Things That Make You Go HMMMMM ...

Begin back peddling ... NOW!

23FEB2013
" ... there are literally teachers now who are getting pink slips, who are getting notices that they can't come back this Fall"

27FEB2013
" ... (Reporter: your confident that teachers are already getting pink slips, is that what you said?) ahh - yeah, I know they - yes there's a district where have, they're getting them just because there's an earlier union notification than most, so - Cattahau county WV - but the baste majority of them will be rolling out in the next two months" [sorry if I spelled that incorrectly]

1MAR2013
" ... (Reporter: secretary Duncun, earlier this week on a couple of occasions you've said that there are teacher who already being laid off because of the sequester - are you prepared to say now that that was an exaggeration on your part?) let me get really clear, why you're getting caught up in the details here - what I said was that teachers were getting notices and they were getting - and in the district we were talking about, 110 teachers have gotten notices. Now, I think there was a misinterpretation that I meant they were being laid off tomorrow, that's not what i said that's not what I meant. (Reporter: you said now, you said they were being laid off now) their beginning to get slips now, getting notices now. That's where I think some of the misunderstanding was. But the fact of the matter is, whether its what's already happened, what's coming across the country [insert his slight snicker here] over the next two months, which I also said, 10s of 1000s of teachers potentially are going to be getting these notices across the country, so the impact here is very very significant."

4MAR2013
"... so when I said pink slips, it was probably the wrong word - I probably should have used 'job elimination' 'positions eliminated' you sort of heard repeatedly, I should have been clear there.
Secondly, when I said 'impact on teachers' I should have said 'impact on educators' it's not just teachers, it's also support staff, guidance counselors, folks who work with special education students ..."
Education Secretary Duncan

Yeah ...

Sounds about right for this administration ...

Never mind that these "lay offs" "pink slips" happen EVERY YEAR at this time dispite the Sequester ...

Oh and that county that was laying off 110 teachers? It was really 5 teachers and they were on the block before the sequester even came into play! It was based on budgets and necessity.

So who broke this story?

The Washington Post ... Strict liberal media!

What does that say about this administration

Police State Over-Steppng ... again

I just received an email from babies-R-Us, which is supposed to be doing some big trade-in program ... in the email it stated two new guidelines they are going to enforce regarding car seats --- totally asinine if you ask me ....

1. Children should remain in rear-facing car seats until the age of 2 years old!!!!

2. Children should remain in Booster car seats until they are 12 years old

While I understand that the American academy of Pediatrics (AAP) has children's safety in mind (as well as all that study money they get from the car-seat manufacturers) in mind ... Have you ever tried to get a toddler to want to sit backwards in the car? Can you imagine the number of kids who are going to suffer from motion-sickness as they try to look out the side windows while the car is going? I'm sorry but as a mother and having a degree in Child Psychology from one of the leading colleges in the field ... I have to say ... BULLOCKS!

Now about those boosters - when my kids turned four (before the law changed) they couldn't WAIT to get out of those damned things ... My youngest missed the new "boosters until 8yrs" by one month, you try to tell an 8 yr old that they have to sit in a booster like some baby after having nearly 4 hrs of freedom! Now you are going to have to plug them in until they are 12? BULLOCKS!!!

What will happen when these kids start school? Will the school districts require parents to send Booster seats with their kids in order to ride the school bus? Oh wait that can't happen because they somehow have convinced the government that it is safer NOT to belt kids in on the buses ... when I talked to the transportation dept at our old school district, and probably got the most honest answer I've ever heard:

they won't do it because the belts could be used as a weapon against the driver but more probably against another student, and since the district cut funding for bus aides to watch the kids they felt that the driver could not control an over-crowded bus of children

I'm surprised that they haven't recommended that anyone with a child under the age of 15 ness to drive a vehicle with third-row seating so that children will be better protected from front impacts.

Actually I'm really shocked that the Feds aren't dictating that no vehicles that hold more than 4 passengers can be sold because they have too big of a carbon-footprint (gag gag gag wretch) ... This will force people to have fewer children because they wont have room for them in their cars ... Else it will force people to use public transportation - which already have sky-rocketing pricing to cover operating costs because NOBODY WANTS TO RIDE IT as it is now ... then they can dictate that cars be made thinner so that people won't be able to fit in them unless they are as skinny as one of those 14 year old models who have been starving themselves since age 5 and don't even register in a size of the ladies department ...

Sorry ... Government over stepping their boundaries just gets my dander up!

Here's an idea ... LOWER THE SPEED LIMITS ... As speed limits go up, the number of & degree of injuries have increased ... limits were increased as people became overly confident of their cars equipment - air bags & anti-lock brakes led to speed limits on roads of 70 mph and above! Car seat or not, of you get in an accident at that speed someone is going to get hurt ... and the majority of hospital visits after an accident are going to be children who can not adequately describe any injuries they might have.

HOLY CRAP!!!

I was shocked to wake up this morning to hear they had a major earthquake in Japan ... they have been having some fairly large earthquakes as it was there (between 5.? and 7.?) over the last week or so ... so news of an earthquake wasn't that surprising ...

but an 8.9 was a total shock!

I've been watching the news on the three major world wide news ... fox, msnbc, and cnn (yes my tv does really get those other stations) ... and the images are amazing - and scary!

They are saying that the waves were about 10 meters (about 30foot) high ... they are showing shots of whirlpools that were created by the tsunami ... boats look like sticks circling a drain hole. 

poor japan.

They are reporting that there is a commuter train missing as well right now ... but its the middle of the night there right now so there are little/few images coming out and its making rescue efforts slow ....

so far they are reporting less than 100 people dead (but that could go up depending on what happens with the fires/after shocks/train) ... but therre have been hundreds hurt/injured.

the red cross says that it is standing by waiting for the word to move in across the world --- Japan, hawaii, california, and all those little islands inbetween that people don't know the names of.

Japan is asking for help from people now.
================
Now the tsunami that has arrived in Hawaii have only been about 3ft, still very dangerous - it will knock the pins out from under you and it only takes 1inch of water to drown a person - and CA is thinking that they will be getting 7 ft waves ...

not sure if that is because there isn't really anything between the epicenter and the CA coast or if they are just being precautiious and over reacting the way the CAns do.

but the major damage won't be from the height but by the reach of the waves...

we've all seen the shots of waves coming in and drawing back - how it barely gets onto the beach (well from a landlubbers point of view, arially they come in quite a ways) .... but these waves could reach in 3, 4, maybe even 10 times that distance - so it could be enough to get into the major coastal cities.

It does not should though that cities like SF and LA will be effected - but still CA is so densly populated that there would be 10s of 1000s of people effected.

Cost of an Education

Ok -- so CA is one of the big states that is having MAJOR financial issues ... so much so that they are going to be handing out IOUs to their vendors .... partly because the state doesn't know how to stop spending when they don't have it, and partly because when they got hit hard by the job crisis they lost a lot of the tax revenue they had been counting on ....

but don't worry -- the city of LA is even MORE broke ... well it seems, they complain about how many of their students are from lower income ... how they can't afford to hire enough police ... how they have to lay off firefighters and other EMS people due to lack of funds ....

but they can spend
$578 MILLION on a new public school building
in a district where the drop-out rate is 1 out of 4 students (27% ... so really its every 3 students)
this makes it (a)the most expensive school ever in the US and (b) the most expensive school per graduate from it.
it is also the THIRD school to reach the multi-hundred millions in the last three years in that CITY alone .... two years ago they spend $232million for a single school, and $377Million for another last year (it had an orchestra pit, multiple auditoriums & atriums, dance studios, soft-oak floors, food courts w/pizza ovens)

this one is K-12 (for now) ... 4200 students

they bought the property of the old Ambassador hotel where Robert F Kennedy was shot & killed and named the building after him (hmmmm, you know CA's First Lady is a Kennedy by birth)'

it has a swimming pool ... fine art murals ... manicured public parks (not just patches of green grass anymore) ... uses large windows to cut down on energy costs from the use of artificial lighting ...

oh -- and the district has had to lay off about 3000 teachers over the last few years on the grounds of 'not having funds' to pay them.

the district is $640 million short for their budget

and their schools rank the LOWEST IN THE COUNTRY

So Fox News asked them for a response to this story ... here's what the LAUSD sent them:

"The construction of these schools was funded by bond money the voters approved to build new schools to relieve serous (sic, the district misspelled it) overcrowding in schools. By law, these funds could not be used to fund teacher salaries or to back fill budget shortfalls currently being experienced by the district and its meets (sic, more product of the LA school systems) the Board goal of relieving overcrowding in all our schools."

Los Angeles Unified School District

they say that the cost comes from keeping the schools up to code for earthquakes & the fees for the land usage, and -- and this this interesting -- they blame having to have to use Unionized labor to do it.

gee ...
wonder why they are having money issues???

We have a levy issue up this year as well, but it is worded very trickily ... it says that it will not only allow the school district to extend the levy out two more years, but allow the district now to apply for the state maximum whenever it sees fit too ....

basically giving the district a blank check ....

EXCUSE ME???

So I'm listening to the radio this morning -- yes, I took a break from Fox News -- and I heard on the radio that teachers, or rather the Teacher's Union, is claiming that the main reason that kids are failing in our state is due to a lack of parent involvement.

WHAT???

Have you ever tried to get involved with your kid's education? The teacherrs will treat you like you are dumb/stupid ... if you are lucky, you will get a call back from a teacher within three days of calling ... if you are lucky, your teacher will update your child's grade once a week and be able to tell you where they are at ... if you are lucky, you can arrange a parent/teacher conference sooner than twice a year.

Why?? Because the union contract says that's all they need to do.

They only have to update grades twice a semester/qtr (depending on your school's grading system) - midterm & final grades.

They only have to meet face-to-face with parents twice a year and even then for only 15minutes.

They only have to send grades via mail if a child is failing their class, but don't expect to get the report in a timely manner - there is nothing that says they have to mail out the grades right away ... we have gotten such reports almost 2 weeks after it was too late to fix the grade.

I learned all this from a resent conversation with the prinicipal from my son's school -- we are fortunate to have access online to a service which shows us our children's grades in each class, secondary-high school, so we can check to be sure that homework is getting in, that test scores are within acceptable parameters, etc.

Our district also makes webpages available for teachers - to put up contact information, assignments, study guides etc.

Now if only the teachers would USE THEM!!! Our tax money is going to pay for it, one way or another, and there are some teachers who havent updated their pages for over a year!

The conversation with the principal went like this (highly paraphrased):

me: there is one teacher who hasn't updated his [my son] grades in about 3 weeks!
principal: there is nothing I can do, they are only required to do it twice a quarter.
me: but how can we tell the kids they have to hand in homework on a specific day, when the teachers can't even get their work done in a timely manner.
principal: I totally agree - but there's nothing I can do.
me: what do you mean there is nothing you can do? you're the principal
principal: the contract the Union negotiated says they only have to update twice a quarter because we are on a quarter system.
me: Let me get this straight -- they won't post when my child is failing ... and the teachers themselves might not realize my child is failing right away - because they aren't required too?
principal: well I would think that a teacher would know if they had a child with a problem.
me: no they won't! We've been running into this at the High School - if a kid isn't acting up in class and being a disturbance, the teachers assume they are doing fine and the kid "falls throuogh the cracks"
principal: that is probably very true
me: Look - all I want is my kids grades to be updated. Surely the teachers get some office time, they can at least update them once a week can't they?
principal: It would be nice - but they are only required to do it twice a quarter.

On a side note: teachers are given a 'free hour' every week where they are supposed to catch up on such 'paperwork' ... but many of the teachers are using this time either as a 'coffee break', for correcting papers, or (in case of the high school) helping kids who didn't understand what the neck the teacher said in class.

I took this conversation to indicate that our district should brace itself for a teacher's strike in the near future.

BUT I want to know what other job in America pays full-time wages for a part-time job, and they aren't required to actually do their job but once every month & a half???

and they dare to blame the problems with the education system on lack of "parent involvement"???? How about TEACHER INVOLVEMENT?????

Education - History?

So I was getting ready this morning and my 13yr son lets out this 'OMG' that I'm not used to hearing him say ... at least not with the channel I watch in the morning ... followed by "that's just stupid!" Okay - now I was really curious ... and I was smart enough to click 'rec' on the dvr so I wouldn't accidentally erase it (like I normally do).

Here's what upset him - mind you this is a kid who cringes when I mention 'homeschooling' over the summer because that generally means 'history class':

An education panel in TX is deciding who they are going to be teaching about in Social Stucies/History courses & text books .... so here is a list of who's out and in (so far)

out
George Washington
Ronald Reagan
Albert Einstein
Mother Teresa
Marie Curie
Paul Revere
Jonas Sauk
Colin Powell
Florence Nightengale
Niell Armstrong
Carl Sagan

in
Oprah Winfrey
Steve Jobs
Michael Dell
Cesar Chavez
(all of these people have been evoked or supported Obama during the campaign - Obama wants to make a Chavez national holiday)

Now granted - you can only teach so much in class ... but still they can surely figure out a way to do several different history classes ....

World History
US History
Modern History
etc.

that type of thing.

Maybe split the eras up so that children are being taught different eras during different years instead of having them learning the same eras a couple of different times.

I think this is more that the teachers are getting bored with teaching the same old stuff - and hey, if they are learning about Oprah what would be better than a field trip to a local taping of the show?

For those of you looking at those names of the 'in' crowd - please notice they are all late 20th century figures -- and they accuse the Republicans of being narrow minded/sighted?

What the heck were they thinking!!!

Story Links:
US Flag Health Care Video
Flag Code

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Okay - normally I would put the video up, but this is pretty offensive to so many people I will just put in the link.

I've been listening about this all morning .... I've heard arguments that the issue is First Amemdment rights .... I've heard the issue is that the message is incomplete .... I've heard that its offensive that its on the flag, because the flag is the symbol that people look to for 'comfort'.

But no one has hit the mark yet.

The reason that this should NOT be in the finalists isn't for any of the above reasons ---

its because it breaks the Flag Code.

The DNC is going to be in enough trouble this fall in local elections .... the last thing they should be doing is presenting themselves as 'unpatriotic' -- remember the face-washing Obama took for not wearing a US flag pin?

The issue in this video is NOT the graffiti

It is NOT what he wrote (not that you can really read it)

It is NOT the fact that it deals with the Health Care issue

It's NOT even that the DNC is behind it ...

Its that flag.

Had this been done with a background of a brick school house

or the side of a hospital

or even on the wall of an emergency room

or the Congressionsl building

or even the White House steps

while people would sit back and go "that's disrespectful" ... they wouldn't have much to say about it (this is assuming of course that the actual property is NOT being defaced)

but since it is on a representation of the National flag - it breaks Flag code (I've talked about this before) which governs the lawful use, display, and representation of the US Flag as set forth from congress.

Of course - those tshirts with the US Flag, against the law .... the flags kids make in daycare/school during the 4th of July, against the law really (even before names are put on them) .... Bunting that you see draped at campaign rallies, against the law .... those flag pins that every one grumbled about not being worn, techically they would have been against the law as well but I'm pretty sure they had a congressional waver.

So this artist painting an US Flag and then defacing it while it still looked like The Flag - that broke the law as well.

Yeah - if they want to do this .... Congress first needs to amend the Flag Code and publish it for America to know.

This goes beyond flag burnings ... which if done correctly, is perfectly alright ... BUT it has to be done according to Code (most are not)

If you aren't familiar with the Flag Code and how to display and use your flag and representations there of -- you should really learn it. see that giant link above? its for the American Legion site .... it takes you straight to the Flag code.

now GO forth and learn something