Education expert talking about giving intensive, relentless instruction

Humm.

Expert swims against trend of special ed students in mainstream classes Although more schools are enrolling children who have disabilities in regular classrooms, an expert in special education made the radical suggestion yesterday that they be 'separated from the general school population and given intensive, relentless instruction.'

It is a sad, sad day when it becomes radical to provide students with intensive, relentless instruction.

This is why I'm a swim coach and not cut out to be a classroom teacher in today's setting. I'm too radical. I expect intensive and relentless instruction. And, it should be for the special education kids and the average kids and the gifted kids and -- all kids. Sure, the lessons are not always the same. But, the expectation of being pushed, pulled and challenged with instruction should be universal.

Mark Roosevelt, the Pgh Public Schools Superintendent, says that he wants to put discipline into the schools -- next year. We'll be radical and begin to talk about discipline in eight months. Eight months.

These statements present additional justifications for great and inspiring after school programming for the kids. It needs to happen after school because the schools have given up the struggle for excellence within the school day. So, a longer school day that is filled with soft structure and casual instruction on hit-or-miss basis is much more like child care than schooling.

Pittsburgh's Rec Centers are running on empty. Even when they operated with decent staffing levels, the coaching and relentless building of community and character based upon technical instruction in sport that transfers to life was not a universal priority.

Sharyn Denhan of Harrisburg is an executive board member of LDA and parent of a son with a learning disability. Her son was taught in regular public school classrooms, but benefited from support services. Now 29, he has a degree in civil engineering from Drexel University.

Everyone benefits from support services.

"My son is basically a success story and I'm very proud of his accomplishment," Ms. Denhan said.

"The problem with learning disabilities is it's this huge broad spectrum. It's not one size fits all. It's a very hard issue to deal with and very unique to the child."

This is a moment and lifetime of PRIDE. That sounds like a good title for a movie, but that is for another thread. Kids present a meaningful opportunity to build pride.

If we want to put pride in our community again, I think that the best way to do that is with our kids. Our children are the keys.

Schools are a part of that formula, but only a part. Parks and programming matter too. As does parenting. Mentoring, instructing, teaching, and even modeling all matter greatly.

I hate it when the leaders (Roosevelt and Luke Ravenstahl) sit on stage and tell our kids and families that they should come to Pittsburgh Public Schools and get a college scholarship when they graduate from 12th grade if they keep their nose clean -- but only have $10,000 in the bank.

That's modeling that doesn't work.

Show us relentless on that promise.

Ten-thousand dollars might get everyone a back pack, calling card and a ticket home if they flunk out in their first semester. That's about it.

One size does fit all. In our public life it is liberty and freedom. That fits. In educational settings, the size that fits all might well be relentless, intensive instruction.

It will be a happy day when those concepts are not so radical.

disinter: Pennsylvania Libertarian to run

Rather say, to STAND for office vs. to RUN. But, perhaps that comes with the next breath and conversation.

disinter Pennsylvania Libertarian to run for six offices…simultaneously
February 15th, 2007

According to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette:

A 47-year-old swimming coach, he said he will run as a Libertarian for Allegheny County chief executive, county councilman at-large, county councilman for District 13, mayor, city controller and city councilman for District 3.

---

Ink in the P-G.

Signal Item - News

Signal Item - News Rendell at library far from certainty

Education Crusader: Objections to PA Secretary of Education

Education Crusader: Letter to Dr. Zahorchak, PA Secretary of Education As is widely known, it is impossible for a charter school and a charter applicant, such as the Education InnovationsLAB Charter School, to be treated fairly by the Pgh Public School District.

By the way, at least a two-hour delay for Thursday.

Oily men Letter to editor

Dennis McGlone of Gibsonia was credited for this in the Trib:

Oily men - Pittsburgh Tribune-Review: "Gov. Rendell and Allegheny County Executive Dan Onorato continue to prove that they are typical 'tax and subsidize' Democrats ('Onorato backs oil-profits tax,' Feb. 8 and PghTrib.com).

Their latest plan to bail out the financially distressed Port Authority of Allegheny County calls for replacing the existing corporate net income tax on oil companies with a gross profits tax. This confiscation will raise tax receipts more than 10-fold.

Unfortunately, they have a problem -- Hillary Clinton has already staked her claim to oil company profits to fund (i.e., subsidize) alternative energy sources.

I have a hunch that Hillary's confiscation will trump Rendell/Onorato. They might try fleecing steel companies, banks, investment managers, even corn growers (corn futures have just about doubled this past year).

No wealth redistribution politician has dibs on those companies' 'windfalls' ... yet.

State pledges $1M toward redevelopment of Nabisco site

Corporate welfare looks like this. I hate these deals.

Pop City - State pledges $1M toward redevelopment of Nabisco site State pledges $1M toward redevelopment of Nabisco site Bakery Square, a major brownfield redevelopment in East Liberty, has received a $1M grant from the state. Gov. Rendell released the Growing Greener II funds on Feb. 9 to pay for cleanup of the 495,000 square-foot former Nabisco plant. The Regional Industrial Development Corporation of Southwestern Pennsylvania will use the grant, along with $335,000 of its own funds, to remove asbestos, PCBs, lead-based paint and other hazardous materials from the site. Development plans for the 6.5-acre area call for 223,000 square feet of office space, 165,000 square feet of retail and a 120-room hotel.

“This project stands head and shoulder above many others,” says Environmental Protection Secretary Kathleen McGinty. “The Governor is making a particularly substantial investment in a beautiful structure that will come back into productive use as a community asset.”

Note, this is a building, not a brownfield. The building was in production just a couple of years ago.

Kathleen McGinty said that this is a beautiful structure. It is. And it is a way for the beautiful to get more beauty -- and richer from taxpayers elsewhere in East Liberty. Beautiful structures should pull their own weight.

The state funds are not just cleaning up something from the past. Right. That's a brownfield endeavor.

A million dollar grant is NOT going to swing a structure from "lifeless" to "dripping with life and activity." Give us a break.

The state funds are needed to help move this project forward and stop all other deals from advancing on their own merits. Nothing moves without state aid when you subsidize over and over again.

Lie: This will create 1,600 new jobs. They must be moving the jobs not created from another boondoggle, such as Deer Creek Crossing or Pittsburgh Mills, into this lie.

I'd be happy to see 16 new jobs. The total of 1,600 is such a joke.

Love....

 

Despite my rambling blogging ways, it is not easy to express love to the love of my life on this day.

No school again for WEDNESDAY

Happy V.Day -- without school.

Mark Crowley's most recent Letter to editor -- ran in Trib

Mark Crowley wrote:

I had a LTE today (2/13/2007) in the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review about a hot topic -- global warming. It was in response to a Bill Steigerwald Q&A interview with a climatologist who is skeptical that global warming is a man-made phenomenon. I offered some libertarian reinforcement to an astute political observation noting how well it fits the standard big government template.

---

Global foolery, Tuesday, February 13, 2007

Climatologist Timothy Ball made an astute observation about the strategy shift that sunspot-deniers are applying to global warming ("The politics of global warming," Q&A, Feb. 10 and PghTrib.com).

He noticed they "switched from talking about global warming to talking about climate change." That's chillingly familiar.

Remember how Osama bin Laden morphed into Saddam Hussein? Or how the mission switched from finding WMDs to freeing Iraq? Or when border security became citizen surveillance?

Next, politicians will put carbon dioxide on the altar of unending wars alongside terrorism, drugs, smoking, trans fat, etc. Expect a new Cabinet-level Department of Hot Air.

Also expect the Department of Education to require that "Greenland" be renamed "Glacierland" to rewrite an inconvenient history about that island's more moderate climate around 1000 A.D.

If the temperature cools rapidly over the next decade, government will proclaim "Mission Accomplished." Do you think, however, that dismantling misguided government programs stands a snowball's chance?

While global warming deserves debate, there's no debate why big government supporters are hot for global warming.

Mark Crowley, Plum

Save Ohio Swimming and Diving

Please sign this electronic petition.

Save Ohio Swimming and Diving Ohio Swimming and Diving

'Dedicated to preserving our Tradition.'

Tonight at 11, news by neighbors / Santa Rosa TV station fires news staff, to ask local folks to provide programming

Who is looking over his / her shoulder at this wave of citizen journalism now?

Tonight at 11, news by neighbors / Santa Rosa TV station fires news staff, to ask local folks to provide programming Tonight at 11, news by neighbors
Santa Rosa TV station fires news staff, to ask local folks to provide programming

This is good news and bad news.

News executives are scared as hell. Media owners are now in the game because of ego or other reasons, beyond profits of the status quo. When musical chairs means the folks with the cameras and microphones are given pink slips -- things get more and more weird.

Perhaps I'll file a story there.

Trust is a big word thought the article. But, what happens when a the City Paper article on "Going to the local Political Blogs" omits early arrivals? Is that any way to build trust? GrassRootsPA's blog started years ago in Pittsburgh by a D.U. student. That site is a hub for local content harvesting.

Mark Roosevelt on the web with Jon Delano -- fine programming

It was great to be able to watch the Sunday Business Edition on KDKA TV on the web. Nice use of technology and video blogging to sustain the conversation.

My note to J.D.:

Thanks for the interview with Mark Roosevelt. I watched online. Nice.

IMHO, the Pittsburgh Promise is a bold face lie. We can't get the respect of the kids when they know they are being lied to.

Roosevelt will be gone before this proves to be but a dream. (Nothing personal. Fact: The average job tenure for school superintendents is about three years. These guys and gals come and go faster than a rash of pink eye.)

Plus, the city's student population is departing as well.

Furthermore, the stessing of discipline is welcomed. But, why wait until next year?

This is the year of the lie and next year the year to be stern?

Another Supplemental Spending Bill for the War in Iraq

Another Supplemental Spending Bill for the War in Iraq Congress continues to spend more than the Treasury raises in taxes year after year, by borrowing money abroad or simply printing it. Paying for war with credit is reckless and stupid, but paying for war by depreciating our currency is criminal.

'Redding-up' abandoned houses taking longer than city expected

'Redding-up' abandoned houses taking longer than city expected List of condemned properties gets longer

Where is that list? Does anyone have a pointer to it on the web?

Does anyone have a list of streets and roads that need to be re-paved this year?

What about the list of the more urgent "to-do" matters that come from the city's 3-1-1 line.

Where is the list of what the redd-up crew did yesterday, last week, last month? If there isn't a list of things still to do, is there at least a list of things that has been done?

Who is keeping a record?

Is there a list of equipment, cars and trucks that are sitting in the garage? How are the repairs from the privatized garage progressing? How is the back-log today? What about those expenses?

Is there a list of what repairs are needed to be done at the various summer recreation spots? What is on the capital expense budget? What is going to be done at the RAD Parks? What pools are going to be open? What repairs are going to be made at the pools.

Is there a list of all the schools that are owned by the city and still not sold to the URA? Is there a list of all the closed schools? Is there a list of schools that are going to move from open to closed or closed to open? How many school facilities are on that list? What facilities might be sold and what are worth keeping? Why?

Who is keeping a list of local experts that should be included on the new Allegheny County committee (whatever) for advancing the democratic process. Seems that the board of elections is going to have a new booster group, of sorts. That's great. Who keeps the list as to who is on and who is off.

Where is the list of Authorities, Commissions and Task Forces in city, county and school agencies. Where is the list of people who are on those boards? Where is the list of people that have been nominated but not put on the boards? Where is the quorum for the Hearing Ethics Board -- and why are the minutes for that entity not public?

The PROPEL Pittsburgh committee (for the youth movement) is about to be born. Who gets picked? Who keeps the list?

Santa Clause checks his list twice. I'd love to see more lists put out into the open.

Is PAT going to issue a list of suggestions it has received at the recent round of public hearings? What suggestions got favorable reactions and have been implemented? What are slated to come into being? What are judged, by PAT, to be bogus?

What supplies are needed to board up a vacant home?

Why do we need a list of property owners of rental properties when we have a recorder of deeds? Can't the lists of the property owners show how to contact landlords?

Where is the list of properties that are owned by the city?

Where is the list of property leins that are on the buy back list? The city is going to spend a few millions, pennies on the dollar, to buy back the leins on various proeprties -- but that list hasn't seen the light of day, to my knowledge.

What properties are for sale in the city, by the city?

Where can someone find a master list of all the rental properties in the city?

What happens when a house is boarded up and a family of four needs shelter from the cold, enters a house, a fire occurs, and lives are lost as the folks can't get back out -- like the recent story in Philly?

Is there a list of abandoned homes that are not really abandoned?

I want a list of lists. I want the lists to be thoughtful and graded. Lists should be linked.

Sadly, I fear that city council and the mayor's office -- as well as the workers of the city -- are each running in circles trying to catch their own tails. Perhaps catching one's own tail is overboard. Some running is to 'CYA' (cover your ass). Other bits of running is to put out fires. Other jogs aim to cover up or complicate.

No doubt, everyone cares. However, who cares to manage and post the list makters? Can those lists be put online?

Platform.For-Pgh.org

Candidate branding from the John Edwards '08 Blog

Branding is a favorite topic of a past chairman of the Allegheney County Libertarian Party, J.E.

Join the Campaign to Change America / John Edwards '08 Blog ... active website communities, and are clearly benefiting from the Internet. But that really isn’t the answer to anything.

What matters is that they both have active public personae which draw the public to the candidates, and then their communities.

Personae that are based around emotional issues (global climate change, poverty); bringing a human element to both “candidates”. (I include Gore as he may or may not enter this or a future campaign.)

In this article, the concept of the candidate brand goes beyond party brand.

Talk Radio 93.7 Needs To Think Big

For 93.7 FM in Pittsburgh to be taken seriously as a talk station, management must do something bold. Pioneer News talk 104.7 FM has a fabulous lineup with locals Quinn and Rose, but virtually everything else is syndicated (Ellis Cannon, of course does the sports talk thing from town). Granted, if the rumor mill is true, the introduction of both Scott Paulsen and John McIntyre will be a good start. Both are among the most talented talkers in the market.

But alas, the talk market industries’s most intelligent, most diverse—stop with the hyperbole—the unrivaled best talk show host ever to click on a microphone continues to sit on a sprawling fixer-upper estate in one of the farthest southern suburbs of Allegheny County.

Open the checkbook for Jerry Bowyer.

The NFL now has Golden Boy Bill Cowher sitting out a no-compete clause to become perhaps a $10 million dollar (a year) coach. Cowher’s legacy will only balloon; his legendary chin will jut just a little further, much like Paul Bunyan and the blue ox Babe.

Talk radio, Pittsburgh chat radio in particular, has its own Golden Boy waiting in the wings. Jerry Bowyer first appeared on the scene as the head honcho of the Allegheny Institute for Public Policy ten years ago. He led the drive to knock down a ½ percent sales tax increase in Allegheny County and nearly a dozen other neighboring counties. The money was supposed to pay for two new stadiums and infrastructure around the region.

I have a confession: early on I despised Jerry Bowyer. He seemingly didn’t care that my beloved Pirates—the primary reason I declare as the reason I moved here nearly 17 years ago—would possibly leave town for greener, albeit still losing pastures.

I WAS WRONG.

Around the time of that near-debacle, Jerry started to fill in on 1360 WPTT, (although he might have started earlier on an AM religious station), and showed some real talk show chops. His personality and knowledge of virtually every hot-button talk show chestnut converted me from ideological opponent to aficionado.

Before you knew it, Jerry was on full-time. It was then you got to know him and his encyclopedic knowledge of everything from the minutia of science to politics, as well as cartoon trivia. Then there was his mastery of economic theories and business, most accepted religions, and a rather lofty insight regarding Hollywood starlets. For a guy with a complicated relationship with baseball (his father was a MLB scout), Bowyer could cover all of the bases.

On the show, Jerry would often dismantle usually adroit talk show guests who got too persnickety. Bowyer could make polished fiscal pariah “Living Wage” union boilerplaters sputter and froth, thus showing their true colors as selfish, under-educated, special-interest cretins. I was so impressed with one particular verbal disrobing that I called Jerry to proclaim the interview was a comedic send-up.

It wasn’t.

Because of that admiration and my eventual offer to write a feature story, Jerry and I became somewhat friendly. Over the next few years, I ended up writing two lengthy pieces on him and his show for a couple of periodicals. Our budding friendship expanded to the point in which we worked together to bring a business and entrepreneurial charter school to Pittsburgh’s southern neighborhoods, but were ultimately sold a bad bill of goods from our sponsor. For the record, that company never did roll out their ambitious plan for several local Charter Schools, and the one it does run here is virtually invisible of the learning landscape.

We’ve communicated about collaborating on a book about leadership and nearly got into the television business together.

And on an even more personal note, Jerry proved to me that a religious man could still enjoy those potty-mouthed brats on South Park. I don’t think I would have had the confidence to return to church had it not been for his masterful ability to make religion seem “cool.”

It was Jerry’s desire to add more religious talk to his secular radio show that ultimately made him move from his comfortable post at WPTT AM to the Christian FM-talker in town. I remember him saying that he thought he could make more of a difference in an arena where he could focus on the Good Book. Apparently, that move bit him in the posterior when management there didn’t want him to deviate from the all-religion talk, even for important regional issues.

In addition to trouble with format content, health issues have also plagued Bowyer in recent years, as a result he’s retreated to the sidelines, to be with his beloved wife Susan and seven children, who the couple home-schools and/or runs various family businesses. It’s also possible that Bowyer’s made outlandish sums of money by utilizing financial techniques he’s cultivated with some of the best brains in the marketplace.

I have no idea whether Jerry would even contemplate a return to the airwaves. Perhaps 93.7 could build him a studio in his home, ala the persistently-injured and vastly overrated Fred Honsberger.

If the folks at 93.7 want to do something incredible, and revolutionary, with its impending talk show venture, they need to at put out some feelers with Jerry Bowyer.

Seriously.

Blast from the past: Pooling your resources

The movie, Pride, is due in a matter of weeks -- and we're getting psyched. Here is an older article about a clinic that I helped to organize. This fellow visited with our kids at the city meet and at zones. He had been a swimmer in LA. But he grew up in Cleveland.

Pooling your resources Pooling your resources

Olympic hopeful urges local youths to live up to their potential

Sunday, August 15, 1999

By Laura Pace, Post-Gazette Staff Writer

Byron Davis doesn't believe in victims.The 29-year-old Olympic hopeful looks into the faces of children and tells them, time and time again, that the key to life is choice.

Will lethargic GOP put up mayoral candidate in the 'Burgh? - Pittsburgh Tribune-Review

Will lethargic GOP put up mayoral candidate in the 'Burgh? - Pittsburgh Tribune-Review Will the Republicans, whose mayoral hopefuls usually perform as sturdily as Silly Putty, bother to field a candidate this year?

Another little asked question that I still want to have answered, before jumping to the Mayor's race, is will the City's GOP Party file papers to get a question about the reduction of the size of city council onto the ballot?

This opens up a big can of worms about ballot access -- another teachable, insightful moment.

A similar interaction happens with the postings at 2politicaljunkies and purdent spending, agendas, principles, practices and standing tall.

Colaizzi seeks seat on city council

Stepping stone. There has to be a song about this????

I don't like our kids being used as stepping stones. I think that an elected posiion on the Pgh Public School's board should be terminal. A change in the city's charter is in order. Once one is a school board member, he or she should NOT be eligible to run for any other elected post. Board members would not be eligible for the ballot for a period of five years following their exit from the school board seat. Then, people will serve on the school board for the right reasons. Then the tone and mission of the board would change to everyone's favor -- not just that of the special interests and powerful.

Colaizzi seeks seat on city council Pittsburgh school board member Theresa Colaizzi yesterday said she will challenge City Council President Doug Shields in the May 15 primary.

Ms. Colaizzi, 46, of Greenfield, said she would ask the Allegheny County Democratic Committee to endorse her in the District 5 council race. Mr. Shields is seeking re-election to council, but he's also running for city controller.

Ms. Colaizzi is serving her second term on the school board.

I understand that my wish is but a fleeting prayer.

From a PIIN meeting in the past. people & vips

The move from Colaizzi is a brush back pitch to C. O'Connor. That isn't a bad thing.

Finally, for now, I can't get that whispy bangs comment (from aother blogger) out of my head given that T.C. is a hairdresser.

Love? Nooooo. Sweetheart deal more like cheap tease. Rather have a ...

Free parking in the city on the evening of Feb 14 is one of the last things that the city needs to provide. The deed is sorta like giving an overweight, diabetic great aunt a big box of chocolates in a red-shaped box. Stupid yet sentimental.

There are a lot of bad ideas that would be slightly better than the free parking display of 'love' from the city. Let's give credit where credit is due. It is better to do something. There is merit to having bleeding heart liberals mark a day where wearing red and wishig for cupid's arrival, based upon a religious Saint's Feast, is marked.

Slightly better would be the hiring of private ambassadors from the PDP to direct downtown office workers on ways around the drunks in Market Square after making eye contact and winking at passers by.

I'm sure Ms. Mon's suggested a V.D. idea of wet kisses from crossing guards and elected politicians stationed at corners throughout the city, to stem the speeding traffic, would have been deemed too much of a gotcha / come on with drunken driver liability.

Pittgirl's ideas can't be re-typed here, as this is a family blog.

Another idea floated on Grant Street was to have political bloggers run heart shaped pretzels out to tug operators as they chugged up the river, unclogging the arteries of commerce, showing gratitude after a thaw.

Getting Around: City loves yinz, offers free Valentine's evening parking Getting Around: City loves yinz, offers free Valentine's evening parking

Sunday, February 11, 2007
By Joe Grata, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Wednesday is Valentine's Day. Pittsburgh wants to show how much it loves yinz by offering a sweetheart deal: free parking.

I'd rather just tell the world that Pittsburgh's parking tax will be dropped to 15%, (not 50%, nor 45%, etc.) as soon as 75% the Parking Authority garages and assets are sold and its final 25% of assets are proven to be on the market.

Yes, I think that the Parking Authority should be sold. I've stated that plank for years.

From china - bike

It would be much better to sell the Parking Authority than the PA Turnpike and the water pipes under the city's streets.

Then the city could establish a parking department to manage the meters, enforcement and be accountable.

New parking garages would be built with private investments again. Parking rates would climb.