This week, two more bills related to physical education and activity requirements will be heard in the House Education K-12 Subcommittee.  From TSBA’s TLN Notes:

HB 0836 by Rep. Gary Moore (D-Joelton) rewrites the present requirement of 90 minutes of physical activity per week to one that mandates 30 minutes per day. HB 1441 by Rep. Beth Harwell (R-Nashville) requires every public school student in grades K-8 to participate in physical education each day during the school year – 150 minutes per week for elementary students and 225 minutes per week for middle school students.

There’s no disputing that obesity is on the rise, not only amongst children, but the population in general.  And therein lies the problem: kids aren’t getting fat and sedentary at school, but like so many other things, school is expected to provide the solution.

Schools have our children for about seven hours a day, 183 days per year.  If we expect public schools to fulfill their mission of actually educating students in the core subjects, providing exposure to a little bit of art and music (helping to develop different parts of the brain), and all of the other things that are already required, we cannot add more unrelated responsibilities.

At some point, legislators are going to have to realize that parents do have an actual role in rearing these children, and that schools cannot both parent and educate in 183 partial days per year.

This morning’s video of Zach Wamp’s appearance on MSNBC regarding the President’s plans for universal health care was a little jarring — even though I’m a long-time fan of Congressman Wamp.

Don’t get me wrong; I’m very leery of universal health care.  I think quality would suffer and costs would soar — and the people causing the increased costs wouldn’t be the ones paying for it.  My problem with Zach’s sound bite is just that I don’t think health care is a privilege — it IS a right, but a right that you have to pay for.  One could say the same about food and shelter.  Everyone has a right to food, shelter and medical care, but that doesn’t mean everyone has a right to get those things free.

What you can pay for, decides what level of quality you are entitled to.  Lots of people live in much larger, more luxurious houses than I do; some people spend much more on food.  That’s okay, and I don’t have a problem with it.  Some people live in government-subsidized housing that isn’t quite as spacious as my own, and some people receive food stamps.  That’s okay too.

Actually, I had a little taste of what government-managed health care might be like, just this morning.  Gamma is sick with mono, and has picked up a secondary virus (I can neither pronounce nor spell it, so I won’t try) that has caused her lips and mouth to blister horribly.  So, in addition to being nearly unconscious all the time, it’s very painful for her to eat or drink — so, she doesn’t.  She’s lost eight pounds in seven days.

I should have this disease for her… except I’ve already had my turn.

This morning, her doctor prescribed a combination of substances that, mixed together, may bring some relief and healing for the blisters.  Hopefully, that will enable her to eat properly, which would speed her recovery.  But here’s the catch: there’s only one drugstore in town that actually does "compounding" anymore, and they’re not on our insurance company’s list of "preferred" drug stores.

In a phone call to the insurance company this morning, I got a heavy sales pitch to let them fill the prescription by mail-order, rather than submitting paperwork for reimbursement later.  Even after I explained to the call-center chickadee that this isn’t one of those things that works well for mail order (like meds you take all the time, knowing weeks in advance when you’ll need them); my child is in pain, and cannot eat.

They’re going to spend more on paperwork justifying the reimbursement, than the medicine costs to begin with.  The truth is, it’s not going to do me in to pay for the medicine — it’s not a big deal.  Really.  But given that we pay for insurance (and pay for much more than we use), I think it’s asinine for them to expect me to jump through hoops to have a $30 scrip covered, no matter where I choose to get it filled.

Especially if their "preferred" pharmacies can’t handle the mixing of three fairly common ingredients.

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Kudos to Jefferson Compounding Center, whose pharmacist made a special trip in today to fix up Gamma’s meds so that she gets some relief.  I don’t begrudge them the cost of the prescription, and highly commend them for their sympathy in this situation.

More kudos to her pediatrician, who seems to have an excellent grip on the situation, and is very calming to a nervous mom.

Even more kudos to the teachers and staff at ORHS, who’ve been e-mailing me assignments and such.  IF she is ever awake for more than five minutes, she can start catching up on all the work she’s missed.  And thank goodness Spring Break is just around the corner — that’s one week that she won’t fall further behind.

So, it’s just been two weeks since Gamma was down with the flu and pneumonia, but she’s been back in school and seeming to feel good.  Until yesterday.

Yesterday, she spiked an even worse fever than with the flu+mycoplasma combo, complaining of an extremely sore throat.  My first thought was possible strep, but she didn’t have the telltale blisters in her throat, so I left her in bed for a day to see if it would run its course.  This morning, the visibly-enlarged lymph nodes under her jawbone caused enough concern to rate another trip to the pediatrician.

There, we got the real answer (gotta love these fast, in-office tests): mononucleosis.  So, she’s in bed for at least a week; it could be much longer.  Alpha was down for a good five weeks with it her sophomore year in high school.

On Monday, I’ll begin accumulating all of her assignments for the week.  Gamma’s hardly ever been sick in the past; I guess it’s just her turn this year.

At tonight’s school board meeting, the Board received the salary proposals from teachers and principals.  It was unlike any other — the shortest, the hardest proposal ever pitched.

Our teachers and principals are expected to do more than ever before, to teach our children more at earlier ages, to fill in the gaps of parenting and medical care and social services.  They have risen to the challenge, and done so largely without complaint.  They did so this year, on the same salary as last year, as there was no raise in the budget. 

Yet each one, like the rest of us, have families to provide for, mortgages to pay,. cars to fuel, etc.

Braced for a request that I feared we would not be able to honor, I listened carefully.  What I heard was nothing short of a shock: given the dire economic times for state and local government, they asked that if we must choose between retaining personnel and giving raises, that we retain all staff with direct student impact, even if it means that there can be no cost of living increase.

It was the most selfless request imaginable.  I am humbled and embarrassed that we cannot provide for our teachers and staff what they need and deserve.

These are the folks who are teaching our children every day.  I am humbled.

Today was the annual Tennessee School Boards Association’s "Day on the Hill," where school board members from across the state gather to receive updates on legislation filed that could impact our school systems, as well as to talk with our representatives to keep them informed about education issues.

This year, we all know that there won’t be any big gifts under the holiday tree. There won’t even be a holiday tree.  We’re not quite to the point of burning furniture to survive, but every school board, every superintendent knows it’s going to be a tough year.

What I asked of our legislators was, "do no harm."  Please don’t pass any bills requiring us to fit more into the already-overcrowded day (e.g., HB0836 or HB1441), go back to elected superintendents (at least when we HAD some elected superintendents prior to 1992, there were clear checks and balances in place limiting the superintendents’ powers — this bill has NONE!), or any that mandate start dates, earlier TCAP dates, or anything else that makes life more difficult — unless they figure out how to appropriate additional time.

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Among the things I learned was that the "stimulus money" from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act will not cover building or renovating schools,  because the $18B for that purpose in the original bill was cut from the final version.  There may be a little bit included for energy efficiency, but not much.  Not enough to rebuild the preschool.

Some money will come to the state for fiscal stabilization, but that was designated by the feds to go first to restoring dollars cut since 2006 — all in higher education.  Truthfully, we don’t know exactly what we’ll receive.  The Commissioner of Education is in DC tonight, meeting with the Secretary of Education and the VP, trying to ascertain exactly what’s in there for Tennessee schools.

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There may be a need for additional communication with Nashville, but for now, there aren’t many hot-button issues brewing.

Over the weekend, we had the wonderful experience of attending the All-State East Orchestra performance.  Directed by professor Ronald Vernon of the University of Mississippi, All-East is an opportunity for the best orchestra students all over East Tennessee (both public and private schools) to practice and play together for three intense days, culminating in a concert.

Entrance was by audition, with only a small fraction of those trying out being accepted.

Gamma told me, with great pride, that half of the violas were from Oak Ridge High School.  I ran the numbers, and she’s right: six of the dozen violas were ours.  Overall, more than a quarter of the All-East Orchestra were from Oak Ridge, with a sizable number of the others coming from exclusive private schools like Baylor and McCallie in Chattanooga, or magnet schools like Chattanooga School for the Arts & Sciences, or Center for the Creative Arts (also Chattanooga).

Oak Ridge’s orchestra program, unlike most others, takes all students — no audition, no private lessons required.  That we are able to succeed in such a competitive environment is amazing, but part of the secret to our success is that we, unlike most others, begin orchestra classes in fourth grade.

Unfortunately, our fourth grade strings program is put at risk every few years, due to time and budget constraints.  The reality is, it’s not really budgetary, because the way it’s structured, the program only costs about $20k per year.  The real cost is in the time set aside, and apparently, some of the elementary principals would like to use the time for other purposes.

That’s a grave mistake, in my opinion.  There’s a great deal of research out there demonstrating the fact that early music instruction (actually reading and learning to play written notes) helps develop additional neural pathways that enhance other "academic" learning, such as mathematics, literary expression, spatial reasoning and critical thinking.

So, when the discussion next arises (I expect it this year) about whether to keep our fourth-grade strings program intact, remember this: we have a record of success in doing it this way, both musically and academically.