Like recent research that illustrates a strong inverse relationship between having pets generally (and dogs specifically) in the family and childhood allergies (http://www.pediatrics.wisc.edu/featured-stories/allergies.html), my understanding is that there's a growing preponderance of clinical trials and evidence that suggests that MANY of the growing number of widespread childhood allergies have to do with controllable factors in the environment (ie hyper-clean environments, antibacterial soap, etc).
This is an early twenty-something, so I'm going to be reasonably gentle. The bulk of the most cringeworthy comments can be as likely put down to the age as to the gender, and I'm going to try to be as charitable as possible.
"...there is something to be said for finally seeing someone you can relate to, who looks like you..." - Might want to steer clear of explicitly saying that you want to work with someone that LOOKS like you. I get your meaning, but since you're pretty much writing the essay to criticize males for acting exclusionary, the answer isn't to be equally tribalistic in turn. You might imagine, with some empathy, that men TOO like to work with someone THEY can relate to, who looks like them, without the (let's be frank, as we're talking about 20-somethings who are still relatively awash in hormones) distraction of a woman in the largely-male, mostly-hetero environment.
"...the long list of people (mostly women) who have published...about the gender disparity in STEM/tech fields and faced incredible backlash..." ANYONE that posits a position, right or wrong, faces incredible backlash today. Welcome to the world. Take a political position: you can pretty much be assured that the number and vehemence of threats is directly related to the size of your audience and how broadly your message is reaching. See it as a compliment. (That is, unless you want special protection from 'stalking' or 'come-ons' because you're female - you know, the 'weaker' sex?)
"...I taught myself some coding and computer repair in probably the most painstaking ways possible..." Really? Like, well, teaching yourself in your room, in the garage, in the basement? I'm going to bet that at least 80% of your male peers learned the same way. And none of them would call it 'painstaking'. Generally, it would be seen as a mark of honor that you earned your knowledge the hard way.
Meh, it's not worth dissecting the essay further.
Stop walking around with a chip on your shoulder. Women can do anything a man can do, and pretty much any man under 40 (and most of them over that) would consider utterly without question. The others you can just disregard.
Tip for Kerstyn, as I'm nearly certain she'll read these comments: I know you think you're grown up. It feels like it, I'm sure. You aren't. You have nearly zero life experience outside the cloistered halls of academia. Keep fighting, keep struggling, but understand that you are very young and have likely earned nothing of note in the eyes of your peers....you get that through time served.
Fighting assholes in the workplace is part of life, as well. Various people will like you or resent you for a myriad of reasons - who you are friends with, where you park, what you like to eat, who you vote for, etc. But the truth is this: If you feel marginalized or disregarded, understand that it is most probably everything to do with your (real) inexperience, and nothing to do with your reproductive organs.
Quick quiz, what percentage of women are shown to be ditch diggers, janitors, coal miners, or other relatively shitty jobs? (Not meaning to deprecate these folks, I worked as a janitor for 4 years. It's hard work.)
I mean, if you're going to insist on gender-equal representation on the sweet, white-collar consultancy-style jobs, let's make equally sure they have the crap jobs too.
Wait...I thought that the ban on stem-cell-farming from unborn babies was going to stunt US stem-cell research forever?
I'm certain there were dozens of stories on slashot (at least) excoriating that absurd Luddite Bush for banning such practices, saying that the US would be stuck in a medical Dark Age while the rest of the world leaped forward with stem-cell therapies....hm, it's almost like the ban worked to encourage scientists worldwide to find alternative ways to get stem cells that will ultimately be therapeutically MORE useful?
It's actually hard to determine the greatest crime of the modern environmental movement.
They're well-intentioned, generally I'd concede that.
But from the (pointless, politically motivated) ban on DDT that resulted in millions of needless deaths in malarial climates, to the histrionic anti-nuclear activism that has effectively blocked the development of nuclear power in the US for the last 30 years (condemning us - until the recent switches to gas - to coal-fired plants and more particulates, more acid rain, more CO2, etc.) the choices made by modern environmentalists are the direct cause of the deaths of many humans.
Of course, this would presume that one sets aside the agenda of the radical environmentalist movement, which IS in fact totally amenable to millions if not billions of human deaths.
Education is controlled at the state level because they are supposed to experiment, with the best rising to the top. "Experiment" meaning yes, some will fail. Does anyone say "I hope our schools are as good as Tennessee or Louisiana"? Of course not. In that sense the experiment is proving out. Just because it's not fast enough for you, doesn't mean it's not working. Democracy is a bitch.
OK, let me see if I understand: "It's her body, her right to choose" (to have an abortion). It is a meaningless mass of tissue that can be disposed of at the mother's convenience. The father gets no say because logically, it's the woman and her body that are at stake.
"Pay me the money" Yet if they decide not to abort, the CONSEQUENCES of the decision will have a lifetime impact financially on the sperm donor/father.
Isn't that nearly taxation without representation? Essentially a choice is being made about my (male) future wealth without my participation.
IF the choice to continue/not continue a pregnancy is your choice, the consequence is your responsibility. If the consequences fall partially on me, I better have a goddamn say.*
*And for those of you who would respond "You had your say, you stuck it in" - in FACT I'd agree with you. But if you go down that road, then you also have to concede that women MADE THEIR CHOICE when they allowed it to be stuck in. Certainly, rape happens, and in cases of rape I would indeed say that is the sole circumstance where a woman IS of course entitled to make the decision without the father. But let's also remember that not all rape is actually rape, as Roe v Wade clearly showed (she claimed rape, it wasn't).
I see too many projects like this confuse the messenger and the message.
The point of a library is not the books; that was merely the method for delivering information (and entertainment, one hopes) in bulk to students.
The library can still do that, although the industrial-era compromise of 'having this all in one place' is quickly becoming silly. Do you know what serves the function of a library in today's schools? The wifi network itself. Why should there be a separate room everyone goes to for information? How prehistoric.
Provide kids in the school with a robust and powerful network. Provide them with the tools to easily access this wherever in school that they may need information. Provide them with an education in the basics, certainly, but my guess is that even kids with allegedly "poor tech skills" are light years ahead of most of their teachers. More importantly, provide them with the conceptualization of information in 'internet space', taking into account organization, the importance of search methodology to get useful information quickly and (very importantly!) a conceptual method to evaluate the reliability of the information they see. Many schools blanket-ban the use of wiki as a source for papers; this is idiotic. The use of wiki and other such sources is part of the world today; to tell a kid to write a paper without referencing them would be like a teacher telling us years ago that we had to write with our toes - more than a little silly. The use of wiki is a huge teachable moment to discuss real questions about information, propaganda, and viewer-manipulation that should resonate to ALL aspects of a child's life (not just on their use of the internet).
Don't get caught up in iconodule bibliophilia: the books themselves are not the point, and today's kids have an ENTIRELY different relationship to technology than we (in my mid 40s) do or did.
Look, I'm 46. I *love* books. Sure, I appreciate my kindle, but nothing beats reading a good dead-tree book. But with 4 teens (2 of whom ended up 'readers', 2 not, despite ALL being read-to constantly and growing up in a house FULL of books - take that nurture vs. nature!), I have to concede that to believe that in ANY context you will get modern teens to enter a library and pick up a book is just futile.
A certain subset of kids will look for books. There's nothing you need to do there. They'll find books like mice find cheese.
Outside that subset, I personally believe that "pushing" books is utterly worthless. Neither their desire, nor their attention span, nor their culture will get them into a library. And if you believe that the schools provide ANY 'learning' on information access in today's culture of the internet, twitter, snapchat, etc - again, you're not looking at it realistically. These kids - low income or not* (*lets remember that 'low' income kids in the US likely have a cellphone) - will have developed their approach to instantly-derived, absolutely-current information based on their media-saturated culture and peers. To say "a kid with weak tech skills" is a complete misnomer. "Weak" tech skills to this generation mean that they "only" have a smartphone, but not an ipad, laptop, etc.
To them, the "good old-fashioned books" are about as relevant as the Dead Sea Scrolls, and about as timely.
I agree with you in principle, but the ideal is hopelessly out of date.
If we're requiring (or at least desiring) that X% of coders (or employees, or whatever) are of each ethnic group where X is representative of their proportionality in a given population, logically this means that there should be ceilings on participation as well, as the entire exercise is zero-sum.
Let's use gender as that's a relatively simple binary proposition (let's assume so, anyway). If 48.8% of the population is male, and 51.2% is female, then If we're saying that we'd "prefer" 51% of the coders be female, we ipso fact must ALSO conclude that we don't want MORE than 51% of the females to be coders, or this will mean that too few men are coders. (Unless, that is, you're a hypocrite who believes that only certain groups are "due" such protection; then you're not about fairness at all, but in honesty nothing more than a tendentious cheerleader picking a side.)
Of course, this gets far more complicated with ethnicity: if we recognize that 12.6% of Americans are African-American, and we are willing to bend our rules, admissions processes, hiring standards, etc to make sure that is represented in our employment figures, again, one must ABSOLUTELY fire any greater number of blacks in any job to ensure that native americans, asian americans (of every flavor, of course), latinos, inuit, etc all get fair representation.
I don't even disagree with you. But I'd argue that this doesn't mean we need to HELP give government more power - either to neo-con evangelists that want to force everyone into their fantasy-utopia of what the world should be, nor left-wing zealots that want to force everyone into their fantasy-utopia of what the world should be.
But what about some alternatives, using this concept?
For example, I could certainly see a DPV being equipped with this, meaning that while you're putting around with the DPV, you could be breathing from regen'd air, instead of draining your tanks. Further you should be able to have the thing either moored, and regenning while it sits or, with UAV tech, heck it could even orbit your dive site and regen of there's no mooring point (or you're in a sensitive area, for example).
The FACT is that most of them run just fine and don't NEED to upgrade.
Just because someone says "get on this treadmill" doesn't mean you need to.
Depending on what you want to do with a computer, you could be running flippin' DOS and be perfectly fine (not to mention have your pick of pretty-much-free machines in the dustbin that would run whatever ancient apps you need SCREAMINGLY fast).
A little edit due to a typo in the summary: "The Clock has become a universally recognized indicator of the world's vulnerability to fearmongering, and our desperate need for people to tell us how we're 'utterly certainly doomed...any minute now' by anyone wanting our attention."
...I mean, the gross disrespect shown other patrons during movies not to mention the nearly animalistic behavior, the welfare moms bringing their 8 children down to see some R rated flick sitting right in front of me, the ridiculous prices for everything from tickets to snacks, the frequently-unfocused crappy projectors, etc.
Then I bought a 60" HD plasma and a fantastic 7.1 onkyo sound system and I don't get upset about how horrible movie theaters are any more AT ALL.
The other night I watched Lawrence of Arabia in blu-ray with my kids snuggled next to me, and I was truly in my happy place.
Another reason to talk about the "Bridgegate" scandal instead of, I dunno, real news like Obamacare, unemployment, our moribund economy, the ongoing blunders in foreign policy, NSA surveillance, etc.
Please, let's talk about Chris Christie some more.
OK one teacher covers the first hour, the second the second, the third the third. Let's say there are 7 hours in the school day. So you have 7 teachers covering 7 hours...for 7 classes. How is that (in sum) different than one teacher covering one class all day?
"Over-simplifying a problem generally does not help." But irony is hilarious. Brilliant.
Let's go through your example items: Food service: people PAY for lunches, but yes, some are subsidized. Let's buy our kids $5 lunches every day: 26*5*40 weeks/year (I think they only attend school 38 weeks) = ~$5000/classroom. In the budget we're talking about, that's peanuts. Security: let's hire FIVE full-time security (~$60k/year = $300k) for the entire school of ~1000 students. = $8000/classroom. "Supervision", "Facilities Management" - lets assume for some reason this isn't part of the bureaucracy we're talking about. Let's hire 4 full-time janitors and a facilities manager again, totalling $300k/year = $8000/classroom. School nurse? Let's make her a good one: $150k/year = $4000/class.
So with these subjects - all quite important, I agree - we only end up eating perhaps $25,000 year. We're still nearly a quarter million PER YEAR PER CLASSROOM away from the budget.
I've left it for last, because it's a sticky one: Special ed: well, now, we start to get down to brass tacks and complicated questions of mainstreaming, ESL, etc. The MPS "...school communications are printed in English, Hmong, Spanish, and Somali." (from their Wiki) I've also heard anecdotally that 50+ languages are supported in the district with translators, educational support, etc. I don't have an answer for it, but I don't believe it's a big number, or that "special ed" is costing EACH CLASSROOM ~$100,000+/year.
You were probably too busy raging to see that I referred to this specifically, by using a 40x40 space for the classroom, when in fact this is easily 2x the size of a classroom for 26 students. And we're paying 3x OFFICE space rates, for spaces like you list, that really would be more corrected classed as 'light industrial' spaces like a warehouse, which is charged at less than 50% the rate psf for office. And then further set aside the fact that: 1) cities RARELY have to buy land for schools, they just zone it, and done. Unless they're taking it from someone, in which case they (allegedly) have to pay fair market value (ha ha ha). 2) schools obviously pay no property taxes.
So the use of commercial space wasn't a suggestion that we do so, but it should advise us what COMPARABLE space should cost, even when it's built and run by someone as stupid as a government.
I'm sorry, anonymous semanticist. "Popularized" may have been a better word. One can 'coin' a term, and yet it still not reach the popular consciousness. In that case, who's more to blame: the 'coiner' or the 'popularizer'?
"Global Warming" was coined - repeatedly - by Mr Gore. He never used the phrase "Global Climate Change" in An Inconvenient Truth, but he said "Global Warming" many, many times.
The fact is that "Global Climate Change" is a far less FUD title; please let me know when the climate DIDN'T change? And do we as humans really assert that we can stop it doing so?
Slashdot Mirror
Like recent research that illustrates a strong inverse relationship between having pets generally (and dogs specifically) in the family and childhood allergies (http://www.pediatrics.wisc.edu/featured-stories/allergies.html), my understanding is that there's a growing preponderance of clinical trials and evidence that suggests that MANY of the growing number of widespread childhood allergies have to do with controllable factors in the environment (ie hyper-clean environments, antibacterial soap, etc).
This is an early twenty-something, so I'm going to be reasonably gentle. The bulk of the most cringeworthy comments can be as likely put down to the age as to the gender, and I'm going to try to be as charitable as possible.
"...there is something to be said for finally seeing someone you can relate to, who looks like you..." - Might want to steer clear of explicitly saying that you want to work with someone that LOOKS like you. I get your meaning, but since you're pretty much writing the essay to criticize males for acting exclusionary, the answer isn't to be equally tribalistic in turn. You might imagine, with some empathy, that men TOO like to work with someone THEY can relate to, who looks like them, without the (let's be frank, as we're talking about 20-somethings who are still relatively awash in hormones) distraction of a woman in the largely-male, mostly-hetero environment.
"...the long list of people (mostly women) who have published ...about the gender disparity in STEM/tech fields and faced incredible backlash..."
ANYONE that posits a position, right or wrong, faces incredible backlash today. Welcome to the world. Take a political position: you can pretty much be assured that the number and vehemence of threats is directly related to the size of your audience and how broadly your message is reaching. See it as a compliment. (That is, unless you want special protection from 'stalking' or 'come-ons' because you're female - you know, the 'weaker' sex?)
"...I taught myself some coding and computer repair in probably the most painstaking ways possible..." Really? Like, well, teaching yourself in your room, in the garage, in the basement? I'm going to bet that at least 80% of your male peers learned the same way. And none of them would call it 'painstaking'. Generally, it would be seen as a mark of honor that you earned your knowledge the hard way.
Meh, it's not worth dissecting the essay further.
Stop walking around with a chip on your shoulder. Women can do anything a man can do, and pretty much any man under 40 (and most of them over that) would consider utterly without question. The others you can just disregard.
Tip for Kerstyn, as I'm nearly certain she'll read these comments: I know you think you're grown up. It feels like it, I'm sure. You aren't. You have nearly zero life experience outside the cloistered halls of academia. Keep fighting, keep struggling, but understand that you are very young and have likely earned nothing of note in the eyes of your peers....you get that through time served.
Fighting assholes in the workplace is part of life, as well. Various people will like you or resent you for a myriad of reasons - who you are friends with, where you park, what you like to eat, who you vote for, etc. But the truth is this: If you feel marginalized or disregarded, understand that it is most probably everything to do with your (real) inexperience, and nothing to do with your reproductive organs.
Quick quiz, what percentage of women are shown to be ditch diggers, janitors, coal miners, or other relatively shitty jobs? (Not meaning to deprecate these folks, I worked as a janitor for 4 years. It's hard work.)
I mean, if you're going to insist on gender-equal representation on the sweet, white-collar consultancy-style jobs, let's make equally sure they have the crap jobs too.
"World isn't black and white"
News at 11. /facepalm.
...of COURSE the explanation (today) is 'climate change'.
My shoe was untied this morning, I'm pretty sure it was due to climate change.
Wait...I thought that the ban on stem-cell-farming from unborn babies was going to stunt US stem-cell research forever?
I'm certain there were dozens of stories on slashot (at least) excoriating that absurd Luddite Bush for banning such practices, saying that the US would be stuck in a medical Dark Age while the rest of the world leaped forward with stem-cell therapies....hm, it's almost like the ban worked to encourage scientists worldwide to find alternative ways to get stem cells that will ultimately be therapeutically MORE useful?
Agreed.
It's actually hard to determine the greatest crime of the modern environmental movement.
They're well-intentioned, generally I'd concede that.
But from the (pointless, politically motivated) ban on DDT that resulted in millions of needless deaths in malarial climates, to the histrionic anti-nuclear activism that has effectively blocked the development of nuclear power in the US for the last 30 years (condemning us - until the recent switches to gas - to coal-fired plants and more particulates, more acid rain, more CO2, etc.) the choices made by modern environmentalists are the direct cause of the deaths of many humans.
Of course, this would presume that one sets aside the agenda of the radical environmentalist movement, which IS in fact totally amenable to millions if not billions of human deaths.
...less structure generally improves EVERYONE's behavior.*
*After the assholes get beaten to a pulp, and everyone settles down.
Education is controlled at the state level because they are supposed to experiment, with the best rising to the top.
"Experiment" meaning yes, some will fail.
Does anyone say "I hope our schools are as good as Tennessee or Louisiana"? Of course not. In that sense the experiment is proving out.
Just because it's not fast enough for you, doesn't mean it's not working.
Democracy is a bitch.
OK, let me see if I understand:
"It's her body, her right to choose" (to have an abortion). It is a meaningless mass of tissue that can be disposed of at the mother's convenience. The father gets no say because logically, it's the woman and her body that are at stake.
"Pay me the money" Yet if they decide not to abort, the CONSEQUENCES of the decision will have a lifetime impact financially on the sperm donor/father.
Isn't that nearly taxation without representation? Essentially a choice is being made about my (male) future wealth without my participation.
IF the choice to continue/not continue a pregnancy is your choice, the consequence is your responsibility.
If the consequences fall partially on me, I better have a goddamn say.*
*And for those of you who would respond "You had your say, you stuck it in" - in FACT I'd agree with you. But if you go down that road, then you also have to concede that women MADE THEIR CHOICE when they allowed it to be stuck in. Certainly, rape happens, and in cases of rape I would indeed say that is the sole circumstance where a woman IS of course entitled to make the decision without the father. But let's also remember that not all rape is actually rape, as Roe v Wade clearly showed (she claimed rape, it wasn't).
I see too many projects like this confuse the messenger and the message.
The point of a library is not the books; that was merely the method for delivering information (and entertainment, one hopes) in bulk to students.
The library can still do that, although the industrial-era compromise of 'having this all in one place' is quickly becoming silly. Do you know what serves the function of a library in today's schools? The wifi network itself. Why should there be a separate room everyone goes to for information? How prehistoric.
Provide kids in the school with a robust and powerful network. Provide them with the tools to easily access this wherever in school that they may need information. Provide them with an education in the basics, certainly, but my guess is that even kids with allegedly "poor tech skills" are light years ahead of most of their teachers. More importantly, provide them with the conceptualization of information in 'internet space', taking into account organization, the importance of search methodology to get useful information quickly and (very importantly!) a conceptual method to evaluate the reliability of the information they see. Many schools blanket-ban the use of wiki as a source for papers; this is idiotic. The use of wiki and other such sources is part of the world today; to tell a kid to write a paper without referencing them would be like a teacher telling us years ago that we had to write with our toes - more than a little silly. The use of wiki is a huge teachable moment to discuss real questions about information, propaganda, and viewer-manipulation that should resonate to ALL aspects of a child's life (not just on their use of the internet).
Don't get caught up in iconodule bibliophilia: the books themselves are not the point, and today's kids have an ENTIRELY different relationship to technology than we (in my mid 40s) do or did.
Except that idea is pure, idealistic nonsense.
Look, I'm 46. I *love* books. Sure, I appreciate my kindle, but nothing beats reading a good dead-tree book. But with 4 teens (2 of whom ended up 'readers', 2 not, despite ALL being read-to constantly and growing up in a house FULL of books - take that nurture vs. nature!), I have to concede that to believe that in ANY context you will get modern teens to enter a library and pick up a book is just futile.
A certain subset of kids will look for books. There's nothing you need to do there. They'll find books like mice find cheese.
Outside that subset, I personally believe that "pushing" books is utterly worthless. Neither their desire, nor their attention span, nor their culture will get them into a library. And if you believe that the schools provide ANY 'learning' on information access in today's culture of the internet, twitter, snapchat, etc - again, you're not looking at it realistically. These kids - low income or not* (*lets remember that 'low' income kids in the US likely have a cellphone) - will have developed their approach to instantly-derived, absolutely-current information based on their media-saturated culture and peers. To say "a kid with weak tech skills" is a complete misnomer. "Weak" tech skills to this generation mean that they "only" have a smartphone, but not an ipad, laptop, etc.
To them, the "good old-fashioned books" are about as relevant as the Dead Sea Scrolls, and about as timely.
I agree with you in principle, but the ideal is hopelessly out of date.
If we're requiring (or at least desiring) that X% of coders (or employees, or whatever) are of each ethnic group where X is representative of their proportionality in a given population, logically this means that there should be ceilings on participation as well, as the entire exercise is zero-sum.
Let's use gender as that's a relatively simple binary proposition (let's assume so, anyway). If 48.8% of the population is male, and 51.2% is female, then If we're saying that we'd "prefer" 51% of the coders be female, we ipso fact must ALSO conclude that we don't want MORE than 51% of the females to be coders, or this will mean that too few men are coders. (Unless, that is, you're a hypocrite who believes that only certain groups are "due" such protection; then you're not about fairness at all, but in honesty nothing more than a tendentious cheerleader picking a side.)
Of course, this gets far more complicated with ethnicity: if we recognize that 12.6% of Americans are African-American, and we are willing to bend our rules, admissions processes, hiring standards, etc to make sure that is represented in our employment figures, again, one must ABSOLUTELY fire any greater number of blacks in any job to ensure that native americans, asian americans (of every flavor, of course), latinos, inuit, etc all get fair representation.
I wonder if he suffered as much as the pregnant Joy Stewart did when he raped and murdered her? How about her family, loved-ones?
And no I don't really understand why we need to humanely kill humans who have done animalistic things.
"there will always be strong government"
I don't even disagree with you.
But I'd argue that this doesn't mean we need to HELP give government more power - either to neo-con evangelists that want to force everyone into their fantasy-utopia of what the world should be, nor left-wing zealots that want to force everyone into their fantasy-utopia of what the world should be.
OK, this product is unworkable as displayed.
But what about some alternatives, using this concept?
For example, I could certainly see a DPV being equipped with this, meaning that while you're putting around with the DPV, you could be breathing from regen'd air, instead of draining your tanks. Further you should be able to have the thing either moored, and regenning while it sits or, with UAV tech, heck it could even orbit your dive site and regen of there's no mooring point (or you're in a sensitive area, for example).
The FACT is that most of them run just fine and don't NEED to upgrade.
Just because someone says "get on this treadmill" doesn't mean you need to.
Depending on what you want to do with a computer, you could be running flippin' DOS and be perfectly fine (not to mention have your pick of pretty-much-free machines in the dustbin that would run whatever ancient apps you need SCREAMINGLY fast).
A little edit due to a typo in the summary: "The Clock has become a universally recognized indicator of the world's vulnerability to fearmongering, and our desperate need for people to tell us how we're 'utterly certainly doomed...any minute now' by anyone wanting our attention."
...I mean, the gross disrespect shown other patrons during movies not to mention the nearly animalistic behavior, the welfare moms bringing their 8 children down to see some R rated flick sitting right in front of me, the ridiculous prices for everything from tickets to snacks, the frequently-unfocused crappy projectors, etc.
Then I bought a 60" HD plasma and a fantastic 7.1 onkyo sound system and I don't get upset about how horrible movie theaters are any more AT ALL.
The other night I watched Lawrence of Arabia in blu-ray with my kids snuggled next to me, and I was truly in my happy place.
Another reason to talk about the "Bridgegate" scandal instead of, I dunno, real news like Obamacare, unemployment, our moribund economy, the ongoing blunders in foreign policy, NSA surveillance, etc.
Please, let's talk about Chris Christie some more.
OK one teacher covers the first hour, the second the second, the third the third.
Let's say there are 7 hours in the school day.
So you have 7 teachers covering 7 hours...for 7 classes.
How is that (in sum) different than one teacher covering one class all day?
"Over-simplifying a problem generally does not help."
But irony is hilarious. Brilliant.
Believe me, I'm curious too.
Let's go through your example items:
Food service: people PAY for lunches, but yes, some are subsidized. Let's buy our kids $5 lunches every day: 26*5*40 weeks/year (I think they only attend school 38 weeks) = ~$5000/classroom. In the budget we're talking about, that's peanuts.
Security: let's hire FIVE full-time security (~$60k/year = $300k) for the entire school of ~1000 students. = $8000/classroom.
"Supervision", "Facilities Management" - lets assume for some reason this isn't part of the bureaucracy we're talking about. Let's hire 4 full-time janitors and a facilities manager again, totalling $300k/year = $8000/classroom.
School nurse? Let's make her a good one: $150k/year = $4000/class.
So with these subjects - all quite important, I agree - we only end up eating perhaps $25,000 year. We're still nearly a quarter million PER YEAR PER CLASSROOM away from the budget.
I've left it for last, because it's a sticky one:
Special ed: well, now, we start to get down to brass tacks and complicated questions of mainstreaming, ESL, etc. The MPS "...school communications are printed in English, Hmong, Spanish, and Somali." (from their Wiki) I've also heard anecdotally that 50+ languages are supported in the district with translators, educational support, etc.
I don't have an answer for it, but I don't believe it's a big number, or that "special ed" is costing EACH CLASSROOM ~$100,000+/year.
You were probably too busy raging to see that I referred to this specifically, by using a 40x40 space for the classroom, when in fact this is easily 2x the size of a classroom for 26 students. And we're paying 3x OFFICE space rates, for spaces like you list, that really would be more corrected classed as 'light industrial' spaces like a warehouse, which is charged at less than 50% the rate psf for office. And then further set aside the fact that:
1) cities RARELY have to buy land for schools, they just zone it, and done. Unless they're taking it from someone, in which case they (allegedly) have to pay fair market value (ha ha ha).
2) schools obviously pay no property taxes.
So the use of commercial space wasn't a suggestion that we do so, but it should advise us what COMPARABLE space should cost, even when it's built and run by someone as stupid as a government.
I'm sorry, anonymous semanticist. "Popularized" may have been a better word.
One can 'coin' a term, and yet it still not reach the popular consciousness. In that case, who's more to blame: the 'coiner' or the 'popularizer'?
"Global Warming" was coined - repeatedly - by Mr Gore.
He never used the phrase "Global Climate Change" in An Inconvenient Truth, but he said "Global Warming" many, many times.
The fact is that "Global Climate Change" is a far less FUD title; please let me know when the climate DIDN'T change? And do we as humans really assert that we can stop it doing so?