North Shore skaters take part in roller derby resurgence
Founded during the Great Depression, roller derby has always been a full contact sport full of nail-biting action….Roller derby is now the fastest-growing sport in the country, with more than 250 leagues competing in North America in the past five years.
Last night the Burbank PTA meeting was devoted to generating ideas for how to deal with the severe cuts that are in store for next year’s budget. Unfortunately no ideas were generated except for one: work to pass the override.
There is currently a $3 million gap between what the school administration considers level funding and what the Town says is available for the schools. In response, the school department has listed seven tiers of cuts that they are prepared to make. The tiers represent increasing severity of impact on the quality of education. But even those seven tiers do not total enough to bring the budget in line with expected funding, another $400,000 in cuts are necessary.
Here is a summary of how the administration prioritizes the budget from first cuts (Tier 2) to last resort cuts (Tier 7). Tier 1 comprises adjustments to previous calculations.
Tier 2: Equipment ($100K is still left in the budget for IT), supplies, advertising and recruitment, staff development and HS and MS printing expenses (which are reduced to 0 - no printing allowed). Also HS graduation expense is reduced to $6,000. The police officer who works inside the HS is cut ($28K).
Tier 3: Converting students activities to fee based. This includes K-5 instrumental music ($80K), all non-sport HS student activities ($70K) and all stipends for student activities ($150K). HS athletics are cut by $140K which still leaves about $300K for HS sports. Increase the bus user fee ($82.5K). Cut a secretary in the main office ($25K) and cut two campus monitors ($41K)
Tier 4: Kindergarten classroom assistants ($20K) and all library aides in all six schools ($105K). Also more cuts to supplies ($43K) and staff development ($27K) and about half the book budget ($63K).
Tier 5: Here is where teacher cuts begin: MCAS Math tutor, a guidance counselor, HS Social Studies, English and Art teachers ($127K) and Alice Melnikoff, the Community Service Coordinator ($63K). Also the rest of the book budget ($57K) - no new books at all.
Tier 6: More staff cuts: Middle school grade 7/8 English, Math, Science, Social Studies and Foreign Language ($244K), HS Science, Foreign Language and English ($159K), another guidance counselor (leaves 3 for the whole system, 2 of which are METCO).
Tier 7: Elementary staff cuts: One 5th Grade teacher, One teacher each at Burbank, Butler and Winn Brook and 3 at Wellington ($371K for all 7)
After the elementary staff cuts class sizes at the Burbank are projected to be 25 for Gr.4, 28 for Gr.3, 22 for Gr. 2, 19 for Gr. 1 and 19+ for K.
After the budget summary, School Committee member Anne Rittenburg listed the efforts that have been made to achieve costs savings so far:
No additional ideas were proposed at the meeting. Most discussion focused on the need to convince voters to pass the override and the Wellington debt exclusion.
The latest New Yorker has an article about Southwest Florida real estate by George Packer entitle “The Ponzi State.” I had to post it here as a follow up to my 2005 post My Experience with the Southwest Florida Real Estate Bubble.
Florida’s Foreclosure Disaster
In “The Ponzi State” (p. 80), George Packer traces the development of the foreclosure crisis in southwest Florida, and looks at how it has affected people at all levels of society. Florida’s economy, Packer notes, “depends almost entirely on growth—that is, on new arrivals and the wealth they generate in construction and real estate.” Gary Mormino, a professor of history at the University of South Florida, in St. Petersburg, tells Packer, “Florida, in some ways, resembles a modern Ponzi scheme. Everything is fine for me if a thousand newcomers come tomorrow. The problem is, except for a few road bumps . . . no one knew what would happen if they stopped coming.” “By 2005, the housing market in Florida was hotter than it had ever been . . . Home values around Tampa rose twenty-eight per cent that year,” Packer writes. “Flipping houses and condominiums turned into an amateur middle-class pursuit.” Alex Sink, the state’s chief financial officer, says, “Florida has always been susceptible to the Wild West mentality. If it’s too good to be true, we’re going to be involved in it.” The combination of underqualified buyers (“Anybody could qualify—I mean anybody,” Marc Joseph, a Fort Myers Realtor, tells Packer), insufficient regulation of mortgages by the state, and the failure of banks to do due diligence on properties and buyers set up Florida for a particularly hard fall. “Anyone buying and selling property in Florida in the middle of the decade must have known that the system was essentially a confidence game, that everyone involved was both being taken and taking someone else,” Packer writes.
Packer notes, “in a place like Lehigh Acres, near Fort Myers, where half the driveways are sprouting weeds, and where garbage piles up in the bushes along the outer streets, it’s already possible to see the slums of the future.” As Doug Bennett, chief of the Riverview bureau of the St. Petersburg Times, tells Packer, “Too many houses, not enough water, the economy’s terrible, no tourists. This is the capital of the low-wage jobs, and when things go bad people just have no safety net. It’s very unfortunate. This is the epicenter of everything that’s bad in America.”
I am late with this, it was supposed to be posted before Thanksgiving, but I figure better late than never. Ilyse and I just, finally, got around to updating our Health Care Proxies which we last did 10 years ago, and had this conversation. It’s really important.
We make choices throughout our lives - where we want to live, what types of activities will fill our days, with whom we spend our time. These choices are often a balance between our desires and our means, but at the end of the day, they are decisions made with intent. But when it comes to how we want to be treated at the end our lives, often we don’t express our intent or tell our loved ones about it.
This has real consequences. 73% of Americans would prefer to die at home, but up to 50% die in hospital. More than 80% of Californians say their loved ones “know exactly” or have a “good idea” of what their wishes would be if they were in a persistent coma, but only 50% say they’ve talked to them about their preferences.But our end of life experiences are about a lot more than statistics. They’re about all of us.
So the first thing we need to do is start talking. Engage With Grace: The One Slide Project was designed with one simple goal: to help get the conversation about end of life experience started. The idea is simple: Create a tool to help get people talking. One Slide, with just
five questions on it. Five questions designed to help get us talking with each other, with our loved ones, about our preferences.And we’re asking people to share this One Slide wherever and whenever they can - at a presentation, at dinner, at their book club. Just One Slide, just five questions. Let’s start a global discussion that, until now, most of us haven’t had. Here is what we are asking you: Download The One Slide and share it at any opportunity - with colleagues, family, friends. Think of the slide as currency and donate just two minutes whenever you can. Commit to being able to answer these five questions about end of life experience for yourself, and for your loved ones. Then commit to helping others do the same. Get this conversation started.
Let’s start a viral movement driven by the change we as individuals can effect…and the incredibly positive impact we could have collectively. Help ensure that all of us - and the people we care for - can end our lives in the same purposeful way we live them. Just One Slide, just one goal. Think of the enormous difference we can make together.
To learn more please go to www.engagewithgrace.org
This post was written by Alexandra Drane and the Engage With Grace team.
When we were having our pre-purchase house inspection last year I was sure to ask the inspector about water pressure. We had renovated our house in Watertown and added a bathroom on the third floor in which the water pressure was decent but not as strong as we would have liked. He just laughed and told us we’d never have a problem in Belmont. And sure enough, the pressure is amazing here compared to our old house just a mile away.
I just read the article about water conservation in the latest Belmont Citizens Forum newsletter, which includes a table of average water usage for surrounding communities. It says that in Belmont used an average of 73 gallons/person/day, considerably higher than Lexington, 65, Waltham, 68, Watertown, 59 and Cambridge at 49. Summer lawn watering doesn’t explain it since all the towns have fairly similar summer/winter use ratios. My guess is that people in Belmont use more water because every time they turn on a faucet the water comes blasting out like a firehose.
Latest Comments
RSS