All purpose news and politics thread part v: The quickening

[Crabble]

I genuinely hope Trump doesn't get a second term. Please don't sit this election out.
I'm incredibly worried for my parents, grandparents and the rest of my older relatives right now.

[Tami]

I genuinely hope Trump doesn't get a second term. Please don't sit this election out.
I'm incredibly worried for my parents, grandparents and the rest of my older relatives right now.

Yeah, I'd be willing to give up my state's primary if it was possible to move the general election from November up to June or July, or even August. The sooner Trump is out of office the better.

[skyvolt2000]

Sure, but your not using it correctly. Why is it going to football stadiums and such? Why is it not actually being used to educate ?

That stadium can be used year round by various folks.

A lot of times that money for that stadium is NOT from the school budget. It's from some bond that the public votes to approve.
Also construction companies have to BID for the contract to build the schools or whatever.
Extra money is added when the board votes to approve such and sometimes it NOT from the general school budget. Varies by district.

So depending on what school district you are looking at-general funding is not involved.
Any and all purchases above a certain amount MUST be approved by the board in a PUBLIC vote. In fact what is spent monthly gets reviewed and voted on MONTHLY.
A school budget must be voted on before the school year ends and the PUBLIC has the right to review it and make comments in public forums.

A school budget is based on PROJECTIONS of ENROLLMENT (and property taxes at times). Adjustments are made when October hits because the last Friday in October your funding from the state is set based on ENROLLMENT. So if your school has 500 kids by October 31st. That is all the funding you get. Even if you lose 100 or gain 500-you only have funding for 500.

For a lot of "poor" schools this is what they face CHARTER SCHOOLS, Magnet & collegiate & single sex schools taking kids. An 8th grader heading into 9th grade in my district has 10 choices. A kid in Smallville is not going to see Smallville Arts Magnet or Smallville All Boys school. He is going to Smallville High and that is FINAL.
So Smallville could rank higher than say Harlem High who has to deal with 20 other high schools.

Also that poor school is also dealing with GENTRIFICATION. My school has NEW Euro style apartments built around it and still more are coming. A normal size house gets torn down and replaced by these that can hold 2 house holds. The rent STARTS at $400K. All I have seen are SINGLE MEN in those apartments. There are 4 other schools in that area (pre K, elementary & 2 middle schools). Guess whose days are NUMBERED. We closed 10 black schools because of apartments closing.

And think about this there are jobs in the school system that are hard to fill-because those jobs are also in the private sector that PAYS more.
School diagnostician is one. This is the person who tests for Special education and 504 classification. We have 10,000+ kids that need testing and there is ONLY 120 of them.
School nurse too. Some schools don't have a full time nurse.
A computer tech makes say $35-40K in the school district. They can make 70K outside of it. I have gone through 7 tech guys in 4 years.

Check your school board agendas-they should be online and you should be able to see what the budget for your school district it. I would advise to NOT print it but download it. Due to size.

[Mister Mets]

Gamestop Y'all gamestop... my

Gamestop's been doing terrible stuff here.

Corporate gave instructions to resist police orders to close down because they considered themselves "essential retail."

https://kotaku.com/gamestop-we-can-s...wer-1842415962

I'll note they did close earlier today.

The Gamestop situation does show a failing of the free market, because the incentives of the people in charge were terrible.

One person who worked at Gamestop wrote online that sales had been awesome during the early stages of the Coronavirus concerns, because you had a lot of people looking for entertainment for when they're shut-in.

Gamestop's financial situation has been terrible. No one wants to buy it.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/busin...-search-buyer/

So the incentives are to make as much money in the short-term as possible. The people in charge don't care about hurting the image of the brand in the long-term because they probably don't think the company has any future.

This has led to the store remaining open way too long during a pandemic attracting crowds at a time when the workers were told to bring in their own cleaning supplies.

[Bruce Wayne]

I genuinely hope Trump doesn't get a second term. Please don't sit this election out.

I think people will re-elect him for being presidential (as well as signing off on the stimulus checks) during this pandemic/crisis despite him being partially responsible for this mess. The rally-around-the-office mentality during this crisis along with right wing media will help raise his approval ratings.

[Tami]

David Lat Put on Ventilator, in Critical Condition With COVID-19 Infection

David Lat is in critical condition and has been has been put on a ventilator at NYU Langone Hospital in Manhattan, where his fight with the coronavirus has taken a turn for the worse, according to his husband, Zachary Baron Shemtob.

In a phone interview on Saturday evening, Shemtob said that at some point late Friday night or early Saturday morning, Lat, founder of the legal blog Above the Law and now a widely recognized legal recruiter, was put on a ventilator after “his oxygen levels dropped.”

“He’s not doing great,” Shemtob said, adding that the NYU Langone doctors and other staff “are really attending to him. They’re taking it hour by hour, day by day.”

Lat, who is a Yale Law School graduate, a former federal prosecutor and the author of a legal-appeals-centered novel, is 44 years old.

Asked if the doctors had talked about or know Lat’s prognosis, Shemtob responded, “It’s a bit much for me right now.” He said it was not clear if any prognosis is even known.

“I just want to folks to know that he is so strong; he is hanging in there, and we are praying he’ll recover,” Shemtob said. “Any thoughts or prayers people have are much appreciated.”

[Tami]

I think people will re-elect him for being presidential (as well as signing off on the stimulus checks) during this pandemic/crisis despite him being partially responsible for this mess. The rally-around-the-office mentality during this crisis along with right wing media will certainly raise his approval ratings.

There is that risk, but I have to think that Trump has pushed his luck one too many times. Anyone dumb enough to vote for him after this ...... :headshake:

[Tami]

DOJ Wants to Suspend Certain Constitutional Rights During Coronavirus Emergency

The Trump Department of Justice has asked Congress to craft legislation allowing chief judges to indefinitely hold people without trial and suspend other constitutionally-protected rights during coronavirus and other emergencies, according to a report by Politico’s Betsy Woodruff Swan.

While the asks from the Department of Justice will likely not come to fruition with a Democratically-controlled House of Representatives, they demonstrate how much this White House has a frightening disregard for rights enumerated in the Constitution.

The DOJ has requested Congress allow any chief judge of a district court to pause court proceedings “whenever the district court is fully or partially closed by virtue of any natural disaster, civil disobedience, or other emergency situation,” according to draft language obtained by Politico. This would be applicable to “any statutes or rules of procedure otherwise affecting pre-arrest, post-arrest, pre-trial, trial, and post-trial procedures in criminal and juvenile proceedings and all civil processes and proceedings.” They justify this by saying currently judges can pause judicial proceedings in an emergency but that new legislation would allow them to apply it “in a consistent manner.”

[Tami]

2020-03-21 Towanda the Avenger on Twitter Hobby Lobby owner David Green is telling store manager.jpg

Hobby Lobby owner David Green is telling store managers to stay open despite the pandemic because his wife had a vision from god.

He also warns they'll all have to "tighten their belts" soon. His net worth is $6.4 billion—hourly employees don't get paid sick leave. #COVIDIOT

Twitter Link

[Mister Mets]

It's why so many smaller colleges play the role of cupcakes to go and get beaten up by larger schools. It's $300-400K that funds the rest of the athletics that year. Sucks for the players of those teams as it's a morale killer, but schools deliberately do it. Hell, UConn is going to take advantage of it as being THE cupcake for FBS schools that are beholden by conference standards to not play FCS programs now that they moved all their other programs back to the Big East and decided that football was not worth investing in for wins.

The main discussion here seems to have been about K-12 education, which has some different arguments from college education, as it deals mainly with the education of minors in schools that are free to attend.

There are obvious potential overlaps in policy discussions (a high school football stadium and college football stadium can both be too expensive.)

Most schools that are struggling do know how to use it. As they ask for assistance, they almost always say they want to use it for updated text books and to update their curriculum. They operating on years of being on the back foot as a result of funds being taken from them to go to religious charters or private schools.



This is all true, but curriculum experts and high level district employees should be the ones who understand these things and are holding the system, schools, and educators accountable for teaching to their population. Theoretically, these should be graduates with stellar degrees and a history of working within the system they are trying to hold accountable. Of course, this isn’t always true, but there isn’t a single system that yields perfect outcomes, but I think there are plenty that offer better ones.

Religious schools don't receive much public funding. Florida devotes the highest percentage to private and religious schools, and it's 3.69% (much of which doesn't go to religious schools.) Georgia is tenth on the list, and it's 0.43%.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/educa...s-house-there/

This may change in the near future with a Supreme Court hearing on a Montana program involving tax credits.

The argument in defense of charter schools is that they're not taking money from public schools since the money is following the student. The idea is that poor and middle class parents should be able to spend taxpayer money allocated on their kid's behalf on something other than the zoned local school, which is the choice available to upper-middle class and upper-class parents who can afford to send their kids to private schools.

There isn't much evidence to indicate that money spent on updated textbooks/ curriculums will make all that much of an impact. According to PISA scores, two-thirds of American kids aren't reading at grade level. That's not going to be erased by new textbooks.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/03/u...st-scores.html

I do agree that there's no perfect system, but that doesn't mean we should money at the problem to get slight improvements (if that even occurs.)

There is undeniably a nationwide disparity between predominantly white and minority districts, but depending who you ask, white privilege doesn't exist.
Closing your eyes when reality doesn't fit the nationalist narrative is also the American way

The achievement gap is a major problem, but it's not limited by race. Rural white districts have much educational outcomes than suburban white districts.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5804745/

And if we're comparing white people to minority groups, Asian Americans have much higher educational outcomes.

[KNIGHT OF THE LAKE]

The reason that many white people don't think white privilege exists is that to a lot of us, it's invisible. For instance, when I walk around a convenience store deciding what snack to purchase, I don't have to also think about the store manager looking over my shoulder to make sure I'm not shoplifting. But I don't think of that as privilege. But to a Black man walking around that same convenience store, where his skin color might automatically make him suspicious to the store manager, it is an example of white privilege.

I’ve always thought it would be better to call it black/poc under-privilege.

Two reasons for that.

1. It’s more accurate. The goal should be for the way whites get treated to be the standard for everyone. Pointing out the inequality for other races makes it more tangible than on the group that really doesn’t feel it. Point out where the problem is. The problem is the way black’s get treated, not the way whites do.

2. It needlessly creates a situation where certain whites who don’t have the capacity for nuance, to get offended and defensive. You can say “well they should get over it” but enough time has passed where we know that isn’t happening. It’s clearly something that causes more issues in addressing these problems than it helps by being hard nosed about the verbiage.

In a perfect world he wording would be trivial enough to not matter because people were emotionally mature. That clearly isn’t the case.

[Darkspellmaster]

I'll take "toxic masculinity" for 500!!

In some cases yes.

Football specifically gets a lot of money because in many schools the football program actually generates money used for other sports. Athletic departments are often dependent on the football program to determine how much they can spend for the rest of the year.

As others have said thetes more to it. But, a good number of schools look for funding via donations from affluent people, and former alumni. Winning schools bring in big bucks for some. It's why some student athletes want to be paid for playing now.

[Gray Lensman]

In some cases yes.



As others have said thetes more to it. But, a good number of schools look for funding via donations from affluent people, and former alumni. Winning schools bring in big bucks for some. It's why some student athletes want to be paid for playing now.

While he is not who anyone would want as a poster boy for it, I remember reading that Johnny Manziel had to attend a gala thrown in his honor where his face was plastered everywhere on all sorts of stuff for sale, with the article pointing out that the only one not allowed to make money off of his image was the guy himself. No wonder some sportswriters call it shametuer athletics.

[Darkspellmaster]

One of the things I say I miss about the 80's. I mean Philly had it rockin when I went to school there. How times have changed. Not saying it's terrible, but so many of the things I had at Parkway and Sayre, and Heston, even Penn State, were things they don't have now. I graduated in 1992 and I don't think they send kids overseas anymore. They might but I don't know which schools do.[/qoute]

I know the more expensive schools in Chicago do do exchange programs still. And Community colleges do do exchanges to other international community colleges.

It's amazing that in order to pass the Home Ec class, not only did we have to show a gain in money, but we actively had to use the account and maintain 5% above the minimum PA gave us which as 25 bucks.

Economics had us balance a check, and middle school had us do a budget for Home ec. for buying our supplies.



[Quote ]That's the thing I don't get about America. I've had an education here and in Japan, and the Japanese definitely don't skimp on Education. I went to Kanagawa Sohgoh High and they were the **** lol. I don't understand why schools just don't receive money based on body count, and not on some polticians biases liberal, or conservative.

Well then you should know that the Japanese school system was partially based in the British one, and honestly I would rather deal with the American education administration than the japanese given how they treat teachers and the issues with students and their families and the issues with suicide and corruption it's a bit of a mess.
However I will concede that they have a better system for studies.

Art makes life liveable. I remember going to plays, shows, historical tours, Overseas trips, etc. Just to learn and enjoy another country. We've seemed to progress and regress at the same time.

Chicago schools do do art trips. But it's harder for Rural communities to do the same. What really sucks is when one group, typically the boys or mens team, gets paid by the school and the girls or women's team has to pay their own way.

[Darkspellmaster]

That's true, I agree with that. I wish they treated all children the same.

On that we can agree.