Meeting Gram in Fancy Gap

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A while back my daughter suggested to my mom that we could get together more if we met for dinner halfway between our home in Lewisville, NC and mom’s in Radford, VA.  Last night we tested the theory by meeting in Fancy Gap, VA for dinner.  It ended up being an easy one hour drive up I-77 for us and an easy one hour drive down I-81 and I-77 for Mom and Bert.

Lakeview_fancygap
We met Mom & Bert and the Lake View Restaurant (attached to the Lake View motel) and they even gave us our own private closet room.  Fancy Gap is right off the Blue Ridge Parkway on Rt. 52 and we decided to head home by heading south down 52 through Mt. Airy, the childhood home of Andy Griffith and my Aunt Judy. The first five miles of the return trip were downhill, as in literally downhill, so next time we’ll try and make it a lunch meeting so we can see the area in the daylight.  I have a feeling it’s beautiful.

Self Flaggelation

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Quit snickering, the title is self-flaggelation not self-flatulation.  Every time there’s an election I think of this term as it relates to one of my oldest friends, Dimitri (Jimmy) Kesari.  Jimmy and I went to high school together and from the go he was more involved in politics than anyone I’ve ever known.  He talked me into running for Student Body president my senior year, got me elected and got himself elected secretary.  Of course he then ran the student body behind the scenes while I stayed busy flirting with the girls on the student council.

Jimmy’s an arch-conservative and has walked the conservative walk his entire life.  He went to Grove City College which is so conservative that they proudly refuse to take any federal funding so they don’t have to play by the government’s rules (at least that’s what he said).  After college he started a solid wast recycling business in Northern Virginia and hired me to keep an eye on all the ex-cons running his heavy machinery.  I survived that for about six months before deciding I valued my life too much to continue dodging front loaders and hydraulic mulchers that mysteriously seemed to attack the only college kid in the yard.  Eventually Jimmy had a split with his business partner and he went into politics, which is where the self-flagellation comes in.

Jimmy became a campaign manager for a couple of different hard-right conservatives running for the House.  Even in conservative Virginia these guys were unelectable so Jimmy’s guys would get something like 12% of the vote. Each time I’d talk to Jimmy after an election he’d say things like, "The campaign was a big success.  The last time my guy ran he got 5% of the vote and this time we doubled him up to 10%."  The man is a conservative martyr.

Now Jimmy’s working for Right to Work and running their state level political operations.  I talked to him this summer and he was getting ready to spend a month away from his family in October working the hotbed states.  Although our politics are very dissimilar I know that in Jimmy’s case the conservatism is heart felt and he does walk the walk, which means I’ll enjoy disagreeing while never losing respect for him.  I can’t say that about a lot of people in politics these days.  I haven’t talked to him about it but I can almost guarantee you he’s not too happy with the way the Republican Party has steered its course of late.  For his sake I hope he’s back home right now enjoying his wife and kids and refueling for the next fight. 

Testing, Testing. Law of Unintended Consequences

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Anyone with kids in public schools knows about the rise in prominence of standardized tests.  Thanks to No Child Left Behind much school funding is put at risk when schools don’t have enough students pass the mandated tests.  On top of that school administrators can lose their jobs if their students don’t pass at appropriate levels, so you can imagine the "learning atmosphere" that this might create.

One consequence of the increased emphasis on testing is that you have teachers teaching to the test.  Our kids now come home with syllabi that clearly indicate when test preparations begin, which is usually one month before the test is administered.  And test preparation doesn’t just mean covering the subject matter, it also means test taking strategy.  Imagine spending a whole month getting ready for tests, and think about the ripple effect it has on the rest of the curriculum.

Another consequence of the new testing regime is that you have administrators and teachers fighting for their professional lives, and that leads them to do some rather strange things.  Exhibit A is the principal in Washington state who suspended a fourth grade student for five days because he refused to answer an essay question on the state exam.  You can read about it here.  The kid didn’t want to write the essay because he was worried that it would offend the principal (the same one who ended up suspending him) and he couldn’t be convinced that it was okay to write the essay.  The principal was so worried about the effect of his refusal to answer on the school’s average that she suspended him for "blatant defiance and insubordination."   Simply put, she’s off her rocker.

Given the atmosphere that school administrators are working in these days it’s no wonder you have a few whackos going too far.  In an effort to bring accountability to education what No Child Left Behind has actually done is change a learning environment into a test factory producing Scantron-completing robots (our kids).  I’m all for making sure our teachers and school administrators are held responsible for doing their jobs, but there has to be a better way than this.

Manly Shopping

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I almost used the title "Man Shopping" for this post and then realized that it was, well, kinda gay.  BTW, did you see that story a week or two ago about the football announcer on ESPN who said something like "That guy has hands of stone, not like a receiver who has to have soft hands to, you know, soft hands to caress balls….okay, that was gay."  I think he was fired. Sheesh.  I didn’t even know that calling something "gay" was considered offensive.  Good thing no one listens to anything I say.

Xmaswishlist
Anyway, I’ve found the ultimate shopping site for me.  Actually I think most guys would like this site: Duluth Trading.  All kinds of good, practical stuff.  Anyone interested in buying me a Christmas gift, or any gift, need only go here and buy anything you find.  For practical reasons I really like the Twill Presentation Jacket pictured to the left, or the Fire Hose Canvas version (BTW I’m an XL).  Utilitarian, wearable in business casual and putzing around town situations, doesn’t wrinkle, coffee stain resistant and lots of pockets.  What’s not to love?

Xmaswishlist2

Oh wait, I’ve found a neoprene six pack beer tote.  I know these guys understand me simply from their tag line: "Beer is best swilled when chilled".  I’m in heaven…yes indeedy, manly shopping.

Easy to Criticize, Hard to Do

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A while back I left a comment on someone else’s blog (can’t find it or I’d link to it) in which I said some rather critical things about TV reporters and their writing abilities.  Lenslinger quickly, and rightly, took me to task.  He pointed out how hard it is to write stories on the fly, match it to video and then get it even semi-coherent for the air.  That was just one reminder about how easy it is to criticize and how much harder it is to actually do anything.

It’s easy to critique an author’s book, but incredibly difficult to write your own.  It’s easy to tell a waiter how to do his job, but when’s the last time you carried five plates on your arm without spilling?

I was reminded of this by Lenslinger’s post "Ten Things I’d Teach News Reporters."  You get an appreciation for how much goes into a nightly newscast, even when it doesn’t go well.  Of course we can, and should, criticize anyone who can do good work but doesn’t, just as we can be criticized when we don’t do our jobs well.  These folks choose to do their jobs in public and as a result they open themselves up to criticism by a far larger audience than the rest of us can even imagine, but that’s the road they chose.

There are other jobs that open the practitioners up to public criticism.  Professional athletes come to mind, and on this election eve so do politicians. I’m sure that politicians’ jobs are harder than we’d like to admit, but at the same time the power they wield demands that we be highly critical of them.  If TV reporters screw up the worst thing we get is bad TV (who’d notice?), and if professional athletes screw up they get check mark in the "L" column, but if politicians screw up we get, well, screwed.

While reading Lenslinger’s piece I remembered how pissed I got the first time I got a negative comment on this blog, and I remember how agitated I was when some troll got on here and started giving me hell.  I also remember thinking, "How do public people do this every day?"  So, yes I’m appreciative of the thick skin that all people in public life must have and I wonder why they do it.  I’m also trying harder to appreciate the hard work that goes into what these folks do, but I’m also not going to give anyone a free pass when they don’t do their jobs well.  In the case of a bad on-air report I’ll probably just laugh and say something like "that was inane", but in the case of politicians I’m gonna squeal like a stuck pig and demand better.

And, oh yeah, I’m gonna try and toss the rascals out.

Heckuvajob Rummy

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How is it that the one guy who can be held directly responsible for much of what’s gone wrong in Iraq still has his job?  "Heckuvajob Rummy" is still the Secretary of Defense, still getting his panties in a twist whenever someone questions him and still putting our military in a lose-lose position.  The worst part is that there was information out there, war game results from 1999 (Desert Crossing), that should have warned him that he needed to think twice about the invasion and to plan very carefully for the after-action occupation.  These war games were conducted by US Central Command (CENTCOM) under Marine General Anthony Zinni who even called CENTCOM in 2002, when it was apparent we were going to war, to remind them of the existence of the Desert Crossing report. 

Among other things the report found that there would need to be a minimum of 400,000 troops in Iraq and even then things would be messy.  Army General Tommy Franks, who took over CENTCOM after Zinni’s retirement, proposed 385,000 troops for Iraq in his original operational plan for the war but Rumsfeld insisted on a sharply reduced number and approved only 160,000.

Even with the 400,000 troops that the war game report recommended the authors anticipated many of the problems we have in Iraq today.

The results of Desert Crossing, however, drew pessimistic conclusions            regarding the immediate possible outcomes of such action. Some of these conclusions are interestingly similar to the events
which actually occurred after Saddam was overthrown. (Note
1) The report forewarned that regime change may cause regional
   instability by opening the doors to "rival forces bidding for power" which, in turn, could cause societal "fragmentation along religious and/or ethnic lines" and antagonize "aggressive neighbors." Further, the report illuminated worries that secure borders and a restoration of civil order may not be enough to stabilize Iraq if the replacement government were perceived as weak, subservient to outside powers, or out of touch with other regional governments. An exit strategy, the report said, would also be complicated by differing visions for a post-Saddam Iraq among those involved in the conflict.

The war game findings were declassified in 2004 and became public as a result of a FOIA request by George Washington University’s National Security Archive and their posting of the document on their website on November 4, 2006. 

The full report can be found here.

It’s one thing to screw the pooch, but when you do it even after the pooch has growled a warning you deserve a special medal of incompetence.  What’s the opposite of a Silver Star?  Whatever it is we should give it to "Heckuvajob Rummy".

**Update 11/8/06** Rummy’s resigning. President Bush thought he was great until the House was lost to the Dems and the specter of Congressional investigations loomed.  I doubt Bush even had to push very hard to get Rummy to the end of the plank.

Winston-Salem Forsyth County School Bond Proposal

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Tomorrow we citizens of Forsyth County will have the opportunity to vote for a $250 million school bond.  Of the $250 million about $125 million will be used to build seven new schools, $90 million will be used to renovate 14 schools and $4 million will be used for wireless internet connections in all 74 schools.  The school system is growing and there’s a rampant fear that our students will be increasingly educated in trailers.

The NAACP is against the proposal because they see it furthering the supposed segregation that the school system has developed since neighborhood schools were introduced back in the mid-90s. Their argument is that schools with a high percentage of minority, low income students are underperforming and that it is an inequitable situation. They feel that we need to return to forced integration of the schools so that there is an equal demographic balance in the schools.

Here’s my take on the situation:

First, I absolutely agree that school buildings need to be safe, clean and sanitary so any necessary renovations to old buildings should be made.  On the other hand there are many worse environments in which you can learn than an air-conditioned trailer, and I’ll bet that if you asked a student if he’d prefer a clean, warm (or cool), dry trailer or a leaky, drafty, dirty bricks and mortar building he’d take the trailer any day.  And you have to ask yourself is a state of the art, brick and mortar building the most critical component of providing a good education?

Second, most of the schools are segregated by demographics because the parents, rich and poor, minority and white, choose it to be that way.  Are you really going to tell them they’re wrong?  If they don’t want their child bused halfway across town in order to meet the system’s ideal demographic breakdown then you have to respect their position.  You also have to ask what you’re truly trying to accomplish by integrating the schools.  Is it to bring up the poorer students’ academic achievement by associating them with richer, better students?  If that’s the case aren’t you just as likely to bring down the richer, better students’ academic achievements?  Instead of looking at forced busing don’t you think you should address the core issue, which is sub-standard academic performance by the students?

To me, the solution to my first question, "Is a state of the art, bricks and mortar building the most critical component of providing a good education" and my last question, "Instead of looking at forced busing don’t you think you should address
the core issue, which is sub-standard academic performance by the
students" is more teachers.  We should spend every dime we can on recruiting and retaining more teachers and keeping the student-teacher ratio as low as possible.  I’d rather build a trailer village of education with a 10-1 student-teacher ratio than a castle of learning with a 30-1 student-teacher ratio.

The Journal had a feature story about the school bond that addressed the segregation issue and in it they mention that the new high school, Carver, in the poor part of town was set up as a magnet school with all the latest, greatest equipment but no parents from outside the district want to send their kids there.  My argument would be that instead of worrying about getting other kids there you worry about educating the kids that are already there.  You don’t throw money at the hardware, you throw money at the talent.  In other words, forget the fancy equipment and double your teaching force.  Make sure each kid gets tremendous individual attention and do it in the schools that need the help most.  Before long you’ll have kids achieving beyond imagination and you’ll probably have to set up a lottery system to deal with the parents clamoring to get their kids in the new school.  That’s when you start doing the same for all the schools.

Unfortunately this school bond is continuing the trend of spending money in the wrong place.  I’d like to see more money spent on talent and less on hardware.  Spend the $90 million on renovations, but take that $125 million and expand the existing schools and vastly expand the teaching ranks.  Also look at more creative thinking.  For instance:

  • Why not use some of the empty commercial space out there for classes?
  • Why not get more active with online learning initiatives?

You’d think that with three kids in the school system that I’d be a rubber stamp for the bond initiative.  I would be if I thought they were spending on the right things, but they’re not so I won’t vote for it.

 

How to Lose My Vote

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You know an election stinks when you go into it with the attitude that you’re voting for someone because they’re not someone else.  The last couple of presidential elections have been like that for me and now this mid-term election has turned into a nose-holder.  I honestly don’t know squat about Roger Sharpe, who’s running against incumbent Virginia Foxx in North Carolina’s 5th Congressional District.  Perhaps I don’t know much about Sharpe because he raised about $4 for his campaign and thus has aired maybe one commercial at 6 a.m. on public access TV and his website isn’t that informative (although it’s better than Foxx’s), but to be honest I don’t need to know that much about him for one very repugnant reason: he can’t possibly be worse than Foxx.  Here’s why I really don’t like the job my Representative has done:

  • She was dumb enough to go to Iraq this summer and come back and say to the local paper that based on her extensive discussions with soldiers during her day or two spent in the Green Zone things were going swimmingly in Iraq.
  • She was petty enough to freeze out the local paper on all campaign-related coverage because they reported what she said.  If she’s going to act like this she really isn’t ready for the big leagues of politics.
  • She voted against Katrina funding, saying that there needed to be more oversight of the spending.  She was probably right about the need for more oversight but she lost her legitimacy about this particular argument when she didn’t make the same argument for war funding.
  • On immigration she wants to bake her cake and eat it too.  She says she wants no amnesty for illegal immigrants and wants to build a wall, but she also says that we need to help businesses that depend on immigration. I haven’t seen anything where she’s said we should show no amnesty for those companies that employ illegal immigrants.  Wait, those would be her campaign contributors so I guess that wouldn’t be a good position.

There are more, but that’s enough for me.  Actually there’s one last reason I won’t be voting for her: someone at GOP HQ thought it would be a good idea to have a Rush Limbaugh recording with a tired "Nancy Pelosi is going to kill your children" message tele-spammed to my house. If they’re using that Oxy-addled, limp-***ed, blow hard for a lock election then they’re worse off than I imagined.

If you need to find me tomorrow I’ll be the guy with the gas mask on at the polls.

Trouble at School

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Last night we got an automated phone call from Lewisville Elementary which is nothing extraordinary since we get about one or two calls a week from the school.  But last night my youngest took the call and listened to it and then informed me that his principal and science teacher had been suspended.  Given the fact that Justin is 10 I kind of took it with a grain of salt because there is no more reliable way to get a muddled message across than to tell a 10 year old boy something and have him pass it along.

After Justin gave me the message I checked the school system’s website and found nothing there and heard nothing on the news so I chalked it up to a misunderstanding.  This morning I saw nothing in the newspaper and there was nothing on the news all morning until about 9:00 a.m. when it was reported on WXII that Principal Rash and Mr. Snow the school’s popular science teacher had been suspended.  The school system hasn’t given a reason for Mr. Snow’s suspension but they did say that Mr. Rash was suspended because of how he handled the unspecified allegations against Mr. Snow.

This is the first time we’ve had anything like this happen with any of our own kids’ principals or teachers.  Both Justin and my daughter Erin really enjoy Mr. Snow’s classes and the few times I’ve been around Mr. Rash I’ve found him to be engaging and popular with the parents.  Hopefully the school system will let us know what’s going on.

I just checked the school’s website and there’s still nothing on there about this whole mess.  I’d like to suggest that they do a better job of using the site to inform us of what’s going on, and I’d also like to suggest that the school have a number we can call in to retrieve any messages that we parents might have missed because our kids listened on our behalf.  I’d suggest putting an audio archive online but I don’t want to overtax them.

**Update**  Here’s another point I’d like to make.  I know that due to state personnel laws the school system can’t tell us too much about what’s going on, but why can’t they at least tell us if this is a potential criminal matter or more of a procedural matter?  We got a call last week about a pellet gun being found on a student last week so I’m wondering if Mr. Snow and Mr. Rash were suspended for mishandling that situation.  Or is it something far more serious like what happened recently at Jefferson Middle School?  They could at least let us know the potential severity of the situation.  I’ve had two kids who were or are students of Mr. Snow so I’d at least like to know if he’s suspected of doing something really creepy.  If he’s not suspected of something criminal it would benefit him and the parents to let us know it’s a procedural matter.

**Update #2** I got around to reading the Winston-Salem Journal’s item about the incident and they got confirmation from the sheriff’s office that they are investigating, so I guess we can assume that it’s a criminal investigation.  Justin came home from school with a note from Mr. Gale who is the acting principal.  Here’s the text:

Dear Lewisville Parents:

As most of you know by now, Alan Snow, the science specialist at Lewisville Elementary, and Ron Rash, the principal, were suspended yesterday with pay. School-system administrators are investigating an allegation of misconduct against Mr. Snow and how Mr. Rash handled the allegation. I understand this is a difficult time, and as soon as the investigation is completed, we will provide more information.

I will be filling in for Mr. Rash as principal for a short period of time until the investigation has been completed. I would like for you to know a little about me.

I retired from the Winston-Salem/Forsyth County School System in June, 2005 after serving the school system for thirty-nine years. I served as principal in three schools:

  • 1990-2005 Piney Grove Elementary School
  • 1978-1990 Speas Elementary School
  • 1971-1978 Fairview Intermediate School (now Ashley Elem.)

I also served as a sixth grade teacher at Clemmons Elementary School from 1966-1971.

As I entered Lewisville Elementary Monday morning, it was quickly evident that Lewisville has a very dedicated, caring staff that is providing a wonderful environment for children.  During my short stay at Lewisville, it is my desire to assist you and the staff to continue to provide a safe learning environment for your child. I can assure you that we will do everything in our power to do just that.

If you have any concerns, questions, or comments, I will be happy to talk to you. I look forward to working with you.

Sincerely,
signature
Thomas N. Gale
Acting Principal

I talked to another parent who did hear the automated phone message that was broadcast last night and she said that a contact name and phone number was provided for calling with questions.  She was quite frustrated that she didn’t have a pen to write down the name and number and there was no way to replay the message.  This just reinforces my belief that for something this important the school system needs to come up with some alternative messaging systems.

**Update #3** Here’s a link to WXII’s October 31 report on the investigation.  According to the report the sheriff’s office was informed of the allegations early last week, which begs several questions.  First, why weren’t parents informed about this sooner?  Second, why was Mr. Snow allowed to keep teaching for another week?  If it went to the sheriff’s office early last week it would lead a logical person to believe that the school system knew about this even earlier.  I think we parents are owed some answers.

**Update #4, 11/9/06** I called the Assistant Superintendent who’s responsible for Lewisville Elementary, Charlene Davis, and she returned my call very promptly.  She discussed the issues with me and shared with me that the investigation is now in the hands of the sheriff’s department and that she’s asked the school system’s attorney to make sure the sheriff shares any developments with them as soon as they can.  She also filled me in on the timeline of events and all things considered it sounds like they moved on this as quickly as possible.  She also told me that she’s spoken with lots of parents (apparently I wasn’t the first to call) and that she’s happy to talk with any parents. So if you have questions please do call Ms. Davis.

Quixotry = 365 points

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ScrabbletileWhen I was a kid we played a lot of Scrabble in our family.  In fact one of the defining moments in my adolescence was the first time I beat my Mom and I was pretty sure she wasn’t tanking the game to make me feel better.  So I read with interest this item (found via Lex) about a guy who scored 830 points in one game and his opponent scored 490.  They set three records; highest score by one player, highest combined score and highest score for one word (365 for QUIXOTRY).

I feel for the guy who lost since normally you’re the winner running away if you score almost 500 points, yet he was beat by 340.  To his credit that means that if you removed the 365 point word he actually played his opponent even.  Most mortals would have thrown in their tiles after that one. How bad was that pun?