Please call your representative and ask him/her to vote NO on House Bill 610 (HR 610) 🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸
‘To those of you not in the education field, you may not understand a lot of the educational jargon and the foundation of the American education system. Having a school voucher system (proposed by Trump’s Education secretary Betsy DeVos) doesn’t just mean you can choose any school you want your kid to go to. It also means the public education program will be dismantled. Let me explain…
If your child has an IEP, frame it. Then kiss it good-bye.
If you have a job in special-education, meaning if you’re a: special education teacher, physical therapist, occupational therapist, speech pathologist, a para, or a teacher’s aid, you’re in the same boat.
If you are in ESL teacher, you’ll go first.
House Bill 610 makes some large changes.
Inform yourselves.
This bill will effectively start the school voucher system to be used by children ages 5-17 and starts the defunding process of public schools.
The bill will eliminate the Elementary and Education Act of 1965, which is the nation’s educational law that provides equal opportunity in education.
ESSA is a big comprehensive program that covers programs for struggling learners, advanced and gifted kids in AP classes, ESL classes, classes for minorities such as Native Americans, Rural Education, Education for the Homeless, School Safety (Gun-Free schools), Monitoring and Compliance, and Federal Accountability Programs. Yes, there are all of these programs happening in our education system, in addition to just academics.
The Bill also abolishes the Nutritional Act of 2012 (No Hungry Kids Act) which provides nutritional standards in school breakfast and lunch.
The bill has no wording whatsoever protecting Special Needs kids, no mention of IDEA, and FAPE.
Some things ESSA does for Children with Disabilities:
-Ensures access to the general education curriculum.
-Ensures access to accommodations on assessments.
-Ensures concepts of Universal Design for Learning.
-Includes provisions that require local education agencies to provide evidence-based interventions in schools with consistently underperforming subgroups.
-Requires states in Title I plans to address how they will improve conditions for learning including reducing incidents of bullying and harassment in schools, overuse of discipline practices and reduce the use of aversive behavioral interventions (such as restraints and seclusion).’
Please call your representative and ask him/her to vote NO on House Bill 610 (HR 610) introduced by three Republican reps.
Month: March 2017
Ugly as Dorian Gray
I would like to know why tax-payers money is being used so the President can go to Mar-a-Lago almost every weekend since the Inauguration & members of his family can go to Aspen or other locations – for business and pleasure – at the people’s expense.
Mar-a-lago (Not a Complete View)
A Partial Inside View of Mar-a-lago
A Partial Inside View of Mar-a-lago
Local businesses & residents have to endure a total disruption to their lives and livelihoods, with incomes suffering and even identities being called into question when they are returning to their private homes. Not to mention the strain put on the cities of New York and Palm Beach. It costs approximately $3 Million per weekend at Mar-a-Lago. Five visits so far equals approximately $15 Million. Add that to the costs to the nation of securing Trump Tower and you’re talking approximately $100 million from the national treasury…
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all together in the end
The fog, heavy upon the land, stifled movement and choked what little light there was. Even the moon, full and majestic, did little to break the grasp of the dense blanket of dew. While the metal walls shielded me from the cold and damp, my bones still ached from them. Everything but time was dulled and slow. My joints throbbed in time to the seams of the road.
Thump-thump. Thump-thump. Thump-thump.
I scanned the darkness in search of lurking dangers. The view from my cage on wheels was distorted through the layers of fog. Other cars could have been inches away and they might have gone unnoticed. Pedestrians and bikers would have been invisible completely. I scanned the darkness and was plagued by doubt. Was I in control or was that just an illusion of hope? My heart beat furiously in my chest.
Thump-thump. Thump-thump. Thump-thump.
The sounds of the…
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Pie, Pi, and Hi Mom (Uncle Rico’s Cheese Pie, and Mattie’s Lemon Pie) and Vampires
3.14159265359
Happy Pi Day!
Garret, who is in his third year of college and almost twenty-one asked me about pie today, because it is the best way to celebrate Pi Day.
Baking and math, is like all art and science – one can’t exist without the other. Baking is an art but it is also chemistry.
Now you might be thinking, “Vampires eat pie?”
Yes, sometimes when we choose to eat solid food we will eat pie. Unfortunately super sweet pies don’t go down well at all for us. But we can limit our intake, just like anyone who has food issues.
Uncle Rico’s Cheese Pie has no crust and is a nice savory pie. Mattie’s Lemon pie goes back to the 1930’s. I fix it for guests. I don’t know if you can fix it without sugar (with Spenda or other non sugar stuff.) Give it a try and…
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Pie
Happy Pi Day (and we all know that it is always Pie Day)
PROPHETS OF DOOM! AUTHORS PROTEST THE TRUMPOCALYPSE.
With anti-trump sentiment at an all-time high, the authors at Horrified Press have come together to show their resistance and protest the 45th president with their own words. ‘Trumpocalypse’, an anthology of poetry and short stories, edited by literature veteran Alex S. Johnson, has sparked a new wave of fiction grounded in the reality of the recent American election. Coining the term of this sub-genre (Trump horror), Alex found this was the best way he could articulate his message – and that of the twenty plus authors involved – to deliver their hard-hitting message in defiance of the current POTUS.
Another wish expressed by editor-in-chief Nathan J.D.L. Rowark was to create dialogue between democrats and republicans – by having those with opposing viewpoints read the opinions expressed on the other side. Part political project, part fiction anthology, the authors involved were given free-reign to pen tales of horror, science-fiction…
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John Gardner On Life and Writing #1
Quote about John Gardner: “The late John Gardner once said that there are only two plots in all of literature. You go on a journey or a stranger comes to town. Since women, for many years, were denied the journey, they were left with only one plot in their lives — to await the stranger. Indeed, there is essentially no picaresque tradition among women novelists. While the latter part of the twentieth century has seen a change of tendency, women’s literature from Austen to Woolf is by and large a literature about waiting, usually for love.” ― Mary Morris, The Illustrated Virago Book of Women Travellers
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“What art ought to do is tell stories which are moment-by-moment wonderful, which are true to human experience, and which in no way explain human experience. ”
John Gardner
“We read five words on the first page of a really good novel and…
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West Coast Review 