Neighborhood Schools

Well, congratulations, Wake County, you just may get your neighborhood schools. Since you don't want your kids bussed to the county's existing schools, I guess WCPSS will just have to build schools in your neighborhood.
.

You Think Wake County School Reassignment is Bad?

If you think Wake County School reassignment is bad, be glad you don't live in Chicago.

Since 2005, dozens of Chicago's public schools have been closed and thousands of students reassigned to campuses outside their neighborhoods - and often across gang lines - as part of Renaissance 2010, a program launched by Mayor Richard Daley

So imagine this: Your kid is caught up in a reassignment that puts him and a group of his classmates who happen to belong to, let's say the RED gang, in a school mostly attended by members of, oh let's say the BLUE gang.

That's crossfire that NO parent would want their kid caught in.
.

Crystal Ball Knew About Recession??

A reader of the News & Observer observed that a "letter-writer criticized Wake County schools for missing the mark on 2009 enrollment forecasts, which were used as a basis for the 2006/07 bond referendum. Somehow (back in the day when the Dow was approaching 12,000, the school system was growing by 6,000 students per year and unemployment was half of what it is today), the school system was supposed to forecast our current recession and the effect it would have on student population growth." She further states that she would have liked to borrow such a crystal ball "before my 401(k) took a nosedive."

Very well said!

.

Let's Be Patient, Shall We?

This, from a Letter to the Editor in the News & Observer, after an incident at an intersection in Apex:

Traffic had slowed and then stopped for a scared, confused puppy trying to find her way to her house nearby.

The brief wait proved too much for one driver who sped around the waiting traffic in the wrong lane and proceeded to strike and kill the puppy.

The owners watched in horror as the incident unfolded. And then ... the driver checked his rearview mirror and sped away.

My heart goes out to the owners of that poor, unfortunate dog.

And to the driver, well, may you never become impatient while waiting for a stopped school bus.

.

Ninety-nine and fourty-four one hundredths percent pure

Do you remember those old Ivory Soap commercials that stated their product was 99 44/100% pure? 99.44 is a pretty high number in my opinion. Darned close to 100%, don't you think?

North Carolina State Employees were told they're getting a mandatory 0.5% cut in their salary this year. So let me do the math: Job layoffs across the state yields salaries of zero percent. Job preservation by the state of North Carolina yields 99.5% salaries paid to State employees.

Those State employees who complain about not being able to absorb a pay cut that amounts to all of five dollars per thousand they earn should get over themselves.


UPDATE: The new State Health Plan rates have just come out. Family deductibles for the Standard 80/20 plan have doubled to $1800 over last year's $900. A pay cut of one half of 1% of a State Employee making 40K a year is $200. Yet when the same employee is asked to cough up an additional nine hundred bucks for health care deductible, where's the outrage over that??
.

Large Class Sizes

The good news is that we have finally completed Attendance. The bad news is that the bell is about to ring, so get ready for dismissal.

Crazy North Carolina Weather

What a crazy week we had last week in the Triangle Area. Monday it snowed, (a rare "treat" here in the South,) and schools were closed. The following Saturday temperatures hovered around the 80°F mark. In less than a week, snow to eighty degrees. All this in a region that normally sees about 60-65° temperatures this time of year. Wacky.


.

Discrimination by Amendment

In North Carolina, homophobes want to write discrimination into our state constitution by amendment that defines marriage as between a man and a woman ONLY.

Why stop there? Let's define a family as a married couple and their naturally born children ONLY. No in-vitro fertilization, "Octomom." And no adoption, either.

So if you are unable to have children, you're out of luck. Should've thought of that before you decided to become barren.
.

Competing with Father

We had one of those "Father-Daughter" dances this week here in the Triangle. You know the type - Dad's getting the opportunity to connect with their daughters - often in an age where Dad's too busy trying to hold onto his job, and the girls are too wrapped up in a digital world at the expense of quality time with Dad. From the News & Observer:

The 12th annual Father-Daughter Dance was a sequined study in contrasts, part high school prom, part wedding reception, part disco romp. The event ... was intended to give fathers and daughters an opportunity to spend an evening together.

But since it was held in a church one week before Valentine's Day, it had the additional mission of modeling for girls what courtship, chivalry and dating are supposed to look like.

"It's a good opportunity for girls to get a standard," said Gerry Hubbell, a member of Millbrook and one of the organizers. "It sets a bar."

For the dads, that meant being on their best behavior. Nearly all the men wore jackets and ties, or even tuxedos and corsages. They opened the door for their daughters, indulged them at the reception tables with all the cookies, M&Ms and popcorn they could eat, and generally allowed them to be princesses for the evening.

That's great and all that dads can get together with their kids for a few hours of father-daughter time. What's distressing is to consider it "setting the bar as a model of what courtship, chivalry, and dating are supposed to look like."

How many young men could come close to such a standard? So let's say these girls start dating, some as early as thirteen. If they were to compare the boys' attitudes and behaviors to those of their fathers, the kids are in for a big awakening.

I'm not against the holding of get together events for dads and kids, and I'm certainly OK with girls spending quality time with their fathers. What I'm uncomfortable with is to present the occasion as some sort of "bar" or "standard" against which the girls' future dates are supposed to look like.

So guys, if you're reading this - beware of your first few dates with girls who may have attended events such as these with "dear old Dad." You may be expected to act like a prince.
.

Wake vs Charlotte-Mecklenburg School Policies for Disadvantaged Families

Much has been said in recent months about which policy is better at assisting disadvantaged students in the county school system: Wake County School System (WCPSS) with its reassignment program based on family income and a heavy reliance on bussing at the cost of fractured communities in the name of diversity, or Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools (CMS) with its increased spending on education for the academic needs of low-income students, and community based schools which help to foster community harmony.

Reassignment vs better spending

The Sunday (02/08/2009) edition of The News & Observer has a front page article Whose Schools Work Better? subtitled "Wake disperses low-income students with busing; Charlotte gives high-poverty schools extra money."

The article seems swayed towards having the reader believe that Wake County's solution is better. Consider the graphics within the paper edition of the article:

1. Even though WCPSS exceeds CMS in passing math or reading EOGs by 9.4% overall, the bar graph illustrates that the difference for black students was only 1.8% higher for WCPSS, and for low-income students only 1.3% higher for WCPSS. The difference for Hispanic students was actually 0.4% lower for WCPSS. As the article states, "[T]here's little difference in how minority and low-income students are doing in either school district."
2. In the "By the Numbers" table, funding from the county for WCPSS is 90% of the county funding for CMS; an indicator that Mecklenburg County is spending more for education.
3. Even though WCPSS has 18% fewer bus riders than CMS in the table, and CMS spends 20% more per student for bussing than WCPSS, the bussing cost per mile is 4% greater for WCPSS.
4. The table also tries to show WCPSS superiority by claiming greater SAT scores by only 5% and high school graduation rates greater by 18%.
5. That the article tries to demonstrate the benefits of the WCPSS diversity policy by illustrating in the circle graph that the number of schools with a passing rate of state exams above 60 percent is 83% for WCPSS vs 46.5% of CMS schools is debatable.
   

Other numbers to look at

Whether or not The News & Observer's article sufficiently justifies which, between reassignment or greater spending in high poverty neighborhood schools, is the better method, there are other numbers that can be telling.

It may seem that one indicator of which is the better way to educate our children is to look at the job rates between the counties. After all, what do our educated kids do after leaving the school system? They get jobs, of course. Granted many who graduate from school may go off to college in another state, and some who leave school may get jobs out of state or may even remain unemployed.

According to the Employment Security Commission of North Carolina, the employment rates for this past December for Mecklenburg County was 91.7%. The county had a labor force of 447,953 in December, and 410,948 of them had jobs.

Wake County, on the other hand, had a labor force of 439,480 and 412,468 of them were employed. This rate of 93.9% represents a difference of only 2.2 percentage points from Mecklenburg.

Conclusion

The school systems and their families may never agree on the best way to educate the next generation of future salaried employees and wage earners in Wake and Mecklenburg Counties. Is reassignment in the name of diversity better than spending more in high-poverty schools? Who can tell. But numbers can be revealing.

Let's "Do the Math," as they say, shall we?

.