Yesterday was Labor Day. Morrisville undertakes quite a number of activities on Labor Day.
First was the 10K race, sponsored by the Morrisville Fire Company. The race wound its way through the borough streets to the finish at Williamson Park. Congratulations to all the participants.
Then there were the festivities in Williamson Park, including the some of the local service organizations, churches, and community groups. There was the inevitable mix of Boy Scouts, fire fighters, borough politicians, and kids in sack races, along with the beautiful weather.
Let's not forget the car show along the downtown section of Bridge Street. I remember some of those older cars from when they were the "New! Improved! Better!" model fresh from the factory.
It was pure small-town corn, and it was great. This is the type of thing that Morrisville excels in. If you missed it, you missed a great show. This was the time to meet your neighbors (you know, the ones you sort of nod toward as you drive by...yeah, them) and say hello in person. It's civic events like these that renew the fraying fabric of community.
This is why Morrisville is a good place to raise a family. While we try to salvage our school system from the ravages of the Stop the Schoolers, let's not lose focus on what makes Morrisville.
Does anyone want to share their stories? What local officeholders or celebrities did you spot? Who was conspicuous by their absence?
Tuesday, September 2, 2008
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An unrelated but timely topic, from today's Phila. Inquirer.
Teachers, please, be good to them
By Sally Friedman
For The Inquirer
They're coming back to you this week. Presumably, they're ready.
While I have no kids to send to you these days, one never forgets. Not their shiny, scrubbed, summer-drenched look. Not those feet that have run bare for nearly three months, now shod in brand-new shoes - or more likely, the sneakers du jour.
For some, the braces are on. For others, they're off.
A few will have grown so tall, or gone so far in losing the roundness that they had only three months ago, that you will gasp at the changes. Children never stand still - in both real and metaphoric ways.
So ready or not, here they come.
But some probably couldn't sleep for the last couple of nights. They were worried about you - whether you'd be kind, whether you'd like them, whether you'd forgive them for forgetting some of their long division over the summer.
Different things likely worried others who will be filling your classrooms today. There is always that little stab of anxiety on these September days when the calendar says it's time, but the stomachache says, "Now what?"
I remember when my own three little hostages to fortune would try for nonchalance about these September grand openings. But it didn't fool me. The trepidation showed on their faces and in their tempests about nothing - and everything.
When the two older girls were fussing over hair and clothes and high school schedules, their little sister was terrified about handling her first locker. Terrible summertime rumors, floated by the big kids, had Nancy positive that she'd never see her jacket again.
But lots of the worry still comes back to you. They wait to see what you'll look like and sound like and act like. They wonder how you'll treat them, even on these early fall mornings when everyone is trying extra hard.
This is the week when they'll spill into your classrooms and fill them, too often to overflowing.
You may feel anxious yourself that there are too many of them, or overwhelmed by the mandate that we hand you: to reach and touch the most sullen, belligerent ones, along with the sweetly appealing ones. But come what may, these young people will be yours for the minutes and hours and months that stretch ahead. You, now, are their universe.
I once was a teacher myself. The career lasted all of one year because I was absolutely overwhelmed by teaching eighth graders the fine points of grammar and the nuances of poetry when I was just 21 years old, and actually terrified of those kids. No school-of-education course had prepared me for the realities of a middle-school classroom.
I left that June and never returned, retreating into pregnancies and motherhood. And oh, what lessons from that!
So I understand that we ask the world of you. Nobody knows that better than a former teacher.
We ask you to be good to them. Such a simple, yet profound, request.
We ask you to treat them with dignity. To show them compassion.
They will have days when they feel stupid or ugly or misunderstood, and when just a word of encouragement from you could send their hearts soaring.
Know that the brightest of them will have dull days, and that the "dullest" ones may suddenly astonish and inspire you.
All that - and still, you must teach them the planets, the sonnets, why grass grows and rain falls, how a man named Hitler changed the face of the 20th century, and one named Osama bin Laden forever altered the 21st.
So much to ask.
In turning children over to you, parents give you all they have. Their most precious cargo.
So, please, handle them with care.
Another from today's Phila. Inquirer.
School-funding change a step in right direction
Janis Rischis with Good Schools Pennsylvania
Baruch Kintisch is an attorney at the Education Law Center
Gov. Rendell and the state General Assembly agreed recently to a new system to fund public schools - a bold step that attempts to fix a big part of government that has been broken for almost 20 years.
If these increased funding commitments are maintained over time, children will receive a better education, taxpayers will finally get some relief from property taxes, and communities across the state will benefit from fewer high school dropouts and a stronger economy.
Pennsylvania has operated since 1991 without a real education funding system. The lack of a system allowed leaders in Harrisburg to hand out funding based on politics instead of educational need.
Things got so bad that the state education budget was using student enrollment numbers that were more than a decade out of date. The state share of total education spending fell from 55 percent to 36 percent, forcing local school districts to make up the difference.
The new system - if maintained - will fund schools over the next six years at an adequate level and distribute funding more equitably to poor and overtaxed communities. More important, schools will be held accountable for investing new funds in effective ways.
The system is based on a data-driven, objective formula that measures what each district needs to help all students succeed. The formula takes into account realistic factors such as current enrollment totals, student poverty, and regional cost differences.
The governor and General Assembly planned the funding step-by-step over the last two years. In July 2006 the state commissioned its first-ever Costing-out Study to measure what schools really need to raise student achievement.
Then something unusual happened. The study didn't just sit on a shelf. State officials used the recommendations to implement a new funding system.
The system was adopted nearly unanimously along with the 2008-09 state budget. The General Assembly has promised to continue working over the next six years to "ensure equitable state and local investments in public education," using the new funding formula.
State officials went even further and created an accountability system allowing taxpayers to monitor what happens to the new resources and have some real influence over these investments.
Pennsylvanians in the 140 school districts receiving the largest funding increases can now ask to see the Accountability to Commonwealth Taxpayers (ACT) Plan created by their district. Each ACT Plan will describe how the new resources will be invested in programs to improve academic results.
The new resources must be used only on certain, approved research-based programs such as: tutoring; longer school day or year; new curricula or courses; teacher training; reducing class size; pre-K or full-day kindergarten; incentives for teachers and principals to work in failing schools; and libraries.
Local school boards should make their ACT Plan available for review and should create opportunities throughout the school year for feedback from students, parents, educators, and taxpayers. (Residents can go to the office of the school superintendent and ask for a copy of the district's ACT Plan, also called PA-Pact).
This is the way government is supposed to work - with cooperation between political parties, with new laws based on solid research, with programs open for inspection, and with opportunities for real people to get involved and make a difference.
As seen in other states, adequate state funding for Pennsylvania's public schools should relieve pressure on property taxes, help more students to graduate from high school, strengthen our workforce, and give hope for a brighter future in many of our most disadvantaged communities.
Also from today's Phila. Inquirer. Another strike, this time in Souderton, Montgomery County. Simon? Margaret Thatcher naked on a cold day?
Classes canceled amid stoppage in Souderton
By Dan Hardy
Inquirer Staff Writer
Teachers in Montgomery County's 6,900-student Souderton Area School District will be walking picket lines this morning.
More than six hours of negotiations yesterday left the two sides far apart on wages and health-care issues. The last strike in the district was in the mid-1980s. There is no school today; the district will notify parents each day what will happen next, with automated phone calls and updates on the district's Web site, www.soudertonsd.org.
No further talks have been scheduled. Mediator Jill Leeds Rivera will be in touch with both sides, working to bridge the gap, officials said.
Some child care will provided at local YMCAs, with parents paying, but registration has closed, the district said. Decisions about sports and extracurricular activities will be made on a case-by-case basis.
"The school board is disappointed that we have not been able to resolve this contract," said spokesman Jeffrey Sultanik, a lawyer who is assisting the board in negotiations. "We had a number of different official and unofficial proposals that crossed the bargaining table today. We believe we made a good-faith effort to resolve the issues."
Gary Smith, a staff member with the Pennsylvania State Education Association who is working with the 512-member Souderton Area Education Association in negotiations, said: "The board doesn't realize that Souderton is no longer a sleepy little countryside township. It's a place where everyone wants to live. People are moving there in great numbers, and the teachers deserve to have the same pay and benefits as other teachers in Montgomery County, which they do not now.
"I believe this has been a deliberate attempt by the board to push the teachers into a strike, hoping they will lose public support," Smith said. "But I believe the public fully understands what is going on and will support the teachers."
Sultanik said that the teachers were asking for a four-year contract with average payroll increases of 5.98 percent in the first year, 9.4 percent in the second year, 7.14 percent in the third, and 6.9 percent in the fourth.
The school board is proposing a three-year contract with increases of 2.5 percent each year.
"I know of no teachers union that has gone out on a work stoppage with these kinds of dollars on the bargaining table, or of any school district that would accept them," Sultanik said. "It's unconscionable."
Smith said that the percentage figures are misleading because they include normal increases teachers get for moving up the seniority scale. The teachers now have the lowest starting salary in Montgomery County - $37,323 - and the union is trying to upgrade the lowest pay, redistribute pay on some other seniority steps, and give the highest-paid teachers a 3 percent increase, Smith said. "We are no longer trying to get up to even the Montgomery average [pay], but we want to get some of the way there," he said.
On health care, the district now offers three insurance plans, with teachers contributing 10 percent of the premium for the most comprehensive one, 5 percent for one that has fewer benefits and more co-payments, and no premium contribution for a bare-bones plan. The board wants to eliminate the most comprehensive plan, to charge teachers a 4 percent premium contribution for the plan that used to have no contribution, and to charge a 12 percent premium contribution for the other plan.
The board also wants to institute individual and family deductibles of several hundred dollars that teachers would have to pay before the district would start picking up the expenses on the low-end plan.
The board estimates that it would save about $300,000 a year with its proposals, Sultanik said.
The union wants to leave the co-pays the same and is asking for improvements in some aspects of coverage, which would cost the district an estimated 3 percent more.
Differences also remain about how much time teachers would have to work and what they would do during working hours.
The Souderton district is the only one in the Philadelphia area where a strike is likely this week, as school begins for both public school and Catholic school students.
Contracts remain unresolved in 11 South Jersey school districts, but strikes there are barred by law. Talks in the Philadelphia School District have been extended for 60 days. In Montgomery County's Cheltenham School District, a tentative agreement was reached last week; the school board is to vote on the pact next Tuesday. Contract talks continue in four other Pennsylvania suburban districts: Bristol Borough, Neshaminy, Palisades, and Springfield, Delaware County.
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