Welcome Back to School!!!

The 2012-2013 school year begins today in Cobb County.  Curiosity and trepidation fill the school buses as kids start a new grade.

Will I like my teacher?  
Will I have too much homework?  
Will I have friends in my class or classes?
What will happen this year???

Parents have just as many questions, wondering if they (the parents) will like the teacher, if their child/children will do well academically and socially, and if they will be able to afford all the related expenses (PTA, school supplies, foundations, new clothes, more school supplies,...)

Though I have said this before, I will say it again - talk to your child's teacher.

Teachers really are human, too, and will not either send you to detention or hate your child because you want to talk to her (or him).  So ask the teacher how she wants to communicate, either email, notes from home, or phone calls, and then treat her as a participant in your child's life.  I make a point of asking what is the teacher's preferred method of communication, even if the teacher says that all methods are acceptable.  Why?  Because the teacher either have 20-30 parents to communicate with (in elementary school) or hundreds of parents (in middle and high school), while I only have 1-8 teachers on my end.

Remember, opening the lines of communication now will help the rest of the year flow more smoothly.

Cobb County School District Budget

Warning:  This is a rant.

Yesterday, the Cobb County School Board passes the budget for the 2012 - 2013 school year, and to be quite honest the entire budget process rests upon the belief that we should NEVER raise the property taxes in the county.

Why?

What is so wrong with paying a little more money to provide for better education?  Are we so greedy and self-centered that we begrudge the school district a mere $50 more per household?  Is the future of our society too "distant" for us to at least attempt to plan for it?

Children are our future.  Period.  End of discussion. Cats and dogs, while wonderful pets, cannot maintain society after we are too old to work.  Flowers and perfectly cut green lawns are really only decorations.  HDTVs will eventually break down.  Computers and the Internet provide a modicum of companionship, but no face-to-face, hand-holding comfort.

But in our greed and arrogance, we refuse to acknowledge that children need help, need money to get a decent education so that they, the children, have a chance at a decent future as well.

I live in East Cobb, where people have money.  To compensate for the lack of funds from the school district, the parents in most of the local elementary school form school foundations.  These foundations not only raise money for the school, but several of them have professional grant writers as parents.  These parents write grants, thereby securing even more funds for the local schools to use.

But what about the rest of the entire county?  Why should East Cobb students have such a monetary advantage?

Our Founding Fathers did not fight the British to avoid paying taxes.  They understood that we need to pay taxes to maintain a healthy, growing society.  They simply wanted a say in what money was collected, and where that money was spent.

Where did that bit of common sense go?

Wordless Wednesday - Fire!!

Truck Burning on I-75 this Past Weekend

The Story Behind the Photo:

Last Sunday, my family and I went out to test drive the new Toyota Sienna (I want one!!!).  Afterwards, we grabbed a nice lunch at a local Colombian restaurant and started to drive home.  A huge black cloud of smoke billowed nearby, so we decided to investigate.

We found this burning truck on the side of the interstate, with a man in an orange shirt watching the truck burn, cell phone in hand.  The fire consumed the passenger compartment of the truck, and began working its way down the adjoining hill.

I immediately called 9-1-1, and as the 9-1-1 operator thanked me for the call, the fire truck rolled up.  A firefighter (in the left side of the photo) calmly grabbed a host, walked up, and proceeded to put out the fire on the hill before dousing the truck fire.  It took him less than 60 seconds.

This post is dedicated to the Cobb County Fire Department.  Thank you for once again doing your job, and doing it with style.

Teach for America in Cobb County? A Mistake!

Earlier this week, I heard that the superintendent of Cobb County Schools, Michael Hinojosa, wanted to hire 50 teachers from the Teach for America program.  The school board was supposed to vote on the issue at tonight's meeting.  I felt shocked, to say the least.

When I graduated from Vanderbilt, I seriously considered applying to Teach for America.  It is a wonderful program that sends recent college graduates to school systems where no one wants to teach - mainly poor, inner city schools and poor, extremely rural schools.  Notice the common factor of  "poor".  By sending teachers to these areas, Teach for America helps students who might not get an education otherwise.

But we have teachers here in Cobb County.  In fact, I recently read that we had thousands of applicants last year - thousands of people who are qualified teachers looking for a job.  And Cobb County is one of the richest counties in metro Atlanta (I daresay in Georgia, but I don't know the facts for the rest of the state so I cannot make that statement with enough certainty.)  So why is our superintendent looking to hire from Teach for America?

To make matters worse, the Cobb County School Board announced at the last meeting that they would be removing teaching jobs due to budget cuts. (To read in between the lines here, they are firing teachers.)

So how could anyone justify bringing in outside teachers to a county with enough money to hire teachers and a plethora of teacher applicants?

And which poor school system will suffer even more because they won't have enough teachers?

Happily, Superintendent Hinojosa pulled the vote for hiring teachers from Teach for America off this evening's agenda.  I hope that the issue stays off the agenda, because no good can come from this course of action.

Children and Multiple Intelligences, Part 1

Lately I've been contemplating and researching the various types of intelligence.  In case you are wondering, "What are types of intelligence?", I made a list of the nine generally accepted types of intelligence:

1. Naturalist Intelligence (“Nature Smart”) 
2. Musical Intelligence (“Musical Smart”) 
3. Logical-Mathematical Intelligence (Number/Reasoning Smart) 
4. Existential Intelligence 
5. Interpersonal Intelligence (People Smart”) 
6. Bodily-Kinesthetic Intelligence (“Body Smart”) 
7. Linguistic Intelligence (Word Smart) 
8. Intra-personal Intelligence (Self Smart”)
9. Spatial Intelligence (“Picture Smart”)

(For more information about the types of intelligence, see http://skyview.vansd.org/lschmidt/Projects/The%20Nine%20Types%20of%20Intelligence.htm)

I actually knew about the various types of intelligence when my kids were invited into the elementary school target program.  The Target teachers explained that all children have these types of intelligence, and that the Target program works to engage the children in more that linguistic or logical-mathematical intelligences.

Of course, my first thought was, "Why aren't regular teacher attempting to use this information in their teaching?" 

The answer is quite simple - teachers are given the materials they use to teach.  Teachers are not allowed to deviate from the script, figuratively speaking, because that might lead to lower test scores.  And the school systems practically worship test scores at the moment, thanks to No Child Left Behind.  

But I wonder if the children would learn better if the school system allowed the schools and teachers to explore various teaching techniques that utilized all nine type of intelligence.   Or what would happen if we allowed students to explore their strengths and weaknesses instead of expecting all students to fit into a mold?

ECP: War of Cobb County Street Signs

Cobb County does a good job with street signs.  There are big, yellow signs announcing small roads, upcoming curves or hills, blind driveways, and other potential road hazards.  Speed limit signs abound, alerting motorists as to the maximum legal velocity.  Stop signs delineate who has the right of way.  And those cute, little green street signs pleasantly mark every corner, assisting those both with and without a sense of direction.  Or a GPS.

Only now the street signs are losing a war.... with PLANTS!!!!

That’s right - plants.  Historically, these green villains tried to take over each summer, growing new limbs, leaves, or vines up, over, and around our street signs.  And historically, Cobb County’s Army of D.O.T. Workers stood in the way.  Diligently, they drove their trucks around the county, hedge trimmers and hatchets at the ready to remove offending plants in their attempts to mislead motorists. These brave men and women fought offensives from kudzu, poison ivy, various bushes, and the most malicious blackguard of them all - the trees.  And before now, our Army always prevailed.

But not these days.  Budget cuts removed funding for what the plant-loving politicians call “extraneous expenses”.  The results are clear - the rapscallions have begun to win the war.

At first it was small.  A cluster of leaves hanging over a yellow sign, making it difficult to read.  Or maybe a stray vine, climbing up a metal support post.  Then the plants stepped it up, as whole branches grew out over sidewalks, visually blocking motorists from even knowing a street sign is there, nevertheless reading it.   And the worst has happened.  The stop sign for a small cul-de-sac in my neighborhood is now gone.  Oh, you can see the metal skeleton of the stop sign, amidst the bruising botany.  But the sign has been eaten, Charlie Brown style, by a tree.

So, what can we do about this?  How can we save our street signs?  

Maybe we could call our county government, and see if we can convince these green-loving people that street signs need love too.  Or we can fight this ourselves.  If you see the army of plants using your yard as a base of attack, do something about it.  If a plant in your yard is attempting to cover a street sign, trim the infringing branches, removing the trespassing vines.  And help our local street signs do their job.

Thank you.

ECP: CCSD Changes Its Facebook Policy

Last Sunday, at 12:29pm, this post appeared on the Cobb County School District Facebook page:

Due to recent offensive and/or inappropriate posts, CCSD Facebook page posting permissions have been changed to allow only comments on posts made by CCSD. Facebook does not provide an option for comments to be screened prior to posting, and the district does not have the resources to provide constant monitoring of the site. We apologize for the inconvenience.

Then on Monday, the CCSD removed all posts from their Facebook page that did not originate from the school district.  

This change in policy caused an uproar on Facebook, as people wondered why this happened.  Was the school board behind this?  Is the school district now censoring the community?

To get to the bottom of this, I called the school district office and spoke with someone in their communications department.  The answer about “why” turned out to be fairly mundane.  According to the School Board Policy Manual, section IJNDB, section F: Employee Created Web Pages and /or Blogs:

The District Web site and individual employee Web pages/blogs will not:

a. Contain public message boards or chat-room areas. ...

b. Allow the display of unsolicited comments from the general public. Any solicited

  public feedback should be reviewed by the employee before posting....

Translated to English, this means that the school district cannot have an open posting policy on Facebook.  So what can we, the community do, if we want to communicate about the school district on Facebook?

Make our own Facebook group.

So I did.  Last night, I created a group called “Cobb County School District Unofficial Community Page”.  Anyone is welcome to join the group, and anyone can post to the group.  Please feel free to post articles, opinions, events, and other information, just as you would have to the CCSD Facebook page.

ECP: Some Cobb County School Board Members Lied to us AGAIN!!

Yesterday, I sat at my computer, perusing the local news and catching up on local activities, when an article caught my attention - “Wake-Up Call:  Cobb County School Board Vote to Change School Calendar Reveals Stealthy Political Forces at Work”  As a parent of two children in Cobb County, I read the article with a sense of dread.  After all, so far I have not seen anything reassuring from the new school board members; so I sat thinking, “Now what?”

“What?” is a elegantly crafted article exposing that our new board members have ties to Georgians Need Summers, which is supported and potentially sponsored by a Texas special interest group.  Texas???  I thought these people represented East Cobb???  

No, they don’t represent us - they represent Tina Bruno and her desire to have shorter school years and longer summers.  They represent a minority, special interest group from another state, and they do not care what their own constituents think.  They lied during their campaigns, they lied during the school board meetings, and they lied to the Grand Jury.   They called us names, act rude to the people of Cobb County, and refuse to answer simple questions.

All four board members made promises to listen to us.  If you look at Scott Sweeney, Tim Stulz, and Kathleen Angelucci’s current websites, they all say that they will collaborate with the public, form a partnership with the community to help make Cobb schools better, spend our money wisely, and promote accountability and transparency within the school board.

And all of these promises, these statements of intent, are lies.

Nowhere on these websites do any of them mention changing the current school calendar.  Nowhere that I found do they say they want to get rid of the balanced calendar, or that they support the traditional calendar. I wonder, did these people purposely without their views from the Internet, to limit opposition on that point?

As for accountability, none of them has a single factual reason to support the traditional calendar.  It costs more money to run a traditional calendar.  It promotes student and teacher absenteeism.  It lowers scores on standardized testing.  It reduces student and teacher morale.  So why are we using the traditional calendar?  

The public opinion poll in February turned out to be a lie.  Stulz and Sweeney insisted that we have a public opinion poll on the choice of school calendar - they insisted over the objections of David Banks and Lynnda Crowder-Eagle.  But when the poll showed support for the balanced calendar, Stulz called the poll “flawed”.  Does he really  think we don’t know what’s going on?  It was never about getting the community’s opinion - it was about them trying to justify a decision that they already made.  

But what bothers me the most is that Allison Bartlett, Sweeney, Angelucci, and Stulz have all come out with supposed “reasons” that they voted for the traditional calendar.  It’s better for the students. It’s better for the economy.  It’s better for Six Flags and White Water.  It’s cheaper.  It raises test scores.  It’s too expensive to cool the schools in August.  The kids will dehydrate on the bus ride home.

But all of those reasons were also lies.

So what do we do now?  I don’t know.

Bartlett will be out this fall, but we are stuck with Sweeney, Angelucci, and Stulz for the next three years.  I know that it is theoretically possible to recall a board member.  I looked into the process.  You only need 100 signatures to start a recall, but you need one third of the people who voted for a candidate to sign a recall petition.  For Bartlett, that puts the recall number over 10,000 people.  The recall process sets the bar quite high, and there has never been a successful recall.  

Until then, we need to spread the word to other counties in the area, and hopefully prevent another school board turning into a long-distance, special interest political empire.