By Larry Woods, Guest Columnist

CLEVELAND, Ohio-I am a high school drop out named Larry Woods.  I saw Kim Brown's comments to the mayor's education proposal and was struck by the brevity and the negativity. (Editor's note: This is an editorial by Larry Woods in response to the one that ran in Cleveland Urban News.Com on July 4 by Kimberly Brown, a former Cleveland mayor candidate and unsuccessful candidate for Cuyahoga County Council who opposes Cleveland Mayor Jackson's education plan that is now a state law that strips Cleveland schools teachers of seniority in exchange for merit pay and hands public monies slated for the school district to charter schools, among other provisions. Signed into law two weeks ago by Republican Gov. John Kasich,  the education plan also calls for a levy on the November ballot, something Brown also criticized. Read Brown's editorial here at Cleveland Urban News.Com and also at the Kathy Wray Coleman Online News Blog.Com at http://www.kathywraycolemanonlinenewsblog.com/2012/07/gov-kasich-comes-to-cleveland-to-join_04.html )

I agree that to ask already strapped homeowners to pony-up more of their scarce funds for a system that does one of the worst jobs of educating [children] known to man [might be unreasonable].

But not once did Kim Brown suggest an alternative or give a solution to the main problem, a system that does not educate our children and only trains them to be employed by businesses that have shipped most of their jobs to cheaper waters.

I would suggest two alternatives. First, listen to Sir Kenneth Robinson, head of the British commission on creative intellegence and education, who says our school system sucks because it treats children like equipment in an assembly line by trying to make them all the same in as much as it actively discourages the inventiveness and creativity that is essential to the entrepreneurial spirit necessary for the present state of our city,country and the world.

Secondly, we must consider alternative educational innitiatives such as, "The Trivalent Understanding," which is  the breakthrough paradigm in personal education considered for the 10 million dollar X-Prize for innovation. And it is taught right here in Cleveland at the Clyde Rahman Community Center.

In closing, I would like to suggest less emphasis on politics, financing, and the type of hater-ism displayed by Kim Brown, (anything you propose-I can tear down). And more focus must be given to educating our children to learn what they are, who they are, and where they came from.

PS:  I did drop out of high school at 15, got a GED, a CLEP certificate, then earned [college] degrees, and I am currently working on my second master's degree in education.

Kwaku L.C. Woods, RN, M.D.MetD1

Woods is an independent consultant for the Cleveland Municipal School District which, under state law, is controlled by the city's mayor, who appoints the once elected Cleveland Board of Education