The Loveshade Family Blog

The California legislature is scrambling to fix the snafu that is forcing two Southern California elementary schools to stay open an extra 34 days. Susie Lange, California Department of Education's deputy superintendent of fiscal services, said "To the average person, it sounds like crazy bureaucracy that we count the number of minutes,"

As a couple of us have worked in the educational system, it does sound like crazy bureaucracy.  But that's because they aren't counting the minutes.

It's not a matter of the schools being short of the state allotted 54,000 minutes in school. The students made and even exceeded that requirement by the end of the scheduled school year. It's a matter that, because their Fridays were 5 minutes short at Dickson Elementary in Chino and 10 minutes short at Rolling Ridge Elementary, those days weren't counted at all. As far as the legislature's tally goes, the 170 minutes and 175 minutes students spent each Friday at those schools never happened.  In arithmetic as figured by the state legislature, 180 - 5 = 0.

Yes, the school district made a serious error in miscounting the minutes. But how could the legislature intentionally make a law that ignores time students actually spent at school?

Estimates are that even if the state legislature works at maximum efficiency, it will be at least another eight days to fix something that should never had been made broken. Perhaps we need to send those legislatures to those elementary school students. Maybe one of the kids there can teach them how to do their arithmetic.

http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/nation/wire/sns-ap-us-california-schools-not-out,0,7891036.story

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Students at two elementary schools in San Bernardino, California, exceeded the number of required minutes to be in school. So they're off on summer vacation, right? Wrong. Instead, they have 34 more days of school. Instead of getting out on in the middle of June, they're supposed to stay until the end of July.

How did this happen? Rolling Ridge Elementary in Chino Hills and Dickson Elementary in Chino had shorter days on Fridays just like many elementary schools in California. This gave teachers time to plan, meet with parents, etc. But it ends up that state law requires these days to be 180 minutes long. Due to a spreadsheet error, these days were only 175 minutes at Dickson and 170 at Rolling Ridge.

The logical among us might say, "So what? They exceeded the minimum number of minutes for the school year. What difference does it make what days those were on?" But the logical among us are likely not bureaucrats and legislators.

If the schools don't make up the supposedly missing time, the school district could lose $7 million. The still logical among us might figure the total amount of time those minimum days were short as a total of 170 minutes at Rolling Ridge, and 340 minutes at Dickson. One or two additional days could make up that time.

But no. According to the law, if you're short on the time for a particular day, even if it's just a few minutes, that day doesn't count. So being short a few minutes for 34 days, even though your total minutes exceeds the state requirement, means those 34 days don't count at all.

What's wrong with this logic? Let's apply this to another situation. Let's say you work for a company that pays you $15 an hour. You're expected to be at work 40 hours a week for 50 weeks, for a  total of 2000 hours in a year. For this, your gross payment will be $30,000. One year you actually worked 2020 hours, but only expect to get paid for your scheduled 2000. But someone figures out that, even though you worked more hours than you were paid for, you came in five minutes late on every Monday. So those 50 Mondays don't count at all, and the company takes back $6000.

Hopefully, the legislature will fix this. If not, we should keep track of every day they show up late.

See an article at http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-summer16-2009jun16,0,2614495.story?track=mostemailedlink

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New Hampshire is now the sixth American state (if you don't count California) to recognize same-sex marriage.

Legislators approved a law that lets the state join gay-marriage-accepting states Massachusetts, Connecticut, Maine, Vermont and Iowa.  California had briefly allowed same-sex marriage, but voters changed the law.

New Hampshire Gov. John Lynch, who opposes gay marriage and had threatened to veto a previous version, none-the-less signed the law.  This was after the legislature added a provision that religious organizations would not be forced to officiate or participate in same-sex marriage.

We support both the law and the exception.  We believe that consensual marriage should not be illegal, but also believe in the right of a religious group to stand by its beliefs.

See the story at http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2009/06/03/national/a120055D33.DTL

See all our entries dealing with same-sex marriage by going to http://www.loveshade.org/blog-mt/mt-search.fcgi?IncludeBlogs=1&search=same-sex+marriage

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Gay Marriage in California has been a merry-go-round in just the last year.

On May 15 2008, the California Supreme Court said prohibitions against same-sex marriage violated the law.  Soon after, gay and lesbian couples began getting married.

On November 4, 2008, Californians approved Proposition 8, which changed the law, so that same-sex marriages would once again be considered illegal--if the law held up.

On May 26, 2009, the California Supreme Court upheld the new law, meaning gay marriages would be banned--unless they occurred during the short time in 2008 when they were considered legal.  Those marriages would stand.

On May 26, 2009, about 175 peaceful protesters were arrested in San Francisco for protesting the decision.

Already, the law is facing lawsuits.

And already pro-same-sex marriage groups are planning to get another proposition on the ballot to make same-sex marriage legal again in 2010.  Perhaps not coincidentally, the tree front runners to become the Democratic front-runner for governor all support gay marriage.

California politics hasn't been this much of a circus since several dozen people simultaneously ran for governor.

To learn about the San Francisco arrests, see http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20090527/lf_afp/usvotegaymarriage_20090527010456

For information on lawsuits, see http://abcnews.go.com/TheLaw/story?id=6194048&page=1

To read about pro-same-sex marriage plans for the ballot in 2010, see http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/Story?id=7502090&page=1

To see all our entries dealing with same-sex marriage, click on http://www.loveshade.org/blog-mt/mt-search.fcgi?IncludeBlogs=1&search=same-sex+marriage

Posted by The Loveshade Family at 03:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (9) | TrackBacks (0)

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