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Little Free Libraries
Did you know in Indiana a child can grow up never having access to a library unless they live in certain townships that support a library. It’s true, thanks to one of Indiana’s many quirky laws libraries receive no state funding so are funded exclusively by their local areas and whatever grants they can manage to get. So if a low income child grows up in a township that doesn’t fund a library his parents are unlikely to be able to afford a libary card then priced at over $100 to use a local library. Indiana is also the only state of the union in which parents have to pay HIGH rental fees for school books because that also isn’t funded. High as in $160 for a year per child…high… on top of school clothes and the biggest school supplies list you have ever see because it includes supplies for the teachers too….yeah high!
I found this amazing having grown up in Michigan where all libraries were free and you could even use one in a neighboring town if you chose to…say it was close to work thus more convient for you then the one closer to your home…or bigger…whatever…you could use it. I just assumed all libraries were free…wasn’t that the point of them afterall? I have a twice a week library habit myself.
Now here is a great idea that would be much needed in backward states like Indiana the 3rd World State of America’s Midwest (Now even the only “Right to Work for Less State” in the Midwest too). Little Free Libraries!
Three years ago Todd Bol came up with an idea to remember his mother, a teacher who had loved books and encouraged people to read. At his home in Hudson, Wisc., he built a box, made it waterproof and filled it with books. It looked like a miniature one-room schoolhouse, with a sign underneath that said “Free Book Exchange.” Bol put it on a post outside of his house and invited neighbors to take a book, and return a book.
That’s when something happened Bol says he never could have imagined.
“People of all ages, men, women, kids came up and just loved the library,” he said. “They got excited and they started coming up to me saying, ‘I’ll build one, do you need books?’”
The rest of the story including a video can be found at http://dailynightly.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/03/10/10634425-using-books-to-build-community A great idea and a wonderful feel good story!
Moldy applesauce repackaged by school lunch supplier
A Washington state fruit processor that supplies the nation’s schools and a baby food maker is under scrutiny by federal health regulators for repackaging applesauce contaminated with several kinds of potentially dangerous, multi-colored molds, msnbc.com has learned.
Food and Drug Administration officials this week posted a warning letter to Snokist Growers of Yakima, Wash., saying the company cannot ensure the safety of moldy applesauce and fruit puree that has been reconditioned for human consumption.
“Your firm reprocesses moldy applesauce product … using a method that is not effective against all toxic metabolites,” read the FDA letter sent Oct. 20 to Jimmie L. Davis, Snokist’s president. “Several foodborne molds may be hazardous to human health.”
Products recalled earlier this year by Snokist were blamed for illnesses of nine North Carolina children who became sick after eating applesauce at school.
Read more here http://vitals.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/11/04/8636308-fda-moldy-applesauce-repackaged-by-school-lunch-supplier Dan, Voice of the Young Progressive will be commenting on this story and other school lunch tales in our next The Julianna Michigan Show podcast. He’s on the case! Till then..try the Michigan Applesauce. 🙂
GOP Education in Michigan
Via Electablog at the Daily Kos:
THIS is obscene:
City fire marshal investigators plan to inspect every Detroit Public Schools classroom after receiving complaints this week about overcrowded classes with more than 50 students.Detroit Fire Department representatives met Thursday with district officials to determine the maximum number of students for every classroom in the district, said Assistant Fire Marshal Osric Wilson.
The fire marshal issued a violation this week at Nolan Elementary-Middle School after receiving a tip that a kindergarten class had 55 students. […]
A Detroit Federation of Teachers’ survey of teachers conducted this month concluded that more than 25% of DPS schools have classrooms that exceed the limits allowed by the union contract, which calls for a maximum of 25 students in kindergarten through third grades, 30 in fourth and fifth grades and 35 in sixth through 12th.
The survey concluded that 437 classes of the district’s nearly 3,500 classes are over the contract limit.
For example, Emerson Elementary’s two sixth-grade classes had 53 and 54 students as of Oct. 18. Farwell Leadership Academy had a seventh-grade class with 50 students as of Oct. 12, according to the survey.
Seriously, can you imagine 55 kindergarteners in ONE classroom? Or 54 sixth-graders?
This is a direct result of the GOP cutting funding to schools to pay for an 86% tax cut to businesses. This is what they think will improve Michigan’s economy. If anyone thinks that decimating our public school system in this way and demonizing teachers is the way to bring our state out of its crisis, they are completely out of touch with what brings businesses to a state.
Shameful.
This is what happens in Michigan when Republicans are elected for public office and yet another fine example of why that Emergency Manager Law has to go. You know I used to say the conservatives in Indiana were far more right wing then the conservatives in Michigan are. No more of that. It’s like they are trying to out do each other as far as which can destroy their states and country faster. A contest the rest of us don’t need.
Art Pope – The Conservative Money in NC
Move over Koch Brothers, there is another conservative figure in North Carolina who is pouring money into that state to influence policies in the worst way. Take this as just one example:
Last year, Pope garnered national attention when North Carolina Democrats accused Pope of engineering, in 2009, the re-segregation of public schools in Wake County, which includes Raleigh. Conservative board members, elected with the support of Pope and Tea Party activists, overturned a program that used busing to achieve economic diversity in schools—a program that the Washington Post had called “one of the nation’s most celebrated integration efforts.” The new school board pledged, instead, to send more students to neighborhood schools. Pope was the second-largest individual contributor to the local Republican Party, which helped fund the school-board candidates’ campaigns. The largest contributor was Bob Luddy, who is a board member at the John Locke Foundation and at the Civitas Institute. Americans for Prosperity provided additional support for anti-busing activists, describing them as “freedom loving” and their opponents as “radical union organizers.”
The Reverend William Barber, the head of the North Carolina chapter of the N.A.A.C.P., which has filed a civil-rights complaint with the Justice Department, says that the new board wants to racially divide one of the largest, and best, public-school systems in the country. “Civitas pushes this extreme, ultra-right-wing agenda,” he says. “The first thing the school board did was start putting black children back into their so-called neighborhoods. The concept first came out of the lips of George Wallace.” Pope told me, “No one that I know of wants to re-segregate the Wake County schools!” He called himself “a big education reformer” who ardently supports charter schools; one of his three children attended such a school.
The New Yorker article has a whole laundry list of things like funding attack ads, founding conservative think tanks, influencing the University education system’s funding and course selections etc. Not living in North Carolina, I hadn’t heard of Art Pope before…he’s really one that needs to be watched. If you are considering attending a University in North Carolina or know someone who is there are some gems in this article too that you may wish to consider.
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/10/10/111010fa_fact_mayer?currentPage=all
Foreign Teachers Exploited because of No Child Left Behind Act
Foreign teachers were hired to work at a school district just outside Washington, DC. Not only were they paid less than comparable American teachers but also made to pay the fees necessary to bring them into this country. The teachers were brought in under the the federal H-1B program (temporary worker) despite all the American teachers that are unemployed and need those positions. It’s about a school district trying to save money in order to comply with the unfunded mandate that is “No Child Left Behind”.
Do I feel bad for these teachers? Yes, I do because they were innocent victims and now are left in the US with no jobs. I also feel very bad for American teachers many whom have been looking for positions not just for months but for years. The ones that ARE working are under paid and under appreciated as Dan – Voice of the Young Progressive pointed out in the last podcast of the Julianna Michigan Show. The Julianna Michigan Show 9-26.
“No Child Left Behind” has done more harm than good, I have concluded after speaking with educators and students affected by it. The only good was that it enabled former Resident Bush to line the pockets of his brother Neil Bush and his mother Barbara who had invested in Neil’s company, Ignite! Learning. Yes, the same Neil from the Silverado Savings & Loan Scandal in the 80s.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/44708445/ns/today-education_nation/
Is this an isolated story? Sadly, the answer is no.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2009-10-27-filipino-teachers_N.htm
The Julianna Michigan Show 