Slashdot Mirror
SETI@home Project Responds To School Firing
SETIGuy writes "SETI@home Project Scientist Eric Korpela has responded to many of the allegations made by Higley Unified School District administrator Denise Birdwell regarding the difficulties caused by the installation of SETI@home, which led to the recent firing of the school's technology supervisor. One of the project's founders, David Gedye, takes issue with Dr. Birdwell's claim that 'an educational institution ... cannot support the search for E.T.' Meanwhile, the fired supervisor denies misusing school computers."
Idle computer resources that are not getting used for anything else are worthless. Might as well fill them up with something, although I'd go with folding@home over SETI@home.
GFA/M/S d-- s: a--- C++++ UBL++$ P+ L+++ !E- W++ N+ !o K- w--- !O !M !V PS++ PE Y+ PGP+ t+++ 5- X+ R tv@ b++ DI++++ D+ G
There's no ignorance in her remarks, she knows exactly what she is doing. I've worked at a school district in Arizona for the past 5 years and what is happening here is typical. A new superintendent comes in and wants to fill all the high paying jobs with cronies. This guy just didn't leave quietly so they trashed his reputation (they do that all the time). Arizona school districts are some of the most corrupt organizations that i've ever dealt with. BTW don't feel too sorry for him, he more than likely got his job the same way, its the way things are done here.
This sad truth will continue to occur until intelligent, capable people begin to devote their lives toward the education of our children. Unless that happens, the majority of our public educators will forever be the people who couldn't pass math because they weren't able to figure out their calculator.
When you're afraid to download music illegally in your own home, then the terrorists have won!
Arizona school districts are some of the most corrupt organizations that i've ever dealt with.
I assure you that Arizona doesn't have a monopoly on school corruption.
Want to hear an example of how it works in my state? There's quasi-state agencies called 'Boards of Cooperative Educational Services' (BOCES) that provide various services to the school districts that join. The theory is that shared services between districts will offer cost savings. Good theory, but it comes with a few catches. Once a district joins BOCES they can't ever leave and must continue to pay their membership dues even if they elect not to use any of the services offered.
I used to work for a company that was contracted with two local districts to supply internet services, workstations and servers. We were always able to beat BOCES by a fair margin when the annual bids rolled around. Then New York State changed the law so that the school districts couldn't receive matching funds from the state unless they went with BOCES, even if the overall cost of doing so was higher.
The internet services that we were offering were cheaper, provided more bandwidth and were eligible for a large amount of Federal funding out of the universal service fund. The internet services offered by BOCES were more expensive, provided half the bandwidth and weren't eligible for Federal funding. But the districts had to choose them anyway, because they were "cheaper" (due to the state matching funds granted exclusively to BOCES) and the fact that they were wasting their contribution dues to BOCES if it didn't use their services.
In effect, my state is subsidizing a monopoly to do a worse job for more money. In the end almost everybody loses -- the school districts, the taxpayers and the private enterprises that could offer a superior product but find themselves shut out of the market. The only winners are the employees of BOCES. Our local one happens to be staffed with ex-politicians at the administrative level and their cronies at the lower levels. Nice, isn't it?
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Yes, I know, and you want a pony. But we're better than that, aren't we? We have to be.
Maybe we should start by teaching a bit of history, starting with the Reformation and the Rennaisence.
We have had personal computers and the internet for about a decade now. A decade. We have utterly no clue how that's going to affect civilisation in the future. But do we want to look back and say "Yes, for the longest time there we could have had it all, but nobody wanted it" ?
Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear
Sounds like your state needs to look into something that Washington and Oregon (and perhaps other states) use. We call them Educational Service Districts (ESD's) and they operate in a highly entrepreneurial fashion. If a district does not like the service and/or price they are getting from one ESD, they are free "join" another ESD even if it is hundreds of miles away. They would still be in their original ESD's legislative area (determined by geography), but are not bound by their prices or policies.
I judt got a nre Kinesis keybiartf so please excusr ant egregiou typos.
A public school can't "write off" an expense. Only a private company or individual can write something off--i.e., count it toward a tax deduction. For the school board, the money comes out of tax revenues.
.sig withheld by request
This sad truth will continue to occur until intelligent, capable people begin to devote their lives toward the education of our children.
She loves teaching but has had to go back to graduate school in order to escape the bullshit pay... You want good teachers? Fucking pay them.
My impression is that, even if you go back to grad school, you're still not going to be paid anywhere near what you'd get paid if you went and got a job in industry with that same masters or PhD. As long as our society expects bright people to suck it up if they want to teach, we're not going to get as many of them to teach as we'd like.
Of course, I still don't understand why we require teachers to have a bachelors or masters degree to teach grade school, or why schools need so damn many administrators and experts to "optimize" the teaching process.
[b.belong('us') for b in bases if b.owner() == 'you']
It might actually be cheaper to replace him, given how pay scales work in some school districts. In downturns, some schools look for any excuse to fire teachers who have been around the longest, because they cost the most money. Then they can hire a new teacher for a lot cheaper.
The entire hiring and firing for teachers and school employees is extremely messed up, at least in California. According to some of the comments in this story, it's just as bad in Arizona.
Qxe4
Who knew leaving a bank of computers on 24/7 costs money?
Answer: The school administrators, who turned down a previous IT request to turn the machines off when not in use and impliment a power management policy some years prior to this incident.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
Not everyone believes SETI is real science - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SETI#Criticism
This sad truth will continue to occur until intelligent, capable people begin to devote their lives toward the education of our children. Unless that happens, the majority of our public educators will forever be the people who couldn't pass math because they weren't able to figure out their calculator.
Bullshit, my wife is a teacher here in NC. Been teaching for 7 years now and she makes under 35k a year and spends 60+ hours a week at school. She loves teaching but has had to go back to graduate school in order to escape the bullshit pay, no planing period, no assistant and the ridicules paper work. Why don't you go become a fucking teacher and take care of 20 to 30 children with little to no help from anyone for less than what you could make at Wendy's flipping burgers...
You want good teachers? Fucking pay them. Not the text book companies or all the other leeches.. Pay the fucking teachers.
Wow, does NC have a super low cost of living?
Move to NJ
I work at in a school district and I just pulled it up on http://php.app.com/edstaff/search.php
The numbers vary depending on subject taught and grade level.
There is a HS Biology teacher with a BS and 7 years experience making 77k.
On the lower side there is a health/gym teacher with a BS and 7 years experience making 45k.
If it's anything like the schools I've been to then there's a LOT of wasted potential in those machines - they're always on ANYWAY.
I don't see how this was a firing matter unless there's more to the story than we're getting. An educational institution SHOULD be supportive of research. Granted I wouldn't have used Seti - something like Boinc has served me well in the past allowing for control over the projects I want my CPU time to go to - including seti.
seriously dysfunctional to the point of needing to be disbanded and reorganized with brand new people
This. School boards are little fiefdoms, filled with people who desperately want to be important. The school board for the school I worked for was just like this. There was a conference that some students were going to go to. The teacher for the subject couldn't make it, but since it was on a saturday, and not a contract work day or event, it wasn't a big deal. The school board disagreed, and ordered him to write a letter of apology to the students who went. Yes, he had to apologize for not doing something he wasn't required to do.
School boards LOVE to micromanage. They mandated a specific essay format for my district at one point. All essays, for all subjects, had to be in one format. Why? To make sure kids knew what to expect for writing projects. It would lead to success!
We had issues with one board member who ran a conservation program. He continuously hounded the science teachers to bring their kids on field trips to his conservation area. Why? He needed the free labor to plant trees and do work. Of course, "it's a valuable educational resource that you're not taking advantage of" was the motto.
Never underestimate the amount of dysfunctional, petty, micromanaging idiots that can get on a school board.
Velociraptor = Distiraptor / Timeraptor