Apologies for the lack of quality posts recently, but sometimes I’m required to leave my perch and join the real world. With that in mind, here you go:

*With budget cuts forcing layoffs at UNCG, Chancellor Linda Brady will teach a class in international negotiation next year.

“She’ll be doing it for us for free,” says political science department head Ruth Dehoog. How kind of Chancellor Brady.

*With two members absent, the Guilford County Board of Education approves Superintendent Mo Green’s regional plan that re-organizes county schools into four regions at a cost of ______. Meanwhile, Green addressed budget cuts and layoffs at a “hastily called news conference” yesterday. Interesting side note in the N&R’s story:

Some school employees learned about system spending cuts in haphazard — and embarrassing — fashion in recent days when they tried to use school-owned debit cards to pay for supplies at local stores. The cards were rejected and the purchases denied.

Nora Carr, Green’s chief of staff, confirmed the purchasing orders and debit card accounts for the schools were frozen over the past few weeks, but school employees weren’t notified, which left some to find out at the register.

“We didn’t handle the communications well internally on that,” Carr said. “That was a place where we made an error.”

Evidence that Carr’s specialty is external spin, not “internal communications.”

*The more I read about the City of Greensboro’s fed stimulus “wish list,” the angrier I get. The “revised list” includes money for various GPD programs, an upgrade to library broadband services and —last but not least —– “10 Toyota Priuses at a cost of about $223,000.” How is this “stimulating” the economy?

*On that note, Winston-Salem Assistant City Manager Greg Turner comes right out and admits that the city’s share of the the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Block Grant program is “mostly a program for energy reduction as opposed to job creation.”

*Yet another business-friendly proposal in the middle of a recession: The Downtown Winston-Salem Partnership is pitching stricter construction standards to the city-county planning board in the interest of creating a “downtown that’s walkable.” The code would include “standards on such things as building transparency, where pedestrians can see in or out, and inviting landscaping and entrances that would attract pedestrians into buildings.”

Breathe deeply.