Saturday coffee.

Monday is the official Martin Luther King holiday. But today is his birthday. Honor him. We could use a man like him now.

We’ve gotten into the heart of Chicago winter. It’s just Gray and chilly with snow flurries every other day.

On the other hand, it’s kind of perfect for a three-day weekend and the NFL playoffs. I have a bet with my Brooklyn brother-in-law. He’s a Jets fan which are doomed to play the Patriots. And, of course, the Bears and Seahawks tomorrow at noon.

The couch awaits.

Cathie Blacks solution to classroom overcrowding: Sophie’s Choice.

In the novel by William Styron and in the film with Meryl Streep, the character of Sophie is a holocaust survivor who in involved with two lovers. As her back story unfolds, we learn that Sophie was forced to choose between saving her son or her daughter from death at the hands of the Nazis at Auschwitz.

This is what Cathie Black, queen of all media and Michael Bloomberg’s choice to be the new Chancellor of the New York schools, thinks is a metaphor for parents in the City’s school system.

“I don’t mean this in any flip way. It is many Sophie’s choices,” she said.” The Tribeca Trib

The “hero principal.” Give me a break! Just fodder for another made-for-TV movie.

Supposedly bright people really believe the superman-principal-flies-in-and-turns-the-school-around plot line that makes it to made-for-TV movies.

You won’t see this made into a movie.

By the time fall rolled around, Stephen Zrike appeared to be on the verge of orchestrating an elusive feat in urban education: turning a school of persistent failure into an academic success.

But then last month, Zrike, a 34-year-old rising star of the Boston public school system, abruptly walked away. He accepted a more prestigious position in Chicago’s public school system, leaving Blackstone in the lurch and Superintendent Carol R. Johnson scrambling to find a temporary replacement.

John Deasy is a disappointing choice to head the LAUSD.

David Lyell teaches in the LA Unified School District and reflects the views of many in this op-ed piece that ran in the South Los Angeles Report.

I’m disappointed by the appointment of John Deasy as the superintendent to the LAUSD School Board. The school board didn’t even bother to consider any other candidates, which is very strange. The public needs to remember that the mayor, who celebrated this appointment, after recently attacking UTLA, was also handed a vote of “no confidence” by teachers at eight of the 10 schools he takes credit for operating.