Awarding 2nd chances is chancy

     Students arrested for underage drinking, a teacher arrested for assaulting a police officer, an administrator taken in for beating up his wife, teachers suspected of or known to have had improper relations with students, teachers caught with drugs off campus.
     Which of these deserves a second chance? If you listen to some people writing to the message board at epalumni.com, they all do. “Everyone deserves a second chance,” they say.
     Former city manager Glen Starnes got a second chance after being fired in Eagle Pass for making false statements on his resume. This generosity blew up in the faces of the Grantville, Ga., city council when Starnes was arrested recently for buying pot from an undercover officer.
     Not everyone deserves a second chance. Someone proven to be a habitual liar – it should be assumed – has other personal faults that make him a poor applicant for the same job elsewhere. Leeway might be given for someone who makes a mistake totally disconnected from their profession.
     This makes the case of Ms. Purcell problematic. While she has no background of similar incidents, she was present at the Homecoming parade as a district employee at a school activity. She embarrassed the district and showed terrible judgment during an event connected to her professional duties. Some length of suspension seems in order, but, in the end, the district shouldn’t want to lose an experienced teacher who would return to do a lot of good things.
     Another important factor is to separate Ms. Purcell from her family and judge her on her actions alone with no influence from the substantial contributions of the other Purcells. That her in-laws and husband have done so much to help our students doesn’t mean she is allowed to behave unacceptably.
     Following an appropriate punishment, Ms. Purcell deserves a second chance. Does everyone deserve a second chance? No. Here is what everyone DOES deserve: to be treated the same as anyone else. That desire for equal treatment for all led to the policy requiring the suspension of the Eagle football players. Previously, such punishments would be serious for one guy, minor for the next, and nothing for someone else.
     So EPISD followed an established policy known to everyone in suspending the football players. These athletes chose to ignore the rules and roll the dice that they wouldn’t get caught. They knew very well after years of playing sports that continued participation requires a high standard of behavior. If they miss football games, that’s fine. They’ll get their second chance later in being allowed to play basketball, soccer, track or baseball.
     Any illegal, unethical or prohibited behavior requires negative consequences in order to discourage continued reoccurrence of undesirable acts. Some people deserve a second chance after paying their dues; other people don’t. The severity of their misdeeds makes the biggest difference, followed by whether they can be trusted in the future to straighten up their act.
     People who screw up and lose important parts of their lives have to understand that they may never regain all the things they once had, no matter how sorry they profess to be and no matter how much they repent and apologize. That threat keeps most of us civil, but too many people will continue to have the wrong priorities and bad judgment. If they don’t get a second chance, don’t feel sorry for them.

Next: Willie Nelson on the dangers of pot

     So, the six Eagle football players caught drinking plea bargained a deal for a large fine, a requirement of 180 days of good conduct and community service. This whole incident has been handled fairly well by the school, the city courts and the police, but the community service “punishment” was a stupid idea.
     According to the Eagle Pass Chronicles website, these guys will visit elementary and junior highs “to talk to students about the dangers of consuming alcohol.”
     If these underage students who were caught with alcohol and are supposedly being punished are allowed to miss class time to visit other schools, that’s really going to piss me off. If I were a principal, I wouldn’t allow it. As a teacher. I would rebel against my students having to listen to them, and as a parent, I would demand that my kids not be made to be in their audience.
     If they want to go in the evenings and speak to church groups or boy scouts, and those groups want to have them, that’s fine. But why should we allow their mistakes to lead to wasting our precious educational time?
     Obviously, if these guys gave a damn about the “dangers of alcohol” they would never have been caught with it. They are not any kind of experts on the subject. They are not any kind of role models – anymore. Finally, they’ve lost any credibility in discussing a serious topic like this with younger kids. I’d bet $1,000 they’re all already drinking again on the weekends or at least counting down the days for the scrutiny to die out so they CAN drink every weekend again.
     I can just picture their speeches going something like this:
     Former Player One: “Hi. I’m here to talk about the dangers of alcohol. Ummm. Don’t drink alcohol because you might get kicked off your football team.”
     Former Player Two: “Right. What that guy said. You might also have to pay a big ticket.”
     Former Player Three: “Raise your hands if you play football. Oh, only 3 of you. Well, for the other 27, don’t drink alcohol because if you do, the football players will show up to drink with you, and then they might get kicked off the team.”
     Questions?
     Sixth Grader One: “Does beer taste good?”
     Former Player Four: “Well, yes, it tastes good, but don’t drink it because it’s bad for you.”
     Sixth Grader Two: “If you know alcohol is bad, why were you drinking?”
     Former Player Five: “I guess because everybody does it. But you shouldn’t.”
     Sixth Grader Three: “I know alcohol does a lot of bad things to a person. What do you think is the best reason not to drink it?”
     Former Player Six: “Probably because you might get kicked off the football team.”
     Community service for these guys should be picking up trash or painting over graffiti – something that actually makes them labor a little and something that actually provides a benefit to our community. To have them go talk to other students will really be more of a reward for them and a total waste of time for the younger kids. I truly hope this proposed “punishment” never gets carried out.

Saucedo shows guts in making hard choice

     Three cheers for County Commissioner David Saucedo.
     While the other commissioners voted for a loan in order to delay a needed tax increase, Saucedo stood firm against the refinancing of the county’s debt. The commission majority acted like your typical over-spender who prefers to face the pain of debt later instead of meeting it head-on now.
     According to the county’s financial adviser, the loan will help avoid any tax hike for now, but will require hefty tax hikes later lasting for many years into the future. But why listen to Robert Rodriguez? He’s only the president of Southwestern Capital Markets in San Antonio and he’s only getting $60,000 a year from the county for his expertise. What does he know?
     “I lost faith in Mr. Rodriguez some time ago, so his advice doesn’t carry much weight,” County Judge Pepe Aranda was quoted as saying in the Express-News.
     I bet Rodriguez does know finances. He probably doesn’t know the length a politician will go to to avoid a tax increase. I think the commissioners know a tax hike is needed but they’re hoping it can happen after the next election, or maybe farther in the future on someone else’s watch.
     Saucedo showed courage in not wanting to take the easy way out.

This does not compute

     It’s necessary now to re-visit and expand on an earlier issue.
     Imagine having to call a technician to do these little jobs (to name just a few) on your computer: add a font, change the desktop, switch the screensaver, add a bookmark to your browser, and enable or disable the popup blocker.
     Some EPISD staff and teachers already face this situation and all will eventually be in the same boat if the technology office ever completes its new, massive reconfiguration project of the district’s network and networked computers.
     Computers district-wide are supposed to be reformatted and set to be unalterable in any way afterwards unless the user turns in a work order for a technician to do the job – however small it may be. It’s a solution selected to reduce viruses and other unintended damage to the operating systems.
     It’s “A” solution, and even though some other school districts do the same thing, I don’t think it’s the best solution. I also have problems with how this plan is being implemented.
     To start with, this is a major change to the way we will deal with our technology. Yet, despite the far-reaching impact, nobody’s officially been told the reason, heard of any prior discussion about it, or been given any kind of expected timetable for its completion.
     Though it’s hard to understand, this lack of communication doesn’t surprise anyone. We have never gotten any kind of messages from the technology office – not warnings about viruses, not notices about important security patches to download, not warnings about e-mail scams, not info about training available, not a heads up about scheduled network interruptions. Zilch. Nothing. Nada. If that’s not the job of the technology office, then I don’t know whose job it is.
     Sometimes, the technicians will add or change routers or servers. Then, we go in and some equipment doesn’t work like it’s supposed to. So a teacher spends 2 hours trouble shooting the problem, then calls someone.
     They say, “Oh, we made some changes and the IP addresses are different now. We didn’t think it was important to warn anyone that some of your settings would have to be changed to keep everything working.”
     So, you think, “Don’t they know their work actually affects other people who might be grateful if you can give them a heads up and save them from doing 2 hours of work for nothing?”
     Work on their newest fiasco of an endeavor began in the summer, but now three weeks into the school year, this work is still being done and looks far from complete. It’s causing interruptions and is interfering with students getting their work done. This really frustrates the affected teachers because they were ready to start the school year from the first day, and the students were ready, but the tools they needed weren’t ready – and still aren’t ready.
     The problems being found with our technology could have been drastically reduced if the technology office just consistently exercised due diligence. For example, new computers lately have arrived and been installed without antivirus software. We have a district-wide license for a program, but nobody knows how to get hold of it. Nobody that I know of has ever been offered training in preventing viruses. They will come install anti-virus software if one asks but the program they install doesn’t always update itself like it’s supposed to.
     Large downloads like complete movies hogging hard drive space and slowing computers have been a problem. Some of this is due to inexcusable teacher inattention, but some of it is due to the network administrator’s lack of effective control over network traffic. Also, the technicians usually know in which classrooms this is happening, yet I’ve never heard of a teacher being reported for not effectively monitoring the use of the computers. Better supervision by the technology staff and campus administrators with consequences for proven neglect could have prevented most of the concerns that they’re now trying to solve.
     Generally, this big technology department initiative just seems poorly planned, badly implemented, heavy-handed and too far-reaching and too complex for their current staff to pull off. So far, it has caused only headaches. When it gets finished (if it gets finished and if it works) it will continue to cause resentment and inconvenience. I don’t think any positive outcomes will ever outweigh all of the negative effects.

President Obama Nails It!

     President Obama delivered a speech Tuesday to our nation’s school children that had most teachers responding with a big “AMEN!” His main focus was telling students to take charge and take responsibility for their own education. For us teachers, that’s a nice switch from the message we often get that WE’RE responsible for everything.
     This is a good paragraph that summarizes the whole speech:
     “But at the end of the day, we can have the most dedicated teachers, the most supportive parents, the best schools in the world -- and none of it will make a difference, none of it will matter unless all of you fulfill your responsibilities, unless you show up to those schools, unless you pay attention to those teachers, unless you listen to your parents and grandparents and other adults and put in the hard work it takes to succeed. That's what I want to focus on today: the responsibility each of you has for your education.”
     Obama went on basically to tell students not to make any excuses and to remember how important education will be to their futures. It was great motivational material, just delivered in too much of an intellectual manner. I would like to see the same speech given by a hell-fire and brimstone preacher-type person with some yelling, foot stomping, fist pounding and a few tears. Basically, just some more emotion. So, I'm nitpicking about his style, but the President's words were wonderful.
     I also really liked this paragraph:
     “Don't be afraid to ask questions. Don't be afraid to ask for help when you need it. I do that every day. Asking for help isn't a sign of weakness, it's a sign of strength because it shows you have the courage to admit when you don't know something, and that then allows you to learn something new.”
     That advice, I think, especially applies to students in low income areas like ours. Many of our students have raised themselves or been raised by siblings without enough adult supervision. From that, these kids tend to have developed an independence that in some ways can be a big benefit. Sometimes this independence leads them to question why things are they way they are. This independence also motivates them to want to figure out things on their own, which is a worthwhile skill to have.
     Too many students, though, let this independence work against them. They don’t ask questions (or at least the right questions), they don’t ask for help, and they view accepting instructions as equal to accepting orders, and, “Nobody gives me orders.” They want to do things on their own, which is good, but too often want to go a step too far and do things their own way. They’ll be like, “It says to draw a square 4” x 4”. So what if I draw it 4 cm by 4 cm, it’s still a square.” These students don't think deeply enough to understand there's usually a good reason for needing to precisely follow directions.
     The President wrapped up with a conclusion very similar to his opening. “I'm working hard to fix up your classrooms and get you the books and the equipment and the computers you need to learn,” he said. “But you've got to do your part, too.”
     To help solve one of my biggest irritations, I just wish he could have added, “And don’t go to any of your classes without a pencil or pen and paper to write on.”

Mavs, Eagles don't need a move to 4-A

     Eagle Pass Sports Central (http://eaglepasssportscentral.com)has an interesting poll concerning the upcoming realignment for U.I.L. competition. As the site points out, in about 5 months new district configurations will be announced, and both Eagle Pass schools might have enrollment sizes qualifying them for 4-A status with the option of remaining 5-A.
     You can visit the website where Morris Libson recounts several scenarios for both the 4-A and 5-A possibilities. The accompanying reader opinion poll shows 70.5 percent of respondents think both schools should choose class 4-A if the enrollment numbers provide that option. About 16 percent say we should stay in 5-A even if we have the choice of 4-A, and about 13 percent say one school should be 4-A and the other one remain 5-A.
     I’m surprised that so many people want to see our schools in 4-A. To me the district we’re in with the Laredo schools has worked well. EPHS has finished highly in several sports, and, given time to grow its programs, Winn should have better showings in the future. All teams at each school, I think, begin their seasons with a realistic expectation of reaching the playoffs, so it’s not like we’re constantly feeling overpowered like 3-A Zapata probably felt when they were in our district with us and Laredo. Now, THEY had a good case for going back to a lower category, even though it meant more inconvenience and longer bus rides.
     The decision will probably be made by administrators with the most weight given to what’s best for the kids academically (such as which choice means less late-night travel on school nights), followed by financial considerations, and finally what it means as far as wins and losses.
     Sports fans, I’m sure, unfortunately would like the win/loss factor to be the main consideration in this decision. I also think many people support us being 4-A because they see it as a shortcut to either less competition or less talented competition. It seems to be a common habit everywhere that to increase their chances of winning, our athletes and the adults organizing them shop for competitions where few teams enter or where they know that the teams that will enter are low caliber.
     For example, an EP cheer squad some years ago had the choice of going to San Antonio or the Valley for regional competition. They chose the Valley because only one other team would be there. Also, the top two squads would advance, so they got an easy ticket to nationals just for showing up to one competition. So, often when I hear that a group has won “state” or advanced to “nationals,” I kind of roll my eyes, because I know it has little meaning. Sometimes they have beaten some serious competition – and those people have my respect – but at other times they have just waltzed right in.
     Our high school teams should compete at 5-A, the highest level, unless they’re seriously struggling, which they aren’t. That way, we know when we get far into the playoffs or through to a state tournament, we have beaten the best, and the honor will carry more prestige than it would for a 4-A team.
     I’ve been wrong before, of course, but I predict in the end that we will maintain something close to the status quo – both schools at 5-A in a district with Laredo schools. In February, the outcome will be known and I might be eating crow.

EPISD: On-line but off target

     The EPISD computer technicians have become the most hated people on Earth. They’re doing some kind of secret experiment that nobody has explained to anyone, for a reason that nobody has explained to anyone, with results that don’t make sense to anyone.
     Thanks to the EPISD technicians, computer labs are not useable, printers don’t print, some computers won’t turn on and many teachers have had their hard drives wiped out with no advance warning, losing some important documents and files forever.
     All the chaos began in the summer. Administrators knew in May that work on almost all the computers would be done and that they would be reformatted. This was passed along to teachers at our campus at a busy end-of-school meeting where almost nobody listens to a word being said and where some people were absent with legitimate excuses.
     At EPHS, I don’t know if any warning was given or not. I know that many teachers were mad when they came back in August and all their saved documents were gone with (they say) no opportunity being given to back them up.
     No memo, e-mail or verbal explanation has been given to teachers concerning what good all of this damage will eventually do, if any. We have pieced together facts and rumors and apparently someone wants a new management system where every computer in the district gets controlled remotely in all aspects from a bunker at the technology office.
     We’ve heard, once it’s all done, nobody will be able to install a program on their own computer or even update any of the existing programs without calling a technician for service. You get a new printer, need to install software (any two-year-old can do it) – you have to call for help. Need to update Acrobat Reader to see a document (this update usually happens almost automatically) – you have to call for help. Supposedly, a technician (or 2, or 3 or 4?) will be connected and be constantly monitoring every computer in the district to make sure it’s being used appropriately. It’s all very Orwellian.
     A few people misuse their computers and some let the students use them for everything EXCEPT academics. We’re throwing the baby out with the bath water here, though. Instead of punishing those who have been irresponsible and making principals supervise technology use more closely, the technology department would rather just make our technology dysfunctional.
     Sadly, we have a school technology department that has no clue about how technology should be integrated into an educational environment. They also have shown no concern about communicating anything to the teachers and students who make up the vast majority of their end users. We had a person hired as an educational technology specialist but his knowledge and training have gone to waste as his role has been relegated – for some illogical reason -- to being just another central office bureaucrat.
     It’s all very frustrating to the students and teachers. We could take our technology and really fly if somebody had the initiative and the knowledge to lead the way. It’s also very sad for the district and the community as a whole that we SHOULD have much more to show for the millions we spend on technology and we’re falling short because of poor leadership.
     Too many of our campus employees have too little training and too little supervision to implement our technology in a smooth manner. But, instead of training them, insisting on better oversight from administrators, and learning to trust everyone, central office would rather stifle the campuses and put obstacles in our way. This type of sorry approach will continue until someone with curriculum experience is put in charge of technology. Such a person would switch the emphasis on technology to teaching and learning and away from record keeping, business transactions, communication and P.R. -- as it presently stands. For the sake of our kids, the existing approach has to change.

Join my gang, or else

     I’m starting a new gang. We’re going to wear Dallas Cowboy jerseys, center our gang activities around Cowboy football games, tag the city with the Cowboy’s star, and our name will be the Day Cruisers – or “DC” as in Dallas Cowboys.
     Criminal gangs have already hijacked our sports teams, our fashions and our religious symbols. I can’t walk around as a legitimate North Carolina Tarheel fan without being accosted as being a member of the Night Cruisers (NC). Well, at my age, I probably can, but innocent teenage kids can’t.
     So, since this kind of thing has already started, I am claiming the Cowboys colors all for myself and my gang members before someone else does. We’re going to wear blue, silver and white rosary beads, put blue bandanas in our pockets and have J.J. (Jerry Jones) tattoos on our necks. We’ll flash 9 fingers (Tony Romo’s number) with one pinky finger down to identify ourselves and our main source of income will be from arranging NFL pots.
     The Day Cruisers will, of course, have to have an initiation rite and a structure that assures the loyalty of our members. A prospective member must eat a raw jalapeño, washed down with a shot of 4-alarm salsa, for each year that the Cowboys have failed to have a playoff win. Right now, that stands at 13. Punishment for disrespecting me, the gang itself, or any individual gang member in any way will be expulsion or that you must drink warm non-alcoholic beers throughout the following Cowboy game.
     Since most Day Cruisers members will be older, married men, we will assure their sustained membership through sexual blackmail. Each member will have to pose nude with a Piedras Negras prostitute and those pictures will be shown to his wife should a member ever leave the gang – or should they ever root for any other pro football team.
     We will wear all our clothing 12 sizes too large, which might be hard for some of our corpulent members who already buy the largest clothes available at the Big and Tall Mens Store. Those guys will just have to find an Extra Big and Extra Tall Mens Store.
     No self-respecting gang lasts long without imposing at least a small reign of terror. We’ll intimidate and harass anyone known to have watched any weenie sport or non-sport, which include golf, tennis, bowling, figure skating or synchronized swimming. They will suffer the pain of having their cable wire cut or satellite dish pulled down, any innocent household members be damned.
     Another thing we’ll do is claim any sports bar as our own any time we please. We’ll do this by bragging loudly about fictional friends that we have in really bad ass gangs like the Mexican Mafia and the Norteños, something like this:
     “My Mexican Mafia friend El Diablo just got out of Huntsville. He’s meeting me here soon and he said he’s going to kill the first guy he sees drinking lite beer.”
     “Yeah, my friend El Muerte from the Norteños is getting here in a minute and he’s going to slice open the first guy that looks at him.”
     We’ll employ some other tactics, too, stolen from typical street gang playbooks. After time, we will give the Dallas Cowboys name and colors such a despicable reputation that nobody else will want to be seen in public supporting “America’s” team. When you won’t wear a Tony Romo jersey to the mall because you’re afraid of getting beaten up over it, that’s when we will know that our gang has truly arrived.

Self improvement would beat forced improvement

     Plans for more administrator walkthroughs in the classrooms. Making all school personnel including teachers and principals clock in and clock out. Threats about getting tougher with use of cell phones on campus. Write-ups for not being at your duty stations.
     Seems like teachers will soon be watched more closely than the students, but a minority of teachers abusing their independence has made it necessary. To me, the motivational speaker at the district-wide assembly hit the mark in urging educators to “do the right thing even when you’re not being watched.”
     Because some personnel took advantage of not being constantly watched, we’re all getting an overload of oversight both in and out of the classroom.
     Recalling the speaker’s words -- There are three kinds of people: 1’s - who always do the wrong thing. 2’s – who do the right thing as long as they’re being watched. And 3’s – who do the right thing even when not being watched.
     We heard a lot of praise and congratulations from the superintendent about how well our district fared in the accountability ratings. So, we applauded ourselves, and now we’ll get back to work with the goal of improving even more. Those improvements would come more easily if all district employees would be 3’s.
     EPISD has a few slackers, like any employer. People come late, leave early, take long lunches. Some people use their phones in the classrooms, give their students very little work, don’t record grades as often as required, and act inappropriately toward students of the opposite sex.
     We have some aides who go through their days without anyone really knowing where they’re supposed to be and what they’re supposed to be doing. Sometimes people treat trips for school business as personal vacations. Some people don’t dress professionally.
     These things happen because the nature of our organization prevents everyone from being constantly watched. Then, as part of human nature, some people try to get away with whatever they can. So, everyone gets treated like they’re a “2” because everyone has to be treated equally and not everyone has reached the third level.
     As we heard, wouldn’t it be wonderful if our students would all be 3’s? But how can we expect them to be if the grownups around them are not? How can we expect students to abide by a cell phone ban when some teachers are there at their desks for half the day using their own? How can teachers who are always running late insist that their students be in class on time?
     Abuses and problems are not widespread, but they exist, and the effort to eliminate them inconveniences everyone. If we cannot improve on our own without threats, reprimands, and increased monitoring, then the district will eventually just impose a suffocating level of supervision.
     We all need to start challenging ourselves to always do the right thing, even when we don’t have to, even when a wrong action has no negative consequences. It would improve us, it would lead the students to improve themselves, it would improve our schools, and as time passes, it would leave our district with nothing to hide, so Eagle Pass could be even more proud of what we have.

Students have their good sides

     Whenever I pass out tests or worksheets to my students, a few of them each class period say, “Thank you.”
     While I appreciate and truly am impressed by this politeness, I kind of laugh inside because I feel like they would say “thank you” if a person gave them an activated hand grenade. It’s odd to hear a “thanks” in response to receiving something that’s not really desired, but it’s uplifting to see young people utilize good manners, as many do in our classrooms.
     You hear a lot of war stories about teaching, so most people (including parents) don’t know how great the kids can be. I found this out first-had a few years ago with a teen relative of mine who had constant conflicts with her parents and raised hell at home. But, her parents would go to open house at school, and all the teachers would say, “Oh, I love your daughter,” and “She’s just a joy to have in my class.”
     Her parents thought this girl must have had multiple personalities, but I soon realized that most kids act much better at school than they do at home where their parents come across to them as controlling, critical, suspicious and embarrassing.
     In reality, at school we see the best sides of the students a lot more often than we see the worst sides. They’re usually energetic, upbeat, carefree, humorous, respectful, intelligent and unselfish, and that’s why I really like my job. In what other career could you spend your days surrounded by hundreds of other people that you could describe that way.
     I feel fortunate that I don’t have to work alongside only adults. Too many grownups have turned cynical and bitter or they still act immature even though their youth has long passed. Our students, when they act immature at least have an excuse – they ARE immature. Give me the young people to be with any day.
     I’ve been a teacher for a long time, and I don’t see myself ever wanting any other job, although I might want to change grades or subjects before long for a change of pace – so I can keep growing as a person instead of falling into a monotonous routine and stagnating. Teaching offers variety and challenge and more independence than most jobs in education.
     The best part, though, is the interaction with the students. If you keep your ears open, you can learn a lot from the students as you teach them. In each class, there’s about 25 people, each an expert in a different area. One might know about cars, another about music, another about sports, yet another about art, and so on. Half of what I know about computers, I learned from watching the students doing their work.
     Often you hear people say that they fear for the future because they see our high school students and think our future leaders will be incompetent idiots. I see our students as the kids that they are. I urge them to reflect on where they’re at maturity-wise, act appropriately for the situation at hand, and keep striving to grow up. I trust that someday they’ll be in a position of responsibility, and they’ll be in good shape to handle it.
     In another week, the students return even though I’d like for summer vacation to last until Thanksgiving. Yes, I like my job, but they’re a lot of leisure activities that I like much better. I’m realistic, though, and I know nobody gets a free lunch – except all of the Eagle Pass children. I’ll go back to work with a smile and I’ll go back grateful to have a job that helps keep me young.

This ain't no cover up

     In his ongoing campaign to end oppression of women, French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who previously suggested a ban on the Islamic burqa, now has proposed a ban on winter, because it also forces women to cover their bodies from head to toe.
     “A burqa or a long, hooded coat, mittens, scarf and boots – there’s no difference,” Sarkozy told the Paris Daily. “We shouldn’t be forcing women to hide their identities behind these layers of unalluring clothing.”
     Asked how a ban on winter could be effected, Sarkozy said his scientific advisers believe it could occur if humankind continues to increase global warming through excessive pollution and by aggressively cutting down more trees.
     Sarkozy’s fashion concerns continue to expand. Most recently, during a meeting with cultural advisers he expressed frustration at surveys showing that fewer French women choose to go topless at the country’s beaches.
     Many French activists believe woman can help prove themselves equal to men by wearing only trunks on the beach – the same as men do -- and they would hate to see a turnaround in this sign of progress.
     “It’s absolutely unfair and oppressive when women have to cover their breasts and men don’t, not even the fat guys with the double D’s,” Sarkozy said.
     Some French citizens see their president as nothing more than a horndog eager to see more female skin exposed in public, but he has a ready answer for such criticism.
     “I’m not saying women should, or must be more revealing in their dress,” Sarkozy said. “I’m just saying if they want to do that, then society shouldn’t discourage them from it in any way (wink, wink).”
     The French president has even privately discussed legislation to outlaw g-strings at strip clubs.
     “All strippers should have the right to undress to total nudity,” he said. “We should not prohibit these women from revealing all the abundance of their natural beauty.”
     Concerning the burqa issue that started this whole campaign, supporters initially believed Sarkozy had a sincere concern for women’s rights, but inside sources say his opposition to burqas began following an embarrassing incident at a political rally. Apparently, he made a pass at a burqa-clad woman whom he described as having a “sexy bedroom voice,” then later found out she was an 80-year-old grandmother.
     “We men want to play the field, but these frigid Islamic fanatics won’t play by the rules,” Sarkozy allegedly proclaimed to a cabinet member.

School ratings? Get real!

     A while back, a comment to this blog asked if I want to start some kind of crusade. Not at all. I just want to entertain a little and have some fun.
     If I were to choose to begin a crusade, though, it would concern the state accountability ratings for Texas schools. These ratings – released just last week for 2009 – give little indication of a school’s actual quality. Our state leaders know this, and it really pisses me off that they don’t push for a more accurate system of evaluation.
     Teachers, school personnel and parents of students see first-hand the failings of the accountability ratings. My crusade would be to make sure EVERYONE knows about this fiasco, so that the ratings would be treated with the skepticism given to tabloid gossip instead of accepted like the word of God.
     A couple of Eagle Pass ISD examples will make my point. Shortly after it opened as an 11th-12th grade campus, C.C. Winn in one year moved its rating up simply by insisting that students be retained at EPHS unless they had met all of the requirements for promotion to Winn. Winn, overall as a school didn’t change one iota, and its rating improved. What changed? The student body (slightly).
     More recently, Liberty Elementary dropped from being exemplary, second best in the state (according to Texas Monthly) blah, blah, blah, to not even being the best or even second best elementary in Eagle Pass. Very little changed there over that time as far as the teaching, curriculum, administration, etc… to sink their high standing. What changed? The students.
     At least 90 percent of a school’s rating depends on the quality of the students coming in, the neighborhoods they come from, and their income levels. It’s not fair that after all the TAKS scores get analyzed, the reports all say “Travis High received an unacceptable rating.” This gets into people’s heads as “Travis High is an unacceptable school” when sometimes low performing schools are fine schools with just too many students whose lives are unacceptable.
     I would like for the announcements to say, “Travis High students performed unacceptably this year in the areas used to rate their campus.” This would help remind people that the campus ratings rely upon student actions that aren’t totally under their school’s control – that the ratings are more a measure of the quality of the students than a measure of the quality of the school.
     School districts, for the most part, are big bureaucratic behemoths where change evolves very slowly over decades. Little changes year to year in the classrooms. Yet the accountability ratings continuously fluctuate. That’s another reason that they are unreliable. If the ratings were trustworthy, how could a school continue doing everything the same and be exemplary one year but recognized the next, failing one year but acceptable the next.
     Further, you absolutely can’t compare one year’s rating to another to judge whether a school got better or worse over time. One reason is that TEA each year breaks out the fudge-o-meter to figure out how to make the tests harder without failing an unacceptable number of schools. For example, they might lower the number of questions that a student must get correct or they might change the rules so that more students’ scores can be exempted.
     Most recently TEA’s chosen fudge factor was the Texas Projection Measure. After factoring in TPM, the number of schools rated exemplary in Bexar County more than doubled. So, on paper the San Antonio area schools showed an incredible improvement in one year. In reality, they changed very little.
     Here’s the Express-News explanation of TPM: “The TPM gives schools credit for students who fail their Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills if the student appears to be on target to pass in the future. It uses a student's current year test scores in several subjects as well as a previous year campus average score to project the student's future test performance.”
     The newspaper also made this statement: “Educators are hailing the new tool as a way to give credit for progress over time.”
     That’s absolutely untrue, as TPM is much too simplistic to measure “progress over time.” All it does is compare two numbers to assume whether a student will score higher in the future. If the low score’s not far from passing, and the school has done well in general, the school’s rewarded because supposedly the student will pass the next time around. Really, it’s just another example of how “close” can count in things other than just horse shoe pitching and hand grenade tossing.
     Instead of predicting future progress, TEA should be examining the student’s actual progress over time. If a student comes into a school two grade levels behind and finishes the year only one grade level behind, then the school should get credit for that in spite of maybe low TAKS scores. Some teacher groups have pushed for this type of system, but too many politicians prefer the current unfair black and white system that says you’re “passing” or “failing” – there’s nothing in between and progress means nothing.
     I hope that teachers keep striving for a process that produces ratings close to reality, because we shouldn’t keep punishing acceptable schools for simply having unacceptable students and we shouldn’t keep rewarding average schools simply for their dumb luck of having exemplary students. Again, I’m sure some people know this is happening. Please help spread the word so that EVERYONE knows it is happening.

No news is bad news

     This is hard to admit, but I miss the News-Guide. I’m not talking about the more recent post-Al Kinsall, post-Rex McBeath, post-Emma Perez Trevino News-Guide that’s pure press releases and ads. The current No-News Guide, as I call it, isn’t worth the effort it takes to carry it out of the store.
     I miss the old watchdog News Guide that every dedicated Eagle Passan read faithfully and loved to hate. As none of the other media in town can be trusted to rake our public officials over the coals for misdeeds big and small, I think our city has lost a vital service that helped voters place the most qualified people in our public positions.
     In thinking through this blog entry, though, I remembered a lot more things I don’t miss about the Guide than things I do miss. The things I don’t miss are easier to pinpoint and quicker to explain, so I’ll just go through them first.
     I don’t miss:
     *The 5,000-word play-by-play accounts of the varsity football games published a week after the fact. When mostly all I wanted to know was how the points were scored, it frustrated the hell out of me to have to wade through lengthy verbiage like this – Garza opened the game with a 5-yard-run up the middle. Ramirez then went around the right for 3 yards before Santos threw incomplete toward Trevino, forcing Hernandez to come in and punt for the Eagles.
     *The 18th century-style design and graphics. While there’s something to be said for tradition, c’mon, most people believe in updates or makeovers now and then.
     *The front page editorials that simple good reporting would have rendered unnecessary.
     *The lame quotes from the old “Eagle Watcher” – the only person ever quoted in the whole damn publication.
     *The ink-stained fingers you would get in the five minutes it took to browse through it.
     *The illogical placement of articles, such as some that would start for example on page 6, be continued on page 4, and continue even more on page 3.
     *The almost weekly letters from a certain high school teacher spouting philosophical drivel, who for a while looked like a wannabe professional columnist.
     *Al’s tired 20-year use of the scud missile metaphor for a long basketball shot. I mean shouldn’t he have been able to find a replacement description from the 3 wars that passed after he originated that idea.
     So, if the old News-Guide so totally sucked, why do I miss it?
     I do miss:
     *The stupid humor the staff members, sometimes directed toward each other, such as the time a headline read something like this: “Another wordy historical account disguised as a news story by Al Kinsall.”
     *Spending 50 cents each Thursday and taking the gamble that it might not be worth it. Sometimes the risk paid off with some worthwhile or at least entertaining information. Sometimes I would have been better off just throwing the 50 cents in the trash.
     *Intelligent letters from people in the know who helped reveal misdeeds that the Guide’s investigative reporter couldn’t uncover because such a reporter didn’t exist.
     *Being aware of the constant shenanigans being pulled by the sheriff and the staff at the Maverick County Jail.
     *The Editor’s rambling but entertaining responses to letters-to-the-editor. All other papers let the readers have the last word unless there’s a factual error that needs to be corrected in a letter-to-the-editor. So, these responses were totally unprofessional, but expected, since nothing else about the paper was ever very professional.
     Every city needs at least one media outlet that’s willing to stick its neck out and criticize the people in charge when they behave corruptly or stupidly. Though it was far from perfect, for a long time the News-Guide did that job better than anyone else around here.
     I wish the little rag had modernized and progressed through the years instead of becoming a dilapidated shell of its former self. The old News-Guide is gone. It probably isn’t ever coming back. And I miss it.

Face it: Only winners get trophy wives

     All guys early in puberty actually expect some day to date the head cheerleader, the homecoming queen or another campus beauty with huge boobs and a wonderful ass. Most guys let go of this dream rather quickly and learn to set their sites more realistically. For some guys, this transformation takes longer. For 49-year-old George Sodini the realization never came to him that not every guy hooks up with a Playboy playmate.
     Sodini, lamenting that the women looked like goddesses and apparently angry that none of these beauties would give him some, shot up a health club this week, killing three women and wounding 15 others before taking his own life.
     After 19 years of failure with women, Sodini still held onto his unrealistic dreams of latching onto a hottie. On his absolutely pathetic blog, he wrote about wanting to date women 10 to 20 years younger, and he devoutly followed the author of the book “How to Date Young Women.”
     Desperate as he was for some action, Sodini should have turned his attention the other direction – to women older than him. If he had kept up at all with the trends, he would have made himself cougar bait, or as they used to say, he could have been a boy toy for an older woman wanting a young stud.
     By the way, I have my own book about how to date younger women. Here’s an outline of the four best bets: A) become a multimillionaire B) be a governor, the president, or a congressman C) be a rock star, movie star or professional athlete D) start your own religion in which you claim to be the messiah and it’s every female’s duty to have sex with you – aka David Koresh and Warren Jeffs.
     Even old farts who can accomplish A, B or C have harems of girls as young as jail bait. Option D, while effective, requires some rather rare psychological traits and often leads toward legal troubles. Since all those options are out of reach for most men or are guaranteed to end in disaster, I have some more advice aimed toward Average Joe: take what you can get.
     In high school, Sodini was probably the dork who haplessly hit on the cheerleaders while ignoring the overtures of the debate team geek sitting behind him in advanced physics. I think he never figured out that he could have done ok chasing attainable girls and that every girl or woman (whatever her age) has the potential to be pretty.
     Even if Sodini had eventually found a pinup queen, you know what would have happened next. He would have been an insecure, over jealous creep who monitored all of her phone calls and never let her out of his sight. He would have been so afraid of losing her that he would be unbearably controlling and his smothering attention would eventually force her to leave.
     Then he would have shot her so no one else could have her. Then he would have shot himself, holding onto the insane illusion that that action would teach the world some kind of lesson about how badly everyone treated him.
     I suspect Sodini made a huge mistake throughout his life: he kept looking for girlfriends without first making sure that he had a few guy friends. Guy friends could have looked at him objectively, aimed him toward females suitable for him and pointed out some possibilities that he hadn’t noticed. Friends would have let it be known to him the absurdity of that 10-to20-years-younger goal. Friends would have let him know that his life had worth even without a supermodel (or even any woman) by his side.
     Sodini was no different from other murderous gunmen. He was a loner overwhelmed with an ongoing frustration with nobody there to help him deal with it. I don’t know why he never learned the social skills necessary to make it through life. I do know more than ever that we need to act upon the usually available warning signs before these loners who don’t have anything to live for kill more innocent people who do.

EPISD Board Prepares Puppet Show

Eagle Pass Daily -- www.eaglepassdaily.com -- City and regional news, opinions, and photos.
     So, 22-year-old Beatriz Garza, fresh out of college, was “one of the most qualified candidates” for the just-filled school board seat?
     How can Rodolfo Lopez say this with a straight face? Were all the other candidates homeless people and al-Qaida terrorists?
     It all looks fishy that someone with simply a bachelor’s degree in business administration beats out others with degrees, political experience, maturity, political savvy, professional experience, and children. (I’m convinced that you can’t really know and care about the school system unless you have kids who are there or who have been there.)
     The way Garza got in smells. It appears that a block of trustees wants to have a puppet, trusting their judgment instead of using her own, and blindly siding with them at every turn. It’s sad, and it shows that some current board members only wish to expand their sphere of influence instead of provide our community with the quality representation that we and our kids deserve.
     I did think that the previous block of Fuentes-McBeath-Cary had grown tiresome, but I was hoping for Lopez to lose his election bid. From what I remember, one of his biggest campaign platforms was to take it easier on delinquent taxpayers.
     What kind of policy is that? How hard is it to pay your taxes? A person who can afford property should be able to afford the property taxes. It’s like saying, “I bought a new car, but I can’t afford gas.” One goes with the other. You know that when you make your purchase, and if you can’t afford something you own, then you sell it -- or you can wait for the bank, the county, the city or the school district to take it away and sell it for you.
     In the past, many people chose not to pay their school taxes because they saw no deterrent in making that their lowest financial priority. Lopez wants to take us back to those days when millions of dollars went uncollected because people realized they could just toss their tax bill in the trash and nothing would happen.
     Now, Alfonso Nevarez has resigned his seat, and this majority that chose Garza gets to pick another puppet, creating a super majority. If they’re smart, though, they would pick someone actually qualified this time, to make less obvious their lack of concern about really serving the community.
     I try to give people credit, and maybe good things can come from Garza’s selection. For one, the board needed more representation from the south side. If Garza can keep an independent mind and not care about alienating some of the “powers that be,” she could give a lift to Winn and Memorial and their feeder schools.
     Secondly, it should help the Kickapoo tribe and the Kickapoo children to know that they’re not helpless in solving their educational failings. Maybe Garza can help find and provide what the Kickapoo kids need to have success in school. Few of them finish high school and even fewer complete college, so as one who did make it, Garza has the potential to help others find the way.
     Currently, on the EP Alumni message board, a couple of postings praise the “great” accomplishments of the previous school board. Though, I think they fell short of “greatness,” they did do many good things. They also stood out from other boards through something they didn’t do. They didn’t look at every situation and ask, “How can I use this to my own benefit, or to the benefit of my buddies or my family members?” Leading up to the election, they did make some questionable calls, though, and those actions led to their downfall.
     We want our school board members to ask themselves with each vote, “Am I doing the right thing, or am I doing the selfish, self-serving thing?” How about you, Mr. Lopez? Are you going to do the right thing?

TAKS for Parents II

A while back, I posted TAKS for Parents. I figured other teachers would have some funny ideas using the same idea, so I started a discussion thread at proteacher.net and got numerous responses, many of them unbelievably posted as “sad but true.” It was a strong reminder that many teachers and schools across the nation face tougher challenges than we do here in Eagle Pass.
Proteacher.net is a worthwhile site for teachers to check out, with numerous forums, blogs and curriculum ideas. Another site I stumbled across is www.detentionslip.org, which is kind of a “news of the weird” concentrating on education topics. That site targets more of a general audience rather than specifically educators.
Now, parents, get your No. 2 pencils ready. Here’s TAKS for Parents II:
1. Your child punches another student and she denies that it happened, your best course of action is:
A. To listen to both sides patiently
B. To demand proof through a review of the security camera videotape
C. To try and quickly put an end to the discussion by insisting, "My daughter never lies."
-- Juan Valdez
2. If the school day ends at 3:30 and you get off work at 4:00 and it's a 10-minute drive from your office to the school, how long should your child be waiting before you pick him up.
A. 40 minutes
B. 2 hours
C. It depends on how long my co-workers want to stay at happy hour
-- Juan Valdez
3. If your child's teacher calls to make you aware that your child has been off task and disruptive throughout the day you should...
a. tell the teacher that during the hours of 8-3 said child is the teacher's responsibility
b. agree that this behavior is not acceptable and say that you will discuss appropriate school behavior with said child.
c. start complaining about said child's good for nothing father who if he took care of his responsibilities then said child would not be in trouble every day.
-- Nucleus
4. Your child receives a notice that he can particpate in the best field trip ever for the low, low cost of $2 cash, a sack lunch and a signed permission slip. You choose to:
A. Sign the permission slip and while you're at it, tell the teacher what you really think of her on the the back.
B. Skip the cigs one day to fork over the $2 and figure she'll know you are giving permission since you bothered to pay.
C. Give the kid the two bucks with a candy bar and two Dr. Peppers in a sack. Call permission in on your way to work.
D. Tell the kid to ask the cafeteria lady for a sack lunch and that teacher has "special" money for kids who can't pay. Drop the permission slip off at school on the way to your mani-pedi
-- Lottalove
5. "Home Economics."
You do not get paid for another week, and have $40 left in your checking account. You use this $40 to:
A) Get your acrylics filled. You have a date Saturday night, after all.
B) Pay $20 on your child's school lunch account, and save the remaining $20 as "just in case" money.
C) Lend it to your neighbor for him to get his car washed and waxed. He is so HOT!
-- Bookgeek59
6. Your economic stimulus check just came, and your child owes $120 in lunch charges.
A. You buy a Wii and tell your child not to tell his teacher. (He does).
B. You buy a new boat, and hope no one notices it sitting in your driveway. (They do.)
C. You call the school and ask them to stop sending those lunch charge notes home because you can't afford to pay for the lunches.
D. All of the above.
-- Linda2671
7. You send an O'Douls in your child's lunch bag for snack and lunch. When the teacher calls you should:
A. Say OMG I must of grabbed the O'Douls instead of the Snapple.
B. Say I have no idea how that got in my child's lunch bag
C. Say I thought you might call, I wasn't sure if I could send in a glass bottle.
-- Summertime (This is actually true. The parent responded with C)
8. The police call to tell you that they have been summoned to school due to your child's out of control behavior. You must come to school immediately. You respond:
a. I don't have a car to get there.
b. I am under the hair dryer right now.
c. Just take him to jail then.
d. Ask the person who took you to the beauty shop to take you to school NOW.
-- also true
9. The crisis unit calls to tell you that they have been contacted by the police to assess your child's danger to himself or others. They are recommeding that your child be hospitalized immediately.
a. Say you don't approve and hang up.
b. Say he's just playing and you need to control him.
c. Say if you'd beat his a$$ he wouldn't act this way.
d. Say take him then!
-- also true
10. Your school is using Picture Day to raise funds for classroom supplies. Your child brings home a large envelope with cute pictures in different poses. You can buy as few or as many pictures as you like. The remaining pictures must be returned to school. Your best course of action is to:
A. Keep all the pictures and throw away the payment envelope.
B. Claim you never received the pictures.
C. Ignore all notes and calls from the teacher and the school regarding the pictures.
D. Direct your child to tell the teacher daily that you will pay tomorrow afternoon.
E. All of the above
-- CVT (also true)
11. When filling out emergency cards for your child do you:
a) list all of the possible candidates under the father's information
b) write the school's address down under your personal information hoping that no one will notice it since you're not zoned to that school
c) list your cousin's best friend's sister's phone number without telling her that she is the only emergency contact for your asthmatic, highly allergenic child because you're between phones right now
d)write down the actual address to the state prison under the father's information because he may not get out before the end of the school year
-- nicksgirl
12. You roll out of bed at 10:30 and discover the television remote is missing. You:
a) Get up and change the channel.
b) Get up and look for the remote.
c) Decide there are plenty of things you should do instead of watching tv.
d) Call you daughter's school, tell them it's an emergency, have your child (who is already struggling academically) pulled out of class, and proceed to drill her about where she left the remote.
-- Sblack47
13. Your child is failing several subjects due to the fact that you kept him home from school for 2 or 3 days each week. He is finally making some progress in the 4th quarter. After the teacher tells you what a great job he is doing, you decide to dabble in a fraudulent lawsuit and fake that your child broke a limb on your neighbor's property. Do you:
a) Send him to school with the fake broken limb, and tell the teacher "He won't be doing much for the rest of the year"
b) Complain to the teacher and principal that your child cannot participate in PE because of the fake broken limb, and decide to show up during PE to make sure he is allowed to do everything.
c) tell all school personell that the fake fracture is so severe that is the child even moves the limb, emergency surgery will be required
d) Take off the fake brace just in time for field day; show up with 4 toddlers in tow and neglect to supervise any of them. Chain-smoke in the parking lot and let the teachers babysit the toddlers.
e) all of the above.
-- hovenweep
Outrageous, but submitted as true.

Job vacancy -- Not Really

Eagle Pass Daily -- www.eaglepassdaily.com -- City and regional news, opinions, and photos.
     Apparently a C.C. Winn counselor got pushed around to make room for the new football coach’s wife and several other employees are righteously P.O.’d that they applied for and interviewed for a job that had essentially already been filled.
     For the details, see the comments attached to the previous blog. While those individuals directly affected cry “UNFAIR,” the school district will certainly just shrug off this situation as the price of doing business.
     Did the district do this to give a break to the wife of coach George Ruiz? Sure. One story I heard was that Eddie Baca’s wife wanted a job a Memorial Junior High, and he left C.C. Winn after only 3 weeks partly because a position wasn’t made for her or given to her.
     If that’s true, it seems like the Bacas were overly demanding, because her certification would have qualified her to teach either elementary school or at Winn. Her place didn’t HAVE to be at Memorial. You can’t just let these spouses insist, “I want to teach to teach this subject, this grade and at this school,” and you wave your magic wand and POOF, there it is.
     Hopefully, Mrs. Ruiz didn’t demand that she had to have a counseling job at C.C. Winn. Maybe she would have accepted working at Memorial or at any of the Southside elementaries but no positions were open. If that’s the case, well, the district will say they did what they had to do.
     Did C.C. Winn ask the counseling staff if anyone cared to volunteer to move to EPJ? If they didn’t, they should have. The blog reader asks, “Who is responsible.” The answer to that is Winn principal Jesus Diaz-Wever. Remember, Vera Sumpter supposedly had a similar situation at Memorial with Mrs. Baca and said no. Diaz could have said he didn’t need a new counselor, and if she wanted that job she could look at other campuses, or she would be welcome to teach at C.C. Winn.
     Diaz, though, does what he’s told to do. Someone else made the decision and he went along. An unwanted reassignment stinks for the person moved to EPJ, but school districts have wide latitude for transferring employees, so really nothing can be done. I do wish in cases like this that they would find ways to avoid the sham interviews that waste the time of the applicants, the interview committee and human resources.
     It should happen rarely, but sometimes the person wanted for a certain job opening will be predetermined. Usually, this predetermination becomes obvious after the fact, making the other applicants just feel used and jerked around. Nobody likes preparing an application (transcripts, cover letter, references, resume, and so on), prepping for an interview, then being grilled in a tortuous interview, then finding out they never had a chance for the spot.
     These positions must be advertised, but this can be done in a way that makes it clear what’s going on. If Mrs. Ruiz already had the job locked up, they should have written the requirements in a way that she was the only one qualified. This gives others a hint not to even apply, much less worry about going through the whole interview charade.
     Maybe Mrs. Ruiz knows sign language. So, you write up a position for a counselor for hearing impaired students. She’s the only one qualified. Bam! She’s in. This saves everyone a lot of hassle and saves other possible applicants the humiliation of beings pawns in an underhanded scheme.
     Another concern is that this new counselor, assisted into a job through her husband’s status, will take advantage of her position. “My husband’s the coach. I can show up late. I can take a two-hour lunch. I don’t have to get this work done today. My husband’s the coach.” Most people try to get away with as much as they can. I hope she’s in the minority of people who have the decency and good character to work conscientiously no matter what the circumstances. Maybe she’ll work hard to prove that she wasn’t just given the job for nothing.
     From this controversy, the biggest question, I think, to ask is this: How much is a head football coach worth? Is he worth alienating current employees? Is he worth his salary and his wife’s? Is he worth the distrust and jealousy from the other coaches caused by hiring an out-of-towner instead of a local? District administrators have already answered these questions yes, yes and yes. If these answers prove correct and Ruiz creates a winning Maverick football program, the stepping on toes to get there will be considered irrelevant – except by those whose toes were in the way. If Ruiz proves to be a dud, he won’t be the only one called on the carpet for a bad decision, and for the poorly executed decision-making process.

The Easy Way to be Valedictorian

Eagle Pass Daily -- www.eaglepassdaily.com -- City and regional news, opinions, and photos.
     In helping your children achieve better grades, there’s a right way, and they're many wrong ways. A Pennsylvania woman this month found that her wrong way of helping could cost her 7 years in prison and a $15,000 fine.
     Caroline Maria McNeal of Huntingdon was charged a week ago with 29 counts of unlawful use of a computer and 29 counts of tampering with public records after being caught using school computers to improve her daughter’s grades and lower the grades of two other girls. McNeal worked as a secretary at the school and used the passwords of other office workers to change the grades and to boost her daughter’s SAT score.
     She probably wasn’t even aware that these were criminal actions, but apparently now McNeal will need to have her Mother of the Year award mailed to the state penitentiary. A jury might have some sympathy for helping your own daughter, but illegally lowering grades of other students is downright evil. McNeal’s lawyer should be telling her to cop a plea because a jury of her peers would want to hang her.
     In all, McNeal is accused of altering nearly 200 scores and grades covering four school years. The situation came to light in October 2007, when an employee of the high school guidance office discovered an SAT score raised from 1370 to 1730. Quite ingenious. When discovered, just claim a dyslexic inputted the data. Probably, some of the grade changes went from 69 to 96, 59 to 95, 19 to 91, and so on.
     It’s scary to think what else this woman might be capable of. My experience is that people who lie and cheat like this have had frequent practice. Certainly, the IRS should be auditing her recent returns. And her Facebook profile probably lists her as a 23-year-old single supermodel.
     I’ve searched to see if McNeal has made any statements in her defense or if her local newspaper might have published more details about this story, but only found many multiple copies of the original Associated Press coverage. I did find this funny statement in another blog: “I guess that calls for a new Latin phrase, to be posted on a Valedictorian's diploma. You've seen ‘Magna’ and ‘Summa.’ Now there's this graduation addendum – ‘Momma Cum Laude.’”
     McNeal’s over the top actions make me not feel guilty anymore about building the Golden Gate Bridge replica out of toothpicks for my 1sg-grade daughter.

Lawmen on the Wrong Side of the Law?

Eagle Pass Daily -- www.eaglepassdaily.com -- City and regional news, opinions, and photos.
     Oh, the suspense! Will the FBI investigation of two Maverick County investigators peter out without nabbing more slimebags, or will we see the biggest local scandal since the Kickapoo Casino/Isidro Garza family fiasco?
     If others are involved with this bribe-taking, Sergio Beattie and Guillermo Martinez could be the lucky ones. In any criminal conspiracy, it’s always good to be the first one caught, because you’re the first one given the chance to rat out others and cut a deal to get off easy.
     Some intriguing questions linger with these two caught here recently. Which one will fink on the other first? How high up will the tattle-telling lead? The stool pigeons will get a better deal for each big fish they help land. On this note, I don’t think the FBI would lay out $14,000 in bribe money just to harass a lowly 8-liner establishment, so I’m expecting something larger to evolve over time.
     And another tidbit I’d like to know is who tipped off the FBI to begin with that Beattie and Martinez were likely candidates to betray the public’s trust? That’s really a minor piece of the story, but I always like to know what screw up led to a criminal’s capture. Sometimes the most ingenious plans have some dumb little mistake or accident that blows the whole thing apart. Then, you’re thinking they would have gotten away with this heist except for this one trivial detail.
     Maybe Beattie and Martinez thought they would start small and later move up in the world of criminal enterprise, otherwise, I don’t see how they thought the few thousand dollars they earned in this scheme was worth the risk. I see the allure of easy money in illegal trades – if it’s low risk. What these guys were doing left witnesses and paper trails. Why would they think they couldn’t get caught?
     So, they might go to prison, they lost their jobs, they embarrassed their families, they ruined their reputations and they’ve lowered the general credibility of local law enforcement. When those are the consequences, most people with good sense would tell the bribe-giver where he could stuff his paltry offer.
     It makes it worse that these two who broke the law were themselves law enforcement. If they would themselves break the law, you have to think they were incapable of fairly enforcing laws where they concerned others. How many ways in the past have they taken advantage of their positions or acted immorally, unethically or criminally?
     Eagle Pass defense attorneys love the way this has played out. They can put under scrutiny any investigations against their clients involving Beattie and Martinez. A lot of work will have to be redone and probably a few cases dropped because anything with their names on it cannot be trusted.
     Maybe other officials are not involved with this latest scandal. If they are, hopefully they will be caught. Hopefully, the ones who are caught will get the punishments they deserve, so that in the future, the probable consequences will deter others. Many of them will still be slimebags, but at least they won’t be criminals.

Greedy teachers union invites backlash

Eagle Pass Daily -- www.eaglepassdaily.com -- City and regional news, opinions, and photos.
     About 700 New York City public school teachers draw full salaries to spend their days playing games, reading, painting, piddling and gossiping, according to a recent article that drew outrage across the nation. Union rules prevent these teachers from being fired or being in the classroom while awaiting disciplinary hearings that may be months or even years into the future.
     My first reaction to this as a teacher is that we need a union like that in Eagle Pass. I’m sure most other people react with, “That’s just plain crazy.”
     EPISD sometimes sees teachers and administrators put on paid leave during investigations of wrongdoing. The difference between us and New York is that it doesn’t happen that often and the investigations wrap up quickly. Teachers can be fired immediately if caught red-handed in their wrongdoing, but they usually know not to be that blatant with actions that might result in termination.
     Another difference in New York is that the teachers cannot be assigned to other duties. So they draw their salaries while sleeping, selling real estate, learning tai chi, earning graduate degrees and teaching each other yoga.
     Such deals result from myopic union leaders who care only about greed and nothing about the well-being of their employer and nothing about the public perception of themselves or their bosses. Such lack of foresight by the UAW helped push GM into its current bankruptcy. What good does it do to have the union’s advantages once that union has bled the employer out of business?
     Here’s a situation reported about GM that exactly mirrors the NYC teachers:
     “Unbelievably, at its assembly plant in Oklahoma City, GM is actually obliged by its UAW contract to pay 2,300 workers full salary and benefits for doing absolutely nothing. Since G.M. shut down production there last month, these workers have entered the Jobs Bank, industry’s best form of job insurance. It pays idled workers a full salary and benefits even when there is no work for them to do.”
     Generally, I give begrudging support to unions. I think they’ve kept this country from a state where the executives of corporations make billions, while the average workers live in poverty. My dad belonged to the railroad union and as he rose in seniority and neared retirement, he was doing well for someone with a 7th-grade education. Without that union, I probably would have grown up poor instead of being middle class.
     However, too many unions achieve their members’ benefits when times are good, then refuse to let go of any gains when their companies hit rough spots. If GM workers, for example, had allowed some givebacks over the years, it might have helped that company stay solvent.
     Unions for teachers, police, firefighters and some others have an advantage in this way, because nobody worries about a city, county or school district going bankrupt. These unions can push hard at contract negotiation time because they can insist that their employer either find the money for raises or increase taxes if they have to.
     Police and firefighters, I think mostly have reasonable salaries, but they do in some places get benefits beyond what they deserve. Due to their union protection, they also are difficult to fire and know they have leeway to act unprofessionally with little fear of serious consequences.
     Unions must realize that when they protect their members like this to an unreasonable extreme, they’re just shooting themselves in the foot. They damage the reputation of their profession. They lose public support. They lose political support. Finally, they might risk putting themselves, and/or their employers out of business.
     The NYC teachers’ union needs to pull back. They shouldn’t insist that a member under investigation cannot be temporarily reassigned. They’ve created an insane situation that everyone can see is the union’s fault. So, I’ve reconsidered. Eagle Pass DOESN’T need a union like that, and if we had one, I wouldn’t want to belong to it.

About the Public Pool and E.Pee

Eagle Pass Daily -- www.eaglepassdaily.com -- City and regional news, opinions, and photos.
     Lately, with the high temperature topping 100 daily, many people know the place to be is the Eagle Pass public swimming pool. An outstanding facility to begin with, recent improvements have helped keep this place hopping through the summer – well, for at least two months of the summer.
     With ideal swimming weather here from at least May through September, it seems like they could find a way to have the public pool open for more than just half of June, all of July and half of August. I know the lifeguards go back to college and so on, and more excuses, and so on. It’s just too nice of a place to waste for almost 10 months of the year.
     The public pool hours also have always puzzled me. Why do they have to wait until 4 p.m. to open? I guess partly because so many Eagle Passans won’t get out during the hottest part of the day. I even hear this phrase sometimes: “It’s too hot to go swimming.”
     How can that be? To me it’s like being out in freezing weather and saying, “It’s too cold to stand by the fire.” If you’re cold, you find a way to get warm, and if you’re hot, you find a way to cool off. I don’t think it can ever be too hot to splash into a nice cool pool.
     I’ve never heard any discussion about extending the pool hours, or ever known why those hours were set that way to begin with. I assume everyone except me pretty much agrees with the way it’s being done. I might agree, too, if I knew the explanation.
     Attendance at the pool would probably double (and maybe it could stay open more) if so many parents weren’t unreasonably afraid of pee in the water. Some parents have told me that’s the reason they would never let their kids go there.
     To me these parents are germaphobes denying their kids fun because of their exaggerated fears. As far as a pool goes, it would take a lot of pee to make a difference in billions of gallons of chlorinated water. Even at that, a little pee on your skin never hurt anyone.
     Even ingested internally, pee has no ill effect. POW’s have told stories about drinking their urine in order to survive in the concentration camps, and the space shuttle astronauts recently drank water filtered from their pee collected while in orbit. They said it was great.
     We once spent a day at Garner State Park and this woman near us had a chair in the river with the water up to her chest. In about 5 hours she drank a case of Budweiser, and never once got out of that chair. This woman either had a bladder like a beach ball, or she pissed enough in the Rio Frio to make it lukewarm. I don’t think she could drink that much and hold it that long, so the second possibility makes more sense. Luckily, we were upstream, but the people downstream didn’t seem to care.
     A kid once told me that his uncle put a chemical in his home pool so that if anybody peed, it would make a bright red cloud around them. On the surface, that’s a good lie to tell because you think, “Who’s going to have the nerve to try it out. Think of the shame if everyone knew you peed in the pool.”
     Such a chemical doesn’t exist. I never believed it did, but I did an Internet search today to make sure. I was surprised to find this story shows up under the urban legends at snopes.com where it goes on to explain that even if kids believe the lie, it still probably won’t stop them. For one thing, Snopes says, if anyone else is in the pool, some kids would pee and just blame the poor guy next to them. Other kids would just be like, “Wow! I pee and it turns the water bright red? I gotta try that!”
     The possibility of a urine detecting chemical has gained credibility through its fictional existence in TV shows and movies. A Wikipedia entry describes a Nickelodeon Adventures of Pete and Pete episode in which “Wee-Wee See” is used to “catch a pool-peeing perpetrator.”
     Kids who have seen that show would believe you have such a product, but I really don’t support using such lies. Eventually, kids learn the truth, and your credibility is damaged. Then, you tell them something important like not to dive headfirst into the shallow end of the pool because they could break their necks and never walk again, and they’ll respond, “Whatever. You’re just saying that because you’re lying there and don’t want to be splashed.” Then, they’ll immediately dive into two feet of water.
     So, back to the subject I digressed from 600 words ago. Maybe the public pool could be even more successful and be open more by convincing the people of Eagle Pass that it uses Wee-Wee See and nobody’s peeing in the water anymore. In the past, I’ve seen the people here believe bigger lies than that.

To P.E. or not to P.E.?

Eagle Pass Daily -- www.eaglepassdaily.com -- City and regional news, opinions, and photos.
     Can schools be all things for all people – fitness centers, medical clinics, nurseries, counseling institutes, food service providers, and not to mention -- places of learning?
     Yes, they have proven they CAN be all of these things, the question to ask, really, is SHOULD they be all of these things?
     I remember this discussion from long ago in my education classes. The arguments are good on both sides, and I still haven’t reached my own conclusion. On one hand, if schools concentrated solely on education they would not be such bloated bureaucracies, they would operate more efficiently, and they would have fewer distractions from their primary function of academics. On the other hand, many students need extra services in order to come to school mentally and physically healthy and fully prepared to learn.
     This issue came to mind this week when I read an article that asserted that children need more time in P.E. in school in order to help fight the nationwide obesity epidemic.
     According to the Associated Press story written this week, only Illinois and Massachusetts require P.E. classes for all kids in kindergarten through 12th grade. This at a time when youngsters definitely need more activity, as illustrated by the unsettling stats from the Centers for Disease Control that “an estimated 32 percent of American kids ages 2 to 19 are overweight, including 17 percent who are obese.”
     This article went on to imply that a mandatory 30-45 minutes of P.E. daily for all students in all grades would reverse the trend of increasing childhood obesity. Is this another societal ill that our schools should be expected to help solve?
     In this case I think so. I’m a strong believer in fitness and I know that strenuous activity revitalizes the mind and improves one’s mood. Some educators feel that P.E. takes away from test preparation time and hurts in other ways academically, but I think it’s time well spent and that it even helps students academically.
     Something to remember, though, is that students only spend 180 days a year in school. So, even if we have daily P.E. for everyone, what are they doing the other 185 days of the year? Playing video games, texting, watching TV, using the internet, of course.
     Reducing obesity, like many other problems, requires a coordinated approach from many angles. YMCA’s, churches, community groups, youth sports leagues and others have to get involved in addition to the schools. Too often, people expect the schools alone to fix everything that’s wrong with our young people today. It’s understandable for us educators to wonder, “Hey, we didn’t break them. Why do we have to fix them?”
     Then we must remember, if we don’t, who will?

Where am I going with this?

Eagle Pass Daily -- www.eaglepassdaily.com -- City and regional news, opinions, and photos.
     People who write books should read a lot of books. If you write poetry, you should read a lot of poetry. If you write for a newspaper, you should read a lot of newspapers. A person who writes a blog should read a lot of other blogs.
     I don’t always follow my own advice.
     When I read, I read to be entertained and I don’t know where to find many entertaining blogs. Most blogs that get updated daily simply read something like this: “Today I emptied the litter box, then sent two e-mails and paid my bills on-line.”
     Please, just shoot me now.
     For instance, some teacher blogs that I found go on endlessly on topics such as a day spent rearranging the classroom.
     “One bookcase move led to many things just falling into place similar to a domino effect. A tall bookcase was moved next to my teaching chair. I thought that surely this wouldn't work. It had to be much too tall. But it had been blocking the air flow and summers can be warm. So I decided that it was worth a try. By switching the two bookcases I then had to move the math manipulatives to another bookcase which gave me more book bin space adjacent to the meeting area. So, suprise--I could actually sort the bins into a much more logical order! By exchanging the math manipulatives to a deeper bookcase, I could actually fit them and organize them. Now, this led to me filling two trash cans full of things that I HADN''T USED in a long while.”
     That person went on like that for 300 words. WHO CARES?
     Unless you’re Britney Spears or Alex Rodriguez nobody wants to know about the endless minutiae of your pathetic daily existence. Some modestly successful blog writers compose reams of drivel, but it’s somewhat valuable drivel because it concerns famous actors, musicians or athletes.
     So, the thing is, I can’t make this blog the daily diary about me type because it would just be too damn boring. Though I’m a teacher and I’ll mainly write about education, I also don’t want my audience to be only teachers. I want to voice my thoughts sometimes, too, about other issues in Eagle Pass, but lately things have been kind of dull here.
     I remember the old days when the police department constantly “lost” items from the evidence room, JP’s stuffed traffic tickets into shoe boxes and forgot about them, and the school board acted so poorly that the TEA assigned a monitor to oversee their activities. Those scandals were entertaining, but they came at a high cost.
     The scandals are fewer now, but shi . . I mean stuff still happens. I hope someone exposes how the county gave Hector Chavez such a sweetheart deal on the dump consulting contract. More power to him for pulling a fast one like that, but someone with the county acted extremely negligently or maybe even criminally.
     Surely the antics of local politicos will inspire me to rant and rave further in future blog entries. I’m aiming for 3 updates a week, or 12 each month. Right now, I’m a little behind for June, so I may rush out some mindless crap a couple of times just to meet my self-set quota.
     Now, I should stop and look for blogs to read for inspiration. I did find one a few months ago that I find really funny. It’s called stuffwhitepeoplelike.com
     It’s a little puzzling that you can make fun of white people like they do, but if you did stuffmexicanpeoplelike.com and filled it with similar putdowns, you’d be chased out of the country for being a flaming racist. At any rate, it’s funny to see white people made fun of. Check it out. Then, check my stuff out again soon.

My premature (I hope) bucket list

Eagle Pass Daily -- www.eaglepassdaily.com -- City and regional news, opinions, and photos.
     Time for something on the lighter side.
     I saw a complaint recently about the weird arrangement of some Eagle Pass stop signs. I so absolutely agree. What’s the thing with having three-way or four-way stops at virtually every intersection? Really, they’re mostly just stop signs used as speed control.
     The most idiotic example is the sign on Flowers Street just north of Liberty Elementary. They have a stop sign there for an intersection with an ALLEY! If I pass this sign late at night, I drive right past it without even slowing down, just out of principle because it doesn’t belong there.
     This sign might help with traffic during the rush before and after school. If that’s why they have it, then they should stick something temporary out there only on school days during those hours. Seriously, if I had an F350 monster sized truck, I would knock this sign down and dump it in the river.
     Thinking about it recently, I decided that this belongs on my “bucket list.” If I discover I only have a few months to live, I’m going to go out in the middle of the night and take out this stop sign. Another thing I’ll attempt to do undetected is return to a decent color scheme the house at the intersection of Bibb and Hillcrest.
     If you’ve been down Bibb lately, you know the house I’m talking about. It’s a classy two-story design with off-white brick exterior, and now half of it is painted mustard yellow. It’s so unnatural with the design and other materials on the house that it’s an affront to God himself. Somebody has to fix this soon or God will strike Eagle Pass with some awful natural disaster. That yellow paint looks worse than the purple columns they had in EPHS, a building that shouldn’t have purple anywhere near it.
     I have a few other items on my short little bucket list.

• I would let an undocumented immigrant have my identity so that even from beyond the grave I could continue to vote against J.M. Farias in whatever political race he decides to enter. Sparing the details, I’ll just say I think that Farias doesn’t have the intelligence or the people skills to hold a position requiring much responsibility. While he’s at it, my hired impersonator could also vote against any member of the Bush family that runs for office in the future.
• Just for kicks I would like to wade across the Rio Grande from our side to Mexico with a trash bag of spare clothes and see how the Mexican authorities react. Would they believe it if I said I was just looking for work? I don’t think they would do anything, but I’m curious to know. The bigger problem would be trying to return to my own country without a passport.
• I would go to the casino with a willingness to lose more than $20. I don’t find the casino entertaining, but that’s because I know I’m not going to win big because I don’t risk big. If I’m willing to lose several thousand dollars, maybe I’ll win a few hundred along the way. Then, like a lot of other people, I can brag that I won $800 without giving the rest of the story about losing three times that amount in the process.
• I would spend the night at the “haunted” house where 2nd Street meets Ceylon. I’ve never seen or heard or felt the presence of a ghost, and I’d like to know before I die if they really exist. This old, empty place would be the perfect place to find out. If a night went by in there without any paranormal events, I would have to say there’s no such thing as ghosts.

     Not all that crazy, but I don’t possess unlimited funds like those guys did in the movie. I need to lengthen my bucket list, but I’ll take my time in doing so since as far as I know I’m not anywhere near kicking the bucket. When my name IS called, Eagle Pass had better be on the watch, because there will be some surprises.