Pittsburgh Plan for Preschool+

The Pittsburgh Plan is awesome for kids 2-6 years old. Claire is just about to the finish the Pittsburgh Plan. She's turning seven this summer. She started when she was about two. Children can start as early as 18 months. Both her younger sisters did, but I didn't discover it until after that point.

There are about 191 activities that you do for 15 minutes with your child two to three times a week for about four years. It helps kids read a little earlier, but they're going get that anyway. What's really fascinating is the math kids can learn if they're taught.

First graders aren't adding/subtracting fractions, dividing, or doing double-digit multiplication because no one's teaching them. Claire can do all of that. Sarah, who is four, is adding and subtracting and blending sounds together to make words. She recognizes double digit numbers up to 100, but we don't do anything with them until single-digit adding and subtracting is more automatic. Emily, who just started, is just trying to remember the names of letters. It's a lot of fun for them because it's a lot of fun for me.

It probably isn't for everyone, but it's worth checking out, especially if it might make their school life easier. More is on: http://www.pittsburghplan.com. I'm sure the founder would love to answer any questions you may have, but I would also being willing to elaborate on anything you would like to know more about concerning the program. It just helps kids achieve more than they otherwise would relying on their school alone.

AIDS

Again, I don't know if Jesus considers AIDS a penance from God because I typically see God allowing pain versus causing pain, even though he used to cause pain in the Old Testament. Either way, AIDS is bad and people shouldn't do things that would risk contracting AIDS.

http://www.tldm.org/news9/aidsnigerianofficial.htm

Mary's Requests

Whether these 17 steps are from Mary or not, they are good things to follow, especially praying the Rosary as a family for the rest of the steps.

http://www.tldm.org/news5/17-steps.htm

How few may get to heaven

This link suggests that most people did not used to go to heaven, so maybe hearing the whole story will change others for the better today.

http://olrl.org/snt_docs/fewness.shtml

Green Scapulars

Here's something on Green Scapulars for those unfamiliar with them.

http://olrl.org/sacramental/greenscapular.shtml

St. Gertrude

Since I don't use MySpace anymore, the links I had saved there aren't doing much good, so I thought I'd share them here:

http://olrl.org/pray/stgertrude.shtml

Happy Mother's Day!

Happy Mother's Day!

Furloughs

So five of the nine members of the school board seem dead set on furloughing more teachers. They were able to get rid of one two years ago by eliminating some high school English classes. She got a job in another district luckily. They got rid of two last year by eliminating some elementary classes, and at least one of those found a full-time sub placement. I don't know about the other. Nevertheless, two more teachers are going to be out by eliminating the entire junior high family consumer science department. I was sitting next to one of those teachers when they called the vote. It was hard to believe.

The reason it's so hard to believe is that the state cut 3.1 million from our budget. The board agreed to $1 million out to cut it to about $2.1 million. The superintendent proposed $2.1 savings by reducing extracurricular activities by eliminating assistant sponsors and coaches, but not eliminating any programs completely. The board approved $1.7 million of those cuts and asked the superintendent to present academic programs that are not state mandated. Library, Driver's Theory, and extra-curricular budgets were cut, leaving $100,000. Left were eliminating kindergarten, 4-12 band, 4-12 orchestra, K-12 art, K-12 computers, 7-12 shop, and 7-12 home ec (family consumer science).

Again, I think extra-curricular activities should go before academic programs if we didn't have the money, but we have the money. We have an 11% surplus from last year, which is $5-6 million. We're expecting another $600,000 surplus this year. The state recommends having at least 3% and requires less than 8% to raise taxes. So we don't need to raise taxes to find that last $100,000, because we already have more than that above the cushion required by the state.

So that's the plan unless actual money and not projected money is found between now and the next meeting at the end of the month. I'm praying that it works out for the best for everyone involved, whatever that may look like.

Pittsurgh Marathon

I didn't run the Pittsburgh marathon yesterday, but I'm still thinking about doing it someday. My original intent was to train at a nice slow pace of about 12:30 minutes per mile and maybe push it to 11 min./mi. for the actual race. From there, I could train at 11 min./mi. and take another minute and a half off my time for each race until I could run 7 min./mi. However, it takes a long time to run that slow and it was taking away from my sleep since that was the only time I could get away from the family. So after running a half-marathon one night in under 3 hours, my body gave out, and I was sick in bed all weekend.

Therefore, my new idea was to run a 5K at that slow pace and take a minute and a half off my time each race until I could run that at 7:07 min./mi., which would be good enough to qualify for the Boston marathon. I don't intend to run the Boston marathon, I just want the piece of mind of knowing that I could if I wanted to. Training never exceeded 7 miles for the 5K, so even at 12:30 min./mi., training was less than an hour and a half. The actual race was under 35 minutes.

Now I'm training at 8 min./mi., so I should be able to run at 7:07 in less than 6 months. The complete program that I adapted for myself from http://www.halhigdon.com takes up to 6 months, but there are test runs along the way. If I meet my goal on one of the test runs, I start over training at that new time. I've never taken the full 6 months yet because I've always been able to meet my goals at one of those test runs so far. Of course, this is the toughest step, so I won't be disappointed if it takes me longer.

Once I can run a 5K at that pace, I'll try running an 8K, a 10K, a 15K, or a half-marathon, and eventually a marathon at that pace. If I don't hit a ceiling, I'll keep going until I can do an ultra-marthon of 50K, 50 miles, or 100 miles, although I suspect I'll hit a ceiling before then. If I hit a ceiling, my new goals will be pro-rated based on my age because the qualifying times for races like the Boston marathons increase every 5 years after 35, giving runners a few extra minutes to make it. Those increases go up to 80+, so if I'm still kicking after that age, I'll have to set some new 5-year goals for my health.

Painted Dogs

I wanted to talk about everything that happened while proctoring the SAT's yesterday, but I didn't think I could put a good spin on all of it. However, it's easier to put a good spin on it now that I've heard what my day would have been like if I hadn't been needed. I would have been at the zoo.

We wanted to go to the zoo this weekend since both days were supposed to be partly sunny and in the 70's. We always go at 9:00 in the morning when they open because it's less crowded and then come home around nap time to put 2-year-old Emily to sleep. Since I was proctoring yesterday, we went today and it went great. However, yesterday at 9:20 AM the zoo was put on a code-red lock down because the Painted Dogs, which eat animals like deer, got out of where they were supposed to be. That meant that the visitors had to go to the nearest building and remained there for a little over an hour before the Painted Dogs could be caged up.

I suspect that there are usually two or more lines of defense and that the dogs got past one, so hopefully there was no real danger, but I don't know if that was the case or if that was made clear to the visitors in lock-down. We imagined being near the elephant house at that time, which even I, with my severely disabled sense of smell, can sometimes get a whiff of how bad it is, and being locked in there with our three girls for over an hour. As it stands, I'll probably not proctor SAT's again, but I wonder if I would have felt the same way about the zoo if I had been there instead at that time.

Healthcare changes

I talked about what might happen with my union's contract last time. However, there are sometimes annual changes to healthcare that are of the take-it-or-leave-it nature. Our copays are going up $5 and our deductibles are going up $550. All the districts in the county joined together for this coverage, so we could get better rates. Rates are going up now because over 1,000 families are no longer paying into the system because 1,000 teaching positions have been eliminated this past year. That number doesn't count those teacher laid off with insurance already under their spouse's employment. In any case, we're taking it because there are no other comparable options for us.

Speculation

My union has two years left on our five-year contract. Two years ago saw 25% the instructional aide staff reduced. Last year saw the instructional aide staff reduced another 33%, 5% of the teaching staff reduced, and administration raises limited to 1%. This year, the administration is not getting raises and assistant coaches are being eliminated, which I agree with if that's possible, but I wonder why those positions weren't eliminated before instructional aides and teachers. There's still $400,000 that needs to be taken from our $9 million balance, taxes raised, or instructional programs eliminated. Again, aside from using the money already taken from the taxpayers or taking more from them, why are elective programs like art and music on the chopping block before 9th grade boys basketball, for example, who can try-out for varsity and junior varsity teams, etcetera?

Two years from now, another 5-year contract will need to have been negotiated for teachers. Otherwise, teachers get a pay freeze because law requires us to keep teaching based on the most recent contract. I appreciate that there isn't more money to give teachers since the state cut our district's funding by $3 million like every other district in the state. Therefore, I hope we can get a contract that gives us other perks instead of monetary raises like eliminating some of the 8 clerical/in-service days or just granting additional personal days. To get our 2% raises last contract, we had to work 3% more and contribute 1% more to our health care.

Since inflation averages 3% annually, 3% raises are what is typically considered fair. So reducing the workload 3% should count as the 3% "raise" year 3. Years 1 and 2 should see a 1% raise and then a pay freeze like the administration has seen, which leaves years 4 and 5. Those years should see a combination of raises or granting additional personal days with personal days equivalent to .5% to equal 3% each year. For example, grant two more personal days in the contract from the current 3 days to 5 days to equal 1%. Then give a 2% raise year 4 and a 3% raise year 5.

I suppose this was just a thinking-out-loud exercise to benefit myself, like most of my posts feel like, but hopefully the readers I care about learn something about me in the process.