Delightful surprises arise near foothills
After 220 columns about parks, preserves, and trails, I sometimes allow myself to think there are no surprises left. If I haven't been there, I surely must have heard of it. Right? Wrong...again.
Sandwich generation needs to avoid financial squeeze
Are you a member of the “Sandwich Generation?” This designation - which applies to people caring for their aging parents while supporting their own children - may be applicable to you if you’re either a younger Baby Boomer, born in the late 1950s or early 1960s, or an older member of “Generation X,” born in the mid-1960s. But any way you slice it, being in the “Sandwich” group is probably going to present you with some challenges, particularly of the financial kind - so you’ll need to make the right moves.
How to put your bridge PLAN into action
Last time we talked about creating a PLAN to make our contract: pause to consider our objective, look at our winners and losers and analyze our alternatives. Now, we put our PLAN into action.
Flag-shirt fight lawyers…looks like charter school fight attorneys are next
It’s a full-fledged assault now on the charter school petitions from Rocketship and Navigator. Fascinating to watch unfold, there are “hatchet men” who likely expect to be rewarded down the line, teacher’s union petition bullies, master strategic planners and a whole bunch of folks who are wrongly becoming convinced that doom and gloom (lost jobs and the collapse of public education in Morgan Hill) are right around the corner should the County Office of Education approve the charters after the rejections of Navigator and Rocketship petitions to open schools – the latter rejection by the Board of Trustees looming just around the corner. As in any good modern American fight, the attorneys are next in line, salivating on the sidelines with thoughts of sugarplum taxpayer funded treasures dance in their heads. Everyone knows a teacher, of course. It’s the largest employee group in Morgan Hill according to the city – Morgan Hill Unified, 753 employees, Anritsu, 488. So, it’s uncomfortable stuff, especially with holiday parties ahead. But it’s too bad that cooperative learning is preached on a classroom level, but not practiced on an administrative level. The charter schools are agents for change and, if skillfully integrated into MHUSD, could lift the entire district. It’s happening elsewhere in this county, but MHUSD opted for a good old-fashioned all-out Nixonian political the-best-defense-is-a-good-offense assault, and the dust will not settle now for years to come.
