2T agreements has meant burning a lot of bridges.

In Tampa the union didn’t like the take it or leave it approach to applying for the Race to the Top grant. And they said so.

Union president Jean Clements said Education Commissioner Eric J. Smith’s aggressive pursuit of the grant may have pushed many districts away from reforms they’re willing to consider. “He has hurt us a great deal, because it’s caused a lot of trust issues,” she said.

I hear that there is a lot of that going around. Great job Brownie. Uh, I mean Arne.

Do you know who the judges are who will decide who gets the R2T grants?

Neither do I.

The department has vetted and selected 60 peer reviewers, and there will be a training session for them tomorrow. But the department won’t say who they are—that will be announced in April when the winners are named. These are the folks who are tasked with reading through thousands of pages of applications from 40 states, plus the District of Columbia, and scoring them on a complex, 500-point grading scale. Although Duncan has the final say on who wins, the peer reviewers hold a considerable amount of power in determining who wins and who loses.