More on the spoon tycoon

Last week Gervais introduced Karen Iacovelli, the Constitutional Law Scholar (circa 1996), Vince Foster suicide conspiracy theorist (circa 1997), office manager for a plastic cutlery company (circa 2002), and resident education anarchist on the Education Oversight Committee (circa right now). She’s the one who signed her name to the following affirmation on a California website:

“I proclaim publicly that I favor ending government involvement in education.”

I came across footage of Mrs. Iacovelli here at the WIS-TV website. Portions of the excellent School Swap series were shown at an EOC meeting, and sparked some deep thoughts from Iacovelli on how to improve our children’s education:

She says public education in the state is so bad, we should consider scrapping the system, "I'm not optimistic."

Gee. Thanks for that. If I wanted an unnecessarily dreadful forecast, I’d get Ben Tanner to kick me in the balls repeatedly while saying, “Partly cloudy.” The job of the Oversight Committee, though, is to monitor the implementation of improvements to our public schools, not to try to throw them out like a cheap plastic fork.

Gervais says, it’s fine if a member has a healthy distrust of bureaucracy - the way a hemophiliac might be wary of Will Folks – but Iacovelli has a full-blown disdain for public schools. Here's an example of her contribution to the committee, from the minutes of a recent meeting:

"Mrs. Iacovelli stated that she voted against the budget recommendations because of her concerns that the educational system is failing to meet its purpose and that stricter accountability and more choices are necessary rather than continued investments."

Basically, Karen Iacovelli is a Sanford-appointed “fly in the ointment.” As if it wasn’t enough for the Governor to badmouth South Carolina public schools on national television, forever associating our state with elitism, arrogance, and John Stossel's moustache – now he’s gone and ensured that our schools will have an adversary in the most unlikely of places: the Education Oversight Committee.

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