school

Way back at the dawn of time when I was in school, LBJ was in the White House and cigarettes were prescribed by doctors,  a book was published called Up The Down Staircase (1965). It was a free form written look at the daily life of a teacher in public school. It was very funny in that it identified some of the foolishness teachers had to contend with while simultaneously attempting to cram useful knowledge into dense heads. (I know, I was one of those dense heads.) Although fiction, it rang true for teachers across the nation.It is with that thought in mind that I chose this title as an homage.

I sure hope the voters in Clay County are paying attention to the chaos and controversy that is currently going on in Duval County between the school board and the public, and the appointed school superintendent. It has pretty much been the pattern for at least the last three Duval superintendents. They are appointed by the school board, almost immediately get a multi year contract extension, that has extremely generous provisions if they leave or are terminated before the contract extensions expire. They then start going their own way, pretty much ignoring and showing their contempt for the wishes of the people as well as the school board.

First, congratulations are in order. Our Golden Eagles defeated Bishop Kenny 17 - 14. Go Eagles!

Now, let me vent a little about the daily life of a high school teacher in Clay County. There are no empty classrooms in our school ANY period. We have teachers who do not have classrooms to call their own. They push or pull a cart, or drag a large cumbersome bag all over the school. It wouldn't be too bad if they were just going a few steps down the hallway, but several are going all over the school, all the while expected to greet their students at the door, have their word wall visible, their objective on the board, the Sunshine State Standards posted, AND the bell activity projected on the screen or written on the board. We must also make sure that our room is "print-rich" with charts, graphs, and informative posters present in our rooms (if we have one.)

As some of you may have read, there was a school board meeting for Realtors this week.  It was an informational meeting for agents to pass on the right information to our customers.  I did not count the number of agents in attendance but it could have been around 50.  It was a question and answer session, that proved to be very helpful. I will touch on a few points that I found very good and helpful.1.  I asked David Owens and Mike Elliot directly about the concurrency issues we all talked about in the early spring.  It appears that they have to revisit this in May of 08, but that most of the redistricting in the "near foreseeable future" will have to do with new schools.

Hey, kids:This is spring break week in Clay County schools, so show us what you're doing. Where have you visited? What have you done with friends? Gone to the beach? Been to Disney or Universal? Visited the Space Center? Or just hung out back home and relaxed while the parents are hard at work?Send your spring break week photos to photos@myclaysun.comWe'll publish the best photos in Sunday's My Clay Sun.