Oh what a week it’s been. Last weekend’s storm managed to knock out school for Norwalk’s students for an entire week. And Thursday and Friday turned out to be pretty nice days, Friday especially with temperatures hitting into the 70s. I kinda remember the 70s too, when I was in school, and any day that featured unexpected warm sunny weather was a challenge to anything that was going on inside a classroom.
Smart teachers then, realized this, and lesson plans were shelved in favor of taking advantage of the climate. Of course they didn’t have to deal with administrators who spend their days filling out forms to explain just how much education was happening with them thar tax dollars. And there were no parental release forms for any excursion outside of the hallway without a hallway pass.
Such impromptu lessons are some of my fondest memories. Like Mrs. O’Leary’s cow tipping over the lantern in the wood barn. My first elementary school was a red brick building because wood buildings were lost in the great Chicago Fire. My second elementary school had it’s entire third floor closed off because of a fire. No cows were involved, but the mysterious third floor featured prominently in stories of lost homework and book reports. You have to like those 70s priorities though, no money to repair the floor, so just close it off and keep the school running, by increasing class sizes.
These days, things are a wee bit more complicated. No school means that state educational mandates must be dealt with. Such as the 900 hours/180 day rule which was enacted in 1981. Those 80s were the start of really bad educational decisions weren’t they? Which Norwalk has to meet, unless the State Board of Education waives the requirement.
According to Mayor Moccia, he has talked with interim Superintendent Michael Nast about doing just that, asking for the state to waive the minimum days required to hold school. The financial implications of keeping school open longer affect not just the City but the parents and programs who will have to adjust schedules to work around an extended school year.
How Norwalk got to closing schools on Friday is a story in itself. Each day an assessment was made by DPW, CL &P and the school bus company about the status of the roads. According to Hal Alvord, no trees blocked any roads to teh schools by Wednesday. According to the Mayor, there were some roads still blocked by trees on school bus routes. The bus drivers reported that too many roads were still blocked preventing them for hitting all bus stops. Apparently having school kids walk to another spot was just too difficult.
“Not so fast,” explained the Mayor in response to my ninny school bus driver assessment question. “There were wires down in the roads, and while most were telephone wires, we didn’t want parents or children to be alarmed that they were near downed wires. You can’t tell telephone from electrical wires.” Then there was some concern about opening some schools versus others, like Kendall and Silvermine, where wires were down near the schools themselves. Nast decided to keep them all closed rather than pick and choose which could open and which should stay closed. Meeting those state mandates is a school district versus individual school kinda thing.
State mandates certainly lead to odd situations. In New York, the Department of Education ahs come up with another mandate, sure to be on its way to Connecticut about banning home made goods at bake sales. The reason? The lack of nutrional information on home baked brownies, pumpkin pie or cup cakes. So it’s okay to sell low fat pop-tarts, but not organic pop corn balls. The LATimes reports:
The Department of Education says the regulations are aimed at combating obesity among the city’s more than 1.1 million public school children, about 40% of whom are overweight. By restricting bake sale offerings to goods limited in calories and wrapped in packaging that lists nutritional information, schools will help children reduce their intake of unhealthy snacks, officials say.
Among the approved items: Glenny’s Brown Rice Marshmallow Treats, baked cheddar and sour cream chips and a variety of granola bars, popcorn clusters and cookies. None has more than 200 calories or 200 milligrams of sodium per serving. The Pop-Tarts weigh in at 200 calories each.
But critics say the numbers are beside the point because the rule discourages home-baking practices that teach children to value fresh food and give people a reason to go to a bake sale, which can bring in several hundred dollars to pay for extras such as field trips and school supplies.
“Why would you go to a bake sale to buy baked potato chips?” said Mitzi Dulan, a nutritionist and registered dietitian whose clients include the Kansas City Chiefs football team and the Royals baseball team. A better plan would be to offer parents recipes for healthier snacks to sell, she said.
David Cantor, the education department’s spokesman, said the city was simply in line with a nationwide effort to combat childhood obesity, which First Lady Michelle Obama has made one of her priorities.
“We restrict sales of homemade food because we cannot monitor its nutritional value,” Cantor said, adding that “homemade is not synonymous with healthful.” A recent photo of items at a bake sale showed a sign for bacon chocolate-chip cookies, he said.
In Connecticut 25% of children between 10 and 17 are obese. It’s insane right? Since the 80s all those mandates of educational standards have led to putting fat kids on school busses to haul them to 180 days of classroom instruction because walking to school is too dangerous and missing a day of curriculum mandate might lead to lower test scores.
If you look at the areas where the students are heavier, you’ll find it is where the neighborhoods are not considered safe (for a variety of reasons) for children to be outside playing on sidewalks, streets or ride bikes through the areas.
You will also note that pound adding foods are cheaper than fruits and veggies. And don’t get me started on school lunch rules! SUre take out the fat, you have to have flavor and a required number of calories, so it’s either sugar or fat, take your pick.
So feed ‘em poor nutritional calories and have them sit inside. Train ‘em to like video games and mindless soap operas. Their get up ‘n go, got up and went.
It takes lots more energy to have healthy, active kids in low income areas.
A lot of times the only people outside in those low income areas are either drug dealers or gang bangers. Kids with any brains at all don’t just stay inside because they like video games; sometimes it’s the only way to stay in one piece.
After school programs are usually the first things to get cut during budget crunches. So we not only “train” them to like video games, we “teach” them we don’t give a rat’s ass about them.
I’m not convinced that it’s all low income kids that are obese. And why blame video games? The reality is that since the 80s we’ve forced a police state supervision expectation on parents. Leave a kid unattended, unsupervised, unprogrammed and you’re guilty of a crime.
It used to be OK to bring home-made food to the homeless shelter until a lot of people got sick from poorly prepared or stored food at the Oyster festival one year and the rules got much stricter. It follows that home made food does not carry the same assurance of proper preparation and storage and somebody would find reason to restrict it from public school. Obesity it just one of the concerns.
Turfgirl, you usually are on target but this time you seem to have conflated two issues. No one is saying that all low income children are fat and all mid and high income are thin, however there is a strong correlation between low income and obesity throughout the United States. This has nothing to do w/the nanny State
sono resident: I was responding, re: low income, to another comment above. But I’ll bite here too, is it poverty that drives obesity, because certainly the war on poverty has neither driven the number of poor people down. Isn’t obesity an epidemic across income levels? A google snapshot, 1 in 7 low income children is obsese. I’m not seeing much in the data of obesity and income, but lots on race, ethnicity and geographic location.
Oh my goodness. The “war on poverty” -
has separated low income families and weakened it beyond recognition. Huge poverty levels are still with us, unless you compare to other country’s poverty levels. Here poverty it looks like means only one TV, a micorwave and fast food? Poor and poverty should be different. The govt. planning for helping poverty stricken families sent fathers out of the home and fostered multiple boy friends, not legally related. What havoc that has wrought.
The president who was going to bring this country together has divided it more then it was divided during the Vietnam War, and getting close to the rift that split this country prior to the Civil War. What is starting to take place in this country reminds me of the unrest in 1928 Germany. Only time will tell and it may be sooner than later.
We have also begun to shun and insult or allies and give comfort to those who would rather see us dead.
NICE WORK
Seeme to me all the hoopla is by people who just can’t stand to see things changing and moving forward. Those so-called allies are a bit nervous that they are being called to rein in their bullying tactics. And maybe if we talked and dealt fairly with some of the rest of the world, there might not be quite so many folks wanting to blow us up. I dunno….I’m feeling pretty comfortable with the way things are going and don’t see what y’all are so scared about…
You must be a government employee or living off a trust fund.
I work for myself, pay taxes, and buy my own health insurance. I own my home, have a mortgage, and try to save for retirement. I will not get a pension from anyone. I read broadly and think about things. I have traveled a lot outside my own country and have seen what goes on. I listen to other points of view without hating the people who have them. That’s why I like the direction we are headed much more than what was going on with the Bush crowd. Again, I don’t see what y’all are so scared about….
Well, try this on for size. I currently have an excellent health care plan – one I like, that treats me well and doesn’t overcharge me for things. I recently had a major catastrophic illness, and the insurance picked up the tab for EVERYTHING. I never saw a bill whatsoever. And I had excellent care by the physicians of my choice, at the hospital and clinics of my choice. And I’d like to believe that my health care will stay that way on into the future.
However —-
As this health care argument has been going on, I’ve searched libraries, I’ve searched newspapers, and I’ve searched the Internet attempting to find an answer as to what is going to happen to the standard of excellent care that I’ve received in the past and would like to continue to receive into the future. And I’ll tell you what scares me. It’s the FACT that I cannot find ONE SINGLE EXPLANATION of what will happen to my health care!
I don’t mean my premiums or my taxes or any associated fees. I’m only interested in keeping my current level of care. And what is truly frightening is that, no matter who I ask – doctors, nurses, medical personnel – NOBODY can assure me that my level of care will not change for the WORSE.
THAT’S what scares me.
And I have every right to be scared, what with having had a catastrophic illness that can, and often does, recur – with life-threatening results. There’s no way anybody can tell me with any sense of security that if my illness returns I will be cared for in the manner I was cared for when I first became ill and they saved my life.
You may “like the direction we are headed” but with my imminent death staring me in the face if my illness recurs, I certainly do NOT!
Aparently you may need to widen your reading materials.
POTUS has stated uncountable times, all across the nation;
If you have health insurance and you want to keep that plan and keep your doctor, NOTHING, in this new historic cornerstone achievment,
will change. You CAN keep what you have.
Fear not, the big bad wolfs ( coroporate interests aka special interests) are stiring the masses to fear their barks of warning. But it is them, those annoying, but smart pirates, that we must recognize, as the real threat.
What is really happening is they are pulling out all the stops to protect their enomus pot of gold. Corporate profits.
The battle is not whats right for citizens.
Who can make a sane arguement against a healthy more properous nation?
Who can make a plausabile arguement to not reduce are petroleum addiction and temper global conflicts?
Who wants their kid to not be educated?
The battle is about citizens trying to take back their country.
Some may argue they, the citizens, never had, it, to begin with.
The teabaggers dont seem to comprehend that they are being manipulated.
Hey, if the clowns and lunatics want to rant and rave, if it gets one person more, to pay attention, let them throw all the tea in china over the seawall.
It is shamefull some of the tactics used.
Playing the fear factor, race card, granny gonna get whacked syndrome.
This is no where near what we need, its sad so many are so easliy misinformed.
But its an historic step for man and a giant leap in the right direction for every citizen.
We the PEOPLE.
No where does it read; we the COPORATIONS.
We, the PEOPLE , must demand a Constitutional ammendment to end the profiteering and piracy in government on all levels.
We must, take the money out of politics.
And you honestly assume that Truly Concerned is going to take YOUR word for it, after spending all that time searching and researching and coming up a big fat ZERO??
You’re just some anonymous poster on a website. What makes YOU the authority?
Come to think of it, Truly Concerned; I’m in agreement with you. I haven’t seen any indication that I can keep my own health care plan AS-IS, UNTOUCHED, NO CHANGES, SAME DOCS, either.
If someone has access to show that this is a guarantee, I’d certainly love to see the proof.
Educational standards departed from reality way back in the early 1970s, and have yet to come back down to earth.
Where were we talking about Educational Standards?
And where are the standards for the other parts of the recipe for student success? Student effort and family support for the effort…
Seems every failure of learning is on the part of the teacher, not on the part of the learner. Of course there are teachers in need of improvement. Where do we see any student repsonsibility for learning?
That’s what I was referring to. Back in the ’70s when the so-called “revolution” in teaching methods began, when school administrators changed the grading system and the teaching system and began the dumbing-down of the class majority so the stupid kids wouldn’t feel badly about their lack of success. Well, here we are 30 years later, and now we’re coming around to realize that what we so earnestly believed while wearing our rose-colored glasses in the 1970s and 1980s is kicking us in the ass in 2010.