Years ago my state initiated something called “open enrollment” in our public school system. Families and kids can choose which district they would like their kids to attend. If they opt out of their home district, they can request another district allow their kids to go there. The home district must approve the transfer, the new non-home district can choose whether or not to accept the kid. Once a kid is enrolled in the new district, they cannot force them to leave if they are failing or being a twit. On the other hand, the home district has to allow them to come back at any time.

Over the years, various bugs have been worked out of the system. For instance, the state doesn’t want kids hopping from one district to another for sports. They addressed that with very rigid eligibility rules that seem to be working quite well. Even so there are still some problems. One of them is funding. Parents continue to pay school taxes in their home district while their kids attend class in a different district. Those parents have nothing vested in the home district and tend to vote down additional funding the home district may need. It can be frustrating.

All of those problems seem inconsequential when I sit back and look at what Bush’s “NCLB” (No Child Left Behind) program is doing to a number of kids. I understand that he was hoping to fix problems in education. I know there were some problems. I know some kids were struggling. However, I’m seeing more kids being left behind in a rather ugly game that’s happening.

Kids are tested, retested, and tested again. The plan is all kids – even special learners – will be at high performing levels by 2014. Everywhere the pressure is on for districts to make sure as many kids as possible do well on these tests. To meet this goal, some things are being left out of curriculums altogether so teachers can focus on teaching to the test. Perhaps one can argue those things are not “necessary”, but I argue that higher level thinking requires more than the rote memory type things that is needed on these tests.

Within each district students are divided into all kinds of categories – males, females, Native American males and females, African American males and females, free and reduced lunch eligibility kids, special education kids, etc. etc. etc. If any of those groups doesn’t make the grade, the school has failed to meet AYP (annual yearly progress). If too many kids are absent and don’t take the tests, the school fails to meet AYP. Currently, my school is failing to meet AYP. Both our elementary and secondary schools as a whole flew through the testing, yet we needed one more special education student to pass the tests in order to meet – it didn’t happened.

While each year, the bar for passing the tests gets higher more and more school districts fail to meet AYP. Currently, over half the districts in my state are failing for one reason or another. If a district continues to fail, their funding can be cut – along with other penalties. All of this puts school and students into a pretty sad situation.

I never truly realized how much until this year. I don’t know how I missed this or why I didn’t pay closer attention to what is happening. Whatever the reason, I am saddened by what I am seeing.

Several of my co-workers and I were looking at the “list” of kids that are cross-registering out of our district this year. Each of them were kids that were struggling students; a number of them were “my” kids – the ones I’ve blogged about – the ones that I have poured my heart into – the ones that are kids in trouble that need extra help. I sighed as I mentally said good-bye to them. It didn’t hit me until someone said “This is going to help with AYP.”

It’s true.

In an tragic sense, it’s a cause for celebration among districts when their “kids in trouble” bail out and head to other districts. Along with their problems, they take their failing test scores with them. Those scores become another district’s problem; it puts another district at risk. It saves your own.

I hate this.

The very kids that we should be helping most become liabilities to school districts. No district wants to risk the loss of funding. The kids are becoming casualties. In essence, we are leaving more children behind now that we’ve adopted “no child left behind”. Districts are better off without them.

I’m angry.

One neighboring district with a large student population has come right out and said – they crunch the numbers to find out how many absent kids they can have before being cited. After that number has been determined, they tell their slowest kids to stay home the day the test is being administered. As of yet, my district doesn’t play that game – we test 100% of our kids.

Newspapers report the results. People see failing districts and mutter about how bad our schools are. They don’t realize what’s happening behind those doors. They don’t know some districts are failing because two of their kids with Down’s Syndrome weren’t able to pass reading and math tests at the 8^th grade level. They don’t realize that some are failing because too many kids failed to show up the day the test was given. They don’t realize how many variables are.

All that aside – my heart is breaking for those lost kids – the ones no district wants to claim.

Fuck the whole thing – THOSE kids have always been my very favorites. While I enjoy teaching and working with the higher achievers too, I utterly love the challenge of the troubled kids. To many many districts and administrators those kids are simply liabilities.

It sucks – welcome to NCLB.

Peace

When we bought this place, the hub was thrilled to have a giant detached garage where he could store his toys. The building is commonly called the “Man Cave”. In it he stores boats, 4-wheelers, the mower, snowmobiles, fishing gear, ski equipment, etc. What once looked like a giant, roomy outbuilding is fast becoming filled to the brim.

We also have a very small barn on our property. We cleaned the place out so we could use that to store patio furniture and gardening stuff – the barn is more “my” outside space. That said, I hate going in there – it’s musty, dusty, spidery, and buggy creepy – not my thing!

Our house has a two stall attached garage as well. The plan for this space (other than storing vehicles) was shelving for holiday stuff, a place to keep the trash and recycling bins, and stuff like that. Nowhere in our plan was “Mouse Condo” – yet, the little buggers have decided to make our home their home.

They have settled into the garage in alarming numbers. Mancub has become a master mouse trapper. He’s baiting, setting, and dumping the dead mice on a daily basis. It’s simply disgusting!

If that wasn’t bad enough, they little creatures discovered the closet in my sunroom! My house has three floors of living space – the sunroom and foyer are on a floor by themselves. The sunroom is one of my favorite rooms in this house – it has a lot of windows, skylights, a woodstove, our hot tub, and a gazillion plants. It’s a wonderful place to curl up in a cushy chair and read a book.

In one corner of the room is a large walk in storage closet. I keep all kinds of things in this space. This is where my mistake began – I put a small bag of bird seed in thei. The damn bag may have well been a neon sign saying “Hello Mice – The Buffet is OPEN”. Grrrrrrrrrrrrr!

Fortunately, the rest of the house is rodent free. We’ve set traps everywhere we could think of, and all of them have remained empty. But, between the storage closet and the attached garage, I’m utterly and completely disgusted, horrified, repulsed, and cruded out.

I cannot WAIT until they are gone. In the meantime, my mighty mouse trapping son will remain hard at work.

Yuk!

Peace

Summer decided to show up this week. It’s f’ing hot and sticky outside and I’m fast becoming an ornery wench.

I have loved the way June, July, and the first part of August were. The days were generally pleasant – rarely above 75 and often below 70 during the day. Evenings were in the 50s and, occasionally, they’d drop to the 40s. We’ve not even taken the cover off our A/C unit!

Suddenly, the sticky icky humid goo that makes a person feel like a soggy rag 24/7 has invaded my space.

It’s not supposed to last – within a couple days I’ll be a happy blogger once again!

Can you tell I have ABSOLUTELY nothing to babble about today?

Peace

Today I took the plunge into the world of a new cell contract and technically a new provider. About twelve years ago when I first got a cell phone I went with Cellular One – they were about the only provider that provided service to this area.

I’ve been happy with them. When everyone else was on minute plans, I was happily dealing with unlimited minutes for less money. Things were good – then AT&T came along and bought up my company. They continued to honor Cell One contracts and would do so until you needed a new phone. When the old ones conked out, you had to switch over if you wanted a new phone.

Even now companies like Verizon have ignored the area where I live so it was a no-brainer to simply go with AT&T. I could use other services as long as I didn’t plan on using them in my own town, workplace, or house.

I’d put off the switch as long as I could. My own phone was dying a slow death and within the last month both cubs ran their phones through the washing machine. Only the hub’s SIX year old phone was going strong.

I pranced into AT&T, set up a plan, picked up four shiny new phones, and eagerly hurried home to learn how to use them. Babycub chose a phone she thought was adorable. For the hub, I picked up the most basic and simple phone I could find. I knew anything with even a wee bit of advanced technology would send him into a tailspin. Finding a phone to suit him was a challenge. Boycub and I have the same phones – different colors.

The cheapo hubby phone and the adorable Babycub phone seem to be just peachy keen fine. The phones I purchased for Boycub and I sucketh. Both of us had more bars on our older phones. Reception here at my house bites the biggie and has me crazed. I’m back to the days of standing on one’s head on the corner of the deck while holding a piece of aluminum to get any kind of reception.

Needless to say – I am pissed!

I went back to the store determined to buy a more expensive (therefore, in my mind, better) phone. The phone dude suggested I keep this one for a couple of days to see if things improved. Like an idiot, I did. I came home, made a few calls, and quickly realized that my new phone is a terrible phone for my house.

I have to make a switcheroo on this thing.

Tomorrow morning I am heading to the lake again – I shall be paying a visit to AT&T on my way out of town. Wish me luck!

For those of you celebrating the 4th – I hope you have an awesome holiday! I’ll be at the lake with a whole lot of family – playing and having a luverly time (hopefully, with a spanking new phone!).

See ya’ when I get back into town!

Peace

Do you ever just want to smack some idiot politician upside the head and ask them wtf they are thinking?

My governor – and do pay attention to this asshole because he’s planning on making a run for the White House in 2012 – needs a good smackin’.

While we are no California, my state is in trouble financially. Our congress put together a bill that would enable the state to continue to offer almost all of the services currently offered. To pay for this, there would have been a tax increase on those making more than $250,000 and on alcohol. Seems like a relatively painless fix to me.

However, enter Emperor Pawlenty who swore to not raise taxes once he was elected. He has what is basically a line item veto or unlimited powers and decided to balance the budget himself. Excuse me? Why the hell do we HAVE a congress if the Emperor is going to do whatever the fuck he wants anyway?

Can you tell I am pissed?

This asshole has stuck to his “no new taxes” throughout his reign over my state. He’s simply cut cut cut and passed the need to tax or raise fees onto local governments. Shit still goes up, but the Emperor will be able to honestly say “when I was Emperor of Minnesota, I balanced the budget without raising taxes”. What a jackass.

Yesterday he announced “his” budget for my state. It’s going to hurt so many people horribly. There will be cuts to the healthcare benefits of the poor. There will be cuts to numerous other social programs that are there to help people.  Public schools k-12 will have their state aid payments deferred for months. This means schools will have to borrow money to make their bills. Higher education institutions will have to make drastic cuts to get past the cuts they are facing. City, county, and township governments are going to be scrambling to balance their budgets and finding new ways to take on fees to help make up the difference.

Essentially, the middle and lower classes just got fucked by the governor. Those who could afford to kick in a bit more won’t be hit at all – additional fees or local taxes don’t tend to hit people making quarter of a million dollar salaries anywhere nearly as badly as those making twenty grand a year.

Financially, my family is relatively stable. I don’t like additionally fees, but we can handle them.  We have health insurance. My heart goes out to those who cannot afford additional costs or have to make a choice between food and a trip to the doctor.

Oh, I guess it doesn’t matter. I guess I should be lucky that I have an Emperor that didn’t raise taxes. After all, he did keep a promise.

Peace

“Do you smell that?”

That’s how it started. Girlcub was sniffing and wrinkling her nose in dismay as the pungent odor of skunk wafted through our abode. Almost immediately, Boycub came flying up the stairs from the family room to add his two cents to the mutters and grumbles of the girl people of the house.

The little smelly skunk wasn’t IN the house, but he or she certainly left their smelly mark. Something outside must have spooked it into letting loose a spray of ugliness that spread from the great indoors into our living space. Yuk. That’s all I can say.

When it was bedtime Boycub opted to crash on the living room sofa because the floor where his room is seemed to be even more rank than the rest of the house. Not long after I’d drifted off to dreamland, I heard the Yorkie barking furiously. Boycub shooshed the dog while I laid in my bed thinking “Wow, the last time she barked like that we had a bear. I should get up and check………….” That’s as far as I got before I drifted back into slumber.

About three a.m. something woke me and I wandered into the kitchen for a drink of water. Boycub woke up and mentioned the barking and the bear possibility. We wandered downstairs to the sunroom to flip on the floodlights that would light up the part of the yard that houses my birdfeeders. Yes, we’d been “beared” once again.

Grrrrrrrrrrrrrr (that’s me, not the bear growling)

This pisses me off! I held off with the feeders after the last time this black demon raided my yard. I coaxed my birds back with sunflower seed and suet goodness. It has been a while without that damn furry thief stealing into my yard under the cover of darkness – I thought I was safe.

No! It destroyed one thistle feeder and stole another. It mangled a shepherd’s hook that held a hummingbird feeder and a peanut/suet feeder. It bent the peanut/suet feeder in half and laid in one of my gardens while trying to shove it’s bear face into what was left of the feeder.

This is war! I will not go quietly into the night with my tail between my legs while my happy little birds suffer sunflower seed withdrawal. I shall endeavor to defeat the furry beast that plagues me.

I’ve contemplated the value of a bear skin rug and the taste of bear sausage and decided neither appeal to me. The bear shall live. However, I’m going to show it a thing or two. My feeders will be slipped outside early each morning and brought inside each night. I refuse to feed the large furry beasts that share my woods – they can fend for themselves.

Peace

I befuddled my cubs when I came home from work today and announced who my “dinner dates” were. There are a couple of women teachers that are *ponders how to put this nicely* – odd. Yeah, that’s a nice way of saying they are a bit different.

The two of them are joined at the hip and pretty exclusive. It’s never bothered me because they don’t tend to be the type of people I hang out with anyway. We get along fine at work, but that’s it. They are the kind of teachers that tend to be punitive and happy to write out detentions, take away baseball caps, and follow minute little rules that I’m content to ignore.

Today one of them asked me to join the two of them and another teacher at a local restaurant that was doing some kind of teacher appreciation thing. What the heck, why not? My dinner plans included making tacos, but there were leftovers in the fridge for the fam – I said I’d go.

They were going to call me over ninety minutes ago.

Yup, I’ve been stood up.

My kids are giggling about this one. My hub is doing a really bad job of not saying things like “you’ve been dumped by the geek squad”. My bestest work friend snorked with laughter.

I’m simply hungry because my luverly family inhaled the leftover lasagna and there isn’t much else that I feel like eating.

Let me just say, I think this is rude. Certainly we aren’t best buddies, but I’m never rude to them. We chit chat at school – we never hang out away from the building. Initially the rest of us tried to get them involved when we were all going out, but they turn us down all the time. We’ve pretty much given up.

Hmph! I think I’ll invite ‘em to Dairy Queen and drop their ice cream cones!

Peace

Who knew a US passport that is supposedly good for ten years is actually only good for nine and a half years – or that one issued to a kid is good for four and a half years rather than the five years it says when issued?  Who knew the expiration date was actually six months prior to what it says inside the passport?

Certainly I was clueless. (hush, I realize there are a lot of things I am clueless about, but I didn’t think international travel was one of ‘em)

A student asked me about this. He’s traveling with me to Europe next year and his passport is set to expire a few months after we return. His father told him to ask me if he could still use it. I was puzzled. Seriously, if the expiration date says “June 1, 2010”, I would assume that as long as I was safely back inside the US borders before that date, there wouldn’t be a problem. Instead, if your passport is set to expire June 1, 2010, you may not be able to use it after December of 2009.

*blinks*

When my student asked I checked with another teacher that travels with me. Like me, she didn’t think the “six months before expiration” thing made any sense. At least she didn’t until she and her son headed off to fly to Germany. They headed to the airport a few days ago, her son’s passport expires in July; they ran into problems at the airport because of the six month thing.

Apparently some countries will not allow people whose passports are going to be expiring into their country. Because some countries are pretty tight about this six month window, a number of airlines will no longer let anyone fly out if they are carrying a passport that falls within the six month window.

Color me silly, but why have an expiration date that doesn’t seem to mean much?

Every time I’ve gone through customs – and I do this a LOT – they ask me “how long are you planning on staying in the country” (among other questions). I should think if I said I was going to be there longer than my passport would allow, they could tell me then.  If I were going to stick around and cause problems, an expiration date or a six month window wouldn’t stop me – idiots, lawbreakers, terrorists, and the like don’t necessarily worry about being legal anyway.

Oh well, I’ve now double, triple, and quadruple checked on the fam’s passports. We’re all set to scamper in and out of the country over the summer. Nobody is “expiring” any time soon.

Peace

Tonight is the Academic Awards banquet, and I’ve been selected by a student as “her” teacher to honor. It’s a compliment, but I’m feeling like an utter shit because I truly have no desire to go. I want to stay home and play outside. We’ve spent a chunk of time batting a volleyball around out there today and now the party is over – I am waiting for my hair to dry so I can get dressed and head out of here to make nice-nice with the grown ups. Shame on me! I truly do really like the girl that picked me. She’s an awesome young woman who will wow the world when she graduates. Her parents, the ones I’ll be sitting with, are friendly and easy to talk to. I’m just wishing I could go back outside for a wee bit more sunshine.

I think I’m feeling ornery because my next three weekends are booked and I am not a happy camper about it. Next weekend is the fishing opener. The hubster is heading out with his friends for their annual, crazed camping thingy. No kids allowed. That means Boycub, who is itching to drown a worm or two, can only go if I take him to the cabin. I’m taking the Cubs to the cabin. The following weekend the hub is taking both of our sons camping and fishing. Normally, that’s an awesome weekend for Babycub and me. We play all weekend. This time, Babycub and I are going to have the grandbaby spending the weekend with us. The following weekend it’s back to the cabin.

I love GrandbabyCub, but she just turned one. One year olds are a lot of work. If we take her outside, she’ll be shoving every leave, twig, or rock into her mouth unless we watch her like a hawk. It’s not my idea of being a total bum while the boys are gone. It’s not what we do at all.

I know I sound like the worst gram ever. I am consumed with guilt when I even think out loud that it’s going to be inconvenient to spend the weekend chasing the baby around. It would be sooooo much easier if she were just a couple years older. I don’t want to deal with diapers or Gerber.

There you have it; why I’m feeling a wee bit of a cranky-pants at the moment. All this, and I still have to correct papers on the Napoleonic Code tonight. *insert yawn* It’s going to be a long night.

Peace

PS – Do you like this design? I think it’s rather sharp.

I knew knew knew knew knew knew knew this would occasionally be a problem, but I figured it wouldn’t irritate me as much a it actually is. Having my own kids attend the school where I work has its ups and downs. I try to stay out of their lives here as much as I can. I don’t stop teachers and ask them how my little darlings are doing and I don’t ask for special favors. The grades my kids earn is all on them. Last year my son had his first detention – it was given to him by my best friend. Such is life.

This year Babycub has made her appearance at my school. I’ll brag for a bit and say I’m damn proud of both of my cubs. They are not in trouble, they have wonderful friends, they are involved with things around school, and they get decent grades. If they begin to screw any of that up, I plan on kicking their asses. That’s the way it goes.

That said, Babycub has a class with one of the teachers who traditionally has made it a point of running off to any staff member who has a child going to school here. It seems our kids are held to an entirely different standard than the rest. A couple of days ago the conversation went like this:

Her – “Can I talk to you – in private?”

Moi – “Of course!”

Her – “It’s about Babycub. I’m a bit concerned and wanted you to know about this right away. When she’s in my class and she finishes her assignments, she doesn’t do extra credit” at this point she gasps before continuing with “she talks to NaughtyBoy and sometimes plays computer games!” (it’s a keyboarding class – they all sit at comps)

Moi – “Does she need more extra credit?”

Her – “No, she’s at 118% in my class.”

Moi – “Are they supposed to refrain from talking when they are done?”

Her – “No, they are allowed to talk to each other.”

Moi – “Oh, they aren’t supposed to play games?”

Her – “Oh no, they all play games when they are done.”

*bangs head on desk* I don’t get it! What is Babycub doing wrong here? I considered the source of the tattling and told the teacher I’d talk to Babycub about this (not that I know what “this” actually is)

Today I was in our work area making photocopies and someone grumbled about NaughtyBoy. Immediately, this same teacher pipes up with “Oh, and that boy is Babycub’s best friend in MY class!”

Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

I looked over and said “They’re allowed to talk in your class, you have her sitting in the front of a row with nobody across from her and NaughtyBoy directly behind her. I should think her choices are somewhat limited here, don’t you?”

She paused for a second and said “Yeah well, I don’t really care who she is talking to or if she’s playing games because she is getting an A+ in my class. She’s my best student!”

*bangs head again* Let me just say, I now have a keyboard imprint on my forehead from all the banging this teacher has me doing lately.

Oy, I have YEARS more of this to look forward to!

Peace