WEEKLY 3,00 zloty (with 7% VAT) Published by: Jargon Media Sp. z o.o. Index Number: 236683 ISSN: 1898-4762 NO. 32 WWW.KRAKOWPOST.COM DECEMBER 13-DECEMBER 19, 2007 Local superintendent may change face of educational system Poles seek equal retirement age Ombudsman Jan Kochanowski has sued the Constitutional Tribunal over regulations governing the retirement age of women and men 4 Arrest warrant on tycoon Krauze lifted The arrest warrant for business tycoon Ryszard Krauze has unexpectedly been lifted. One of Poland’s richest citizens can now come back to Poland 6 Jerzy Lackowski, a former Malopolska Province school superintendent who now heads the Teachers College at Krakow’s Jagiellonian University, has become a consultant to Arriva PPC opens an old friend, Minister of Education Katarzyna Hall. Together, the two plan to create a voucher system under which students could go to the school of their choice. private railway Iwona Bojarczuk poorer teachers get the same money as much the reform. That’s because voucher-system vouchers in a report to then-Prime Minister STAFF JOURNALIST better ones. The rules almost make it difficult success is based on large enrollments, which Jaroslaw Kaczynski. The British-Polish company to fire a teacher with four years or more of bring in a lot of money, and village-school en- “We are afraid that the educational vouch- Arriva PCC has recently begun Jerzy Lackowski, a former Malopolska experience. rollments are small. er” will bring “racial segregation at schools,” operating the first privately Province school superintendent who now heads Lackowski believes there is an urgent need In fact, if a school budget were linked en- Klosowski said. He said he also worried that owned railway in the country 8 the Teachers College at Krakow’s Jagiellonian in Poland for a student school-choice system tirely to the number of students, village-school “parents, especially in rural areas, will have to University, has become a consultant to an old like the ones in the U.S., New Zealand and vouchers would be unable to cover the schools’ drive their children several kilometers” to get friend, Minister of Education Katarzyna Hall. Sweden. costs, Lackowski said. to the schools the children want to attend. Together, the two may change the face of School choice can come through vouch- Former Deputy Minister of Education Sla- Polnord to build in Polish education. Their plans include creating a ers, by giving schools additional tax money womir Klosowski expressed doubts about See SCHOOL on Page 13 voucher system under which students could go for each student they attract, and by granting St. Petersburg to the school of their choice. autonomy to schools in choosing the curricu- They say bringing a free-market system to lum and profile of teaching. A voucher would Polnord, a subsidiary of Prokom, education would make schools better because be equal to the cost the government pays for is set to commence a massive they would have to compete for students. one student’s education. Each student going to Lackowski and Hall have been calling for a school would have a voucher, so the more stu- construction in St. Petersburg 9 school reform for years. In addition to vouch- dents, the more money the school would have. ers, they want a system that shifts control of “Of course before introducing educational schools from teachers and administrators to vouchers we will need to analyze the cost of Skyscraper to tower parents. They also want a system in place that educating individual students and compare it allows the government to revoke the licenses of with the amount of government revenue as- incompetent superintendents and teachers. signed for education,” Lackowski said. over Poland Teachers have too much power today, they One drawback of a voucher system would Poland’s Palace of Culture and feel. Teachers union rules require equal pay be that unless special arrangements were made for equal length of service – which means that for village schools, they would suffer under Science is set to be overshadowed in four years’ time 10 New low cost route Krakow-Paris The low-cost French-Dutch airline Transavia has recently begun flying daily between Krakow and Paris 12 house of entertainment the best entertainment in Krakow piano bar live-music sessions bring card – get prize HOTEL NOVOTEL, ul. Armii Krajowej 11 Tel.: +48 (0) 12 636-0807 2 The Krakow Post POLAND DECEMBER 13-DECEMBER 19, 2007 R E G I O N A L N E W S “New Jews” kindle revival in lost heartland Foreign Ex-Soviet states seek energy ties with Japan: official ministers The GUAM regional bloc of four former So- viet states late last week called for closer ties with Japan over both energy-saving technology and pipeline construction in the Caspian Sea. hail new era Representatives of the group – Azerbaijan, Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine – visited Japan, a major energy importer, for talks with Foreign Minister Masahiko Komura. in ties with “Japan is the world leader in energy-saving technologies,” Andriy Veselovskyi, deputy for- eign minister of Ukraine, told a news conference Germany with other GUAM delegate members. “We are interested to have this technology. This is beneficial both for us and for you because AGence france-presse Japan expands their technologies to other coun- tries,” he said. German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter The group at the same time called on Tokyo Steinmeier and his new Polish counterpart to take part in construction of additional pipelines Radoslaw Sikorski said late last week they in the energy-rich region in an effort to diversify hoped to mend bilateral ties that soured un- energy supplies. Polish Jews celebrating Hanukkah. der Poland’s former government. “Diversifying routes of energy would be ben- “We both said that we want to open a eficial for the region and for the world market,” new chapter in German-Polish relations,” AGence france-presse Veselovskyi said. ern Europe to escape 11th century pogroms, convert to Judaism, due to both fears of pub- Steinmeier said after talks with Sikorski in Japan, the world’s second largest economy, has and on the eve of World War II, there were lic reaction and his lingering Catholic belief Berlin. virtually no natural energy resources of its own. In Europe’s former Jewish heartland, around 3.5 mln there. that it would be a sin. He thanked Sikorski for coming to Ger- The European-oriented GUAM was formed in flickering Hanukkah candles are a symbol The capital Warsaw alone had a Jewish The spark for Krasniewski and his twin many on his first visit abroad as the top 1997 as an alternative to the Commonwealth of of both the annual religious festival and the community of 400,000, ranging from the en- brother was a recent holiday. diplomat in liberal Prime Minister Donald Independent States, a Kremlin-dominated group- inner light guiding dozens of Poles to their tirely non-religious to traditionally-dressed “We were standing in the middle of Tusk’s government. ing of ex-Soviet countries. (AFP) roots and the culture of their forebears. “We see this as a sign of your interest and Orthodox believers. It was the largest Jew- Prague’s old Jewish district, and we decided willingness to play a role in breathing new The revival of Judaism in Poland is be- U.S. broadcaster denounces ish city in Europe and the second in the to convert,” he said. life into the relationship between Germany ing kindled by “new Jews”: Poles raised world after New York. “At first there was a struggle in our fam- and Poland.” jailing of Azeri correspondent in the shadow of the Nazi Holocaust and After invading Poland in 1939, Nazi Ger- ily, to stop us going back to what they had Sikorski told reporters: “I would like to Communist-era anti-Semitism, who have second every word of that.” A U.S.-funded broadcaster denounced the jail- many transformed Warsaw’s Jewish district escaped from,” he added. Ties between the two neighbors suffered ing of its Azeri correspondent late last week for chosen to leave the mainstream in a country into a Ghetto, to isolate and eventually wipe But the twins’ grandfather eventually under nationalist Prime Minister Jaroslaw slander by the same local court that had cleared that is overwhelmingly Roman Catholic. out the population. warmed to the idea, and finally told them Kaczynski, who was soundly defeated by him of the charge two days earlier. After ceremonies marking Hanukkah in Half of the six mln Jews killed by the Na- the story of the brothers and sisters he lost Tusk and his Civic Platform in October Prague-based Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty Warsaw’s Jewish cultural center, recent con- zis were Polish, and most died in Nazi con- during the Holocaust. elections. called in a statement for the immediate release of vert Agnieszka Kwasniewska, 37, recalled centration camps set up in occupied Poland, Krasniewski’s brother chose to become Kaczynski missed few opportunities to 42-year-old correspondent Ilgar Nasibov. her awakening. such as the infamous Auschwitz-Birkenau. an Orthodox Jew, and follows a strict kosher reproach Germany over its World War II Nasibov turned up at the court in the western “When I came to the synagogue, it was In 1945, Poland’s surviving Jewish popu- diet. Krasniewski considers himself a con- past. He told fellow EU leaders during a row city of Nakhchivan expecting to be given his dis- like I had always belonged,” she told AFP. about voting rights in the bloc this year that missal charges after being cleared of the slander lation numbered just 280,000.