SOS! Save Our Schools! needs volunteers.

[Amy Kloss]

Bill, if you somehow think adding an extra 30 minutes to my work day will alleviate our budget issues, it might be best to bow out now.

And if you'd like to get into compensation issues based on hours worked, I think the extra 15-20 hours a week I spend online with my students outside of school in my "always-open 24/7 digital classroom" might as well be up for negotiation as well. I'm not asking for this compensation, to be clear, but if you're so bent on the antiquated issue of seat-time, you should have a clear picture of what it looks like these days.

See Bill, it's thinking like you've exhibited here, a surface-level fix for a non-issue, that shows the flaws in your approach to education issues. If you want a better education for Lakewood's students, as I do, you might be wise to focus on issues of pedagogy, curriculum, and the changes that the internet age bring to learning.

But you go ahead and keep on fighting for those thirty minutes, and maybe by some miracle of "Callsian" thinking, everything will work out fine.

I just read through this entire thread for the first time, and I loved this entry so much, I wanted to say "Bravo" to you Sean. Bill Call certainly seems obsessed with the idea of an 8-hour day for teachers. Apparently, he has never been a teacher or known a teacher well enough to understand the tremendous number of hours involved in the job. Others on this thread have already tried to educate him, but some people refuse to learn.

As Sean states, we would all "be wise to focus on issues of pedagogy, curriculum, and the changes that the internet age bring to learning." Our kids have already moved on beyond the idea of traditional classroom time as the only valid educational method.

[Will Brown]

It is interesting that you cite popular songwriters as some sort of authority on working hours, when they are probably more concerned with whether their ditty rhymes than whether it is factually accurate.

The idea that popular musicians, who almost certainly do not work office hours, are an authority on the subject is farcical. Do you really think they hang around offices gathering data on which to base their songs? Do you think they even care whether their songs are accurate? Do you whistle while you work?

I guess I am disappointed at what seems to me to be the decline in our intellectual capacity, when to get information we are no longer to do much work, but satisfy ourselves citing popular songs, google, wikipedia, the media, and movies.

And all of this, of course, is irrelevant to the subject of this thread.

[michael gill]

Michael Gill wrote:

"I don't advance Dolly Parton as an authority on the workday, actually. She's just an observer. That song is not prescriptive: it is descriptive. It takes advantage of what was, by the time she wrote the line, an already well-worn idea in popular culture. The line works because even before she wrote it, "nine to five" already sounded to most people like a regular work day."

I can tell, Will, that you are what we call a "strong reader."

Which makes it perplexing that after reading the above, you then wrote:

"It is interesting that you cite popular songwriters as some sort of authority on working hours, when they are probably more concerned with whether their ditty rhymes than whether it is factually accurate.

The idea that popular musicians, who almost certainly do not work office hours, are an authority on the subject is farcical."

Umm . . . Yes, well . . .

Similarly, I juxtapose this:

I wrote:

"Bill Call provoked this discussion with his willful ignorance of (I don't mean he doesn't know, I just mean he ignores) all aspects of the school administration's job, except for their negotiations with the teacher's union . . . and further, willfully ignores every part of that negotiation beyond how to save the most tax money.

"Bearing that in mind, if what you'd like to discuss is the credibility of Dolly Parton when she sings about working "9 to 5," well, OK then."

Which you answered by telling me:

"And all of this, of course, is irrelevant to the subject of this thread."

I happen to believe that what I said at the top of my post and what you said at the bottom of yours are dangerously close in meaning.

Nonetheless, if you do not believe that common song lyrics describe common truths about society, well, you should listen to more music. Of course poets and songwriters commonly tell lies, but they do so by picking up scraps of culture that resonate because they are true. Working nine to five is one of those cases.

Tell me this: Where do you think that phrase comes from?

[Corey Rossen]

"I don't want to work, I want to bang on the drums all day."

Sorry, back to 9 to 5. Nothing to see here.

Corey

[marklingm]

Michael,

While we may not agree with Bill all the time, at least Bill is not afraid to share his points of view ... here ... out in the open.

Speaking of which …

Shawn Juris,

Please tell us if you did in fact suggest that the Lakewood City Schools should turn over their property tax revenue to the city if the district doesn't rank "excellent" or better.

Did you suggest that? Please explain.

(quoth Mr. Markling: "For example, the above photo was taken by Jim O’Bryan during my 2011 meeting with Ward 3 Councilman Shawn Juris at the Root Cafe wherein Shawn was explaining to me why the Lakewood City Schools should be required to turnover its property tax revenue to the City of Lakewood if the school district doesn’t rank excellent or better.")

… have you heard anything from Shawn?


While it's certainly not Dolly’s best song (I couldn't bring myself to post the video), let’s keep your theme going and see if we can get some “Straight Talk” …

Gimme some straight talk, straight talk — and hold the sugar please
Straight talk, straight talk — sounds plenty sweet to me
Don't talk to me in circles in some mumbo-jumbo jive
Gimme just straight talk, straight talk and we're gonna be alright

'Cause I like to know just where I stand, I don't like guessing games
And I hate a bunch of gibberish, so just spit it out real plain
Don't use big educated words from your BS Degree
Straight talk, straight talk — don't try B.S.-ing me

Straight talk, straight talk — turn loose and let it go
You can tell me anything — just like on Oprah's show
Just tell me how you really feel, be on the up and up
With questions I can understand — for answers you can trust

***

Matt

[michael gill]

Matt,

Bill Call does indeed put himself out there.

About that "straight talk" video, I thank you, and I'm sure several of us thank you, for your restraint.

Not that Dolly Parton isn't a great singer and a delightful human being. She certainly is at least one of those things, and possibly both. Still, thank you.

And no, I have heard nothing at all from Councilman Juris. I would love to hear more about that conversation, though, and to have Mr. Juris represent his own point of view.

[Bill Call]

Matt,

Bill Call does indeed put himself out there.

About that "straight talk" video, I thank you, and I'm sure several of us thank you, for your restraint.

Not that Dolly Parton isn't a great singer and a delightful human being. She certainly is at least one of those things, and possibly both. Still, thank you.

And no, I have heard nothing at all from Councilman Juris. I would love to hear more about that conversation, though, and to have Mr. Juris represent his own point of view.

I'll be back after a short recess.

[Bill Call]

1. Why do YOU think the district lost its excellent rating?
2. What is the "new reality" and how does it relate to your response in question 1?
3. What would you do or have done differently to change our district's rating?
4. What evidence would you need? It seems like facts, data, and lived-experience of professionals aren't enough, so what is?

1. The district lost its' excellent rating because a small group of students failed to meet adequate yearly progress. The district does a better job than Cleveland, Euclid, East Cleveland or Cleveland Heights and a worse job than Parma or Berea and 50 other districts in the area. I don’t think that’s good enough.

2. The new reality is that the students in Lakewood are in competition with the students of Singapore and Finland and not the students of Euclid or Cleveland, that even the best schools in this country compare poorly with many foreign schools and that the foreign schools spend less money. We can and should do better.

3. There is one school of thought out there that more time teaching and learning has a positive effect on outcomes. While extra time doing the same thing in the wrong way isn’t very productive more time in the classroom correlates well with better outcomes.

4. The evidence is all around us. If you are satisfied you are to easily satisfied.

"Bill Call provoked this discussion with his willful ignorance of (I don't mean he doesn't know, I just mean he ignores) all aspects of the school administration's job, except for their negotiations with the teacher's union . . . and further, willfully ignores every part of that negotiation beyond how to save the most tax money.

According to the department of labor an eight hour day is eight hours work, not 6 ½:
http://www.dol.gov/whd/regs/compliance/whdfs54.htm

It’s only in the never neverland world of government that 6 ½ hours of work is called an eight hour day.

The district has limited resources, the people are taxed to the limit and spending tax dollars on shorter days and retirement bonuses and overly generous benefits packages does nothing to improve the schools and does great damage to the community.

Here is my advice to Lakewood School Board employees:

Start at 8 work till 5, work year round, work till you are 65, be paid for performance or find another line of work. Lakewood City Schools is a school district not a welfare agency.

The current results are unacceptable to me. If you think they are acceptable you are part of the problem. No organization every excelled with the mission statement: Second or third place is pretty good and maybe better than we should expect and anyway our customers are just too demanding.

[michael gill]

You keep saying the same thing, Bill.

[Sandra Donnelly]

Ummmm, quite frankly, Bill, throughout my 35 year career as an educator and administrator, I would have thought working 8 to 5 would be akin to being on vacation. Nine hour days were a rare treat.

[Sean Wheeler]

1. The district lost its' excellent rating because a small group of students failed to meet adequate yearly progress.

So far so good, but then....

The district does a better job than Cleveland, Euclid, East Cleveland or Cleveland Heights and a worse job than Parma or Berea and 50 other districts in the area. I don’t think that’s good enough.

I want to call attention to a quick sleight-of-hand in this second statement. Bill, do you mean that the first group of cities also has a similar group of refugees that score worse than ours, and that Parma, Berea, and 50 other districts do a better job working with a similar group of refugees at their schools?

As for points 2-4, I think you need to take a closer look at the teaching and learning that go on here in Lakewood. As an example, one way that we're increasing contact time, and one way that wouldn't show up in your examinations of my contract, is that we've increased contact time in our district by increasingly moving towards a 24/7 digital environment for teaching and learning online that supplements and extends the work we do in our classrooms. While there are still some issues of access to technology and teacher training being considered, Lakewood teachers have voluntarily extended their student contact time well beyond the extra half hour you'd like to tack on to our work days. And while I agree with this statement,

While extra time doing the same thing in the wrong way isn’t very productive

I disagree that Lakewood isn't being forward thinking in their adoption of 21st century tools and skills. You mentioned the new reality of global competition, and I think Lakewood is really taking the idea pretty seriously as evidenced by our increased commitment to leverage the vast new learning resources available around the world and bring them into our classrooms right here in town.

If economics, and not learning, are your bottom line, I don't know how I can convince you that Lakewood is doing some great work right now. But if you'd be willing to look at learning first, and table the economic discussion until you firmly grasp what it is that teachers these days do, I think your economic points can begin to make more sense because they'd be grounded in a realistic context. Right now, I'm afraid that you're conflating the classrooms that you and I experienced with the classrooms that exist within the context of the digital information age.

The offer stands as it always has. I would like to invite you to take a close look at the innovative work that is abundant in our schools right now. I honestly think that if you took the time to actually learn about what my colleagues and I do everyday, you'd come away with a more appreciative view of not only the work being done, but what needs we are really facing on a day to day basis. I think there is room in our city's conversation about education for voices like yours, voices that question, suggest, and hold high standards of economic and civic responsibility. But to simply stand off in the distance, unaware of what the "new reality" you suggest actually means in the lived experience of our students, teachers, and administrators, is to miss a chance to have a strong and respected voice in the improvement of our city's schools. I'd do anything I can to share this with you, and anyone else willing to listen, whenever you'd like.

Thanks for chiming back in and answering my questions Bill. You're a stand-up guy.

[marklingm]

And no, I have heard nothing at all from Councilman Juris. I would love to hear more about that conversation, though, and to have Mr. Juris represent his own point of view.

Michael,

Any word from Ward 3 Councilman Shawn Juris yet?

I'm hoping that we can count on Shawn as a strong school levy supporter.

Support the School Levy!

Matt

[michael gill]

Nothing yet, Matt.

[marklingm]

Nothing yet, Matt.

I guess these things take time, Michael.

I wonder whether City Hall will formally endorse the upcoming school levy - if it hasn't already. Maybe I missed that announcement, which is certainly possible.

I'm assuming that the City Hall Administration is formally endorsing the school levy since Mayor Mike Summers is the co-chair of the school levy committee.

Ward 3 Councilman Shawn Juris can put the issue of whether he supports the Lakewood City Schools to rest by sponsoring a resolution formally putting City Council's endorsement on the school levy ... and voting for it ... no abstentions, please.

As an aside, I beleve that The Lakewood Observer was one of the first entities to formally endorse the school levy.

Support the School Levy!

Matt

[marklingm]

From the Minutes of the February 1, 2010 Regular Meeting of the Lakewood City Council:

****

15. (1B) RESOLUTION NO. 8399-10 – A RESOLUTION in support of Lakewood School Operating Levy. (Pg. 21)

Motion by Mr. Summers, seconded by Mr. Butler, to adopt Resolution No. 8399-10.
Motion adopted. All members voting yea.

****

RESOLUTION NO. 8399-10 is attached.

Thank you, 2010 City Hall!

Support the School Levy, 2013 City Hall!