Isn't America Grand?

Thanks UNOIT. I forgot to mention technology.

I am blown away by the advances we have made. But I agree with UNOIT in that it has taken away human interaction. We email, IM, AIM and such to the point we never have the human touch.

This allows us, me included, to hide behind our computers and attempt to change the world without a single handshake.

I am really not too sure that is a good thing!

Jenny

You and Leo should form a team and take on education!

Unoit:

I don't read Leo's goal as being to shut down various community elemeentaries like Staunton or Van Buren. It's my understanding that two elementaries in the city of Brazil are within a couple of blocks of each other, and instead of renovating them it would be better to combine them and make one good one to cover the same geographic area. This makes perfectly logical sense to me as long as there is enough acreage for a bigger school.

The problem with evaluating teachers and weeding them out is that the department heads, at least at Northview, take all of the advanced classes and leave the more difficult teachers to teach for everyone else. It's much easier to teach the motivated college-bound kids, and you get better results. But it doesn't make you a better teacher.

Lots of comments, however, when I wrote the original piece, I intended to stress how lucky we were to live in America at this point in time and use my experiences with the school corporation to illustrate the fact that in many countries, the government tells the populace what is going to happen, period.

I, too, can see that the decrease in human interaction may not be a good thing. I'm a person who rarely does business over the phone unless forced to because I like to look a person in the eyes. There is some secrecy involved in e-mail, blogging, and IMing, yet it is still communication. True, at times, people read emotion into the written word wrong, something that happens less face-to-face. I've had people read anger into some of my writings that I do not feel. I've felt disappointment that someone did not get my meaning, but I've never felt anger due to a response. Someone accused me with being angry at Dr. Schroeder to which I replied "I'm not angry with him, I do not know him. The day that I get angry with him, believe me, you will read about it in the paper." Why should I get angry at someone trying to do a job? I can, and will, disagree with him, but as dispassionately as possible.

As to "taking on the welfare situation", I think I've got my plate pretty full already, although that is another situation on the downslide. Perhaps if we can get people educated so that they can make a living, we can get them off of welfare or at least tell them "if you don't work, you don't eat" as the Pilgrims did before this nation was founded.

As to comments on the schools.

Sassypants said, "I hope people will study this issue at hand with the renovation and make wise choices. The board and the community and said let's go ahead. 150 people said no."

Did the community say "Let's go"? Very few people spoke up one way or another. Building committees made up mostly of school employees made recommendations that were reviewed by a so-called county-wide committee made up of 28 people, only one of which identified himself as a member of that committee and supported the plan by speaking for it during all of the public meetings. He was the spouse of an employee of the school corporation. To date, I've not heard the mandate of the community. I, for one, hope that people actually stop and take a serious look at the situation, too. But, for some, it is easier to let the school corporation tell them what is best instead of researching the facts and making up their own minds.

Sassypants also said, "This plan is just the best that can be done with the money allowed." I respectfully disagree. This plan wastes money that can be better spent to improve education.

The comments that "we will not be asked to "overhaul" a building for 20 more years" and that we "tear down our coliseums" point out a basic flaw in our school corporation's planning. We do not seem to have a long-term building replacement plan, yet we diligently replace our buses. If you care to look at our history, we do remodel about every twenty years. We have too many buildings in the corporation, yet we seem to have too few classrooms to reduce our student to teacher ratio to boost our graduation rate. Our schools, and other buildings are not historical shrines, nor should they ever become such. They are built to serve the needs of the community at the time that they are constructed and can only serve those needs until the needs change or the population outgrows the buildings. Should we go back to one-roomed schoolhouses? It makes as much sense to waste money renovating when you should be replacing as it would to refurbish and update the Central Office, the old Knightsville school building into a usable state for this era. That is, "no sense at all!" By the bye, most buildings still in use after a hundred years are no longer used for their original purpose, one notable exception being churches, temples, and cathedrals.

I am neither for nor against buildings. Buildings enclose the education process but they do not teach. I have stated publicly that, were it feasible, we should knock down every building that we have and build schools at each level exactly the same. We can't do that. We have two small schools within a mile of each other that need the investment of an amount of money that is over half of what it took Avon, IN to build an elementary school for more than the combined student bodies. These buildings that we have are over forty years old, reasonably near half of their servicable life expectancy and taking into consideration the ages of our other buildings to warrant seroius thought towards replacing them with one building now.

I have researched a little bit on our problems. What I've found worries me. I'm trying to change the direction that we appear to be going. If that makes me a "bad" person in someone's eyes, I can live with that. If I fail to make the change, I can live with that also. I'll know that I gave it my best shot.

One thing that some people fail to understand is that I don't want to do their thinking for them. I am one person and we can find out more facts if I'm not the only one looking. I sent an e-mail to just about all of the administrators of the corporation and to the board of trustees the day that I filed the petitions asking for the petition and remonstrance process asking them to have a "substantially" different plan prepared and ready to go in case the remonstrance is successful. We need to invest in our buildings, but that investment needs to be based on facts and reality. We need to look at the school corporations operation and the community, the bigger picture also. I was dismayed that at none of the public meetings, none of our civic leaders spoke. Yet our schools impact this community greatly.

No Leo. I see you as a good person, just not a nice person. That's a compliment. Nice people don't make waves and let problems go on as they don't want to face them so they don't have to admit that they exist or deal with controversy when they go to the store or to their place of worship....Take Saint Joan of Arc as an example [No Leo, I don't think you're up for sainthood-grin]. She did a lot of good but certainly the church did not think she was a very nice girl, challenging the church doctrine the way she did, telling them it was about God, not rules of the church. So why don't we ALL sign our real names to these comments instead of hiding behind aliases? I'm sure that we won't get burned at the stake like Joan. What's the worse that could happen? I find it troubling that some want their thoughts out there but don't seem quite ready to accept responsibility for making them...HMMM. If this were on the printed page as letters to the editor, it would never be allowed. An open discussion of issues is not truly and totally open if we don't know with whom we are discussing. One thing we as a society have a problem with is exactly what Leo addressed. It's okay to disagree with someone and one can still respect them without totally agreeing with them. That's what makes America so great in theory. In reality however there is an undercurrent of animosity and clique mentality that prevents problems from being openly addressed. It's sort of our American dysfunction if you will. We don't seem to be able to disagree and still have that person be a part of our "clique". All you posters know who I am. I'm an American, a legal resident on Indiana, I actually enjoy paying my taxes to support the American way of life, take care of my kids, am loyal to my husband, etc etc...I just feel that remaining silent on issues only makes problems worse. Our country is great but like Joan's church, run by humans so not perfect. We need to keep working on the details. Not addressing them doesn't make them go away no matter how much we make believe it does. This culpability on line goes right along with our not speaking out when there is a problem. The first step is letting others know that it is YOU who are voicing those opinions on line. The next, more important step is when you go to address a problem in person at the school or local government level. Once you go outside your comfort zone and actually DO something that you only have believed in but not acted upon will you be truly fulfilled. [If you see some religious comparison from your own religious background, all the better as in practice it is much the same in many religions. Practice what you preach]. I wish some of you would seriously think about it. It's lonely in the closet and the fear of coming out is much worse than the fact that people know you're out. As a matter of fact, most will not even mention it as they are too wrapped up in being "nice".

Somewhere, either here or on one of her blogs, Jenny Moore, mentioned that people like to stay in their "comfort zone". I've stepped out of mine on the issue of education within the school corporation. I didn't keep track of the time that I've invested on this, but I have gigabytes of data on my computers. I've built spread sheets and looked at comparisions on other schools that matc ours in various ways that just do not indicate that the school corporation is planning to do what is best for our students or our community. I have taken the time and put forth effort to sit and write to persuade people. I have addressed the school board meetings, yet I have to write out what I want to say and read it because I detest speaking in public and know that I'm not good at it. Many times, while standing in front of such meetings, I've wondered if I was going to have a heart attack or stroke right there. I ran for a seat on the school board, and may again, although I don't want the position because it will take my time away from enjoying life. As a Sergeant in the Marines, I would not hesitate to walk up to a general for his signature on a private's emergency leave papers if he was the only officer in our chain of command and the private was going to miss transport if he didn't leave ASAP. As a union shop steward, I would enter into meetings with management on a member's grievence to negociate a solution even when there was no way that the company was in the wrong and the employee was, because I was the employee's representative. If I had won a seat on the school board and a parent called me about a meeting with the school over their child, I would feel compelled to attend.

That's just the way I am.