On Thursday, we decided to go our separate ways to do some of the things that were still on individual lists of things to do. Jessica, Ella and I headed toward the outlet malls and Jennifer's family drove into the mountains to look for waterfalls, and to the Ober Gatlinburg tram to ride up the side of the mountain. We met at the Apple Barn sometime after noon for fried pies and ice cream.

We hit the scrapbook store and clearance center in Governor's Crossing. For anyone who's interested in scrapbooking, no matter the skill level, you can find just about anything you need in one of the two stores. Old Navy and Dress Barn rounded out our spending spree, giving us a chance to expand our wardrobes for next year. The whole time we were at Five Oaks, it looked like a storm was brewing. Some of the ladies at Dress Barn were talking about hail being mixed in with the storm - wherever it was. But the threat of whatever it was wasn't going to keep us from shopping!

Apple Barn fried pies are always a great treat - complete with a scoop of vanilla bean ice cream - for just $2.99. By the time we finished the pies, the wind had started picking up and the dark clouds were rolling in. All signs pointed to another monsoon, just like every other day. We ran to the cars and headed back to the cabin. Nothing. Finally - a day without rain!

I surpassed the 1000-picture mark! By the end of the night, I was up to 1006 total for the week.

. . . and on the deck back at the cabin.

This fish looks like an American flag!

Fishes . . . duh.

A shark swimming just above our heads!

Ella with Mommy

I held a horseshoe crab!

The fish that looked like a bush

Bubba Gump

The last baby standing (the one on the right!)

The morning started with hot Krispy Kremes . . . which is always a good way to start, end, or get through any day. After showers, we packed a picnic lunch and headed out toward Cades Cove, an abandoned settlement in a flat area surrounded by mountains.

There are many coves in the Smokies, and they were often chosen by settlers as locations for communities. They provided fields for farming, trees for logging, and streams for milling. At its peak, this particular cove had over 100 families. It was used in the 90's as the setting for the "Christy" TV series based on the novel by Catherine Marshall about her mother's experiences as a teacher in a setting similar to the Cades Cove area.

The winding road to the cove took us over 20 miles from Gatlinburg, so by the time we got there, we were ready to eat. We pulled in to the picnic area and unloaded the ice chest and Wal-Mart bags. Sandwiches and chips were made, and we had just started enjoying the meal when, suddenly, we heard a rustling noise in the trees, growing increasingly loud by the second. We all looked at each other and asked, "is that rain?" I grabbed my camera from the table and stood up, then felt the first drop of rain as I lifted my leg over the table's bench. By the time I made it to the van, the rain was pouring.


By the time we had everything packed away and were all sitting in the van, the rain started to lighten. It moved out more slowly than it moved in, but the rain didn't last over thirty minutes. We finished the picnic in the van and pulled out to start driving the 11-mile loop around the cove.


We've always heard that you can see bears in the cove, but when we were here on our honeymoon, we only saw deer. A few miles into our trip this time, we had seen a few deer and several turkeys, but we were thinking we still weren't going to see a bear. Jessica has been looking forward to seeing a bear since we started planning our vacation, so she was very disappointed.

A little over half-way around the loop, we stopped at the visitor center and farm area. I like this area best because there is a lot to see in one stop, rather than one or two buildings, which is a lot more convenient with three kids and a stroller. When we were in the visitor center, I overheard one of the park employees telling a visitor about a "bear jam," a traffic backup created by the spotting of a bear. He said that if the gentleman had to sit in traffic for a while, that would probably be why.



When we left the center to head down the path exploring the rest of the buildings, I told everyone in our group about the bear. I didn't really think it would be there longer than a few minutes, and I thought that even if we left then, we'd miss it. So I suggested we keep looking around, and if it was still there, we'd see it on our way out. About a half-hour later, we loaded up the van and headed back for the loop. Probably a mile up the road, we saw a long line of traffic barely creeping along. We knew exactly what we were about to see . . . a BEAR!!!


We could finally see the end of the line, and there was a park ranger standing beside the road telling everyone to roll up their windows and not stop. So we did just that . . . closed the van doors, rolled up the windows, and drove by the bear. I steered with my left hand, resting my camera on my arm and snapping pictures with my right hand.


We took a new way home - leaving the beaten path for a less-traveled route. There were originally three roads entering the cove. One of these roads is number 8 on the auto tour - a seven-mile gravel road that heads out toward Townsend, winding up and through the mountains, taking travelers to another cove on the other side. It provides a great look at Cades Cove from high above, and it lets travelers slow down to ponder what it would have been like for the settlers to build and travel the same roads - in much worse condition.


Here are some pictures from the day.

Ella sitting on a split-rail fence

Jessica, Ella & me with the cove and mountains in the background

Ella with the mountains

The bear!

A look at the cove from high above

Monday was a slow day - probably the slowest day of our whole vacation. We didn't leave the cabin until 5:00 in the evening. Most of the day was spent napping, hot tubbing, cleaning, and just relaxing around the cabin.

Dinner at Lineberger's was great . . . can't say the same for the service or speed. A Chinese family came in after we had ordered and sat at the table next to ours. They ended up getting our appetizer, they had their food before we finally got our mushrooms, and they had finished their meals and left (and their table had been cleaned off) before we got ours. It took about an hour and a half from the time we walked in until we had our food. We were going to complain, but the food was so good it caused us to not say anything.

After dinner, we did some street shopping in Gatlinburg. The shops sit right on the edge of the Parkway (with a sidewalk, of course) and they sell anything from ice cream to pot pipes . . . guns and knives to purses and t-shirts. And then there are the candy stores!!! The sidewalks are fairly large, compared to those in Fredericktown, but they're kinda small when they're filled with hundreds of people and tons of strollers. It sure doesn't leave much room for a double stroller.

We've lost track of how many times people have come up to us and asked if Ella and Amelia are twins. At Applewood the other day, the hostess asked if they're twins and James said no. She said, "yeah, she's bigger," and pointed to Ella (who's three months younger.) Last night, a man pointed at them and said, "she laughed," meaning Ella, "but he didn't like it," meaning Amelia. Hmm . . . .

We shopped until around 10:30, then headed back to the cabin. Sometime around midnight, we cut into the watermelon (I was VERY disappointed - it wasn't ripe.) Julianna and I had been looking forward to it since we bought it Saturday night. We ended the night relaxing in the hot tub, then headed for bed.

Ella napping in Mommy & Daddy's bed

Aunt Jen pushing the girls around
Amelia taking advantage of Ella being asleep
Julianna enjoying her Baskin-Robbins chocolate ice cream in a chocolate-dipped cone . . . yummy!

Sunday was a slow day – a day of rest. I tried sleeping in, but once everyone else was up, I had to get out of bed to see what was up. I couldn’t stay in bed while something was happening out in the rest of the cabin. We took it slow all morning – hot tub, pool, snacks, and TV. Sometime around 1:00 or 1:30, everyone was finally dressed and ready to go out into the world.

Lunch at Applewood Farmhouse Restaurant was awesome as usual. Their smoked pork loin with apple relish is awesome – and you get a ton of extras to go with your meal . . . apple julep, apple fritters, vegetable soup, salad, rolls, and dessert.

After lunch, we took one of the shorter scenic drives in the area – the Roaring Forks Auto Tour. It’s a winding one-way road up one side of a mountain and back down the other, exploring the area that was once home to some of the area’s earliest settlers. The folks had to abandon their farms and ways of life when the government took their land to create the national park. Some of the buildings we saw were original to their locations, while others had been moved from other neighboring farms and areas. One house we saw had been painted white with blue and yellow trim – the “only three colors Sears and Roebuck sold.” We stopped once along the auto tour to look at some of the buildings and wade in the stream. We also took some time for pictures. So far, I’ve taken 331 pictures since Thursday.

This is the third summer we’ve been here, and it seems like rain is both guaranteed and unpredictable. No sign of rain one minute, and a monsoon the next. That was the case yesterday. On the way back from Gatlinburg, it started raining – a lot. It poured practically the whole way back to the cabin, then let up just long enough for us to unload and get settled in for the evening; then it opened up and poured again – both vertically and horizontally. Sure, a charcoal grill probably works better when you’re not in the middle of a mountainside hurricane . . . but the experience was definitely a unique one!

Ella at Applewood

Old-fashioned ice cream maker

Welcome to the Apple Barn!

Ella at one of the buildings on the auto tour

Ella next to the split-rail fence

Us in the stream

View from the deck door

The kitchen

Wrap-around porch with swings, chairs & hot tub

Lean more about the cabin

Ella with Granny & Pa's dog, Suzie

Ella in the kitchen floor

Granny reading Ella her bedtime story, Noah and the Ark

Us at the Rainforest Cafe

The Five Girls

. . . really, I am. If you've noticed that I haven't posted in . . . um
. . . two weeks . . . it's because I've been frantically working on my
internship. I have the ISLLC test on Saturday (it's the certification
test for administrators - six hours of writing) and comps on the 19th.
I HAVE to get my internship projects finished before the 15th so Dr.
Bertrand can look at them before my comps. Then I have two summer
classes (Foundations of Administration and Administration of Special Ed)
and I'm FINISHED!!! I can't wait! As you can see, I've been way too
busy to blog, but I hope to have time to catch up soon. I'll definitely
try to share some pictures and thoughts from vacation (June 21 - 30) and
maybe I can share some exciting news from the job hunt??? We'll see!
Still working in that department, too! But for now, it's 12:30 AM . . .
time for bed!!!

I don’t know why I am so drawn to controversial people. I try to avoid being personally involved in controversy at any cost, but for some reason, I admire those who tend to run their mouths a little too much and get things stirred up more than they should. One such person on my top-ten list is Rev. Jerry Falwell.

Shortly after the story broke in 1999 that Rev. Falwell accused Tinky Winky of being gay, I had the opportunity to hear him speak at Bailey Smith’s Real Evangelism Conference at Arnold FBC. He talked about ten signs that would point to the end of the world. I know . . . very encouraging message, right? I wrote them all down and carried them in my Bible for the next few years, and I think the list is even still tucked away in that Bible, on a shelf somewhere.

A man of vision and passion, Rev. Falwell always had an opinion about everything. (Maybe that’s why I admired him so much. I tend to have an opinion about everything, too . . . I just try to keep it to myself.) The founder of Thomas Road Baptist Church and Liberty University, he worked hard to champion the causes for which he lived. I don’t agree with his staunch opposition to public schools, but I do understand the reasons and passion behind his stance. I also appreciate the work he has done in the political arena. Some have credited him with the election of Ronald Reagan, George Bush, and George W. Bush.

On Tuesday, conservatives lost a dear friend and strong ally. Through all of the turmoil and controversy, Jerry Falwell was a faithful follower who carried out his mission on earth in the way he believed God wanted him to. I may never be on all the cable news shows for ticking off as many people as he did. I may never establish a church, university, or grassroots political organization. I do hope that when my life ends, someone will be able to look at what I have done and say that I fulfilled God’s purpose in my lifetime.

One of the latest trends in commercials deals with identity. You've seen the Hertz commercials where a shifty crony from a cut rate car rental company goes under cover to find out what Hertz offers that makes them the best. Then there are the Mac commercials where the guy portraying a PC is a slightly-overweight, unattractive, nerdy middle-age man who is constantly plagued with malfunctions and a host of other problems, and the guy portraying a Mac is a young, smart, attractive, 20-something who, in a few words, has everything, does everything, and is everything. Perhaps the most popular of all are the Citibank commercials about identity theft, where a voice-over tells how they used an unsuspecting victim's credit card to finance a shopping spree that is obviously unrelated to the victim's way of life.

In each of these examples, identity plays a huge role in the scene, the interest of the audience, and the ultimate message of the commercial. Today's society places a large emphasis on identity and its protection and conveyance.

I have a sneaky suspicion that there is an identity crisis among folks in the education community. Aside from the fact that we claim to be a profession but have never been treated as professionals, we often find that our identity within the school structure is often confused, contributing to conflict, unrealized expectations, and a constant weathering away of morale. While this crisis is prevalent among teachers and classified staff, it begins at the leadership level, where it perhaps inflicts the most damage on the overall climate.

Everyone in K-12 public education begins as a teacher. From there, some become building principals. Some principals become assistant superintendents, superintendents, or fill other central office staff positions. All administrators have, at one time in their career, spent time in a classroom. But it's amazing to me how many of them forgot that part of their identity once they moved from the classroom to the office.

The most effective administrators that I have ever worked with and for remember what it was like in the trenches. They remember how taxing the life of a teacher can be. They remember to make decisions that are in the best interest of students, not parents or board members or community leaders. They remember that test scores mean nothing and that children mean everything.

On the other hand, those who left the role of teacher behind when they accepted an administration position have adopted the philosophy that they are a supervisor of employees who need constant direction. They approach their job with what McGregor called the Theory X type of motivation. They are the micro managers whose mission is to always be a thorn in the side of the teachers, prodding them along to a specified goal. They perform to please their supervisor, the local school board, parents, and the community. They forget the real reason of education and focus on data more than students.

I've often said that when I sit down behind a principal's desk for the first time, I will not be taking off my "teacher" hat and putting on my "principal" hat. I will never say, "I was a teacher; now I'm an administrator." I am a teacher; I have been a teacher; I will always be a teacher. In my new role, I will happen to be the lead teacher in the building - the one who makes the executive decisions and is responsible for the overall operation of the building. By no means will I be the best teacher in the building. I will be a resource for my fellow teachers. I will help them improve; I will help them share ideas; I will help them make a difference in students' lives. I will not simply be a supervisor, making sure employees show up on time and crank out a quality product.

My mission is not to make $50,000 a year, to get the next promotion, or to please a group of people. My purpose in life is to use my gifts and abilities to make the greatest possible impact on public education. If I am going to fulfill that mission, I must make a strong commitment to the identity of a teacher. It will never happen if I fall victim to the identity crisis that often comes with a new title. My title may change, but my identity must always remain, a teacher.

As we approach the end of the school year, there are plenty of controversial conversations springing up in Missouri education. I have a feeling we're in for a few major shifts in the coming years - either by choice or by force. I think we, as educators, can help facilitate those shifts on our own terms so that, even if they are forced upon us, we will have a say in the fallout resulting from them. I also think that, as these changes come about, we have the opportunity to make education the profession we've always longed for it to be.

One of the most controversial topics we're faced with is merit pay. If you mention that in a room full of teachers, be prepared for anything! You never know what kind of response you will get. I definitely understand both sides of the debate, but I truly believe that if we ever want to see what we do make the leap from a job to a profession, we MUST address this issue.

Probably the biggest hurdle we have to get over in this debate is the "we've never done it that way before" mentality. Because our pay scale has traditionally been based solely on seniority and education, those who have been in the profession a while can't imagine any other way working. It's also hard to trust a new system when the current one has "worked" so well for so long.

The second problem we have is with those who are afraid of being compared with others. When opponents say "no one wants to be a loser," they're right. But some people ARE losers. I'm not talking about the ones we walk up to with our fingers in the "L" sign on our forehead, but the ones who have settled into their 8-3 job, nine months a year, with laminated lesson plans. Just like we'll never get 100% of students to score in the top two categories on the MAP, we'll never get all teachers to cover the GLEs and put forth 100% effort. They settle for 75, 80, or 90%. And they're afraid that, when they're compared with other teachers, they won't make as much money. Although there aren't that many of those teachers out there, unfortunately, they're usually very loud and try to stifle those who want to change the status quo.

I'll admit - I'm not a 100% teacher. There are plenty of teachers out there who do a much better job. I try . . . but I fall short plenty of times. But I'm the yearbook adviser, media club sponsor, academic team coach, CTA president, region MSTA past president, and an MSTA board member. When you start talking about merit pay, where do all the extras come in? Do we continue career ladder? Do we restructure it as well? Does involvement in extracurricular activities play into the merit pay? Once we've overcome the "never done it before" mentality and stopped worrying about making comparisons, then we've got to look at how to structure a system to recognize everyone's contributions and efforts.

As I was getting ready for school last week, I was listening to the conversation on Fox & Friends on the Fox News Channel. Someone was talking about the differences between the generations, and how the latest generation is having a problem handling criticism on the job. They cry when they're talked to by their supervisors. Someone on the show said that it could have something to do with the fact that we teach kids that there are no winners or losers - in soccer, they play the game, but no team wins. Hmm . . . does that sound familiar? No winners or losers - let's just pay everyone the same, no matter how well or how poorly they do their job. What other "profession" pays its employees that way?

Merit pay unfair? Maybe . . . but life isn't always fair. Maybe we shouldn't be so concerned about it not being fair for a few and concentrate on how much MORE fair it would be for all those who do an excellent job (of course, NEVER based solely on test scores).

Oh, Baby!
Life Together
Life Plan
Parent Connection
Things That Make You Go Hmmm...
Educational Equality
A Law By Any Other Name
This is Why We Teach
What's That Noise?
Home Improvement

Educational equality is a catch phrase that has been thrown around in circles of influence lately. Although a decades-old concept and continuing struggle, it is something that has most recently shaped legislative and executive decisions in both federal and state governments. The lynchpin of the accountability-touting, government-aggrandizing No Child Left Behind Act, the notion of providing an equal educational opportunity to all children has become a pawn in the political arena of education reform.

Perhaps my inexperienced mind has trouble comprehending this concept, but I believe “equal” simply means that everyone is given a fair chance. I also believe it means that no one is given preferential treatment. If you would ask any first-grade student in Missouri, he or she would tell you that “equal” means “the same.” So why do bureaucrats and lawmakers have such a hard time defining the word?

It seems as though, in the spirit of education reform and government intervention, we have given in to the notion that in order to provide an equal educational opportunity, we must not maintain a level playing field. Instead, we must identify groups of students – by race, socioeconomic status, learning ability, etc. – that have traditionally felt marginalized by the education system, and customize the services provided to them at the expense of those groups that have traditionally been successful in the existing setting.

In Missouri, we have subsidized a failing inner-city school system where the grip of teacher’s unions has stifled improvement measures, forced desegregation has depleted the quality of the student base, and district and city leaders have resisted real reform. While the St. Louis Public Schools system spends $9,500 per student, in Southeast Missouri, a small school struggles to maintain quality programs due to decreased funding, spending $7,650 per student and yet out-performing the city schools.

The Missouri legislature currently has a view of educational equality based on the data from one test and the amount of state aid given to certain districts. In their view, the funding formula that they developed is equal for all districts. They do not consider the inequity introduced by the dollar value modifier, which funnels an exponentially greater amount of money to St. Louis city and the districts in its surrounding counties and in some cases provides hundreds of thousands of dollars in additional funding to one district and not its immediate neighbor.

If the big-heads in Washington, D.C. and Jefferson City would sit down and come up with a definition of “educational equality” from the literal meanings of the words, I believe they would examine the policies that are currently in place and realize that much inequality currently exists in the very measures that they tout as creating equality. We are at a point in the history of our democracy where politicians base much of their rhetoric on their influence in public education – no matter their level of experience in classroom instruction. When conservative ideologies of educational accountability, liberal social agendas, and spending tactics of both sides of the aisle enter the equation, the mess that can result from their ignorant approaches at “fixing” problems is catastrophic.

Today, our life group is embarking on a forty-day journey through the book of Acts. We will be exploring the lives of those in the early church and looking at how God used ordinary people to chart a course that we're still following two thousands years later. Because Jessica and I are the "Grow Champions" for our group, our leader, Jason, called me at 4:00 last Wednesday, as I was heading home from Jefferson City, and asked if we would create a reading plan and present it to the group on Thursday night. Talk about short notice! Not wanting to let him down, I reluctantly agreed, thinking I would just do a quick Internet search and print off something that someone else had already put together.

There is no 40-day reading plan for Acts . . . anywhere. At least I couldn't find one. After about an hour of searching, I decided if I would have anything to present, I would need to get busy. I started at the beginning, trying to create natural breaks while keeping each day's reading around fifteen verses. For the most part, it worked out that way.

As I flipped through Acts and typed a list of all the topics that we'd be reading about, I began to think about what happened throughout the book. God used ordinary people - sometimes less-than-ordinary people - to carry the most important message to the world. I started to think back to an Old Testament verse that I've claimed as my life verse for the past decade. Habakkuk 1:5 says, "Look at the nations and watch – and be utterly amazed. For I am going to do something in your days that you would not believe, even if you were told.” Don't you think that the believers of the early church were shown things that they would never believe?

I originally planned to call our journey "40 Days of Mission," but after thinking about how this verse relates to Acts, and how much it means in my own life, I decided to call it "Something." I think the next forty days will be so important for our group that, before I left school on Thursday, I created a blog for us to share our what God says to us.

I'm watching. I believe that the “something” in my days will be as great as or greater than what Paul and Barnabas and Luke and Peter experienced. And I believe that I will be amazed at what He does in my life, life group, church, community, state, nation, and world.

It's a trite cliche that you've heard over and over - something that you may often attribute to old blue-haired women without a care in the world who go around spouting religious jargon all the time . . . "suffering for Christ," "bless your soul," "count your blessings . . . ." Or you may think of it as another one of those hymns that has been overused in churches for years. It wouldn't hurt to take a fresh look at the phrase and consider heeding the advice. Take a few minutes today to count your blessings.

My school began MAP testing yesterday. The annual assessment is Missouri's benchmark program to purportedly rate the improvement of its 524 school districts. Because it compares each class of students with those coming before and after them, it does not provide an accurate picture of the progress, but the idea is at least commendable - they're trying to make the public THINK that comparing apples and oranges is adequate. While the debate about the usefulness of MAP scores in any comparison (between different groups of students, different districts, different buildings, etc.) will continue until something new comes out of Jeff City, we'll keep plugging away, trying our best to teach the concepts and content of the test and bribing students to do their best each year.

Being a MAP administrator is not always a bad thing. It allows content area teachers to see what is tested so they can better understand the expectations of the test. It also gives us a chance to see how students answer the questions, write for prompts, and test in general. As exciting as all of that may seem, the last two days have provided a couple of "chuckle moments" for me.

This morning, as I was reading the prescribed instructions that "must be read verbatim," I noticed that the students were having to close and open their test books a lot. At one point, I smiled as I realized that I had just asked them to look over a part of the session and close their books, and then ten seconds later, I was asking them to open their books to the next part of the session. As amusing as that was to me, a separate set of instructions was even funnier: "Stop. Please close your test books. Please open your test books to . . . ." In almost the SAME BREATH, I was asking them to close and open their books. No wonder MAP testing is so exhausting!

A few of my funny moments can't be shared because they were answers that I noticed students writing. Because there are no "released items" on this year's test, I can't talk about those answers until the items finally are released and the questions are made public. Until then, I'll just remember them from time to time and smile inside as I think about how funny they were.

Our teachers and counselors have found that many pencils do not erase very well - especially Papermate. The absolute best pencil we've found is the Dixon Ticonderoga. There's something about the "lead" and eraser that makes this a great choice for any situation - especially testing. Yesterday, as I was looking at the box that my pencils were in, I noticed the words "An American Original" emblazoned on the front. Feeling my patriotic side tweaked just a bit, I felt proud that our nation had produced such a wonderful product. The pride lasted only a second as I glanced a little lower on the box to notice a sticker that had been haphazardly affixed: "Made in Mexico."

Then there's this . . . with all the concern about terrorism and illegal immigration, you'd think states would have citizenship requirements for its public school teachers. A couple of weeks ago in my School Law class, Dr. Kiehne brought up the topic and asked if I would do a little research. He said there is a lawsuit in New York over a requirement that public school teachers must be US citizens. I'll reference it later when I remember (or find out again) the name of the case. Apparently some states are looking at their requirements for teachers and realizing that no such citizenship requirement exists. The very people who are teaching our children about American government and history . . . about citizenship . . . are not required to be American citizens themselves.

The next morning, I searched the Missouri Revised Statutes and only found that the Commissioner of Education must be a citizen of Missouri, and school board members must be residents of the district on whose board they serve. Other than that, I could find no residency or citizenship requirements in the law. Next, I emailed my information source at MSTA headquarters to find out if DESE had a policy, rule or guideline (or if I had just overlooked something in the law.) She passed my request to someone at DESE who replied that there is nothing that says you must be a US citizen to have a certificate to teach in the state.

After I reported my findings to Dr. Kiehne, he spoke with his state representative, who was not aware that such a loophole existed. He vowed to "check in to it" and see if something could be done. In an effort to see what our Republican House leadership will do when this issue is brought to their attention, I will mention it to Speaker Rod Jetton when I meet with him next Wednesday. Since the current leaders are pandering to their conservative base with resolutions guaranteeing students' rights to silent prayer in public schools and making every possible attempt to push vouchers and private school initiatives, my money is on seeing a bill on next year's calendar making US citizenship a requirement for Missouri teacher certification. Anything less would just be un-American.

If you've been keeping up with the St. Louis Public Schools issue, you're aware that they are now unaccredited, and the state is in the process of taking over. From the reports I've read about recent state board meetings, the fight has begun.

In one corner: SLPS and its board, administrators, teachers, students and parents.
In the other corner: DESE and the state board (and some students and parents).

A transitional board has been appointed, and effective June 15, 2007, students in the district will have the opportunity to transfer to a district in a neighboring county.

The school board met today to authorize an appeal of the unaccreditation, and in a 6-0 vote, they removed their president, who will continue to serve as a board member.

DESE has provided a FAQ sheet to answer questions for those who are interested.

The past few weeks have been interesting as our state makes the first move at revealing the teeth in their school improvement program. It will be very interesting to see where it goes from here. We can only hope that any decisions that are made are in the best interest of the students.

For anyone who has ever accused 24 of “jumping the shark,” I say you must not be a true fan. If you were, you’d realize that the Jack Bauer rollercoaster was just plummeting down a hill, and there’s another twist just around the corner. Exhibit A: The phone call at the end of this week’s episode. Congratulations to all the 24 Forum posters who accurately predicted that Audrey in fact wasn’t “died,” but that she would be back soon (I wonder how you ever figured that one out.)

Another memorable line that will live in the annals of 24 – in the previews for next week, when Jack asks Wayne to send someone to get Audrey, and Wayne says no, Jack says, “you owe me.” My opinion? Jack should get anything he asks for – and a lobster dinner on the side.