They are going to name the Harris County Department of Education building on Irvington after RONALD REAGAN? This falls under the "I thought I'd seen it all" category.

Reagan was NOT the education president, contrary to what the misinformed Republican woman quoted in the Chronicle story believes.

It looks like Jessica Farrar and Sylvia Garcia tried to make the argument against the name change to no avail. This is just a damn shame. We have a county with huge percentages of minority kids, kids with inadequate to no health and dental care and kids below the poverty line.

In case anyone doesn't remember, Reagan was continually slamming on people on welfare, acting as if all families on welfare were piling in their Cadillacs to go use their food stamps.

I was a high school teacher during Reagan's presidency and those were dire times for education. Reagan started that ridiculous drumbeat of "let's abolish the Dept. of Education". He cut federal education dollars because, hey, that's what you do when you are a Ronald Reagan - cut funding and decrease services! At the low income, racially diverse school where I taught, all I saw were kids on free and reduced lunch, and on food stamps, who really needed help to survive and keep their focus on learning.

Seriously, is this a done deal? Read the Chron article for an explanation of what in the heck HCDE is, and to see the photo of the HCDE board member holding up the photo of Reagan that he keeps in his wallet. A must see.

UPDATE (from Kuff): For an interesting Republican view of this, see Houston Consigliere.