On the topic of Education...in Clallam County

Hello Fellow Homeowners & Renters,
Until this Port Angeles school tech levy election is over on May 20, I will continue to send updates to you that will hopefully assist you in making your decisions.  I hope too you will discuss this information with your friends and neighbors.

Today I learned about a $13.2 million grant which was awarded to Washington state schools...only to be lost due to our teacher's union rules.

Some months ago, I listened to a radio interview with a Washington teacher who stated that the single biggest obstacle to our children receiving a world class education in Washington is the WEA (Washington Education Association).

Fifty per cent of the check you write for your property taxes goes to education; and a big portion of that DOES NOT go to educating our children.

According to the following article which appeared in today's Seattle Times:
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/cgi-bin/PrintStory.pl?document_id=2004394554&zsection_id=2003749464&slug=grants06m&date=20080506

The National Math & Science Initiative wanted to disburse this grant by paying teachers directly.  But Washington's teacher's union's collective-bargaining laws require that teacher pay (a small portion of the grant) be negotiated between unions and school districts.

"The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which provided $10 million for the effort, was disappointed that Washington state couldn't find a solution, noting that some of the other states involved have teachers unions, too.

"Honestly, I can't figure out why they couldn't solve this," said Steve Seleznow, the foundation's program director for education.

But Rich Wood, spokesman for the Washington Education Association (WEA), said that outside groups can't just set up a new system for paying local teachers.

"That's not how it works in our state."

The WEA, he said, was particularly concerned about tying teacher pay directly to student test scores."

That last statement from the spokesman for the WEA is very telling.  In other words, the teachers' union doesn't want anything tying test results to teacher performance.  They want to avoid accountability at any cost.  Even if that means denying our children a multi-million dollar grant.

Here's a video report from the Evergreen Freedom Foundation with an eyepopping interview of its CEO on the loss of this grant and the role the WEA paid in losing it (the comment by a teach posted at the end is very interesting indeed):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UQqiJGyMe7I

(Note:  the EFF was the organization that challenged the WEA and won the Supreme Court case which foiled the WEA's attempt to use non-union teacher dues for the WEA's own political causes.)


And here's another wasteful fact:  teachers who are awaiting hearings on various complaints - which could range from a minor infraction to assault - are assigned to what teachers call "the rubber room" where they must report daily, sometimes for years, to await a decision.  Here they read magazines, play cards and nap....all at full pay, all at taxpayer expense - as dictated by union rules.

The Seattle School District paid $2 million to teachers last year while they await administrative hearings.  Two million dollars of our taxes going to teachers who must sit and do nothing.  Okay, so some of them may not be "fit" to teach, but surely they can be given some job in the school system to make them useful to taxpayers.

There are so many many ways our government run school system is wasting our hard earned tax dollars and failing our children (and why home schooling is on the increase).  Changing the state constitution to allow passage of school levies by a simple (as opposed to super) majority, further removed our schools' responsibility to accountability.

Today's PDN front page story tells of the PA School Board's cut to this year's school budget (partially achieved by job attrition and declining enrollment).  But the School District will go ahead with our Legislature's mandated (but unfunded by the state; translation: to be funded through property taxes) all-day kindergarten.  If you are interested, I can point you to reports which state that this approach to learning does not necessarily help our children learn and in some respects can actually hinder it.

Also interesting to note in the PA School budget trim:  $14,000 saved by turning off computers during evenings, weekends, and school breaks.  Stoopid question of the day:  how many years has this been going on and why didn't the school board think about saving us that $14,000 in energy costs before now?  I won't even go into green issues with this one - not to mention wear and tear on the computers - which we are being asked to replace.

All something to think about when filling out your ballots.
Shelley
P.S.  I would certainly understand if some of you were so angry at this that you felt it necessary to write a letter to the editor of the Peninsula Daily News.
P.P.S.  Please do not construe the statements above as our being opposed to education or taxes for education.  We are NOT!  We simply want our tax dollars spent wisely, our children to receive a world class education, and the state of Washington, the WEA, and our schools to put the children first.

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EDUCATION: More spending on digital TV than Education

Next February, somewhere in America, someone out there is going to flip on his tube for some Law & Order: SVU and see nothing but fuzz. He'll probably grapple with his rabbit ears and pound the side of his aging CRT, but no amount of cajoling will bring back Ice-T's interrogation room or Richard Belzer's last unfunny stand. That's because on Tuesday, Feb. 17, 2009, the FCC will repossess the analog spectrum from the major television broadcasters and the networks will go all-digital.

Most of us get our television reception from either cable or satellite and will therefore be unaffected by the change—but 17 million U.S. households still rely upon analog, over-the-air broadcasts for their TV. If those viewers don't upgrade to digital televisions or purchase digital converter boxes, they will no longer be able to access standard broadcast channels (although many low-power UHF stations will continue on in analog).

The prospect of good, honest, television-loving Americans losing their signal has caused a lot of hand wringing of late. According to a January survey by the National Association of Broadcasters, 79 percent of Americans are aware of the transition. That number is up from 38 percent the previous year, but it still means that 21 percent of the citizenry has no clue that the country is about to go through a wrenching technological change with its most massive of mass mediums. A recent New York Times article cites a study estimating that 9 million households could lose one or more stations, even if they do get converters.

All this despite a huge information campaign and an incentive program that amounts to an investment by American taxpayers of up to $1.5 billion. The National Telecommunications and Information Administration, a division of the Department of Commerce, is offering 33 million coupons at $40 each toward the purchase of a converter box, with a maximum of two per household. (Amazon is currently selling a Sansonic FT300A, for example, at around $59, which would make the total cost to a consumer less than $20). Ironically enough, the Digital Television Transition and Public Safety Act was part of the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005.

That, to me, raises the question: Do Americans have a right to television? I asked this recently of spokespeople from the FCC, the NAB, and the NTIA and received reactions ranging from puzzlement to outright hostility.

The question is not meant to be cynical. There is, after all, a public-interest rationale for as many people as possible to have access to the television medium—in fact, it's the sheer number of people who have access to television that makes it such a powerful technology. According to Nielsen Media Research, 98.2 percent of American households have a television. By some measures, that even beats the penetration rate of basic adult literacy skills, which was last pegged in 2003 at 86 percent (to be sure, a comparison between households and individuals is inexact at best, but the statistic is still jarring). So when it comes to getting the word out for emergency alerts, public service announcements, news, election information and educational programming, there's no more effective distribution method.

Nevertheless, it would be naive to think that television's primary function in most households is as an emergency alert or learning tool. And it's illuminating to put the government's $1.5 billion allocation in perspective. Consider: The proposed 2009 federal budget for adult basic and literacy education is $574.6 million.

My point here is not to say that the federal government cares more about TVs than books—it's only to point out just how surprisingly important it currently seems to be to the nation's well-being that every American have TV access. It made me wonder if our elected officials are as concerned about ensuring that we all have access to broadband Internet. Turns out that there is a massive federal program to stimulate the growth of broadband—administered, oddly enough, by the Department of Agriculture, which through its Rural Development program has approved 85 loans totaling $1.68 billion since 2002 to help fund broadband infrastructure rollout in underserved areas.

Is nationwide availability of speedy Wikipedia queries as important as delivering Ryan Seacrest digitally to your living room? I leave that to you, dear readers, to decide.

Excerpt from article about TRUE COST of BOTTLE WATER

In addition to the 17 million barrels of oil (equivalent to just under the GDP of the Cayman Islands at today’s prices) used in production, bottled water consumes gallons and gallons of water.

Three gallons of the wet stuff is required to produce one gallon of what you will happily pay a dollar for, largely because of the length and complexity of the various “purification” processes and the evaporation loss that takes place while the water is in the plant. This is quite an ugly statistic, when juxtaposed to the fact that less than one percent of the water on our planet is both accessible and potable.

Besides the extravagant amount of oil used to make the bottles and large volumes of water used in the bottling process, there are of course, several other considerations. Firstly, there are the transport costs - by the time you transport every bottle by rail or truck and keep it cool, you may as well have filled it one-fourth of the way with oil. Let’s also not forget the operating costs of the factories themselves and the profit the bottled water companies have to make for their shareholders.Therefore, purely from an economic standpoint, if you only drink bottled water, you’re a mug.

Beyond that, there is also an environmental impact from production. This in fact, is quite simple to calculate: every ton of PET plastic for the bottles produces 3 tons of carbon–adding 2.5 Million tons of carbon dioxide emissions to the 17 million barrels of oil.

Info from the Pacific Institute

Written by Ben · Filed Under Green living

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The purpose of this site is to deal with the big, three E's which affect us all - that is, the Economy, The Environment and Education.

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