I’ve long thought that the people who do lay-out and advertising for the Times have a larky sense of humor – that their ads act as subtle critique of the story running alongside. Today brought another example.
Towards the back of the “New York” section today an article ran about the city’s new contract with a company that will track special education data. Apparently if your child has special needs, or if you want to gather data about educating special needs children in the public schools, it’s nearly impossible to gather accurate, up-to-date information, which is obviously a problem. To fix this problem, the city has contracted with a company in Virginia to overhaul the current system. The price on this contract? About 55 million dollars, which doesn’t include another 23 million over five years for “related costs,” including training and equipment.
So isn’t that…78 million bucks over the next five years? I guess that 78 million comes from some magic place, a place where the school budget isn’t facing cuts of about 1 billion dollars for the next school year. Yes, that’s right, I said ONE BILLION.
Where, you ask, might we find this magic place, where a person (or a school system) can find 78 million dollars?
The elves in charge of advertising and lay-out at the Times have an idea: running into this article about school budgets is an inset box featuring the winning lottery numbers for New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut.
Hey. All you need is a dollar and a dream, right?
Do you suppose Joel Klein buys his tickets in bulk?
