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Tuesday, February 14, 2012

A CHOICE MATTER

Currently if your kids in ELEMENTARY school, they eat what's served them and that's that. Hey, that's they way it was when I grew up. (I confess I walked home for lunch until I went to the tenth grade, even when I was on crutches.) No matter where you ate, you ate what you were served or I had to listen to my mom go on about starving kids in China and some kid working in the field all day on a bowl of rice. She was trying to teach me to be grateful and I learned.

Aside from the nutritional moral lesson there is something else at work here. Starting in MARCH some of the elementary students will begin having an option, the CHOICE menu. The biggest problem is where it starts, SHOEMAKER. I mean it's got to start somewhere, but why do all the GOOD new programs always seem to start in certain schools?

10 comments:

  1. It's starting at Shoemaker because they have the least amount of kids buying school lunch. They want more kids buying the lunches so more revenue comes in. It's not a special favor, they're just trying to get money wherever they can.

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    1. I don't think your logic holds up to well because FREE lunches are paid for by the government. Money is green no matter where it comes from.

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  2. I don't think that it is that big of a deal. They are opening the innovation school in the Washington School. Hopefully, the best parts of a STEM based curriculum make their way through the city and the same goes for lunch.

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    1. Rather than hopefully, I believe doubtful is a more appropriate word. Right now there are classrooms who do not even have a science book for the "normal" curriculum. Science is part of the MCAS (I wonder if not having the needed books and materials is contributing to our failing scores)

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    2. This comment has been removed by the author.

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    3. Why should we have to wait or hope!

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  3. Wasn't the Washington School an innovation school before it was a behavioral school?

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    1. It was a magnet school. Paul Revere was the first innovation school in MA

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  4. So I'm digging into this innovation school idea and I really like it but it's interesting that Lynn would pursue such a school considering that:

    1) Innovation plan must have...specified measurable annual goals for school performance and student success.

    Didn't the LPS just vote to sign the petition requesting a waiver from AYP, a form of "specified measurable annual goals for school performance and student success"?

    2) Provisions of union agreements may be waived or modified by a two-thirds vote of the bargaining unit members employed or to be employed at the school.

    Well this doesn't surprise me. Wonder if Future's had a hand in this one?

    3) Evaluations annually by district superintendent, to determine if the school has annual goals outlined in the innovation plan.

    Hmmm...wonder how those are going to go?

    4) Local or regional school board may take action if superintendent finds that the school has substantially failed to meet its goals.

    Well that can't possibly happen. Dr. Latham isn't leading a failing district. Why would the innovation school fail? Now I understand requirement 1).

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    1. The NCLB Waiver was signed last week by the President.

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