Mayor – Clownmommy

No Snow Day Yes

Thursday evening

NEW YORK, NY February 25, 2010 —Because of the snowstorm, the city has decided to postpone parent teacher conferences for junior high and intermediate schools, but Mayor Bloomberg says otherwise, it’s business as usual in the classroom.

“Our main objective is to keep our kids in school,” Bloomberg says. “That’s why we have an education system. And right now we expect that snowfall tomorrow will be manageable enough that we can keep all schools open.”

The mayor says the city will let parents know if they decide to close schools as soon as possible, but no decision has been made.

The mayor says the sanitation department also has 365 salt spreaders that can disperse 170,000 tons of salt and 1,600 snow plows can begin clearing city streets once 2 inches of snow accumulate on the ground.

But, because temperatures are in the mid-30s, the mayor says much of the snow that has fallen is melting on city streets.

Friday Morning

NEW YORK (AP) – Mayor Michael Bloomberg says safety was the reason for the rare decision to close New York City’s public schools.

In Albany, the sun was shining Friday and schools were open. But hundreds of schools – from Rochester to the lower Hudson Valley and Long Island – were closed. It was the week’s second snow day for many upstate districts.

New York City officials originally had hoped that the snowfall would be manageable. But Bloomberg says his top advisers spoke on Thursday night and decided keeping schools open “may not be safe.”

There are 1.1 million pupils in the nation’s largest school system. During a Feb. 10 storm, they enjoyed their third snow day in only six years.

Said Schools Chancellor Joel Klein: “Everybody better do their homework this weekend.”

from someone i’m connected to;

Dear classmates –
>
> As an Alaskan, I am writing to give all of you some information on
> Sarah Palin, Senator McCain’s choice for VP. As an Alaska voter, I
> know more than most of you about her and, frankly, I am horrified that
> he picked her.
>
> The most accurate description of her is red neck. Her husband works in
> the oil fields of Prudhoe Bay and races snow mobiles. She is a life
> time member of the NRA and has worked tirelessly to allow
> indiscriminate hunting of wildlife in Alaska, particularly wolves and
> bears. She has spent millions of Alaska state dollars on aerial
> hunting of these predators from helicopters and airplanes, dollars
> that should have been spent, for example, on Alaska’s failing school
> system.We have the lowest rate of high school graduation in the
> country. Not all of you may think aerial predator hunting is so bad,
> but how anyone (other than Alaska wolf-haters, of which there are
> many, most without teeth), could think this use of funds is
> appropriate is beyond me. If you want to know more about the aerial
> hunting travesty, let me know and I will send some links to
> informative web sites.
>
> She has been a strong supporter of increased use of fossil fuels, yet
> the McCain campaign has the nerve to say she has “green”
policies. The
> only thing green about Sarah Palin is her lack of experience. She has
> consistently supported drilling in ANWR, use of coal-burning power
> plants (as I write this, a new coal plant is being built in her home
> town of Wasilla), strip mining, and almost anything else that will
> unnecessarily exploit the diminishing resources of Alaska and destroy
> its environment.
>
> Prior to her one year as governor of Alaska, she was mayor of Wasilla,
> a small red neck town outside Anchorage.The average maximum education
> level of parents of junior high school kids in Wasilla is 10th grade.
> Unfortunately, I have to go to Wasilla every week to get groceries and
> other supplies, so I have continual contact with the people who put
> Palin in office in the first place. I know what I’m talking about.
> These people don’t have a concept of the world around them or of the
> serious issues facing the US. Furthermore, they don’t care. So long as
> they can go out and hunt their moose every fall, kill wolves and bears
> and drive their snow mobiles and ATVs through every corner of the
> wilderness, they’re happy. I wish I were exaggerating.
>
> Sarah Palin is currently involved in a political corruption scandal.
> She fired an individual in law enforcement here because she didn’t
> like how he treated one of her relatives during a divorce. The man’s
> performance and ability weren’t considered; it was a totally personal
> firing and is currently under investigation. While the issue isn’t
> close to the scandal of Ted Steven’s corruption, it shows that Palin
> isn’t “squeaky clean” and causes me to think there ay be
more issues
> that could come to light. Clearly McCain doesn’t care.
>
> When you line Palin up with Biden, the comparison would be laughable
> if it weren’t so serious. Sarah Palin knows nothing of economics
> (admittedly a weak area for McCain), or of international affairs,
> knows nothing of national government, Social Security, unemployment,
> health care systems – you name it. The idea of her meeting with heads
> of foreign governments around the world truly frightens me.
>
> In an increasingly dangerous world, with the economy in shambles in
> the US, Sarah Palin is uniquely UNqualified to be vice president. John
> McCain is not a young man. Should something happen to him such that
> the vice president had to step in, it would destroy our country and
> possibly the world to have someone as inexperienced and inappropriate
> as Sarah Palin. The choice of Palin is a cheap shot by McCain to try
> to get Hillary supporters to vote for him. when McCain introduced her
> today, Palin had the nerve to compare herself with Hillary and
> Geraldine Ferraro. Sarah Palin, you are no Hillary Clinton.
>
> To those of you who, like me, supported Hilary and were upset that she
> did not get the nomination, please don’t think that Sarah Palin is a
> worthy substitute. If you supported Hillary, regardless of what you
> think the media and the democratic party may have done to undermine
> her campaign, the person to support now is Obama, not Sarah Palin. To
> those of you who are independent or undecided, don’t let the choice of
> Palin sway you in favor of McCain. Choosing her shows how unqualified
> McCain is to be president. To those of you who are conservative, I
> guess you have no choice for president. But please try to see how the
> poor choice of Palin tells us a great deal about McCain’s judgment.
> While the political posturing inherent in the choice of Palin is
> obvious, the more serious issue is the fact that the VP is, literally,
> a heartbeat away from the presidency. Sarah Palin is totally and
> unequivocally unqualified to be vice president, let alone president.
>
> I know this is a lengthy and emotional email, but the stakes are high.
> I thought it might help for all of you, regardless of political
> affiliation, to know something about Palin from someone who has to
> live with her administration in Alaska on a daily basis.

More Standardized Testing

It’s not much of a stretch to imagine that someone who identifies herself as a clown would not think much of standardized tests.

So it is not a stretch to imagine how appalled I am that Mayor Bloomberg has announced a pilot program including timed paper-and-pencil assessments for children as young as kindergarten. That’s insane. Children spend the year of kindergarten learning to sit in a chair without touching anybody else, how to transition to circle time, again without touching anybody else, at least not hard enough to knock them off balance. In addition they must practice standing in line without playing with the hair of the girl in front of them. There are other activities involving reading and math. But, learning to sit in a chair when the teacher says it is time to sit in a chair is the main objective of the average kindergartner.

My Kid is going into 3rd grade this year, the first year of high stakes testing in New York City. She has been aware of THE BIG TEST for months. She has thought long and hard, and has decided the best way to prepare for this public evaluation is to brush her hair everyday

I too am being mature about the test. My fantasy back up plan is to pull her out of school in January and put her on a plane to Montana so my brother can teach her to ski like her Idaho born cousins because that’s a learning deficit in my family.

However, I think My Kid is actually looking forward to the test and would be really upset if she missed it.