Monthly Archives: December 2006

Education news today

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KnoxNews reports that Farragut folks are concerned because they’re afraid that too many students will be zoned out of their overcrowded school and into the new Hardin Valley High School.

Farragut High administrators fear that electives like the chorus, as well as honors and Advanced Placement classes and sections, may disappear should many students be zoned to the new Hardin Valley High School.

“When you cut too low of sections and (teachers) can’t teach other things, you start looking at cutting positions,” said Farragut High Principal Michael Reynolds. “The course selections have taken 20 years to grow, and for some teachers, that’s their entire career invested in this. If we cut courses, it’ll be hard to grow them back.”

Jacket, I think, has often made the point that smaller high schools (just a few hundred students) are better.  A smaller student body may make for more personalized instruction, but it does definitely cut into the course offerings.

Still, it seems that being around 1,500 students — even 1,400 — would yield a workable number to keep the AP curriculum.  After all, Farragut is a fairly homogeneous community: mostly upper-income, mostly white, mostly English speaking… if Oak Ridge (with a more diverse student population) can maintain a broad range of AP classes with a student population of 1,542, I would think that Farragut could as well.

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From this morning’s paper, it’s evident that the big-city mayors are still leaning on the Governor to hurry up and do something about education funding.  I concur that we need to do something, but unfortunately, the four mayors seem to be pushing for a solution that would help their cities at the expense of others.

I had to smile at the Gov.’s response though:

The governor said he has told the mayors to “just cool your jets a little bit, we’re going to tackle this issue.”

So long as he tackles it fairly, and devises a solution that hurts NO ONE.  In a state that’s at 90% of the nation’s per-capita income but only spends 76% of the national average per pupil on education… well, we have our priorities out of order.

This powerpoint from Matt Murray at UT’s Center for Business and Economic Research is worth the read.  (Right-click the link and select “save link as.”)

End of a long day

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In the last five minutes of this last day of November, it’s 54 degrees outside. On the deck, I hear a soft, rhythmic chirping… tree frogs? It’s a little more musical than crickets, with more tonal variety than cicadas. I hope that they do not freeze as the temperature plummets tomorrow.

Today was a full one, spanning a whole range of pursuits. I worked for about five hours (beginning at 4:30 a.m.), put in a couple of hours with my school board hat on, did a little tech support with my dad, hung the wreaths, and worked a couple more hours. At three, I headed for Delta’s school and logged some volunteer time with the middle school TSA — bright kids, fantastic program that lets them explore a variety of things from precision woodworking, graphic design, electronics, building robots, video production, programming, digital photography, and parliamentary procedure. There’s a lot more, but you can see the list of this year’s competitive events here.

After that, I worked a bit more, then headed out for the season’s first holiday party at Adams Craft Herz Walker architects. It was an enjoyable evening… followed by digging up some research on BEP cost components for the CAFE group that publishes every Thursday.

Before I knew it, it was now, which was tomorrow when I started this post. It’s a good thing my calendar is sort of clear tomorrow today.

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I’ve been thinking about Christmas, and how to do it better this time. I think I’m over the senseless buying of stuff just to make sure that I can keep up. This year, I’m really trying to be selective and to choose gifts that mean something to the recipient even if the cost is negligible. Unfortunately, that’s harder than just spending money.

Two procurements are complete (one niece, one brother-in-law), and one is nearly finished (which was really supposed to be my youngest sister’s gift last year, but it took longer than expected). I still have a long way to go.

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