Tuesday, September 29, 2020

Compare & Contrast a Private Citizen at City Council with Deference to Mike Beck

 

              The contrast between how an ordinary citizen with an issue before the Cascade City Council and Mike Beck is currently on full view. During the pool construction, the city brought heavy equipment on my lawn, tore up the grass, and I want to be reimbursed for fixing it. I was not there for the discussion because the city had previously published that meetings were closed because of Covid. The following meeting Mayor Pro-temp Andrew Kelchen rudely refused to hear it or tell me to put it back on the agenda.

Meanwhile Mike Beck gets a special meeting to discuss breaking his promise to the city to run a street to the park he gave the city—limestone outcropping land he can’t dig a basement in and can’t sell anyway. And there is lots of discussion:

1)      The street to the park will be closed and then he has another lot to sell for $50,000

2)      City workers are against it because a cul-de-sac is far harder to (snow) plow and becomes a safety issue.

3)      More hard surface (an additional house, garage, and driveway)  invalidates the drainage plan, which is already a problem.

They are starting over with the special meeting bit, because they screwed it up on the first try, and Councilman Hosch called them on it. But if you are an ordinary citizen, don’t count on getting one, you get a rude ration…

Thursday, September 24, 2020

Some Economic "Tough Talk" about Schools

 

Is there something more fiendishly depraved and debased going on in politics when it comes to education? Are opportunities in this society so reduced by technology, over-population and all the rest of it since the 1960’s and 70’s that money spent on education is doing nothing but assuaging societal guilt? Just window dressing? A handy method of keeping kids out of harm’s way so their parents can work? Is it that we really don’t even intend to educate them because there are no jobs for them anyway? Especially when we are bringing in/allowing scads of workers from elsewhere?

            For the past several years, Republican dominated legislatures like ours here in Iowa have routinely funded education below the inflation level, which is effectively a reduction, when Iowa schools have never needed funding increases more, considering that the state has become a Mecca for immigrants working in meat packing plants around the state. Their non-native, non-English speaking kids need more language help and special services.

Only they are not alone. Is there anybody who doesn’t realize there are more kids with autism in classrooms these days?

We never saw them when I was in school, but that may have been because anybody who wasn’t “socially acceptable” was kept home. The environmentalists say it is toxic chemicals we’re spewing into our world; Anti-vaxers say inoculations. Whatever. These kids are in classrooms now. They need highly refined special attention, psychologists, teachers trained to write Individual Education Plans (IEPs), special discipline techniques and all the rest of it. Schools are absolutely staggering under the burden of it all, and what they need is more budget for personnel to deal with the issues confronting them. Not less.

 

Thursday, September 3, 2020

Country Schools--Old & Brand New

             Primarily out of Covid concern, my thoughtful, Fort Collins niece and her husband have put their five-year-old in a co-op “pod” first grade with friends’ kids.

New name, folks, but a very old concept: the country school! Once upon a time in the last century, neighboring families sent their kids to the closest school, usually one room with a wood burning stove, a few books and a blackboard.

            The physical plant number and varying grade levels of pupils—forced children to become independent learners, able to work on their own at a very young age. With a child in most every grade, older students gave younger ones lessons, providing “oldsters” valuable review. The teacher was executive, who assessed the various levels of math, reading and writing competency and grouped kids at similar levels and set the schedule.

            An academically talented young people, especially girls, would become the teacher’s assistant, go to high school, get a year of college, in summer school or by “correspondence” and become teachers themselves. Most students emerged from country schools with a solid level of overall literacy that might put some of today’s to shame.

            While most country schools had fewer than a dozen students, some had as many as 2 dozen—the one I attended at St. John’s Placid was 5th to 8th grade—had that many. First to 4th was in the nun’s living room, which is where my niece is going: in the teacher's living room.