Van Wijk Blog

Home of the Collierville Schools Citizen's Report

Posts Tagged rant

Let’s not compromise our values and thereby let the terrorists win…

Nov 17

Posted by E2Dutch in Rant, Reality Check | Comments off

I am not a biblical scholar. I don’t have a list full of bible verses to reference in this matter. But I do know this:

Jesus wants us to love our neighbors. Help the poor. Welcome and befriend strangers.

The most real way we can show a Muslim what it means to be a Christian is to be welcoming to them. This means we help them in their time of need. Whether their reasons for leaving their home country are political, economical or for physical survival… they came for help. And we need to step up and do so.

And as we show what compassion in the name of Christ (and decency) looks like, we are doing exactly what we need to: we’re being defiant to the terrorists. “The greatest act of defiance against terrorism is to refuse to be afraid, to refuse to be so ruled by our fear that we compromise our most important values,” is what Jen Hatmaker puts forth. She also lists a few bible verses if you really want those…

To live is Christ, to die is gain… We really don’t have anything to fear if we believe that.

What matters more is our heart attitude than the migrants’ motivations.

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Collierville Schools and sensationalism, rash judgement, misinformation and other nonsense

Jul 11

Posted by E2Dutch in Ramble, Rant, Reality Check | Comments off

The tone and content of some comments and posts in the Collierville Schools group on Facebook sometimes take a turn for the worse… A few personal thoughts and observations in response to some of the posts here:

  1. (How can Collierville Schools agree to a 4 year contract with Durham for transportation?!) In order to get a reasonable agreement (in cost, etc.) with a company like Durham, there has to be commitment to certain things from both parties. That means, among other things, committing to a certain number of years.
  2. Agreements like these include provisions for quality performance of the agreed upon services. Breach of those will allow for termination of the contract (or sometimes other penalties).
  3. The school board for Collierville Schools chose to leave start times the same for this year in order to allow the best chance of getting everything operational and making sure they were fiscally responsible. The Durham contract, per discussion at the school board meeting last month, allows for changes in start times (and going to 2 if desired). It changes the number of buses needed, which changes the fees charged to the school system.
  4. Mr Aitken has said it many times: operational vs aspirational… This year, the focus is to get a good school system up and running in time for when kids show up. That means for this year at least, a lot of items are being left as they were last year or reverted to legacy SCS policies, because any significant change will be disruptive to getting everything and everyone started.
  5. I trust our local representatives and the administration they have put in place with my kids for their education. I have already seen so many improvements put into place or set into motion over last year’s mega district and even the legacy SCS!
  6. Change is hard. In some areas, laws, regulations, and financial reality force decisions and limit options. Collierville Schools, in my opinion, has done a very good job in weighing options and making choices. Yes, I have a list of aspirational changes, but I am pragmatic enough to realize they are not of utmost priority.
  7. A lot of people put a lot of their own time, energy and emotions into the new school system. They are taking personal and professional risks. The occasional vitriol that pops up in community response to their work is disappointing.
  8. Our town of Collierville is providing tremendous support for the school system. Financially, logistically, etc. I have never seen a community be so united in support for such a huge undertaking.
  9. I have three kids at Collierville Elementary and a wife who is a teacher in Bartlett. I am highly invested in the local education programs. I am not an expert in most aspects of what is being accomplished, but I have a decent dose of intellect and common sense… And I think the right choices are being made, overall. And I am excited!
  10. Don’t believe everything you hear or read in the news. The words used can be either misleading or poorly chosen. Either in an effort to sensationalize (they got your attention!) or out of lack of understanding of what is in play, or inability to convey nuance. I found there to be insufficient reliable information in the media about the schools, so I started attending the meetings. I decided to try and share accurate summaries and observations with the group, and will continue to do so as long as I can afford the time, and there appears interest. It has allowed me to observe the workings, and the effort, and the character of those involved. This is an exciting time, and it is going to be great!

 

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Thoughts on creating new (municipal) school systems… Reality Check #1: are we there yet?

Mar 20

Posted by E2Dutch in Ramble, Rant, Reality Check | No Comments

(my blog – my opinions…)
I have been very interested in, and engaged with, the process to create municipal schools, from the moment I moved to Collierville in 2011. This was shortly after the MCS charter surrender. This will not be the place to go over bygones like why we needed to go this route… If you think we shouldn’t have… perhaps an ‘offline’ discussion will help us exchange ideas in a productive manner…

So you want to start a school system…

Reading the frequent comments on various posts in the Collierville Schools Facebook group, it becomes clear a lot of people are having trouble looking outside their own area of concern. I totally agree that they should be PASSIONATE about their children’s schooling. However, with that passion, they will need to realize that there is a lot of work that goes into creating a new school system.

Everything a school system does is closely controlled by laws and regulation. The rules about who is responsible for the education of which child are lengthy and detailed. The number of kids in a school building drives just about everything: funding (from multiple sources), staffing, transportation, nutrition, etc. That number is a result of a combination of who is zoned to a school, who chooses to opt out of public education (home school or private school), and who chooses to attend outside their zoned school (incoming and outgoing). At the same time, traditional school registration practices have students not formally committing to a school until 4 business days before the start of the school year. When the school year starts, however, the expectation is that everything will be in place for education to commence. Think about that for a second…

To resolve these challenges, the school boards in the municipalities are looking to get early commitments to specific (zoned) schools. And, actually, information on intent to not go to a certain school. (this is why it is so important to ‘early register’ your kids when asked to do so!)

Another challenge – an arrangement for students to attend outside where they are legally required to be served… The big example here is for the Collierville residents attending at Germantown’s Houston Middle and High Schools. Germantown has no jurisdiction over these students, and Collierville has no jurisdiction over the schools in Germantown. Collierville has the option of making an arrangement with Germantown to accommodate a certain set of students for a certain amount of time. This requires two elected bodies to set priorities, to know what the need, capacity and desire of the citizens and affected families is, and to then find common ground in a legally binding manner.

Until an agreement is in place (looks to be ready for prime time this week), the school boards can only make announcements and recommendations and set processes in place based on what is the rule and what is formally in place and agreed upon, and what is actually within their jurisdiction.

Yet, this responsible manner of answering requests and questions seems to infuriate people… They need answers now!

From observing the CMSD school board in action, I know for a fact that this is a very passionate group of people who actively promote the Collierville students’ best interests. If they could move faster, they would.

Perhaps what is missing in the equation is trust. Trust in the process to be worked out between Germantown and Collierville to reach a practical and responsible agreement. Trust in the motives and intent of the CMSD school board. Trust that the concerns that have been expressed are being heard. Trust in your elected school board and the school office staff and leadership they are hiring to serve your children.

If the actions of a school board, school, or a school’s staff seem to indicate that your children are not an even priority to them compared to other children, perhaps that is your sign that you’re looking to have them attend the wrong school. I am hearing some Collierville residents are choosing to not have their children stay at a school until their exit grade because of various reasons. Public comments made by folks (parents, residents, students, etc.) associated in one form or another with those schools may have been a contributing factor for some. That is sad, but we should be able to rejoice in the fact that there is now a choice.

Support your local school boards. Learn what they are working on. Read the reports (my ‘citizen’s reports’ included). Get involved. And trust them to do the job we elected them to do.

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Can I feed my family of 5 on SNAP’s $4.50 a day (per recipient)?

Sep 18

Posted by E2Dutch in Rant, Reality Check | No Comments

(I am blessed enough to not qualify for SNAP… )

I have been hearing about the SNAP (formerly known as foodstamps) benefit being cut later this month… And there have been people, including Panera CEO Ron Shaig, weighing in on this, and he is even trying to ‘live on $4.50 a day,’ and having a very hard time doing so.

My first thought about this was that SNAP self-defines itself as the “Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.” Merriam Webster has these definitions: “Supplemental - added to something else to make it complete” and “Assistance - the act of helping or assisting someone.” Please note the program does not pretend to ‘provide for’ or ‘fully feed’ or anything like that. It is a form of HELP. It is to supplement the grocery budget for those who need help…

And then I ran the math…

For a family of 5 (like mine), $4.50 per recipient per day is $22.50 a day, $157.50 a week, and $675 a month (30 days). How is a family of 5 supposed to live on that (if we ignore the ‘supplemental assistance’ concept)?

The outrage! The cruelty!

In fact, my (wealthy?) family of 5 has a monthly grocery budget of $500. Wait… how much? $500. Obviously, I must starve my kids… Please call DCS!

I will admit, we do eat out occasionally, and that doesn’t come from the grocery budget. It comes from our dining out budget, which is $200 a month. And since I am pretty sure that dining out generally costs more than a home-cooked meal, I think I just proposed that meals for a family of 5 for $675 actually seems quite reasonable. I also get non-food items out of my grocery budget, which is not possible when using the SNAP debit cards…

A local columnist (Wendi Thomas from the Memphis Commercial Appeal – I would provide a link but they have a crappy paywall on their site preventing access to the content…) argued it would be ‘hard to eat healthy’ on $4.50 a day. I guess I want to point out here that the opposite is true:

My family eats a reasonable amount of fresh (and frozen) vegetables and fruit. We have bananas, blueberries, strawberries, grapes, apples and pineapples in our house right now. We have boxes of salad mix (which is more costly than buying by the head of lettuce), carrots, celery, lima beans, peas, corn, green beans, black beans and bell peppers in our regular rotation of vegetables. We eat a lot of chicken breast (again more costly than a whole chicken), lean ground beef, pork chops, tuna (canned) and fresh salmon. We only buy whole grain bread. We consume a lot of (whole grain (read: more costly)) frozen waffles, Cheerios (brand name), Nutella, peanut butter, greek yogurt, quinoa (great deal at Costco!) and other tasty and mostly wholesome foods. Oh, and tons of luxury foods… Scallops, fancy orange juice, desserts, juice boxes, snack foods, the occasional six-pack of beer, etc. We eat well.

While I get some of these items at Costco, I get most of my groceries at Kroger and Target. I am enough of a snob to avoid Wal-Mart for groceries, and I have only been inside an Aldi once – it just didn’t click for me. I know I can save $10-20 a week by shopping at Wal-Mart and Aldi instead of Kroger and Target… My sister-in-law loves taking the Aldi flyer (with all the super low-price fruits and veggies) to Wal-Mart and make use of their larger selection and price match policy.

Did I mention I do all this for essentially $675 or less a month? I guess that sounds a lot richer than $4.50 per recipient per day…

My kids’ elementary school (they are 10, 8 and 8) serves free breakfast to everyone. And, of course, free lunch to those who qualify (which any SNAP recipient would). But I make their (wholesome I think) breakfast each morning, and they carry their lunch boxes which contains a balanced meal (and a cute note from mom). Would using those school meal benefits reduce a recipient’s SNAP funds? No. Some, if not most, local schools also provide free dinner on days with after school activities. Making use of these school meals would allow a SNAP beneficiary to redirect some spending to other meals…

Look… I am not judging here… and I am not arguing that the SNAP benefits should be cut. I am providing this mini-rant as a reality check on whether it is reasonable to expect a poor family to feed themselves on $4.50 a day. (Did I mention that is not even the expectation?)

I fully realize that my elementary school kids don’t eat as much as teenagers, and that baby formula can put a serious dent in a grocery budget… But those teenagers would get breakfast and lunch paid for 180 days in the year (through school) and many other days they could get a dinner through school.

I also realize that regionally, food costs may be higher than at my local grocery store. I acknowledge it is possible someone’s benefits are less than the $4.50 a day that’s being used in all these news articles…

The two points I wanted to make are:
1. Despite the anguish in a lot of media, $4.50 per recipient per day can be more than enough for a family.
2. The program is intended to help with the grocery budget. Not replace it.

In the mean time, if you feel passionate about these things, and have the opportunity to, please consider donating to some of these programs that further help to supplement meals (I do):

http://www.midsouthfoodbank.org/

http://www.mifa.org/

And more: http://www.foodpantries.org/ci/tn-memphis

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So you don’t like who’s in charge…

Jul 26

Posted by E2Dutch in Uncategorized | No Comments

I have some friends – facebook friends, real friends, family members, too, actually, who seem to gain power from criticizing leaders whose ideology does not match theirs.

As far as political leaders goes, there is a solid core of these dem-bashers… Doesn’t matter who it is, they disagree. There is name calling, ranting, overall criticism…

You know what struck me that all these have in common? It is nothing but negativity in these comments, blogs, articles and columns they produce and/or replicate. It can be OK to occasionally post some negative comment about a topic, but all the time?

If you want to make a difference, do you do so by creating further polarization? By poisoning the environment? By being (or coming across as) bitter? I do think we can usually agree that a certain issue is not the way it should be… So how much do you think you are contributing by only offering criticism of the other party’s proposed solutions? Do you have a better idea? Why don’t you convert all that bitterness, anger and vitriol into a positive contribution to the problem at hand?

So maybe your idealistic partners have a completely different proposal than the one that seems to be winning favor? What do you think will have more success: ranting and raving against the winning solution, or finding ways to improve the winning solution in order to make it less objectionable? Yes, it will require you agreeing to compromise (the horror!), working together and establishing relationships with your opponents.

Is that giving up on your ideals? NO! It is applying your ideals to reality. Reality… You know – the place where we all live! We cannot control the world around us – so the best we can do is to try and contribute to it in a positive manner… Not sit on the sidelines and complain – although it may make you feel superior!

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