Saw this article referenced on Editilla's ladder. What I wrote a while back about the local Jewish community's measures to boost its numbers here post-storm still applies - though I am glad to see the networking aspect of the Jewish Federation's program is going on. The thing that will ultimately keep these newcomers here, however, is what will bring this entire city back and help make it better than before, which is a variety of skilled jobs that are not heavily dependent on the tourist dollar.
Although I must say that the Jewish community here is different from most other places. There is a diversity within its ranks and an interdenominational cooperation that is not seen in many other places. The majority of the Jews here are Reform-affiliated, but there are also Conservative Jews, Modern Orthodox, Lubavitchers, and others - and they come together on many occasions throughout the year, the most notable being the Louisiana Lehrhaus, in which rabbis, cantors, and knowledgeable lay lecturers teach courses on Judaism once a week for a four-week period, courses that are open to the entire Jewish community, regardless of denomination.
There are fewer of us now than there ever have been - but these are folks who are determined to add to their numbers, because the last thing any of 'em want is for their houses of worship to become museum pieces. Family is pretty damn important to the Jewish people, and the fact that many of the people here have had to encourage their children to seek opportunity elsewhere rather than in the city of their rearing...well, it hurts in many ways, especially after a catastrophe such as the one that hit this city a little over a thousand days ago. I ultimately hope the Jewish Federation can keep this momentum going.
We will not close. But it hurts to see the evidence, right up close, that the man who is supposed to shepherd every flock in New Orleans doesn't give a good goddamn about us. No, it doesn't surprise me a bit, but it's a little like the difference between thinking your lover is cheating on you and actually catching them in the act. (Or like that difference must be; I've been lucky to escape that particular life experience.)
I'm in a lesser sort of funk, which has been eased greatly by the grooves in this man's music (shame on you, New Orleans, for missing his recent show! Shame! Shaaaaaame!!!), but, having attempted to revamp my resume and having it come out as too Jewish (still, in Dan's estimation), ˙o˙ɯ ʎɯ llıʇs sı uʍop ǝpısdn
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I need to start actually using the B.F.A. I earned somehow. And, no, that is not a reference to my anatomy. If it were, then perhaps I could throw my weight around and get a job faster than I could snap my fingers. "Hey, I've got a gut and a butt, and I'm NOT afraid to use 'em!"
Let's just say that the hands on my new Minnie Mouse watch are moving, the world is still turning, and I feel like I'm not on it. Must...get...back...on!!!!
Because, when he first asked me out, it was to a Zephyrs' game, and I said, "No," because he asked me out for a date for later on that same night.
Because, when he proposed to me, it was right after a game at Wrigley Field. The Cubs lost, 1-0, to the Braves. Andres Galarraga homered and Bobby Cox got tossed from the game.
Because, when we got married, he knew darn well it was a mixed marriage - he's a Cubs fan, I'm a Mets fan.
Because, at the Abita Brewpub the other night, I was watching a subway series game at Yankee Stadium and observed a Mets fan by the foul pole trying his hardest to influence a call that went against the Mets - the shot bounced off the base of the pole, but it bounced left instead of right. Grrrrrr...
Anyway, it is baseball season...
and today is Dan's and my seventh anniversary.
Oh, what a shpiel it's been. May there be many, many more acts - and innings - to come for us.
- They hate me. - No. They don't. -Yes, they do. They sure do. I can see.
I was still working as a glass rat when my then-boss got involved in the lives of a mom and her middle-school-aged son, both of whom were renting an apartment in a property my boss managed. The kid had already been held back a year, and he was flunking out of the grade he was in. His mom had missed the deadline to enroll him in summer school so that he could make up for his failing grade on the LEAP test and progress to the next grade. I got on the phone, made like I was his mother's cousin, and got them to call his mom up to get his application in order for summer school.
But that was only the beginning...
I wasn't always like this. I wasn't always wound this tight. There was a time when I was fun. I was funny. I was.
Summer school was proving to be just as much of a challenge for this child. He didn't have any major learning disabilities - he just didn't have anything resembling good study habits, and he wasn't absorbing a number of the lessons he should have been absorbing to get him to the middle school level. My boss and I figured he needed to be tutored some more outside of school, and he also needed somebody other than his mom to check and see if he had homework each day, because she was proving to be a pushover in that department. The only thing that was really driving this kid was that he didn't want to be held back for another year. Well, fine.
The homework thing was what needed to be tackled first. So I did what any concerned parent or guardian would do. I called the school to talk with the staff there and see if I could check with them as to whether or not he had homework that day and if there was any supplemental work we could do with him outside of school.
I ran right into one very defensive head of the school.
But you can't be funny and be the principal of a ... school. No, you cannot, because when it comes to their kids, these parents, they have no sense of humor. If anything goes wrong, it's my head. It's my head in the smasher. These parents will come down on me like a nuclear bomb. I can't make a mistake. I gotta be perfect. And that pressure has turned me into one thing that I never wanted to be. A bitch.
Before I even began to speak to the principal, he told me, in a voice that was highly defensive, that he was standing by his teachers and whatever they had to say about their students' grades and behavior. If I was calling to complain, I had to take that into account right off. Just so we both knew what the lay of the land was.
Having never encountered school administrators quite like this before (I was only in my twenties and wasn't yet a mom), I was a tad taken aback. "Sir, I understand that," I said, to put us both at ease. "I already know that there is a problem with the student I am calling about that goes beyond your school. I'm simply calling to see if there is some way we can all be on the same page with regards to his homework, since he doesn't let us know that there is any until it's too late. We want to make sure he does it, and we just need your help in making sure he does do it."
I could feel him relax on the other end of the line. I was apparently a rarity in that I didn't think that what was happening with this kid was necessarily the school's fault. And it wasn't.
We talked about setting up a system in which I could contact his teacher for a bit to check up on what work he needed to be bringing home, and I got some good recommendations on what he needed to be tutored on beyond the school hours.
Cooperative moves. That is what is needed to raise children. It is also something that seems to be a major afterthought in the way public education is put forth to everybody these days. I look around at all the experiments kids are being subjected to in the school environment, at the teachers who are expected to say, "How high?" when asked to jump to the latest thing with not much training and pay to do so, at the parents who just want what's best for their kids and, deep down, would really prefer not to be nailing either their kids or their kids' teachers to the walls, and I can't help but think that our educational system has become like communism...
And the schools and the state will get even less respect if they decide to enforce this. The only consolation is that the DA's office here can't keep up with the prosecution of the perpetrators of more serious crimes, forget the prosecution of parents of habitually tardy children. Then again, they may grab hold of this one in order to boost their numbers. New Orleans, Louisiana - Murder Capital of the World, but God forbid your child fails to attend school on time. We'll have our mayor cold-cock you for that one, missy.
Fine, then. My chin is up and at the ready. If I'm in jail, though, who in hell is gonna make sure my son at least gets to school, huh???? The Walking Id himself?
In the middle of all of this are the children. Not as a concept to be bandied about when one wants to make a case for school choice. Not as pawns to be shuttled about in this game called "school admissions roulette". Not as a way to manipulate parents and teachers against their will...but as individuals who have every right to be educated regardless of where they are from, what they look like, whether they are boys or girls, whether they are disabled or no, or what their home lives or family incomes are.
Most parents and teachers are committed to educating the children. It's the people in charge of the purse strings that I get angry about the most. It is those people who are using the parent-teacher commitment for their own gains. I really really really want to point fingers at specific people, like the real Paultards - Vallas and Pastorek, but they are symptomatic of what has been going on for some time in forty states and has only just come to this city. It is the folly of this impulse that G-Bitch remarks upon in one of her recent posts:
The idea is that the public sector cannot and does not work and only the skill set of private business and MBAs can save ___, in this case public schools. These advocates forget that not everything is a commodity and not everything can be treated as a commodity. People as commodities leads to personal violence, slavery and child abuse, among other things.
Take it from those who are deeply involved. Keep yourself informed. Document everything - every last complaint, every compliment, every ailment, eve-ry-thingggg. Apply for as much as you can with regards to your child's schooling, but always keep other options under the table, even if it will cost you for a bit. Support your teachers as best you can unless they have given you serious reason to believe they are not worthy of your support - then get other opinions from other parents, document everything once again, and try to work together on this for the best of all parties. There is no one formula for educating every kid, but school isn't necessarily a laboratory, either. Let's get some more pay to the teachers as well, so that we can give the good ones a chance to rise to the top and pass their love for what they do on to the kids. And involvement doesn't have to mean "in your child's and/or teacher's faces" - it means "be aware". All we are left with if things are not getting better is resorting to throwing things against the wall, abusing drugs and drink heavily, or praying. Or all three in succession.
And I really don't think that's gonna work.
*Harlan Ellison, "Eidolons", from Angry Candy Unless otherwise noted, all other dialogue in italics is fromSchool of Rock. I love Principal Roz!
Last night was a Shabbat service honoring our religious school teachers...and, in honor of the occasion, I was subjected to a phone survey on the state of New Orleans education, with bonus questions concerning the Hornets, shortly before my attendance at the service. When one of the first questions concerns what I think New Orleans needs the most and my first impulse is to say, "Where do I start???"... I initially thought this survey was gonna be a farce. In a way, it was, but not in the way I thought it would be.
The number that appeared on the caller ID was from Hudson, Florida - and I want to try calling it back to see exactly which organization was conducting this survey. The queries began with what I thought about various local politicians and other notorious notables (Bobby Jindal, Hizzoner the Walking Id, Mary Landrieu, RSD superintendent Paul Vallas, BESE bigwig Paul Pastorek, and George Shinn) and I had to answer in a multiple choice fashion ranging from favorable to unfavorable, with "somewhat"s inbetween. "Most of the people named can go to hell" was not an option, sadly. It was where most of my answers lay - but instead, with the exception of Landrieu, most of the people named got "unfavorable"s from li'l ol' me. Yeah, I had to settle.
Then the questions about the charter schools came. The survey deviated from the norm because I was able to engage the surveyor in some conversation about the questions he was asking me. The man himself had a son who was invited to attend a charter school in the Florida area - though it was a good school, he had some reservations concerning the elitism of a system that professed to educate all, yet to do it "better" under the guise of this system of having a board of directors in charge and semi-autonomous sponsorship from outside the traditional public school system. To put that "equality" in perspective, I was asked about the fairness of this sponsorship and whether or not it really contributed to the rebuilding of the New Orleans public schools - and elicited some information concerning the added wrench in the works of grants from the Walton Family Foundation. 1500 scholarships are out there for families of K-3rd grade students who want to use them to head to greener pastures at private and parochial schools in the area, with more grants in the works for students in older grades to be added each year. This, coupled with consideration for school vouchers, coupled with the recent money woes for the RSD, makes for an unequal playing field for students that hasn't been all that level to begin with (unfortunately, Cliff and some other parents I have been talking with know this all too well). It also makes for a rocky road for a school system that was broken a long time ago - and , if recent trends continue, will have an extremely hard time getting off it knees and on its own two feet.
In this way, a ten-minute survey was drawn out to twenty-plus minutes. I thank the surveyor who shared his own misgivings and opinions with me as I shared mine with him.
For other possible partners in this effort to make school choice a choice stacked against recovering traditional public schools, go here.
For evidence that programs to throw new teachers into this lion's den of sketchily supported schools are simply NOT working, head to G-Bitch (another hint can be found here). A key quote from her post:
And locally, the uncertainty about benefits for long-term Orleans teachers now in charter schools may have a temporary reprieve–HB 718 has made it out of the Education Committee and will give Orleans teachers a 5 year leave of absence, 2 more years to figure out the retirement benefit issue.
puts my recent answer to a query on a recent post of mine into a slightly different light.
...the charter for my son's school says that the teachers will not be tenured, sick leave policies from the OPSD will not be grandfathered in, but "accumulated sick leave can be converted into pension compensation in the Teacher Retirement System of Louisiana upon retirement. Provisions will be made for health insurance including short and long term disability.
"Individuals who were employed by the local public school system, and who are on a leave of absence, may continue their participation in the Teacher Retirement System of Louisiana or elect a 401K. Newly hired teachers will be offered the 401K only. We are investigating a 403(b) retirement plan for employees...."
My son's school "will not be participating in the United Teachers of New Orleans collective bargaining agreement with New Orleans Public Schools."
Their salaries are a 2-3% increase over the OPSB salary ranges, for my son's school, which means they must stay in the approx. $30k-$48K range, but they cannot pay more than that.
Because the OPSD was not the greatest at taking care of their teachers, I have to wonder whether the teachers in the schools here will keep this up for much longer before they start looking around for places where costs of living aren't going to be galloping ahead of their salaries and benefits. Yes, this is a nationwide problem that needs to be seriously addressed and soon, but it isn't usually coupled with trying to rebuild a ruined city in the bargain.
Increasing the three-year "leave of absence" to five years for the OPSD teachers, under the current conditions I have described above, is delaying an inevitable decision on the part of the teaching staff of the schools here to leave for greener pastures elsewhere - whether it be schools in other parishes or in other parts of the country.
Students and parents can only suffer educationally and monetarily in this scenario.
And a day when the weather is cruddy, my car failed to start outside the coffee shop, and I can't reach my husband, who is out of town, to see if he renewed his AAA membership and, if he did, could he please call them up to tow the damn car to our mechanic.
Sigh.
However, I am grateful for two things:
1) The rain has washed all the love bug carcasses off the windshield of the car. I can now see well enough not to drive it.
Hana sez: Believe me when I tell you these are not my kids...even though they may be behaving like them.
You, too, can own the perfect shirt for those days when the world is weighing down on you by heading here. Donate a little something to Remember Ashley Morris while you're at it.
I must say that the shirt dries off very nicely after a soaking rain and does feel great.
Things can only go onward and upward after a day like today, right?
To paraphrase a recent email I received, the charter school teachers in the area are fast reaching their event horizons.
When the former Orleans Parish School District was reorganized into the form of a Mobius strip from hell, former OPSD teachers were given the option of taking a "leave of absence" from their OPSD positions to teach in charter schools and see how the situation fit 'em. The time they could take off? - up to three years.
Keep in mind that if the teachers decide to stay with their charters after that time, they are giving up all kinds of benefits that would come to them from working in a public school entity: tenure, retirement plans, other good stuff that can come to those who are busting their buns teaching their subjects for not much money for a few decades.
So...
Guess which year we're coming up on?
It's not much of a wonder why the state and most other private entities are supporting the charters, in this case...and it makes me want to go and read my son's school's charter to see what benefits the teachers get, if any.
I'd advise any other parents whose children are enrolled in charters to check the fine print at their schools as well. It's a good thing to do anyway, since I was witness to a nifty circumvention of what a charter states a while back. Never underestimate the power a charter school board can exercise in exploiting loopholes in its own document - for good or ill.
Decision makers at the state level are planning on closing Frederick Douglass High School on St. Claude in the Upper 9th Ward. We know this for two reasons; one that no new freshmen were admitted last year, and that several weeks ago teachers at Douglass were pulled into a meeting and told that the school is being phased out. The very way this is being done is sneaky and vague; likely because if these plans were publicly announced they could result in a huge PR problem for the RSD and State Superintendent Paul Pastorek.
....The long and the short is this: Don’t count on Vallas or anyone at the state level for help, and frankly you should not be lulled into waiting for this dubious Master Plan. For the Douglass community, you are going to have to fight to keep your school.
To quote Frederick Douglass: “Those who profess to favor freedom and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the roar of its many waters.”
Costas Now treats the blogosphere like an interloper - heavy on any and all information without that inside access, without even seeming to care about whether or not they get that. Will Leitch does his best to emphasize, amidst all the anger coming from Bissinger and the attempted pinning of comments on recent posts on him by Costas, that, in the end, it is readership that is driving the content and contributing to the success of a blog(s). And, no, people aged 18-34 aren't going to be picking up newspapers now because darn near all of them are getting their sports news, among other news out there, from syndicated news agencies and not from local reporting. It costs too much for these news conglomerates for them to, say, pay somebody to exclusively follow a farm team, and this is not something the blogosphere started. Blogs might actually have been contributing to it in the past couple of years, but mainly as a response to trends that have already been fueled by corporate buyouts of news outlets. This is a trend that eliminates contributions of human beings, warts and all, and it doesn't give folks like Bissinger the time to hone their craft much anymore, as he says. I weep for his bygone past, but I celebrate the openness of the blogosphere and the chance to figure all of this out for myself, thank you...and, on that score, Bissinger really doesn't give bloggers and readers of blogs credit for having some brains. Only readers of his books can really appreciate good sportswriting, apparently.
On the blogging moms score - excuse my aside here - Hoda, what the hell happened to you? You were the toast of New Orleans, a great investigative reporter who rightfully went national and began contributing insighful reporting to NBC's Dateline on a regular basis - and now you're Kathie Lee Gifford's sidekick, asking Heather Armstrong "is it all moms who are on your blogosphere?" Wake UP, woman!!!!
There's a reason why marketers are trying to cater to moms who blog now, and that is the previously untapped community these women represent, the generation of mothers who were supposed to be able to have it all and don't quite. We all want nothing more than to get beyond the mommy platitudes of its being the best time of your life, caring for an infant and taking that time to do so, when in reality, it can be a depressing, isolating, hugely chaotic time for new parents who are being bombarded on all sides on how best to raise these young lives they've brought into the world. Being a parent is still damned difficult and we need all the help we can get. And though I didn't need to know it before I saw that sad Today show clip, I am thoroughly convinced that I don't need an overly orange Kathie Lee, the woman who launched a thousand sweatshops, to put down the blogosphere. Honey, come on down to my city and we'll set you straight on what blogging really can be.
Perhaps then you'll get a little less concerned about whether or not it's right for you personally and you'll start worrying about the children again, since, after all, you are all about family - right?
