You can't be both places at once

Wednesday brings us an intruiguing political scheduling conflict on the Cincinnati schools beat:

At 4 p.m. in Evanston, the CPS teachers' union and other pro-levy groups are holding a major campaign rally to gin up support for the property tax hike, which the district says is necessary to stave off deep deficits. The rally has been publicly planned since mid-September, union chief Tim Kraus said.

But thirty minutes earlier in Corryville, a school board committee controlled by board president Eileen Cooper Reed and chairman Rick Williams will meet to discuss its planned "redesign" of the school system in detail for the first time. The board first announced that meeting last Thursday.

If you're at one event, you're not at the other.

Here's the subtext: The union is backing a slate of candidates against Williams in the school board race and has been extremely skeptical of the redesign plan. Meanwhile, many of those CPS players likely who've committed to the rally are extremely interested in the content of the meeting, but obviously won't be able to attend the meeting.

Kraus won't say the conflict was intentional, only repeating that the rally was planned first. Tuesday, Cooper Reed called it an innocent scheduling conflict, and reasserted the entire board's support for the levy. "Business goes on as well," she said.

Union-backed candidate Eve Bolton said conspiracy theorists would have plenty to work with today.

"Unfortunately we are in an atmosphere of such distrust that this would even occur to anyone," Bolton said.