Gov. Chris Christie has advised the education department not to release a report Tuesday which details how much New Jersey spends per pupil, over concerns it could hurt the state in a current legal challenge.
The above is plain ridiculous. If releasing how much taxpayers fund per student will hurt the state in the lawsuit, perhaps the Ed Law Center has a point. You do not conceal public information.
These are not national secrets. It is not a covert operation. It is not a trade secret. This is an accounting to the taxpayers for how much they are actually spending on public education.
This is civics 101 here, governor. Release the damn figures and just shut up about it. You are becoming ever so the politician with comments like this one.
Use the numbers 1 to 16 to complete this puzzle. Each number can be used just once. Each row is a math problem; work from left to right. Each column is also a math problem; work from top to bottom.
The other night I was working on my photograph project. It is really more than that as it is organizing, backing up, and otherwise preserving thousands of CDs of data. I stumbled upon the motherlode.
Long ago I used to have a web site for my classroom at another school. That site was very kewl. We did things there that folks aren’t doing even today. Anyhow, while I had some of that site, I knew I only had a fraction of what was there. I found the complete site! I have had fun re-living many projects from the 1990s.
One thing I have noticed, the photographs I took then were all re-sized and have not held up well. I recall working with the restraint of 25k as I didn’t want to overload people’s connections. Most folks used the telephone line in those days.
I had a dual model on one system in the classroom that permitted our weather station to act as a call-in station. We then set up all sorts of polls for the students to call in and respond. Then we used those data for analysis. Today one would simply put up a poll on a web site.
Anyhow, the above puzzle is one of the ones from that site. I now how new (old) work for this year’s students.
Bridgeton is an Abbott district so I am certain there will be plenty of students who would benefit from the backpacks. That isn’t the issue.
What is the DRBA doing in the education field? Apparently, it has a Community Initiative Committee and that group thinks backpacks is a good use of the authority’s money.
Now you and I both know that stocked backpacks are a drop in the bucket for a multi-million dollar entity like DRBA. They can certainly afford it. But what the hell does it have to do with administering bridges, airports, and ferries?
The DRBA mission is:
The mission of the Delaware River and Bay Authority is to provide safe, efficient and modern terminals, crossings, vessels and related transportation while participating in controlled economic development opportunities supported by a technically proficient and professionally motivated work force dedicated to providing high quality customer service.
For the past four years I have been involved in Project PORTS. The Promoting Oyster Restoration through Schools program teaches students about the importance of oysters to our local ecosystem (they are a keystone organism). In doing so, students engage in meaningful scientific study. The American Littoral Society is a partner. This is a wonderful project.
Students work with oysters. They learn the anatomy, life cycle, and use in the Delaware estuary.
Our field trip revolves around this study. The folks at the Haskin Shellfish Research Laboratory are superb! Students who have never been to a beach are mesmerized by the hands-on experiences.
The culminating activity is for the students to bag shell for new oysters to grow on. Oysters grow on other shells, either oyster shell or clam shells. Truckloads of shell are dumped on the playground. Students cut netted bags off of a roll. Then they fill the bags with the shells. Students all across the area help with this.
This year 2700 shell bags were created.
Those bags were collected and dropped off in the Delaware Bay. Four bags are joined together with a cable tie. They sat in the shallow water for about two months. During that time, oyster larvae swim in the morning looking for a hard surface on which to attach. Finding the shells, they attach to it. The oyster spat begins to form. Unlike clams, oysters do not move in their lifetime. Over centuries, oyster reefs can form. The ultimate work here is to form such reefs off of Gandy Beach in the Delaware Bay.
The oysters do not remain along the Delaware Bay’s coastline. Last night at low tide, about 15 of us untied the bags and made five or so groups of bags. The bags had been placed on three sand bars. The work took long enough that we never really got to the sand on one of them. We were working in thigh-high water.
This morning I returned. About two dozen of us spent three hours in water that eventually got up to our chests loading a barge and two skiffs over and over and over again with the shell bags. The skiffs and barge would trek out to two commercial fishing boats to unload. It was exhausting, but thrilling work. We used a bucket brigade to load the vessels. I got a little video of that for my students. Not only will they repeat this activity this coming academic year, but we learn about bucket brigades in a story we read.
The vessels loaded with oysters always needed to be lifted off the sandbars and pushed out. Bags weighed up 50 lbs. after sitting in the bay for two months.
In the end, 2700 bags are going up the bay to its permanent home. The bags are cut open and dumped. These bags will be responsible for a few million oysters being grown. That’s some stewardship from youngsters! These oysters will contribute to the health of the estuary.
