TIME FOR THE NEXT PHASE – Dad Gone Wild

TIME FOR THE NEXT PHASE – Dad Gone Wild

TIME FOR THE NEXT PHASE

“For convenience, history is often viewed as a conflict between the instinct for order and the impulse toward chaos. Both are necessary: both are manifestations of the need to survive. Without order, nothing exists: without chaos, nothing grows. And yet the struggle between them sheds more blood than any other war.”
― Stephen R. Donaldson, The Gap Into Vision: Forbidden Knowledge

 

Today I did something that I haven’t done in nearly a year. I kissed my wife good-bye as she headed out for school. Quite a bit different than the past couple of months when I’d so the same, but she’d head back to her corner of the bedroom where she’d deliver instruction to students remotely.

I can’t even imagine what is going through her head as she makes the 8-mile drive this morning. She’s missed her students terribly over the past months, but there still has to be some fear as the pandemic is still ongoing.

Today is just a planning day. A chance to get the classroom ready and prepare for the arrival of students tomorrow. By the end of the week, MNPS will have students attending at every grade level. And with that will come more unique challenges.

The conversation around schools has been rightfully centered on teachers, but let’s not forget CONTINUE READING: TIME FOR THE NEXT PHASE – Dad Gone Wild

2021 Medley #4 – Indiana Still Hates Public Ed | Live Long and Prosper

2021 Medley #4 – Indiana Still Hates Public Ed | Live Long and Prosper

2021 Medley #4 – Indiana Still Hates Public Ed

School “reform” in Indiana

In April of 2019, I wrote,

This year, just like in the past, the state of Indiana, ruled by one party with a supermajority in the legislature, has worked to disrespect public schools and public school teachers. The only way to fight this, aside from the daily grind of contacting legislators about every single damaging piece of legislation, is to elect people who don’t hate public schools and public school teachers.

One would think we’d be able to get the teachers, themselves, on board with this…

Sadly, nothing has changed and my fellow Hoosiers, including many of my former public school colleagues, continue to send the same anti-public education folks to Indy. In this year’s session of the Indiana General Assembly the Republican supermajority, like Republican legislators across the country (see here, and here, for example) are doing everything they can to damage the public schools of the state.

They are attempting to divert more money for the state’s already expansive voucher program…despite the studies that have shown that vouchers don’t improve education. They will likely succeed. The state, of course, hasn’t looked CONTINUE READING: 2021 Medley #4 – Indiana Still Hates Public Ed | Live Long and Prosper

NYC Public School Parents: More wasteful DOE spending on busing, devices, and possibly School Safety Agents to come

NYC Public School Parents: More wasteful DOE spending on busing, devices, and possibly School Safety Agents to come

More wasteful DOE spending on busing, devices, and possibly School Safety Agents to come

The Panel for Educational Policy will vote on a new batch of DOE contracts this Wed. on February 24. As an elected official wrote me over the weekend, “Am looking at PEP Contracts – some are questionable.”  I replied, “Always! Which ones now?”

Here are some:  There are retroactive contracts totaling more than $58 million for school busing, mostly for the month of January, except for a Reliant bus contract for Jan. 15 through Feb. 14 for $14.6M. 

This is despite the fact that DOE created a separate non-profit company (with less transparency) that would acquire Reliant and operate its 835 routes from January to June of this year, for a total of $59 million, according to  the contracts approved at the Dec. 4, 2020 PEP meeting. 

This new proposed contract document explains:

This emergency has risen as a result of the need to provide pupil transportation during the 2020-2021 school-year, while the DOE completes individual negotiations with Reliant for their pupil transportation services. These transportation services are necessary for the preservation of the health, safety, and general welfare of students and the school system as a whole. As such, declarations of Emergency Procurement and Emergency Implementation of contracts by the Senior Executive Director for the Division of Contracts and Purchasing and the Chancellor, respectively, were made (see attached).

Unexplained is what has caused the unanticipated extension of these negotiations with Reliant, and whether they relate to the  $142M in unpaid pension costs that the DOE insisted to the PEP and reporters they wouldn’t have to cover, but the union insisted they would. 

The proposed contract list also includes paying IBM another $5.12M to “stage” and send 55,000 new iPads, similar to the process from last year, when they paid IBM a total of CONTINUE READING: NYC Public School Parents: More wasteful DOE spending on busing, devices, and possibly School Safety Agents to come

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Big Education Ape: THIS WEEK WITH NEWBLACKMAN (IN EXILE) - http://bigeducationape.blogspot.com/2021/02/this-week-with-newblackman-in-exile-blm_20.html

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